This essay considers the emergent phenomenon of ‘junkification’ in academic research publishing. The term junkification was originally coined to describe the in...
Reformation of science publishing: the Stockholm Declaration
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.
A New Paradigm for Scientific Publishing, Peer Review, and Impact Assessment
Scientific publishing and peer review have evolved little in three centuries, while the demands placed on them have grown profoundly. The growing role of artificial intelligence has underscored deep, systemic shortcomings of an aging system that has largely evaded innovation, a system whose origins are appallingly closer to the invention of the printing press than to the internet. We can do better – much better. This article is intended as the beginning of a communal experiment: a living document that critically reviews the modern academic publishing and peer-review system and presents a concrete framework to address what bibliometrics experts¹ have characterized as "the pervasive misapplication of indicators to the evaluation of scientific performance". Building on the Leiden Manifesto, DORA, and a body of scholarship spanning many disciplines and decades, we present a community-governed, non-profit platform organized around three trust-weighted impact factors, for articles, authors, and reviewers, with full algorithmic transparency, an open development log, and structural decoupling of credibility scoring from content moderation and from monetization. We invite the community to discuss, critique, and help shape it.
“Paging Dr. Fraud”: The Fake Publishers That Are Ruining Science
For years, spurious journals have proliferated online, promising academic credibility in exchange for cash.
Why the Stockholm Declaration will never work
Abstract The Stockholm Declaration calls for a moral reformation of scientific publishing—replacing commercial publishers with scholar-led journals, rewarding quality over quantity and instituting independent oversight. While noble in spirit, it fundamentally misdiagnoses the disease. The crisis of science stems not from paper mills or profit motives but from systemic incentives that reward volume, novelty and prestige over validity and reliability. Non-profit ownership will not neutralize the prestige economy, sleuth-led policing cannot scale, and ‘integrity registries’ would merely replace metrics with surveillance. True reform requires rebuilding the publishing infrastructure as a public utility: publicly funded, free to publish and read, and stripped of hierarchy and financial incentives.
The strain on scientific publishing
Scientists are increasingly overwhelmed by the volume of articles being published. Total articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science have grown exponentially in recent years; in 2022 the article total was approximately ~47% higher than in 2016, which has outpaced the limited growth - if any - in the number of practising scientists. Thus, publication workload per scientist (writing, reviewing, editing) has increased dramatically. We define this problem as the strain on scientific publishing. To analyse this strain, we present five data-driven metrics showing publisher growth, processing times, and citation behaviours. We draw these data from web scrapes, requests for data from publishers, and material that is freely available through publisher websites. Our findings are based on millions of papers produced by leading academic publishers. We find specific groups have disproportionately grown in their articles published per year, contributing to this strain. Some publishers enabled this growth by adopting a strategy of hosting special issues, which publish articles with reduced turnaround times. Given pressures on researchers to publish or perish to be competitive for funding applications, this strain was likely amplified by these offers to publish more articles. We also observed widespread year-over-year inflation of journal impact factors coinciding with this strain, which risks confusing quality signals. Such exponential growth cannot be sustained. The metrics we define here should enable this evolving conversation to reach actionable solutions to address the strain on scientific publishing.
The Drain of Scientific Publishing
The domination of scientific publishing in the Global North by major commercial publishers is harmful to science. We need the most powerful members of the research community, funders, governments and Universities, to lead the drive to re-communalise publishing to serve science not the market.
