The urgently needed reformation of science publishing

Much of my blog is dedicated to poor research of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) conducted by biased researchers, published in lousy journals, edited by careless editors and reviewed by irresponsible reviewers. I have warned many times that this practice is polluting the medical literature with devastating consequences.

Over the years, this problem has sharply increased due to ‘paper mills’, AI and other issues. Eventually, I got the impression that hardly anyone cares about this rapid decline.

This article shows that I WAS WRONG! Here is its abstract but I urge everyone to study the pull paper:

Science relies on integrity and trustworthiness. But scientists under career pressure are lured to purchase fake publications from ‘paper mills’ that use AI-generated data, text and image fabrication. The number of low-quality or fraudulent publications is rising to hundreds of thousands per year, which—if unchecked—will damage the scientific and economic progress of our societies. The result is editor and reviewer fatigue, irreproducible experiments, misguided experiments, disinformation and escalating costs that devour funding from taxpayers intended for research. It is high time to reevaluate current publishing models and outline a global plan to stop this unhealthy development. A conference was therefore organized by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to draft an action plan with specific recommendations, as follows. (i) Academia should resume control of publishing using non-profit publishing models (e.g. diamond open-access). (ii) Adjust incentive systems to merit quality, not quantity, in a reputation economy where the gaming of publication numbers and citation metrics distorts the perception of academic excellence. (iii) Implement mechanisms to prevent and detect fake publications and fraud which are independent of publishers. (iv) Draft and implement legislations, regulations and policies to increase publishing quality and integrity. This is a call to action for universities, academies, science organizations and funders to unite and join this effort.

Of course, the paper was not written with SCAM in mind. The problem exists in all science. Yet I am convinced that in the realm of SCAM it is particularly acute. The actions proposed in the paper for improving the present situation are all very reasonable (but nobody should fool themselves by thinking that they are easy to implement!). Let’s hope that everyone concerned takes careful note and do what they can to avert an otherwise inevitable calamity.