Scamming science: predatory journals and the academic rat race

Global academic community unites against predatory journals, urging action to combat threats to scholarly integrity in scientific publishing.

An editorial titled ‘Predatory Journals: What Can We Do to Protect Their Prey’ was jointly published across the world’s most prestigious scientific journals in their first issue of January 2025. Unusually, all leading journals such as Nature, Science, The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, NMJI (and many more) spoke in a unified voice, urging the global academic community to recognise and combat the dangers of predatory journals. This editorial was a desperate call to action against a crisis threatening the foundation of scholarly integrity.

To understand academia’s current state, one must first grasp the role of periodicals— in science and health. Scientific journals aim to advance knowledge through rigorous scrutiny. Scientific papers undergo peer reviews, ensuring that only credible, well-researched findings are published. This process maintains academic integrity and prioritises scholarly validation, distinguishing journals from other periodicals.

At the heart of academic journals lies the peer-review system, a rigorous process where submitted manuscripts undergo critical evaluation by experts in the field. This system ensures that the research is original and methodologically credible. Over time, this validation process became the gold standard of scientific inquiry, refining and filtering knowledge before it is published. Peer-reviewed journals including Nature (1869) and Science (1880) rose to prominence, becoming prestigious platforms for scholars. For centuries, scientific publishing was driven by intellectual contribution and validation for findings, pushing the boundaries of knowledge.

But then, something changed…

The essence of scientific publishing eroded as academia became increasingly metric-driven in the 20th century. Universities worldwide mandated research publications for faculty hiring, tenure, and promotion. Initially designed to help students make informed choices, university rankings began using publication counts and citations as key indicators. This inadvertently fuelled the “publish or perish” culture, where academic survival depended more on quantity than quality. Professors, like professional athletes, were expected to deliver consistently, leading to immense pressure to publish, sometimes at the cost of integrity.

In sports, an athlete’s worth is measured by statistics—runs, goals, and medals. Similarly, academics became valued based on publication numbers rather than knowledge value added. This reflects Goodhart’s Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Universities, eager to climb rankings, laid the emphasis on research output.

This excessive pressure in academia gave rise to predatory journals. By mandating research output, universities unknowingly created a demand for fast and easy publication. And where there is demand, opportunists will always be ready to exploit it. Enter predatory journals—entities that mimic legitimate academic publications but operate without any real peer review or editorial oversight.