Scientific journal publishers and editors say they are being offered bribes
Scientific journal editors are increasingly being approached with bribes, often by paper mills seeking to place low‑quality or fraudulent work in open-access and marginal journals. Commenters debate whether such payments are illegal or merely unethical, and tie the problem to systemic incentives like “publish or perish,” metric-driven hiring and funding, and the expansion of academia. Proposed remedies range from tougher sanctions and better fraud detection to radically rethinking publishing itself, including open platforms, paid peer review, and de-emphasizing raw publication counts.
Prevalence and Nature of Bribery
- Several commenters say bribe offers (often via “special issues”) are frequent and overwhelming; others in senior editorial roles report never encountering explicit bribes and see “every editor” claims as hyperbole.
- Distinction drawn between normal article processing charges (APCs) paid to journals vs. under‑the‑table payments to individual editors.
Legal vs Ethical Status
- Debate over whether commercial bribes to editors are illegal:
- One side claims bribery laws typically target public officials and legal duties, so journal editors aren’t covered.
- Others counter that many jurisdictions ban commercial kickbacks; even where not explicit, fraud statutes could apply.
- General consensus: unethical regardless; legality varies and is hard to prove.
Incentives, Scientometrics, and “Publish or Perish”
- Strong agreement that metric‑driven careers (h‑index, impact factors, publication counts) create demand for low‑quality and corrupt publishing.
- PhD overproduction and career pressure push some toward paper mills and gaming metrics.
- Some argue this is “capitalism” and others say it’s more about human nature, institutional incentives, and regulatory capture.
Impact and Harm
- One view: most corruption clusters in low‑quality “trash” journals, largely ignored by serious researchers, so harm to actual science is limited.
- Counter‑view: these papers help fraudsters climb academic ladders, divert funding, and mislead administrators, policymakers, and the public.
- Concern that scandals provide ammunition to those trying to discredit science as a whole.
Trust, Scale, and Politicization
- Several comments connect this to broader erosion of trust in “The Science,” the dangers of both blind trust and blind mistrust, and the difficulty of non‑experts judging expertise.
- Reputation and peer judgment still matter, but reputation itself can be gamed and doesn’t scale well.
Traditional Journals, Open Access, and Publisher Incentives
- Suspicion that legacy journals use these scandals to tarnish open access while defending paywalled business models.
- Some argue academic publishing as an industry is broadly “rotten,” extracting rents from publicly funded research.
Proposed Fixes and Alternatives
- Suggested responses include: harsher penalties (up to shutting labs/departments), public naming, paying reviewers, better misconduct investigation, and reducing reliance on crude metrics.
- Ideas for structural change:
- Open, GitHub‑like platforms for data, code, and living papers with crowd‑sourced review.
- AI‑assisted refereeing for logic checking (met with skepticism about training on fraudulent literature).
- Rethinking whether we need traditional journals at all in an era of near‑zero publication cost.