A research article can be seen as a conversation between scholars. In the past this conversation took place almost exclusively between privileged colleagues, and more recently as part of the anonymous peer review process. Today technology allows this conversation to take place in the open, in forums like preprint servers, and the conversation can be ongoing with post publication commenting. There are multiple providers of “community peer review” offering various services targeted at different parts of the scholarly communications ecosystem, from preprint servers to journal peer review to post-publication commenting. These providers are not only pushing boundaries on how peer review is conducted, many are also expanding what peer reviewers look like, bringing in more diversity and working to train early career researchers. In this session we examine various types of experiments, how these services can help diversify science, and how their efforts are contributing to trust and integrity.

The Research Integrity Checks (RIC) platform addresses a critical gap in scholarly publishing by integrating multiple research integrity tools into a unified platform. Developed by HighWire Press and MPS Labs, RICS offers a comprehensive dashboard that streamlines integrity checks within the DigiCorePro submission system and as a standalone tool. Researcher identity is vital in evaluating research integrity. A key feature of RIC is identity verification, ensuring authenticity of authors, editors, and reviewers throughout the entire publishing process. It validates users by examining data from ORCID IDs, IP addresses, retraction histories, conflicts of interest, funding disclosures and more. By integrating resources like Crossref, Retraction Watch, PubMed and Open Alex, RIC centralizes identity checks, reducing reliance on fragmented tools. With configurable scoring and thresholds, RIC helps detect integrity concerns, maintaining publication quality. By generating XML metadata to document these checks, RIC enhances transparency, trust, and efficiency in research publishing.