Cactus Communications (CACTUS) has announced a partnership with Imagetwin to integrate automated image integrity checks across its research and publishing solutions. As part of this integration, Imagetwin is embedded within Paperpal Preflight, CACTUS’ editorial integrity and workflow efficiencies solution, where it operates seamlessly, allowing users to run image integrity checks with minimal effort and without introducing additional steps into existing workflows.

With this integration, CACTUS further strengthens its comprehensive manuscript assessment capabilities within Paperpal Preflight. Alongside existing modules such as SmartScreen, IntegrityGuard, and PeerPilot, the platform now includes ImageCheck, powered by Imagetwin, enabling deeper and more holistic evaluation of manuscripts across both textual and visual elements.

After evaluating multiple providers in the space, CACTUS joined hands with Imagetwin based on its detection quality, scalability, and ease of integration. The partnership enables publishers, editorial teams, and researchers to screen figures for duplication, manipulation, plagiarism, and AI-generated content as part of their standard workflows.

As research output continues to grow, image-related integrity challenges are becoming more frequent, harder to detect manually, and often identified too late in the editorial process. By embedding image integrity checks directly into submission and review workflows, CACTUS enables teams to detect duplicated and manipulated images, identify plagiarised figures across publications, flag AI-generated or altered visuals, and conduct these checks earlier in the manuscript lifecycle.

This approach shifts image integrity from a reactive investigation to a standard, workflow-integrated practice, strengthening the overall reliability and efficiency of editorial decision-making.

Akhilesh Ayer, CEO, Cactus Communications, said, “As part of our commitment to upholding integrity of research, we are focused on embedding advanced capabilities directly into workflows to address integrity challenges early-on and more consistently. Our partnership with Imagetwin is an important step in enabling more reliable and scalable integrity practices across the publishing ecosystem.”

Nishchay Shah, Group CTO and EVP, Products & AI, Cactus Communications, added, “Handling integrity concerns, including images, has become central to scholarly publishing, and it requires a different level of analysis beyond conventional checks. This deep integration of Imagetwin strengthens Paperpal Preflight as a holistic integrity assessment solution, enabling automated, high-precision integrity screening that operates seamlessly at scale, within existing workflows.”

Patrick Starke, Co-Founder, Imagetwin, commented, “Image integrity should not rely on manual checks. The volume of submissions and the level of manipulation have already surpassed that approach. What matters now is infrastructure. With CACTUS, we are making image integrity a standard part of the process. That’s the shift the industry requires.”

As scholarly publishing continues to scale, the need for deeper, more integrated integrity checks will only grow. By expanding its capabilities to include image integrity, CACTUS is helping shape a more robust and future ready approach to safeguarding research quality.