© Jana Christopher
Jana Christopher
Image Integrity Analyst
Who I am
I was the first image integrity analyst at EMBO Press, when the program started in 2011.
At the end of 2015, I started my own business, and joined FEBS Press in 2017.
My assignments come from various other journals and publishers including SpringerNature and The Royal Society,
I also run training courses, and regularly present to students and young scientists.
My background is in theatre arts and linguistics. In 2002 I obtained an MA in Bilingual Translation from Westminster University, London, before returning to Germany and starting a new career in publishing.
I live in Heidelberg with my husband, we have two daughters.
Since February 2024, I have been Chair of the STM Working Group on Image Integrity
NEWS: Image Integrity Training Videos
Comissioned by the STM STEC Working Group on Image Alterations and Duplications,
I have produced a series of training videos that form part of the STM Integrity Hub Initiative.
These instructional videos are intended to serve as a tool for scholarly journal editors screening for manipulated images in submitted manuscripts. They provide an overview of the most commonly found image aberrations in scientific publications and illustrate how they may be detected and verified. Watch the videos here.
Publications:
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A call for research to address the threat of paper mills PLOS Biology (2024)
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Community-developed checklists for publishing images and image analysis Nature Methods (2024)
- The raw truth about paper mills FEBS Letters (2021)
- Digital magic, or the dark arts of the 21st century—how can journals and peer reviewers detect manuscripts and publications from paper mills? FEBS Letters (2020)
Press:
BBC Radio4 27 February 2025
Inside Science - AI in Science: Promise and Peril
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0028bpf
Nature News 05 November 2024
AI-generated images threaten science — here’s how researchers hope to spot them
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03542-8
Undark 05 November 2024
The Rise of the Science Sleuths
https://undark.org/2024/09/11/the-rise-of-the-science-sleuths/
STAT January 10, 2023
Mistakes happen in research papers. But corrections often don’t
https://www.statnews.com/2023/01/10/corrections-retractions-journals/
SCIENCE 21 July 2022
https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease
UKRIO Expert Interview with Jana Christopher 2021
Chemical & Engineering News 2021
https://cen.acs.org/policy/publishing/Paper-mill-hits-RSC-journals/99/web/2021/01
Nature News 23 March 2021
The fight against fake-paper factories that churn out sham science
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00733-5
Nature News 21 July 2020
Pioneering duplication detector trawls thousands of coronavirus preprints
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02161-3
Nature News 12 June 2015
The image detective who roots out manuscript flaws
http://www.nature.com/news/the-image-detective-who-roots-out-manuscript-flaws-1.17749
https://www.chemistryworld.com/
https://www.laborjournal.de/editorials/1988.php
https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2020/02/21/the-tadpole-paper-mill/
https://www.statnews.com/2018/11/21/research-misconduct-journals-hiring-research-integrity-czars/
http://www.nature.com/news/research-integrity-cell-induced-stress-1.15507