[Eril-l] NISO Approves Working Group to Develop Recommended Practice for Trust Markers for Scholarly Research

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NISO Approves Working Group to Develop Recommended Practice for
Identification of Trust Markers for Increasing Credibility of Scholarly
Research



Baltimore, MD—May 5, 2026—Voting members of the National Information
Standards Organization (NISO) have approved the formation of a Working
Group to provide consumers of scholarly content with definitions and a
framework for understanding items that signal trust in published scholarly
content. NISO is currently seeking members from across the information
community to join the resulting Trust Markers Working Group.



Ethics and integrity cases in submitted manuscripts are becoming an
increasingly common problem, while retractions continue to grow at a rapid
rate. These cases may be caused by intentional misconduct and fraud as well
as a host of unintentionally poor research practices.

Most reputable journals undertake a range of checks to identify these
issues ahead of peer review and publication. However, the specific checks
undertaken are highly variable and typically not shared publicly on a
journal site, and most preprint servers conduct far more limited checks.
This means that the process for identifying errors and misconduct is
unclear to readers, especially those who are unfamiliar with different
scholarly publishing mechanisms and terminology and consume different types
of content across a wide range of sites. This includes researchers not
versed in a particular discipline, the general public, media and
journalists, policymakers, and other nonexpert audiences that may not be
familiar with how to assess the credibility of the scholarly content.

Now more than ever, with the push from funders for greater research impact,
the significant increase in fraudulent submissions, and the growing
mistrust of scientific information in some parts of broader society, it is
crucial to provide clarity on how much trust can be assigned to a piece of
scholarly content.

NISO is inviting experts from across the information ecosystem, especially
representatives working in or involved with research integrity, publishing,
scholarly research, science communication, metadata registries,
identifiers, and academic libraries, to join the Working Group.

“We are excited to develop this Working Group dedicated to the ever
important fight for research integrity and transparency,” says Keondra
Bailey, NISO Standards Program Manager. “This initiative is another step
toward providing users with clear markers for trustworthy research, and
NISO is proud to lead this effort."

For more information and to volunteer to join the Trust Markers Working
Group, please send an email stating your interest to nisohq at niso.org.

About NISO

Based in Baltimore, MD, NISO’s mission is to build knowledge, foster
discussion, and advance authoritative standards development through
collaboration among the cultural, scholarly, scientific, and professional
communities. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages with libraries,
publishers, information aggregators, and other organizations that support
learning, research, and scholarship through the creation, organization,
management, and curation of knowledge. NISO works with intersecting
communities of interest and across the entire life cycle of information
standards. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American
National Standards Institute (ANSI). For more information, visit the NISO
website (https://niso.org) or contact us at nisohq at niso.org.



NISO
3600 Clipper Mill Road, Suite 302

Baltimore, MD 21211
Phone: 301.654.2512
E-mail: nisohq at niso.org
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