Publishing Beyond the Market: Open Access, Care, and the Commons
<I>Publishing Beyond the Market</I> argues that the move to open access should focus less on the free accessibility of research outputs and more on who controls the publications and infrastructures for scholarly communication. By deploying theoretical literature on science and technology studies, care ethics, and the commons, the book critically interrogates open access and reimagines a more ethical future for researcher-led publishing. A case study of Plan S—the multifunder European policy for open access publishing—explores its tendency to rehearse all the failures of commercialisation. Through critical engagement with the open access landscape, the book reveals the shortcomings of market-centric and policy-based approaches to open access book and journal publishing, particularly their tendency to reinforce conservatism, commercialism, and private control of publishing.<BR /><BR /> Going forward, <I>Publishing Beyond the Market</I> explores the importance of collectivity and democratic governance within the transition to open access publishing. It suggests that developing a commons-based, scholar-led publishing landscape through a series of presses that are each managed by working academics could offer a productive counterpoint to marketised systems of open access and subscription publishing. In weaving themselves together in order to "scale small" these publishing initiatives would act as a counter-hegemonic project based on mutual reliance and care. By illustrating how these projects build toward a commons-based publishing future, and how they may complement other approaches to publishing within university presses and libraries, the book culminates in an argument for the infrastructures, policies, and forms of governance needed to nurture such a collective vision.
Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media
When practitioners used the term “social media” to describe the internet tools that emerged in the mid-aughts, they were giving a name to the kinds of platforms and protocols that allowed people to socialize with friends and communities of interest by using digital technologies. Twenty years later, users of social media are far more likely to scroll than post – and the content that they consume is often strategically produced and algorithmically curated. In this essay, I argue that the very essence of social media has changed. To more effectively interrogate what we are witnessing, we need to stop presuming that these tools are “social media” and begin recognizing that they are now “parasocial media.” Doing so raises new questions about digitally mediated sociality, not to mention the politics and governance of these platforms.
Symposium: A Skeptical View of Information Fiduciaries
In recent years, the concept of “information fiduciaries” has surged to the forefront of debates on platform regulation. In a forthcoming essay, we question the wisdom of applying a fiduciary framework to dominant digital platforms.
Reclaiming scientific publishing: Our duty to make science freely accessible to all
When we (Camille Thomas and Romain Vaucher speaking) entered academia as graduate students in France and Switzerland, we were enthusiastic about the vast amount of research available with a simple click on our university computers. However, we also quickly felt disheartened by the significant amount of research work we couldn’t access when wrapping up our theses from home. Luckily, pirates existed. Empowered by Aaron Swartz’s Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, Alexandra Elbakyan created Sci-Hub in 2011, the greatest leak of scientific knowledge of the century. We felt right in the middle of an Open Access (OA) revolution that would finally make all scientific articles, old and new, accessible to everyone. Fifteen years later, our hopes as idealistic early-career researchers have been crushed by the oligopolistic model of scientific publishing and the subtle pressures of the “publish or perish” culture that reigns over our career development. In the meantime, publishers like Frontiers, MDPI and Springer Nature, to name a few, have exponentially expanded their number of titles. They have become increasingly exploitative of scholarly manpower, moving far away from the genuine accessibility they allegedly promised under the guise of this OA transformation. Open Access is to be praised, but the way it has been implemented through the mainstream Gold and Green OA models now primarily serves the status quo of large for-profit publishers. These entities hijack public money and voluntary editorial labour for their own profit and that of their shareholders (Butler et al., 2023; Shu and Larivière, 2024). In a nutshell, to offer reader accessibility, the Gold OA model requires authors to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC; around 2,000 $/€, rarely less, and often much more) covered by individual research funds, funding agencies or university library deals. The Green OA model allows authors to upload their accepted, non-formatted manuscripts to repositories after an embargo period. While both models allow compliance with funding agency mandates, true equity and accessibility are ultimately left behind. In an article we recently published (Vaucher and Thomas, 2026), we describe the mechanisms through which we, as researchers, inadvertently contribute to keeping research exclusive while driving the publishing model down an unsustainable path. Just like our broader economy, our publishing model and the ways science is evaluated fuelled a predatory system that demands more papers, funding and prestige at an ever-faster rate (Walter and Mullins, 2019), likely at the expense of quality, diversity and ethics (Frank et al., 2023; Heen and Vogt, 2024). These concerns aren’t entirely new. What is new, however, is the growing realisation among societies, universities and funding bodies that we must move away from this system. Initiatives like the European Diamond Capacity Hub, ALMASI and craft-OA are actively paving a way forward that we, as scientists, have yet to fully embrace. In the geosciences, a collective and concerted effort is currently being made by researchers to provide fairer, more sustainable alternatives through community-driven Diamond OA journals (which feature no APCs and completely free access to published articles). Volcanica (Farquharson and Wadsworth, 2018), Sedimentologika (Thomas et al., 2023), Tektonika (Fernández-Blanco et al., 2023), Seismica (Rowe et al., 2022), Geomorphica (Lefebvre et al., 2025), Open Paleontology (Drage et al., 2024), Advances in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry (Pourret et al., 2025), Geodynamica, jSEDI and Planetary Research are all recently created, scholarly-run journals funded by university library investments to promote better ways of publishing. Their articles are peer-reviewed, free for readers to access, and free for authors to publish. They rely entirely on the voluntary involvement of scientists running open-source editorial platforms (such as Open Journal Systems), transparent workflows, copyediting, production and final dissemination. Diamond OA journals offer an alternative path for all of us to transform our broken publishing system and reclaim ownership of our own science. These efforts go hand in hand with greater involvement in our academic societies and non-profit publishing initiatives. Ultimately, real transformation can only happen if all of us as researchers realise how inherently unfair and exclusive the current system is to labs and institutions that cannot afford steep Gold OA APCs or paywalled journal subscriptions. It also means we must collectively stop evaluating science based on journal prestige and the flawed metrics they own (Posada and Chen, 2018; Sabel and Larhammar, 2025; Simons, 2008). Only by breaking these habits can we truly make knowledge accessible to all. References Butler, L.-A., Matthias, L., Simard, M.-A., Mongeon, P., and Haustein, S.: The oligopoly’s shift to open access: How the big five academic publishers profit from article processing charges, Quantitative Science Studies, 4, 778–799, https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00272, 2023. Drage, H. B., Keating, J. N., Nielsen, M. L., Saleh, F., and Hearing, T. W. W.: Open Palaeontology: a new model of diamond open access journal for palaeontology, Open Palaeontology, 1, 1–6, https://doi.org/10.26034/la.opal.2024.6223, 2024. Farquharson, J. I. and Wadsworth, F. B.: Introducing Volcanica: The first diamond open-access journal for volcanology, Volcanica, 1, I–IX, https://doi.org/10.30909/vol.01.01.i-ix, 2018. Fernández-Blanco, D., Lacassin, R., Gouiza, M., Perez-Diaz, L., Magee, C., McCarthy, D., Doré, T., Péron-Pinvidic, G., Kavanagh, J., Bond, C., and Schmitt, R.: Tektonika: The Community-Led Diamond Open-Access Journal for Tectonics and Structural Geology, τeκτoniκa, 1, I–XIII, https://doi.org/10.55575/tektonika2023.1.1.56, 2023. Frank, J., Foster, R., and Pagliari, C.: Open access publishing – noble intention, flawed reality, Social Science & Medicine, 317, 115592, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115592, 2023. Heen, E. and Vogt, H.: Scientific rot: Unsustainable publishing practices threatens trust in medicine, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 30, 941–944, https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13989, 2024. Lefebvre, A., Bosch, R., Burrows, K., Giaime, M., Goodwin, G., Lai, L. S.-H., Stammler, M., and Fernández, R.: Geomorphica: The most accessible journal for the geomorphology community, Geomorphica, 1, https://doi.org/10.59236/geomorphica.v1i1.54, 2025. Posada, A. and Chen, G.: Inequality in Knowledge Production: The Integration of Academic Infrastructure by Big Publishers, in: ELPUB 2018, https://doi.org/10.4000/proceedings.elpub.2018.30, 2018. Pourret, O., Millet, M.