I sent it across to them, I am now detecting internal duplicates with an automated process, but the performance of ImageTwin is very impressive, and I use it for these annotations. Apparently they just improved it again.

Obligatory quote from Chris Gaffe: "Scientific Reports has an in-house team who are dedicated to ensuring that the journal operates with integrity. They are an excellent team who care enormously about the journal and the research it publishes."

Don't have much negative to say about Frontiers based on recent experience, they seem to follow up on a lot of things and take reasonable actions.

My instinct is (b).

I think this one is real. I can tell by the scissors and USB connected sperm cells.

So that they know which ones to cite correctly? Thanks for this actionable insight.

No idea. I don't think they need a reporting guideline. If I saw this manuscript, I would just tell the authors if they care enough about the data to publish it, they shouldn't make the figures so ugly. It's offensive to the reader. And this is not even a bad example by SciRep standards.

Plates should be consistently oriented and not stretched into ovals after the photo was taken. The duplicates would have been obvious to spot. And if there were no duplicates, the figure would have been less horrible to look at. pubpeer.com/publications...

Academics will publish anything in a journal if you'll let them.

Chris Gaffe (director of research integrity at Springer Nature) said in 2024: "Scientific Reports has an in-house team who are dedicated to ensuring that the journal operates with integrity. They are an excellent team who care enormously about the journal and the research it publishes."