Founder Insights Part One: How publishers can safeguard the visibility and integrity of their content

As part of GetFTR’s fifth-anniversary celebrations, we sat down with the founding publishers to reflect on five years of progress and change across the research discovery landscape.

An earlier interview in Research Information captured some of their key reflections, but the conversation uncovered many more valuable insights.

As GetFTR’s fifth-anniversary year draws to a close, we wanted to share these additional perspectives in a four-part blog series. Each post explores a key theme shaping the future of research discovery: how GetFTR and its partners are supporting trusted discovery and access, strengthening research integrity, and ensuring that visibility and value travel with the version of record wherever discovery happens.

The discovery landscape is changing

The ways in which researchers find and consume scholarly content are transforming rapidly.

While overall engagement with research continues to grow, the routes to that content are fragmenting more than ever through library discovery platforms, discovery indexes, search engines, syndication platforms and, increasingly, AI-powered tools such as Claude, Scite, SciSummary, ChatGPT, and more.

For publishers, this shift presents both opportunity and risk. Research is highly discoverable, however users can read and summarise articles without even visiting the journal or the publisher platform. Additionally, the reliance on AI tools raises questions about accuracy, provenance, and the version of record.

Publishers therefore face an urgent challenge: how to ensure their content remains visible, trusted, and used in its authoritative form.

From streamlined access to sustained visibility

Launched five years ago, GetFTR was designed to simplify access to full-text articles by connecting researchers directly to the publisher-hosted version of record from discovery tools, library services, and research platforms.

Today, GetFTR has evolved into a core piece of scholarly infrastructure.

Through its API integrations and also via a browser extension that add links to AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, and others, GetFTR will ensure that whenever an article is cited on a website that uses DOIs, the user is guided back to the publisher’s trusted source.

In a fragmented discovery landscape, GetFTR ensures that usage, access, and trust travel with the article wherever it appears.

Addressing publishers’ key priorities

We talk to a lot of publishers, and we often hear these three concerns:

Sustaining legitimate usage amid shifting discovery habits.
Maintaining the integrity of the version of record as content circulates through the discovery ecosystem.
Demonstrating value and relevance to consumers within an open, distributed ecosystem.

GetFTR responds to these priorities by:

Strengthening visibility and usage: directing readers to publisher platforms from any discovery point and supporting the provision of off-platform metrics
Reinforcing research integrity: signalling retractions, corrections, and license information at the point of discovery.
Supporting trusted access: helping ensure that discovery leads users to authorised publisher versions of record, including within generative-AI environments.

“Researchers encounter articles through many channels, not always on publisher sites. GetFTR ensures that visibility, access, and trust travel with the article, wherever discovery happens.” Mark Heaver, Taylor & Francis

Safeguarding the research record in the age of AI

As AI tools increasingly summarise and repurpose research, clarity about source and version becomes essential, and publishers remain the custodians of the scholarly record. Publishers want to ensure that it is as easy as possible for researchers to visit the scholarly version of record.

“GetFTR provides a seamless pathway to the trusted version of record which is imperative as AI tools transform how research content is accessed and reused.” Laird Barrett, Springer Nature

By embedding trusted links and indicators across the discovery ecosystem, GetFTR ensures that both human and machine readers are able to connect to accurate, up-to-date content via links to the full text. The result: preserved integrity of the scholarly record and enhanced publisher visibility which will result in increased usage and engagement.

Looking ahead

As research discovery continues to evolve, publishers remain focused on ensuring that authoritative, trusted content is easily discoverable and accessible, keeping integrity, trust and reliability at the centre of the research journey.

GetFTR offers a proven, collaborative infrastructure that achieves exactly that. It bridges publisher systems and user workflows, ensuring that the version of record remains visible, verifiable, and valued, wherever discovery happens.

Visibility is not simply about access, it is also about trust, transparency, and the role of publishers in protecting the integrity of research.

Next in the series: Research Integrity and Trust: How GetFTR Strengthens the Scholarly Record.