Research Integrity and Peer Review

Stephanie Boughton, Editor-in-Chief (research and publication ethics)

Stephanie Boughton is a Research Integrity Manager in the Springer Nature Research Integrity Group where she manages a team of Research Integrity Advisers. The team provides support and advice to in-house staff and external Editors across Springer Nature on dealing with publication ethics issues and ensuring adherence to editorial best practice and standards in peer review.

Stephanie has a degree in Medicine from Brighton and Sussex Medical School and previously worked in hospital clinical practice as a junior doctor. She joined BioMed Central in 2010 as Deputy Medical Editor and later became Medical Editor in BioMed Central’s Research Integrity Group before joining the newly formed Springer Nature Research Integrity Group.

Stephanie has conducted research and participated in many events relating to peer review, research integrity and publication ethics and has also developed guidelines for editors on dealing with cases of text recycling in conjunction with COPE.

Maria Kowalczuk, Editor-in-Chief (research and publication ethics)

Maria Kowalczuk obtained a PhD in Bioinformatics and Genomics at the University of Wroclaw, Poland in 2002. She then took up a permanent position there researching the coding properties of microbial genomes. In 2006 Maria joined BioMed Central as an in-house Editor managing the peer review process for a number of BMC series biology journals, and the flagship journal BMC Biology in 2008. In 2010 Maria moved to the Biology and Medical Editors team responsible for the editorial oversight of the BMC series of journals. The role expanded in 2012 to cover all aspects of policy and ethical issues across all BioMed Central’s journals. In 2014 Maria was appointed Biology Editor in BioMed Central’s Research Integrity Group. In 2017 the team was restructured and expanded to become Springer Nature Research Integrity Group. In her current role as Research Integrity Manager, Maria oversees a team of Research Integrity Advisers who support in-house staff and external Editors across Springer Nature in ensuring adherence to editorial best practice and standards in peer review. Maria also continues to pursue research into peer review and takes part in debates, meetings and conferences related to research integrity and publication ethics.

Joerg Meerpohl, Editor-in-Chief (research reporting)

Joerg Meerpohl is a board-qualified pediatrician and pediatric hematologist & oncologist. He has been working as a researcher at the German Cochrane Centre since 2007 and was appointed deputy director in 2011 and co-director in 2015. His main research interests include systematic review methodology, transparency in research and related dissemination bias as well as reporting quality in particular. Since 2015, Joerg has been a member of the Cochrane Steering Group.

For many years Joerg has also been an active member of the GRADE working group, and has run many GRADE workshops at national and international organizations. Joerg worked as a GRADE methodology advisor with several WHO panels, the European Stroke Organization and the Robert Koch Institute in Germany amongst others. In 2013 he founded the GRADE center in Freiburg, Germany and is a member of the GRADE guidance committee.

Elizabeth (Liz) Wager, Editor-in-Chief (peer review)

Elizabeth (Liz) Wager is a freelance consultant and trainer with a special interest in medical publishing and peer review. After a degree in zoology from Oxford, she worked in the publishing and pharmaceutical industries for Blackwell Scientific, Janssen Cilag and GlaxoSmithKline before setting up her own company, Sideview, in 2001. She chaired the Committee on Publication Ethics (2009-12) and is a member of the Ethics Committees of The BMJ and the World Association of Medical Editors. She is Visiting Professor at the University of Split School of Medicine, Croatia from where she received her PhD in 2010 on ‘Peer review and editorial processes for improving the quality of research reporting’. She has published research and commentaries on peer review and publication ethics and is a co-author of Cochrane systematic reviews on the effects of peer review and technical editing, several COPE guidelines and flowcharts, and of books on ‘Getting Research Published: An A to Z of Publication Strategy’ (3rd edition 2016) and ‘How to Survive Peer Review’ (2002).