AI in practice: IOP Publishing

Q: What is the current state of play with regards to AI usage?

A: The conversation around AI often swings between recognition of its potential and concern about its risks. In scholarly publishing, we need both perspectives.

At IOP Publishing, we’ve taken a considered approach, recognising the opportunities AI presents while being mindful of its limitations. One thing is clear: AI is already changing how research is created, discovered, evaluated and shared.

As AI becomes increasingly embedded in the research workflow, it brings significant opportunities to improve access to knowledge and accelerate discovery. It also creates new challenges. The scale at which unreliable or artificially generated content can be produced means publishers must work harder than ever to maintain trust, transparency and integrity in the scholarly record.

At IOP Publishing, our response combines clear policies, responsible practices and targeted investment in technology. We regularly review and update our AI policies for authors and reviewers to keep pace with evolving technologies and ensure clear expectations around transparency and accountability. We have also established principles for licensing published content to AI companies, reflecting our commitment to the responsible development and use of AI.

We are using AI where it creates genuine value. We’ve introduced tools such as Alchemist Review, which help identify potential quality and integrity concerns in submitted manuscripts. We have also developed a duplicate review checker that identifies unusually similar reviewer reports, helping detect potentially compromised peer review and strengthening oversight of the review process. Together, these tools enable editors and research integrity specialists to focus their expertise where it matters most.

Ultimately, the organisations that create the most value from AI will be those that use it responsibly and in service of their communities. AI may change how people engage with research, but it does not change the need for trustworthy knowledge. If anything, it makes that need greater than ever.

Q: What are the best opportunities for future development?

A: While it’s impossible to predict exactly how AI will evolve, it’s clear that it will play an increasingly important role in the research ecosystem. What I hope to see is AI helping to make research more connected, collaborative and accessible.

As the volume and complexity of research continue to grow, AI has the potential to help researchers identify links across disciplines, uncover new insights and work together more effectively across institutions, sectors and geographies. It could help break down traditional boundaries between fields and enable knowledge to flow more freely, supporting innovation and accelerating discovery.

I also see exciting opportunities to make research more accessible and useful to a wider range of audiences. Whether supporting researchers, policymakers, educators or industry, AI could help more people find, understand and apply relevant knowledge to real-world challenges.

For publishers, there is an important opportunity to help ensure these developments are built on a foundation of trustworthy, high-quality research. While the technology will continue to evolve, the principles that underpin research communication, transparency, integrity and trust will remain as important as ever.

Q: What are your three key learnings?

1. The growing importance of making trust visible. Researchers have always relied on trusted sources, but as AI increasingly becomes a route to discovering and consuming information, signals such as peer review and attribution become even more important. Publishers have a responsibility to make those signals easier to recognise and understand, helping researchers and readers navigate a growing and increasingly complex information landscape with confidence.
2. Transparency cannot be an afterthought. Whether AI is being used by authors, reviewers, publishers or technology providers, people want to understand how and where it is being applied. Clear policies, open communication and shared expectations are essential to maintaining trust and supporting the responsible use of these technologies.
3. As publishers, we should not simply be responding to AI. We have an opportunity to help shape its future. The quality of AI-generated outputs will depend heavily on the quality of the content used to train and inform these systems. Through responsible licensing, collaboration and continued investment in research integrity, publishers can help ensure AI is grounded in trusted, evidence-based knowledge. As AI becomes more powerful, the qualities that underpin great research, trust, transparency and human expertise, become more important, not less.