Help your students make more informed decisions about the academic sources they discover online with Research Integrity.
When students search for academic content, Signals will display clear, colour-coded indicators:
| Indicator | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Looks good | Signals has not identified research integrity concerns in the available assessment data |
| Caution | Signals found issues which warrant further investigation but these are fewer or less concerning issues than “Alert” evaluations |
| Alert | Signals found issues that merit immediate attention and may be evidence of serious research integrity problems |
| Retracted | Article has been retracted |
| None | Data available for the article is insufficient to perform a robust analysis |
Understanding the assessment from Signals
Signals combines networked publication data, expert knowledge and AI to assess publications. Individual signals contribute to the overall assessment, with Caution and Alert reflecting different thresholds based on the combination and strength of the signals identified.
Open the Research Integrity card and follow the link to the full Signals report to explore the evidence behind an assessment.
Research Integrity indicators support critical evaluation. “Looks good” does not guarantee that an article is accurate, and Caution or Alert does not by itself establish misconduct. Users should consider the evidence alongside the article’s methods, its relevance and other sources.
Assessments can change as new information becomes available, including citations, retractions and expert comments. Where no assessment is available, Signals may not have enough information to evaluate the publication. This does not itself indicate a research integrity concern.
Wanted to understand more? Watch our webinar with Tiago Barros, Co-founder of Signals, to explore how Signals assesses publications and supports research integrity within Lean Library.
How will Signals help your students?
When an article is detected, the metadata will be sent to Signals and the related information will appear either as a Floating Action Button on an academic page or a widget on search databases, such as Google Scholar and PubMed:
Helping students on academic pages
Indicator on the Floating Action Button |
Click to expand and see the full report |
Helping students on search databases
How it would appear |
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|---|---|
| Google Scholar | |
| PubMed | |
| Wikipedia |
How to enable this feature?
Signals integration will be enabled by default for all institutions. However, if you'd like to change this, you can easily do this in our Integration Settings page in the Lean Library dashboard. Please follow the steps highlighted below: