Publish to Make Science Perish

In science, we have our own version of the attention economy. There’s a common adage of “publish or perish,” which for many fields is broadly the case. Peer-reviewed journal articles are the main vehicle for disseminating your science, and measuring your productivity. When you submit a peer-reviewed journal article, an editor makes an initial decision on fit with the journal, then the editor will solicit peer reviewers to evaluate your article. This system is imperfect; sometimes, status of the authors or research team will impact initial decisions of an editor (because we are all biased). Journals are measured on many factors; many of the simplest are based on whether or not the articles have a lot of citations in other peer-reviewed articles. Citations are a metric that measures attention; a highly cited article does not have context for why something is highly cited. We typically have a view where someone who has a lot of citations has impact in their field. If you have expertise, you might know whether or not the attention garnered is positive or negative, and you might be able to evaluate analytic choices of their work.

 

Academics have varying incentives, but promotion and tenure are highly skewed to your scientific output. In some places, scientific output is facilitated through grants; some are allowed to work on research while also teaching. Some have a seat only because of their grant outputs, and when the grants run out, their seat and salary are gone. A key part of this dynamic is this is a system where norms (and being in the know of those norms) are emphasized. For experts these norms are simple to self-police because naturally there are not a ton of people with doctorate degrees whom treat peer-reviewed publication as their primary measure of productivity. Because of that dynamic, predatory publishers arise who do not adhere to ethical peer review and publishing standards and create a pay-to-play environment where individuals can submit their work to get a quick review without the input that other publishers would want you to consider for your work to be published. The fundamental problem with most predatory publishers stem from their exploitation of a system with numerous loose norms. They exploit these loose norms to make money, which is a nuisance. However experts generally disapprove of individuals who engage with these predatory publishers, especially if their entire scientific identity is dependent on them.

 

When it comes to the public, one of science’s huge issues is the gatekeeping of good information. Articles are often not open access to the public unless the researcher pays for them. Unless you have funding to make the work public, articles go through multiple rounds of expert reviews, and then your work is under embargo for a year (or longer). If you want your study available immediately through a journal, pay a $2000-$7000 Article Processing Charge (APC), and this work is freely available to all with a link. Predatory journals typically undercut some of the top journals’ APCs (Nature, JAMA, etc.), and have quick to no barrier to entry. If you are someone not in this system, it is incredibly easy to not know whether or not a journal is predatory. These journals have similar names to highly regarded ones, and have increasingly deceiving website mimicking non-predatory ones. There are great studies in predatory journals, and there are poor studies in the journals with the most highly regarded reputation, but the whole point of peer-review is having the opportunity for work to be vetted by experts.

 

Now we have a new predatory journal in my space which goes beyond just a cash grab. this article in WIRED by Emily Mullin and Matt Reynolds overviews troubling aspects of this journal.

 

From the article:

In a February 5 press release, the Real Clear Foundation calls the journal “revolutionary,” saying it will publish “cutting-edge, peer-reviewed, and open access research from the world’s leading scholars of epidemiology, vaccinology, global public health, health policy, and related disciplines.” In its bylaws, the Academy of Public Health says only members can publish in the new journal. To join, you must be nominated by a current member.

 

One of the key elements of peer-review journals, which includes most predatory pay-to-play publishers, is that anyone can submit. One might think that if you can only have experts and their networks publish, that journal platform will be great. When the individuals in that space are known for not adhering to standard scientific principles and integrity, that can become a new platform to further trick the public into thinking that their work is legitimate. This is often work that would not ever make it through peer-review (or subsequent requests for retraction/removal) in other spaces .

 

This new journal, featuring some controversial health scientists, including a few appointees in the new Trump administration who faced significant backlash due to their questionable scientific opinions in response to COVID-19, presents a troubling new perspective. While scientists are not immune to errors, the way they respond to them often reveals their motivations and character. Instead of embracing an open-access model that compensates reviewers for their time and expertise and acknowledges their contributions amidst the vast scientific community, this group chose to establish an exclusive club. By controlling who is invited as reviewers and who can publish, they further narrow the scope of ideas and work shared within their platform.

 

From the Wired article:

Articles published so far include a review of a paper examining the association between vaccines and asthma, a critique of Covid vaccine trials, and a study that concluded that masks were not associated with lower Covid case rates. The journal also published an editorial from Kulldorf arguing that in some ways scientific journals “are now hampering rather than enhancing open scientific discourse.

 

I am open to innovative approaches in scientific publishing, such as preprinting, allocating funding for open access journals through grants as part of your publishing strategy, and removing the names of journals from CVs. These efforts encourage scientists to critically evaluate scientific articles based on their merits. While the scientific community can embrace these changes, the public may perceive new journals with prominent board members from prestigious institutions and accolades for their work, leading them to accept this research as high-quality and drawing conclusions accordingly. Unfortunately, this dynamic could further divide the scientific community into partisan networks rather than fostering a level playing field for ethical and reporting standards, allowing the best work to emerge.