Journal impact nonsense
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/journal-impact-nonsense
INTRO: Here’s a revealing look at the state of the chemistry literature in 2025, and it’s not a very appealing sight.
Chemistry World has listed the “Top Five” journals in a number of areas of the science as ranked by “Journal Impact Factor”. and “Journal Citation Indicator”s. The JIFs are put out by Clarivate (Web of Science), and you’d think they’d be fairly useful, because they
deliberately exclude journals that do not meet their standards. And as the article notes, this year marks the first time that they have excluded citations involving retracted papers. But even Clarivate realizes that JIFs are not exactly a one-stop-shop for rating journal quality and impact... (
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Six stories on the shady side of scholarship
https://longreads.com/2025/08/14/science-cheats-a-reading-list-on-unscrupulous-scientists
EXCERPTS: There’s a tricky balance to strike here. On one hand, it’s critical to root out research fraud and serious errors. On the other hand, highlighting the most dramatic outliers risks creating the impression that science as a whole can’t be trusted...
[...] Ultimately, as trust in science and scientists declines, and as misinformation spreads, it’s more important than ever to distinguish between rigorous science and work that takes shortcuts. [...] Science whistleblowers aren’t always celebrated. All too often, junior scientists who call out suspect research practices are ignored. Worse, their careers may suffer...
[...] Paper mills, or companies that offer services including pre-written papers, have facilitated dishonesty in the research world. [...] To end on a happier note: Cheating scientists have given rise to research-integrity sleuths, who analyze papers for potentially serious errors... (
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Academic publishing – stuck in a prisoner’s dilemma?
https://www.leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/academic-publishing-stuck-in-a-prisoners-dilemma
INTRO: Academia today finds itself in a paradox. The ‘
publish or perish’ mantra has spiralled into an uncalled race, where the finish line is quantity, and not quality. In this obsession to stack CVs with publication credits, research quality and integrity often suffer.
Between 2018 and 2022, research articles witnessed a
22.78 per cent growth to 5.14 million. Yet concerns over research integrity persist. In a
2016 survey by Nature, involving over 1500 scientists, more than 70 per cent failed to replicate another scientist’s experiment, and over 50 per cent were unable to even reproduce their own results. Nearly a decade later, another survey by Nature, having more than 1600 researchers, reinforced these concerns, with the majority identifying a worsening reproducibility crisis while citing ‘pressure to publish’ as the prime cause behind it. This raises a question: Are we producing knowledge, or just running after volume? (
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The peer-review crisis: how to fix an overloaded system
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02457-2
EXCERPT: With the number of scholarly papers rising each year, publishers and editors complain that it’s
getting harder to get everything reviewed. And some funding bodies, such as ESO, are struggling to find reviewers.
As pressure on the system grows, many researchers point to low-quality or error-strewn research appearing in journals as an indictment of their peer-review systems failing to uphold rigour. Others complain that clunky grant-review systems are preventing exciting research ideas from being funded.
These are long-standing concerns. Peer review has been
accused of being a sluggish, gatekeeping, bias-laden enterprise for as long as it has existed. But some data show that dissatisfaction is growing. [...] Others argue that peer review has become too unreliable. They suggest radical reform, up to and including phasing out the practice entirely... (
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