Morressier pulls focus on research integrity as it eyes next stage of growth

Berlin and Washington DC, May 30, 2023 – Morressier has published a roundup of its growth and development over the past 18 months and outlined its focus on leading the fight for research integrity.

Sami Benchekroun, Morressier co-founder and CEO: “The past 18 months have been an astonishing period of development for Morressier, and I think it’s fair to say that we have found our place in the scholarly communications ecosystem. We’re investing heavily to be first to market with innovative solutions that support societies and publishers in identifying integrity issues, early and at scale. We’re integrating this tech where it’s needed – in workflows across the publishing lifecycle – to reduce retractions and increase the quality of submissions.”

Partnerships and scalable growth

Morressier’s long-term commercial partnerships form the basis of its growth strategy, powering the innovation it is bringing to market. Morressier strengthened its two-year relationship with IOP Publishing, continuing to develop a streamlined and user-friendly journal submission process. It has made inroads in the physical sciences sector over the past year, with AIP Publishing being one example of an established publisher drawing value from Morressier’s end-to-end platform, with a focus on conference proceedings. 

Morressier helped ASCE expand access to existing research by launching a Conference Video Collection, transforming over 1,000 hours of video content into a searchable video library. The company also supports trailblazers in the scientific ecosystem such as AAAS, ACS, APS, among others.

The needs of Morressier partners are driving a new product-led growth strategy which has seen expansion in supporting smaller societies, universities and users via the platform, in areas such as preflight checks, event management, manuscript submission and  peer-review.

The company is not only solving these problems with in-house solutions. Morressier announced an integration with CCC’s Ringgold Identify Database to improve data interconnectivity for early-stage research in October. The Product team also works with an array of the industry’s leading technology providers to integrate solutions with the Morressier platform, especially in the research integrity space.

Othman Altalib, Chief Growth Officer: “The reaction in the market to what Morressier is doing has been phenomenal. Submissions and research integrity are consistently top-of-mind across the academic publishing industry, which explains the traction we’re seeing. It's hugely validating for our roadmap and it’s so gratifying to know that what we're doing is having an impact on the quality of science.”

Product milestones

A steady cadence of releases on the Morressier platform have brought improvements to every part of the pre-publication lifecycle:

• In June 2022 Morressier released its first integrity checks, for citation manipulation. These help publishers to identify articles that cite the same author’s research multiple times, as well citations that refer to individuals who played a role compiling the volume currently under review.
• The Events Hub, enabling registration and ticketing via seamless integration into workflows on the platform, was launched towards the end of last year. It enables scientific event organizers to easily manage registration and ticketing for virtual and hybrid events.
• Enhanced user profiles on Morressier now leverage the Ringgold identity database and other industry standard identifiers such as ORCiD, enhancing trust.
• The first major automation features for Morressier’s peer-review workflows enable editors to distribute abstracts and papers for review. Smart tools take into account reviewers' chosen topics of expertise, relative workloads, and potential conflicts of interest.
• Weighted peer-review scoring enables editors and conference organizers to assign different weights to the graded scoring categories in their peer review settings.
• Automated integrity checks by batch upload enable societies to save time and stay ahead of emerging threats in scholarly publishing.
• In May 2023 a comprehensive standalone integrity suite that supports publishers in identifying integrity issues early and at scale was launched, which includes plagiarism detection and checks for retracted papers and much more.

Integrity, integrity, integrity

Sami Benchekroun: “What has emerged from our work over the last eighteen months is a relentless focus on enhancing the integrity and quality of the outputs of research. We want to make retractions a thing of the past; we’re in a fight for science. The next step in our journey will be to set a new standard in journal submissions, with research integrity and quality baked into every workflow. The work we have done in just the past months has given us great confidence in this vision. Further automations with the support of novel technologies and capabilities are already part of our immediate roadmap.”