Q4.2025 Release

Expanded Unusual Activity Detection Tool (UAD)

Our Unusual Activity Detection (UAD) tool was the first research integrity intervention on the market. As the research integrity space has evolved, we’re expanding the functionality of this tool to provide new scoring systems and analysis capabilities. 

New authorship change device detection parameter  

Enhanced the Unusual Activity Detection (UAD) scoring system by adding a new configuration parameter to detect when multiple authors confirm authorship changes from the same device. This addition to the UAD functionality allows journals to identify potential cases where a single person may be inappropriately approving authorship changes on behalf of multiple authors.  

This change involved adding the “Authorship change confirmed on same device” parameter as an additional Unusual Activity Scoring option on the Manuscript Details configuration step. Administrators can set the sensitivity level (Off, Low, Medium, or High) for this detection parameter alongside other existing UAD scoring options. This enhancement enables clients to strengthen research integrity by expanding UAD capabilities to detect suspicious authorship approval patterns.  

Configuration Location: Client Configuration Center → Configure This Site → Step: Manuscript Details  

New UAD Parameter Added:  

• Parameter Name: Authorship change confirmed on same device  

• Available Sensitivity Options: Off, Low, Medium, High  
   

How It works: This new parameter adds to the existing UAD scoring system, contributing to the overall unusual activity score when authorship changes are confirmed from the same device across multiple authors.  

BETA: New UAD capabilities ready for customer testing 

Added a suite of new beta features to the Unusual Activity Detection tool for customer testing and validation. This expansion of UAD capabilities leverages a publisher’s corpus of historical peer review data in ScholarOne, surfacing user insights that draw from activity on both rejected and accepted articles. 

The analyses listed below are available for active client testing and validation. We recommend beta testing these new reports on your sites and providing all feedback on these reports to your ScholarOne team. We will be refining the functionality, performance, and design to these features based on this feedback and releasing incremental improvements in the coming months. 

• Relationship analysis 
  This report identifies and analyzes user relationships for actors on a given paper, surfacing data around collaboration frequency between individuals. 
   

• Prolific authors analysis 
  This feature notes submission patterns for each author on a paper, then appends a risk assessment based upon the rate of an author’s completed submissions within a given time frame. 
   

• Clique analysis 
  This feature identifies groups with unusually strong connections that may indicate coordinated misconduct. The tool collates all documents with which authors on a given paper are associated and creates a graph that illustrates potential clique networks. Clique analysis also includes timeline visualization to provide context for the clique’s collaboration activity over time. 

• Security analysis and network details 
  New data is now available for a paper’s actors, including VPN service detection, network type, bot/crawler information, user-supplied location vs. IP location, and more. 

How it works: To activate the new beta tools, please reach out to your account manager or s1help@silverchair.com, and we will arrange for a demo and share best practices for testing these features/providing feedback to the product team. 

Enhanced API to Retrieve Portal-Level Person Attributes

Enhanced the getpersoninfofull API to retrieve person attributes (keywords) configured at the portal level. The API can now pull these portal-level attributes using either the person’s email address or unique person ID when the ‘portal’ combination is specified. 

This enhancement enables clients with portal-based architectures to properly access and utilize portal-level user attributes through the API, supporting better integration and data consistency across their publishing platforms. 

API Enhancement Details: 

• New Capability: Retrieves portal-level person attributes (keywords) 

• Query Methods: By email address or person ID 

• Response Format: Returns attributes array containing:  

• attributeId 

• attributeName 

• attributeTypeId 

• attributeTypeName (Keyword) 

How it works: This enhancement supports clients with portal architectures where user accounts are managed centrally at the portal level, ensuring consistent attribute retrieval across all journals within the portal. 

Improved Keyword Validation During JATS Document Ingestion

Fixed keyword validation during JATS XML document ingestion to properly validate internal-IDs and attribute names. Previously, ingestion would succeed but fail to send submission confirmation emails when invalid keywords were provided. The system now correctly validates keywords based on attribute configuration and fails ingestion when validation rules are not met, ensuring data integrity and consistent email notification behavior. 

Validation Behavior: 

• When custom attributes are not allowed: Ingestion fails if incorrect internal-IDs or invalid attribute names are provided 

• When custom attributes are allowed: Ingestion fails only if attribute name is blank.