© Jana Christopher
Jana Christopher
Image Integrity Analyst
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.
Comissioned by the STM STEC Working Group on Image Alterations and Duplications,
I am currently producing a series of training videos that form part of the STM Integrity Hub Initiative.
These instructional video modules are intended to serve as a tool for scholarly journal editors screening for manipulated images in submitted manuscripts. This tutorial provides an overview of the most commonly found image aberrations in scientific publications and illustrates how they may be detected and verified. Watch the videos here.
Image analysis of blots, microscopy images photographs, diagrams, graphs, plots
Research misconduct can misdirect research effort, waste funds, and damage public trust in science
It is beneficial to both authors and journals to detect questionable images before they become part of the published literature
Paper mills are a threat to the scientific record
Community-developed checklists for publishing images and image analysis (preprint)
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