-A., Marin-Carbonne, J., Mallik, A., Tierney, J. E., Darling, J. R., Kiseeva, E. S., Torres, M. A., Fonseca, R. O. C., Tartèse, R., Namur, O., Klöcking, M., Matthews, S. W., Dahrén, B., Ickert, R. B., and Board, the inaugural A. in G. and C. editorial: Equitable Access, Open Science, and the Future of Publishing in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry, Advances in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry, 1, https://doi.org/10.33063/agc.v1i1.770, 2025. Rowe, C., Agius, M., Convers, J., Funning, G., Galasso, C., Hicks, S., Huynh, T., Lange, J., Lecocq, T., Mark, H., Okuwaki, R., Ragon, T., Rychert, C., Teplitzky, S., and Van den Ende, M.: The launch of Seismica: a seismic shift in publishing, Seismica, 1, https://doi.org/10.26443/seismica.v1i1.255, 2022. Sabel, B. and Larhammar, D.: Reformation of science publishing: the Stockholm Declaration, R Soc Open Sci., 12, 251805, https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.251805, 2025. Shu, F. and Larivière, V.: The oligopoly of open access publishing, Scientometrics, 129, 519–536, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04876-2, 2024. Simons, K.: The Misused Impact Factor, Science, 322, 165–165, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1165316, 2008. Thomas, C., Privat, A., Vaucher, R., Spychala, Y., Zuchuat, V., Marchegiano, M., Poyatos-Moré, M., Kane, I., and Chiarella, D.: Sedimentologika: a community-driven diamond open access journal in sedimentology, Sedimentologika, 2023. Vaucher, R. and Thomas, C.: Diamond is the new Green—Why Green Open Access is not a sustainable long-term model for scientific publishing, Sedimentologika, 4, https://doi.org/10.57035/journals/sdk.2026.e41.2397, 2026. Walter, P. and Mullins, D.: From symbiont to parasite: the evolution of for-profit science publishing, Molecular Biology of the Cell, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1091/mbc.E19-03-0147, 2019.
Faster science, penalties in evaluation, and concerns on quality and impact: Researchers’ use and perceptions of preprints
The preprint ecosystem has expanded rapidly over the past decade, fundamentally altering science communication. Yet, the scholarly community’s attitudes toward this shift remain underexplored. Through a large-scale survey of US and Canadian biomedical scholars, we provide a comprehensive analysis of preprint utilization, perceived impact, and integration into academic credit systems. We find robust engagement across reading, citing, and submitting preprints; however, this activity is driven primarily by a desire for rapid dissemination rather than a foundational commitment to open science. Furthermore, while preprints are valued as networking assets, perceived career penalties during formal academic evaluations stifle broader cultural adoption. Crucially, to navigate the absence of formal peer review, scholars report a heavy reliance on author reputation as a primary heuristic to evaluate a preprint’s credibility and guide their reading and citation decisions. Notably, despite acknowledging preprints’ role in accelerating knowledge sharing, scholars express significant concerns regarding fraud and misinformation, particularly amid declining public trust in science and emerging threats to scientific integrity from artificial intelligence. To resolve these tensions, the preprint ecosystem must evolve beyond prioritizing speed to foster genuine academic dialogue. Simultaneously, evaluation frameworks must adapt to the realities of preprinting, and innovative quality-control mechanisms are urgently needed to balance rapid dissemination with rigorous scientific integrity.
Post Artifact Books and Publishing
How does digital affect publishing spaces? How do we talk about these effects?
So maybe now we can agree that having an unchecked research integrity militia who unfortunately has the ear of the press and increasingly that of the the publishers, but who fiercely rejects any… | Ioana A. Cristea
So maybe now we can agree that having an unchecked research integrity militia who unfortunately has the ear of the press and increasingly that of the the publishers, but who fiercely rejects any minimal ethics or code of conduct, is a (growing) problem? Also, that 1. problems have to be investigated before deciding they are are legitimate and serious; 2. this investigation is not social media, blogs and the press; 3. this investigation should not be on the front page of journals and Retraction Watch; 4. there are degrees of seriousness and some things can just be corrected or are simply not very consequential (no, it's not a house of bricks where we have to check every brick, that's a dumb analogy), so being absolutely hysterical and overdramatic about any lie, inaccuracy or mistake is purposeful at worse and should be ignored at best and 5. it is not only unnecessary, but harmful, to also go into other, non-academic things the person did or does to complete "investigations" that you (press, sleuth, blogger, etc) do not have the tools and information to do completely and accurately (this fixation would be called harassment in the before times). Others will justly write about what the institutions did or did not do, but what I want to say is that we really should end it with the blank credit we give to any and all allegations that come from the establish research integrity truth fighters.
