Regarding Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky's June 17th editorial, “Rampant Scientific Falsification Threatens Publishers”:
What we see here is a crisis caused by perverse incentives. Publishers charge between $1,000 and $12,000 to publish an open access article. Every time a publisher rejects a submission, potential revenue is lost. This creates a strong economic incentive to lower quality standards, a temptation that many publishers will find difficult to resist.
At the same time, the most important “productivity metrics” that advance scientists' careers are the number of papers they publish and the number of citations those papers receive. The peer review process that's supposed to sift for quality relies on the unpaid work of other busy scientists, who have little to gain from being thorough and often lack access to the data and code needed to verify authors' claims. Add to that the rise of artificial intelligence and the lack of incentive for scientists to copy others' papers, and you've got a perfect storm that's aimed squarely at the legitimacy of the scientific enterprise.
Cosmetic changes such as journal checklists and ethics statements will not be enough to overcome these fundamental problems. Rather, we need a fundamental rethinking of how science is encouraged, funded, practiced, and shared with the public. This couldn't be more important: if we can't trust science, how else can we make progress?
Philip Köllinger, Baef, Switzerland
Indeed, as Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky suggest in a recent editorial, “science must fight back” against misconduct in the scientific literature, but it must do so without in any way undermining open access efforts to make such publications freely available to all.
For three centuries, the international scientific enterprise developed mainly on the basis of select paper publications. Eventually, as the number of journals published continued to grow, subscription fees became too burdensome and reports on scientific progress were effectively locked up in well-funded university libraries. For many people inside and outside science, this meant an unacceptable, undemocratic and closed access.
This is why it is so problematic to consider eliminating “the pay-to-publish business model, which has the effect of selling a semblance of legitimacy by charging researchers for publishing their articles.” The problem is that this model is central to efforts to achieve open access. That is why the editorial makes it clear that abolishing the author-pays model would be “painful.”
Open access and the fight against counterfeiting are intertwined with the information age challenges for science. Defeating this epidemic of counterfeiting is crucial. Preserving open access is also crucial.
H. Frederick Dilla, Lewes, Delaware.
I served as executive director and CEO of the American Physical Society from 2007 to 2015 and helped organize the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable in 2009-2010.
While Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky raise important concerns in a recent editorial, it is worth discussing one key reason why “paper mill” scientific journals have been able to thrive.
The emergence of the open access movement in scientific publishing over the past two decades was aimed at making the results of scientific research more widely available, and to a large extent it has achieved that goal. However, many funding agencies, especially in Europe, made the mistake of requiring grant-funded research to be published in “gold” open access journals, i.e. free journals that have no subscription or publication fees but which are of course very rare.
This decision ostensibly accorded respectability to article publishing companies that, while posing as gold open access journals, are in effect operating as for-profit self-publishing venues. The only real way to counter this destructive trend is for funding agencies to change course and start promoting “green” open access alternatives, such as open access preprint servers such as arxiv.org and various open access institutional repositories. Scientific articles are posted in these forums in their final, approved form before being published in journals, although the typesetting and page numbers may differ from those that journals ultimately use. For most readers, such differences are trivial to the point of inconsequence. It is the free availability of articles that really matters.
At the same time, funding agencies should require proof that articles resulting from their grants have not been published with the payment of publication fees. The use of such fees, even by “respectable” publishers, should be considered a form of self-publishing and should ultimately be phased out. Instead, publishers should be encouraged to keep copyright embargo periods as short as possible.
I served as chair of the Publications Committee of the American Mathematical Society from 2018 to 2019.
Publishers acknowledge that paper mills that subvert editorial practices and trick publishers into publishing fake science pose a real threat to our community, but we argue that the threat is far from overwhelming.
