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The number of articles published worldwide increased from 1.9 million in 2016 to an impressive 2.8 million in 2022, an increase of 47%, while the number of scientists has practically not changed.
This new study offers a detailed analysis of this situation, which has sparked controversy. Therefore, it uses data on the growth of publishers, article processing times, and citation behaviors (articles that reference each other).
The study, in which researcher Dan Brockington from the ICTA-UAB participated, concludes that some publishers, such as the Multidisciplinary Publishing Institute (MDPI) and Elsevier, have been the “disproportionate hosts” of the growth, and proposes solutions.
“The fundamental contribution of this work is that it provides comparative data between different publishers, which represent the vast majority of indexed articles and magazines. This way, you can check if any publisher is behaving unusually or if there are editorial changes in play,” says Dan Brokington.
“Public confidence in science depends on it being done correctly,” says Mark Hanson of the University of Exeter. “This means that articles have to be reviewed by experts, which takes time. It means that some items will be reused, then revised and improved or returned to the workbench.”
The study’s findings suggest that some editors do not carry out this process. This is bad for public trust in science, because it is clear that not all of these articles are treated with normal standards of rigor.
“A crucial conclusion is that this is not simply a consequence of increased open access publishing. There are open access publishers that have not increased their content dramatically. Rather, it is the type of business model where open access publishing is integrated,” says Brockington.
We have problems
A publisher occupies a prominent place at work. Multidisciplinary Publishing Institute (MDPI). MDPI is behind 27% of the added growth in the system since 2016, although it is not alone.
Publishers such as MDPI and Frontiers have enabled this growth by creating numerous “special issues” that publish articles with short turnaround times.
Special issues – also called themes or collections – focus on a specific topic, and traditionally arise from a conference or current scientific topic.
Despite this, the rise of special issues is accompanied by changes in the definition of the term. Some publishers have taken this label and eliminated the meaning of the word special.
“Special issues work differently from normal research. Instead of authors submitting their work to peer review, guest editors are chosen to produce a special issue, and they can invite anyone they want to write an article,” says Brockington.
The operation is similar to the traditional one, but in the new model very few articles are rejected and peer review is very fast.
According to the study, MDPI’s average delivery time is about 37 days, a lower proportion than other publishing groups. This low response period was very constant in all their magazines.
The researchers highlight that from submission to acceptance it is not possible to correctly review the most complex scientific articles in 37 days.
The notable change taking place at some publishers, across multiple magazines, raises questions about the freedom of magazine editors. “How is it possible that editors remain ultimately responsible for what is published if so many magazines are changing their behavior in the same way?” asks Brockington.
Impact inflation
The sudden increase in the number of published articles has created what the authors call impact inflation. The impact of a journal is based on measures such as citations: if a journal’s articles are regularly cited by others, the journal is considered to have a high impact. This is important for authors, as the impact of journals is used to determine who gets grants and funding.
The new study also reveals high rates of self-citation (Articles that reference other articles from the same publisher) to their MDPI journals, which has dramatically raised the profile of these journals.
On how this situation could be addressed, the authors highlight that researchers face “Publish or Die” pressure to be competitive in funding applications. “Although we highlight some groups, in reality it is about the entire sector. Funding bodies and regulatory groups have to invest and define the line, and then say who has crossed it.”
“We need much more transparency about academic publishers if we are to effectively govern their behavior,” says Brockinton, adding that “the current system is dysfunctional. It does not work. But we won’t know what will work best if we don’t have clearer, more accessible data.”
The authors of the study have not received funding for this work, and their data and the article, titled “The strain on scientific publishing,” are published as an open-access preprint on arXiv.org.
