“The Dark Side of Academic Publishing: How RI² (Research Integrity Risk Index) Reveals Hidden Risks in Top Universities. Ranking Isn’t Everything RI² Shows Which Universities Are Failing Integrity Tests”
What is RI²?
RI² (Research Integrity Risk Index) is the world’s first empirically grounded, composite metric designed to identify and profile institutional-level risks to research integrity. Developed by Professor Lokman Meho at the American University of Beirut, RI² was created in response to growing concerns that global university rankings prioritize publication volume and citation counts over scholarly integrity.
What Does RI² Measure?
RI² evaluates research institutions using two independent and verifiable indicators:
R Rate – The number of retracted articles per 1,000 publications, signaling serious issues such as methodological flaws, ethical violations, or authorship misconduct.
D Rate – The percentage of an institution’s publications that appear in journals recently delisted from Scopus or Web of Science due to failure to meet quality or publishing standards.
These indicators are normalized and averaged to generate a score between 0 and 1. Based on this score, each institution is placed into one of five risk tiers—from Red Flag (highest risk) to Low Risk—within a fixed reference group of the world’s 1,000 most publishing universities.
Visitors can access the full methodology and explore institutional rankings and tier classifications on the RI² platform.
Why RI² Matters
Traditional university rankings often reward output and citation volume, inadvertently encouraging questionable practices such as:
Publishing in predatory or delisted journals
Inflating output through multi-affiliations
Gaming citations via self-citation and citation cartels
Outsourcing intellectual leadership to external authors
RI² addresses these issues by shifting the focus from quantity to integrity. It offers a conservative, transparent, and globally benchmarked tool that highlights structural vulnerabilities often overlooked by mainstream metrics.
Who Should Use RI²?
RI² is designed for a wide range of stakeholders, including:
Universities seeking to assess and improve their research governance
Ranking agencies aiming to integrate integrity-based safeguards
Funders and regulators evaluating institutional reliability and risk
Journalists, watchdogs, and scholars committed to promoting research accountability
The next semiannual update to the RI² database and institutional rankings is scheduled for December 2025.
Check the Following Website for More Information: https://sites.aub.edu.lb/lmeho/ri2/?s=08