At Springer Nature, we are committed to keeping this content off our (digital) pages and removing any that make it to publication. We have invested millions of dollars in developing artificial intelligence techniques to identify problematic content, including two newly launched AI tools that monitor for signals such as AI-generated content and duplicate images. Through our technology, talent and detective work, we identify and track down different mills around the world and prevent their papers from passing through our systems. In 2023, our Research Integrity Unit identified and blocked more than 8,000 submitted papers with serious integrity issues.
In addition to our internal efforts, we are committed to collaborating with other publishers through the STM Integrity Hub, a community initiative that fosters knowledge and data exchange and develops shared technology tools to help publishers overcome the challenges of paper mills and unethical practices.
Publishers are working hard to address these issues, but they cannot do so in isolation. Serious efforts must be made to address the perverse incentives to publish fake research and to educate researchers on appropriate standards of research practice. We are committed to working together to that end, including by providing free online integrity training, and we hope that the broader scientific community will agree that collaboration, not criticism, is the best way forward.
The author is Director of Research Integrity at Springer Nature.
According to “science”:
I have received three coronavirus vaccine shots so far, and I usually also get my annual flu shot because I fundamentally believe in the mainstream science behind vaccinations. But while I do not condone outrage at public health officials like Anthony S. Fauci, I still feel that the word “science” is too easily invoked as a trump card these days, including for political or self-serving purposes.
As privately funded research aimed at corporate interests becomes increasingly common, even science can be sold. Questionable findings can be emphasized if they favor corporate products. Accurate findings can be ignored, even with serious health effects, if they are bad for corporate interests. And lobbyists try to manipulate government regulators.
This type of profit-driven manipulation has no place in any government agency or anywhere in the scientific process.
Frank Staal Jr., White Rock, B.C.
Regarding the June 3 Washington Post article, “CDC's 6-foot distancing rule during pandemic had little scientific basis”:
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci’s recent remarks to Congress and reporting in the Washington Post have made it clear that the question, “What were the failures in the early management of the pandemic?” is a contentious one. Our collective answer to this question will have significant implications for the ongoing and future emergencies.
Distancing guidelines were based on a preliminary understanding that large droplets were the primary route of COVID-19 transmission. Given the effectiveness of such protocols for other diseases, it made sense to recommend distancing while further studies were conducted. Today, we know that COVID-19 is primarily airborne and transmitted by inhalation, but distancing still reduces the risk of inhaling an infectious dose of the virus.
It is worth exploring whether the experiences of agricultural and food workers, who have been disproportionately affected during the pandemic, reveal that precautions and distancing were not universal and were often denied. On Maryland's Eastern Shore, where our team focuses its research, living quarters in employer-managed camps, such as Westover in Somerset County, are overcrowded and lack proper ventilation or air conditioning. Workers who live off-site are often crammed into employer-approved motel rooms.
At the start of the pandemic, food factories across the country saw employers conceal infections, force sick employees to return to work, and deny access to personal protective equipment. These are just some of the ways they put profits ahead of public health. Respecting regulatory obligations, following health guidelines, and affording the same protection, dignity, and care offered to those not classed as “essential” would have saved lives and mitigated the unequal harm these communities faced.
As lawmakers struggle to control the narrative about the pandemic, we are drawing the wrong conclusions.
Of course, looking back is necessary to prepare for the next inevitable pandemic. But instead of obsessing over whether 3, 6, or 10 feet of distance is optimal depending on the pathogen and how it is transmitted, we need to remember that the greater harms were caused not just by technical considerations but by how societies chose to respond and who became victims. If we assume that the main problem with managing the pandemic is the cost to businesses and the mental health of those who can isolate at home, while ignoring the enormous sacrifices (physical, mental, economic and social) demanded from frontline workers, we risk repeating the harms of the past when faced with a new virus.
We have dairy workers infected with avian flu right now, and we can't waste time asking the wrong questions.
Devon Payne Sturgis, College Park
Sarka Sangaramoorthy, Washington
Jessica Curry, Glassboro, New Jersey
The authors are working on the RESPIRAR project, which focuses on disparities in health among migrant and seasonal agricultural workers.
