Storm over science: predatory practices and the fight for research reliability

2025/01/01 by Vı́ctor de Lorenzo, Paul B. Rainey, Paul Williams +4 · 1 voice · 4 citations
Decision Sciences · #Academic Publishing and Open Access #Accreditation #Best practice #Credibility #Publishing #Quality (philosophy) #Reliability (semiconductor) #Safeguard #Storm

paper · doi:10.1093/femsml/uqaf029

published in microLife 6, uqaf029 (Oxford University Press)

openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

Scientific publishing faces a credibility crisis driven to a very large extent by predatory journals, paper mills, and exploitative open-access (OA) practices. Structural pressures-publish-or-perish culture, mandatory OA policies, and author publication charges-driven business models-fuel the proliferation of low-quality or fraudulent research, now exacerbated by artificial intelligence-generated content. This opinion, which aligns with a growing clamour from the research community-calls for an international journal accreditation system, guided by a transparent code of conduct and enforced by funding agencies, to restore integrity, prioritize quality over quantity for professional progression, and safeguard trust in scientific communication.

Citations

• The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly

Cited by

• Fragile research systems, brain drain, and predatory publishing in under-resourced countries. [europepmc]
• Making scientific publishing more balanced and reversing the current dangerous drift to better support global environmental conservation and planetary health. [europepmc]

Discussions

• A proposal for journal accreditation systems to counter predatory practices. If funding agencies enforced these accreditations, predatory journals would quickly vanish. doi.org/10.1093/fems... [bsky, 14 points, 1 comments]

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