Introduction Welcome to the academic jungle. For years now, a particular species of profiteer has been multiplying rapidly, masquerading as legitimate scholarly communication: the predatory journals. These entities, driven by profit rather than scholarship, exploit the open access publishing model and the academic pressure to “publish or perish.” They promise rapid publication, often for a … Read more
Introduction The relationship between political administrations and the scientific community is always a complex dance, but under Donald Trump, it quickly turned into an aggressive, one-sided tango. For the world of scientific publishing, the impact wasn’t just about uncomfortable headlines. It was a deep, systemic threat to the bedrock of evidence-based research: funding, data access, … Read more
Introduction The academic world rests on a foundation of trust. When a new research paper is published in a journal, the scholarly community and the public assume a certain level of rigor, honesty, and integrity has been applied. We assume the research was conducted ethically, that the data are real, and that the peer review … Read more
Introduction For centuries, the academic publishing world operated on a relatively “stable” model: scholars wrote research papers for free, editors and peer reviewers volunteered their time, and then commercial publishers or learned societies sold the final product back to university libraries at eye-watering subscription prices. It’s an arrangement that has often felt more like a … Read more
Introduction The promise of open access was a thrilling, almost utopian vision for scholarly publishing: immediate, free access to research for everyone, everywhere. It was supposed to tear down the paywalls that had turned publicly funded knowledge into a commodity accessible only to well-endowed institutions. Among the various open access models that emerged, Gold Open … Read more