All articles tagged with #academic publishing
A finance professor in Ireland, Brian Lucey, had 12 papers retracted from journals he edited by Elsevier, citing editorial conflicts, though Lucey disputes the grounds for retraction and highlights widespread similar practices in finance and economics publishing. The retractions, which involved highly cited articles, have sparked debate about editorial ethics and conflicts of interest in academic publishing.
The article summarizes recent developments in scientific publishing, including NEJM launching a new public health report rival, a former NIH official's paper receiving an expression of concern, and a study revealing that 1 in 5 chemists have intentionally added errors during peer review, highlighting ongoing issues of misconduct and integrity in research.
In the first half of 2025, a top philosophy journal, The Journal of Philosophy, accepted only one article out of 403 submissions, highlighting a notably low acceptance rate, though the reasons behind this are not definitively explained.
A study analyzing 18,400 articles suggests that peer reviewers are more likely to approve manuscripts if their own work is cited, raising concerns about citation bias and coercive practices in peer review. Reviewers who request citations of their own work tend to be less likely to approve the article, and language used in reviewer comments may indicate coercion, highlighting potential issues in the peer review process.
AI-generated research papers raise new concerns about idea plagiarism, with debates over whether methodological overlaps constitute plagiarism, highlighting challenges in maintaining academic integrity as AI tools become more prevalent in research.
The UK Royal Society is transitioning eight of its journals to the 'subscribe to open' (S2O) model, which makes content freely accessible if enough libraries subscribe, aiming for 100% open access. This move aligns with a broader trend among scientific publishers adopting the S2O model to promote open access, with varying degrees of sustainability depending on subscription levels and financial support from scientific societies.
A Northwestern University study reveals that organized scientific fraud, involving sophisticated networks and paper mills, is rapidly increasing, threatening the integrity of scientific literature and calling for urgent reforms in the research community.
Frontiers is retracting 122 articles across five journals after uncovering a network of authors and editors involved in unethical practices like citation manipulation and undisclosed conflicts of interest, linked to over 4,000 articles across multiple publishers, highlighting ongoing issues with research integrity in academic publishing.
A study led by James Zou from Stanford reveals that 7-17% of sentences in peer reviews for computer science articles in 2023-2024 were generated by large language models (LLMs). These AI-generated reviews are characterized by a formal tone, verbosity, and a lack of specificity, often appearing close to submission deadlines. Zou suggests that fostering more human interactions in the review process, such as through platforms like OpenReview, could mitigate the dominance of AI in peer reviews.
Arash Abizadeh advocates for "diamond" open access in academic publishing, where universities and libraries directly fund journals, eliminating commercial pressures and making research freely accessible. This model addresses the high costs and restricted access of current publishing practices, but faces challenges due to the prestige associated with established commercial journals.
Two major open-access publishers, MDPI and Frontiers, have been accused of excessive self-citation to inflate their journal impact factors, according to a study on SocArXiv. The study found that these publishers' journals have significantly higher self-citation rates compared to others, raising concerns about citation manipulation. Both publishers deny encouraging such practices and claim to have measures in place to monitor and prevent unethical citation behavior.
Predatory journals, which publish papers with little to no peer review in exchange for authors paying a fee, are a growing concern in academic publishing. While paying to publish is common among legitimate open access journals, predatory journals often exhibit red flags such as catering more to authors than readers, sending out flowery invitation emails, and having a broad scope. The rise of predatory publishing is a symptom of the publish-or-perish mentality in academia, and efforts to combat it include the use of whitelists and checklists to help authors identify reputable journals.
A high-profile group of funders, academic publishers, and research organizations has launched an effort to address the problem of paper mills, which churn out fake or poor-quality journal papers and sell authorships. The group's five-point plan includes measures such as studying paper mills, improving author-verification methods, and supporting the development of tools to verify the identities of authors, editors, and reviewers. The initiative aims to improve education and awareness of the problem, conduct detailed research into paper mills, and ensure that groups across publishing communicate in tackling the issue.
A dispute between the publisher Wiley and the editors of The Journal of Political Philosophy (JPP) led to the creation of a new journal called Political Philosophy, emphasizing editorial independence and academic freedom. The new journal, open access and published by the Open Library of Humanities, is led by the former JPP editors and aims to provide a platform for interdisciplinary engagement in political philosophy. The move comes after over 1100 philosophers and scholars signed a statement of non-cooperation with JPP's publisher, leading to the birth of Political Philosophy as a successor to JPP.
Researchers at the University of Kansas have developed an AI text detector that can accurately distinguish between human-written and computer-generated content in scientific essays, specifically in the field of chemistry. The detector, trained on journals published by the American Chemical Society, achieved almost 100% accuracy in identifying human-authored passages and reports generated by AI models like ChatGPT. Existing AI detectors for general content performed poorly in detecting AI-generated content in scientific papers. The tool aims to help academic publishers assess the infiltration of AI-generated text, mitigate potential problems, and ensure the integrity of scientific literature.