Fractured reality
The report examines the evolving impact of digital technologies on European democracy. In an era of a global struggle to control the information space, this report offers critical insights into the fracturing of perceived realities, the rise of the ‘fantasy-industrial complex’, and the systemic risks posed by the attention economy. It exposes how platforms algorithmically prioritise engagement over accuracy, reinforcing ideological echo chambers and amplifying mis- and disinformation that erode democratic resilience. The report highlights how structural incentives and foreign control of the most important players in the information space undermine information integrity, collective knowledge and civic discourse. In response, the report presents a number of recommendations from fostering alternative public spaces and crowd-sourced knowledge systems to reforming business models, restoring user agency, and advancing EU digital sovereignty through decentralised infrastructure
Peer Review at the Crossroads
Peer review has long been regarded as a cornerstone of scholarly communication, ensuring high quality and credibility of published research. Although academic journals trace their origins back three centuries, the procedures for evaluating submissions, particularly peer review, have undergone continuous evolvement. Peer review’s formal institutionalization in the mid-20th century represents a significant, yet natural, phase in this ongoing transformation of scholarly communication. By the early 21st century, there emerged an opinion that the conventional model of peer review faces systematic challenges, including inefficiency, bias, and institutional inertia. The study aims to synthesize the evolution, practices, and outcomes of both conventional and innovative peer review models in scholarly publishing. Through a mixed-methods approach combining interpretative literature review and process modeling (Business Process Model and Notation –BPMN), it identifies four frameworks: pre-publication peer review, registered reports, modular publishing, and the Publish-Review-Curate (PRC) model. While the PRC model, which integrates preprints with post-publication review, demonstrates advantages in transparency and accessibility, no single approach emerges as universally ideal. The choice of model depends on disciplinary context, resource availability, and institutional priorities. The analysis underscores the need for adaptable platforms that enable hybrid workflows, balancing rigor with inclusivity. Future research must address empirical gaps in evaluating these innovations, particularly their long-term impact on equity and epistemic norms.
You can just review things: A digital ethnography of informal peer review
Across scholarly communities, manuscripts face similar evaluative rituals: editors invite experts to privately assess submissions through formal peer reviews. This closed, loosely structured, and publisher-mediated process is now being supplemented by critiques on open, distributed platforms. We call this practice, a blend of three open peer review variants, informal peer review as it is accessible to outsiders, unmediated by publishers, and conducted across public platforms. Informal peer reviewers range from occasional error detectors to experienced sleuths who identify plagiarism, fraud, errors, conflicts of interest, and conceptual flaws. They may interpret methods, clarify jargon, assess value, and connect to related work. Here, we asked four questions: (1) Who are informal peer reviewers? (2) Where do they work? (3) How do they evaluate research? and (4) What are their impacts? To answer these questions, we conducted a cross-platform digital ethnography with participant observation. We traced discourse across communities over four months and revisited cases after nine and twelve months. From 15 communities, we selected 12 case mentions (10 unique cases) and 8 meta-commentaries from 26 reviewers. Using open and axial coding, we generated 1,080 codes and four themes: reviewers are a motley crew, they self-organize across subpar digital spaces, use deep, uncommon strategies, and they face resistance from authors, publishers, and editors. Informal peer review, we concluded, is a fragile, minimally governed patchwork of people, platforms, and practices, as well as an emerging evidence infrastructure that can be scaled up. We advise advocates and tool-builders to evolve informal review tools, communities, training, and governance by connecting to scholars' values, reducing participation friction, and rewarding attempts to extend the scholarly dialogue.