About imagetwin
How was imagetwin established?
Our company was founded in 2022 by Markus and Patrick. However, the journey started much earlier with the master thesis of Markus at the Vienna University of Technology in 2016. After many years of research, we launched the first pilot of imagetwin in 2021, which has been used by selected integrity experts and researchers. Based on the feedback, we launched the current version of imagetwin in 2022 and made it available to the public. Since then, our goal has been to improve the software constantly.
What is imagetwin’s mission?
Our mission at imagetwin is to combat image plagiarism and manipulation to increase the quality and trust in science. We want to support publishers, universities, and scientists worldwide in their challenge to set new integrity standards. Therefore, we are improving our software daily and sharing our knowledge of image integrity with the scientific and general community.
About our service
Why should you use imagetwin?
Image plagiarism and manipulation are serious threats to science. So far, trained experts and reviewers have detected these issues by eye. However, manually checking images for integrity issues is tedious, time-consuming and expensive, and many problems remain undetected.
What kind of image integrity issues can the software detect?
- Plagiarism detection within a paper and across external publications
- Detection of both full and partial duplicates
- Manipulation detection within duplicates (e.g., scaling, rotations, flipping, brightness, contrast, colour)
- Manipulation detection in western blots (splicing detection)
Who can use our service?
Our software is used by Journals, Publishers, Universities, Scientists and many other research-oriented organizations.
What are the costs?
Please visit our Pricing section to gain a detailed view of our prices.
Single scans can be purchased directly in the web application.
Depending on the volume, the prices for our yearly plans will vary between 2.5 EUR and 4.0 EUR per scan.
What is a scan?
With one scan you can check either 1 PDF file or up to 25 individual images.
How do I purchase a yearly plan?
You can send us an inquiry directly from the Pricing section, contact us via our website, or write us at [email protected].
About our software
What kind of images does imagetwin detect?
We focus on life science images and optimized the software for microscopic images, gel bands (like Western Blots), light photography, FACS and various graphs and charts.
What file formats does imagetwin support?
The software supports PDF and all common image types: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .jfif, .bmp, .tif, .tiff, .svg
Which database does the software compare my paper/image with?
Each uploaded image will be checked for internal issues and against our database of over 75 million scientific images.
How long does it take to use the tool?
Depending on the file size and its complexity, the scan of an entire paper takes on average between 5 and 15 seconds.
What kind of tools are available within the software?
Our software has the following functions:
- Filter functions
- History function (i.e., you can go back to your scan for 30 days; can be disabled if requested)
- PDF Report function (i.e., a report with the findings)
- Forensic toolbox for detailed view of a detected area
About privacy
How safe is the software regarding privacy and confidentiality?
We have a strict data privacy policy and delete all data after the scanning process. Uploaded user data will never become part of our database. So, there is no risk in uploading your unpublished or confidential data.