Scientific societies, journals, editors and researchers are pushing back against mean-spirited peer reviews go.nature.com/4mXJjn6

📄 Study compared ~443 “legit” vs ~555 suspected predatory articles. Predatory ones tend to be shorter, use common office fonts, stick to A4 page size, and show simpler metadata. Visual fingerprints can help spot low-quality journals. 👀 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

🧵1: Peer Review Is Cracking. Researchers are churning out papers to survive. Peer reviewers are overwhelmed. Editors chase quantity, not quality. It's not science—it’s a paper factory. Reform is urgent, or public trust will collapse. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

"If Trump wants to eliminate fraud at universities, why gut research integrity agencies?"

🧵1. Predatory journals aren’t just a nuisance—they erode trust in science. A new #AI tool just scanned ~15k journals & flagged over 1k suspicious outlets. Could this be the watchdog science needs? 🧠🔎 #ResearchIntegrity #Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🧵1: Peer Review Is Cracking. Researchers are churning out papers to survive. Peer reviewers are overwhelmed. Editors chase quantity, not quality. It's not science—it’s a paper factory. Reform is urgent, or public trust will collapse. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

How science should NOT be done: testing the effects of CBD on cat fear...by scaring the cats so much they urinated...and no IACUC (institutional animal use committee) approval? Why? oh, because it's a predatory MDPI/Animals journal...calling @amcell.bsky.social www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15...

1/6 🚨 Springer Nature is retracting an entire book on machine learning. Why? It was full of plagiarized content, nonsensical claims, and had no proper peer review. 🤮 Retraction Watch: 1 Springer’s credibility: 0

Parallels between Trump’s government and Orwell’s 1984 are striking: language manipulation, “alternative facts,” and efforts to control public discourse echo Newspeak and reality control from the novel. When leaders rewrite words and history, democracy faces real Orwellian risks. #Trump #Orwell

These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

‘Mind-boggling’: US CDC orders gender-related terms cut from scientific papers www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"Detecting fraud ‘is a job for professionals, not peer reviewers’" @elisabethbik.bsky.social #ResearchIntegrity www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-o...

🚨 ICMJE should certify legitimate journals to combat the rise of predatory ones? 🔍 Fake journals mimic real ones, trap authors, and pollute science. ✅ A global seal of trust could protect research integrity? 🔗 jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... #AcademicPublishing #PredatoryJournals

💰 Authorship for sale. 🧐 A Nature investigation exposes how paper mills sell fake authorship slots—and corrupt the scientific record. 🧪 Science is being hijacked for a price. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/d41... #AcademicIntegrity #PaperMills #ScienceFraud

Researchers studying research must avoid the temptation to get too stuck in the academic weeds https://go.nature.com/4eDITPB

🚨 Starting June 16, Nature now automatically publishes peer‑review reports + author responses with every new primary research paper—no more opt‑in. It’s transparency by default, aimed at demystifying science for all. ⬇️ group.springernature.com/gp/group/med... 🔗 #OpenScience #Transparency

Would you pay $169 for an introductory ebook on machine learning with citations that appear to be made up? Intern Rita Aksenfeld's first story for Retraction Watch

🚨 Starting June 16, Nature now automatically publishes peer‑review reports + author responses with every new primary research paper—no more opt‑in. It’s transparency by default, aimed at demystifying science for all. ⬇️ group.springernature.com/gp/group/med... 🔗 #OpenScience #Transparency

🚨 New study: Male lead authors are more likely to have papers retracted—especially for misconduct like plagiarism. 👩‍🔬 Female-led research shows fewer retractions overall. 📚 Science needs not just rigor, but integrity. 🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.jo... #AcademicPublishing #GenderInScience

📌Our new study finds that male leading authors have higher retraction rates than female leading authors 📍11K+ retracted articles & 19M+ non-retracted articles analyzed

New from The Strain Team: 🎊 Springer Nature Discovers MDPI 🎊 Springer Nature has spawned a copycat journal series called "Discover" mimicking #MDPI journal titles and citation behaviours. We even made a browser game to prove it (see 🔗). Gross! 😀 1/n #ResearchIntegrity #SciPub #AcademicSky

We’re back, baby! 🔥 More motivated than ever and calling out predatory journals louder. Follow the fight here too ⬇️✖️ x.com/PredatoryRep... #AcademicPublishing #PredatoryJournals

💰 Authorship for sale. 🧐 A Nature investigation exposes how paper mills sell fake authorship slots—and corrupt the scientific record. 🧪 Science is being hijacked for a price. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/d41... #AcademicIntegrity #PaperMills #ScienceFraud

🚨 ICMJE should certify legitimate journals to combat the rise of predatory ones? 🔍 Fake journals mimic real ones, trap authors, and pollute science. ✅ A global seal of trust could protect research integrity? 🔗 jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... #AcademicPublishing #PredatoryJournals

🚨 New study: Male lead authors are more likely to have papers retracted—especially for misconduct like plagiarism. 👩‍🔬 Female-led research shows fewer retractions overall. 📚 Science needs not just rigor, but integrity. 🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.jo... #AcademicPublishing #GenderInScience

Here’s a thought: If you’re exposing thousands of predatory journals online, staying anonymous isn’t just smart—it’s survival. Safety, job security, and avoiding prison time? All on the line. ☢️🚨 #AcademicPublishing #Whistleblower

There’s no definitive way to measure how predatory a journal is. Special issue count? APCs? Peer review quality? Website design? These indicators are often subjective, inconsistent, and context-dependent. No single metric tells the full story. #AcademicPublishing #Predatory #Science

How could we compare to a company that sells its list of predatory journals? Perhaps it's time for Cabells to rethink its model and make its blacklist openly accessible so everyone can see the validity of its metrics and which large predatory publishers (we know well) are listed or not. 😉

A Sage journal that holds the distinction of highest number of retracted articles in the Retraction Watch Database likely made in excess of $400,000 in revenue from those papers, by our calculations.

Clarivate to stop counting citations to retracted articles in journals’ impact factors

Scopus indexed a journal with a fake editorial board and a sham archive, @abalkina.bsky.social writes. They removed the journal after we contacted them. retractionwatch.com/2025/05/16/e...

There’s no definitive way to measure how predatory a journal is. Special issue count? APCs? Peer review quality? Website design? These indicators are often subjective, inconsistent, and context-dependent. No single metric tells the full story. #AcademicPublishing #Predatory #Science

Here’s a thought: If you’re exposing thousands of predatory journals online, staying anonymous isn’t just smart—it’s survival. Safety, job security, and avoiding prison time? All on the line. ☢️🚨 #AcademicPublishing #Whistleblower

What a waste of limited resources ⬇️🙄

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Several research institutes in Germany are joining a worldwide grassroots effort to save science data sets that researchers fear could be deleted by US President Donald Trump’s administration, Nature has learnt. https://go.nature.com/42uEw50

"Squared blunder’: Google engineer withdraws preprint after getting called out for using AI

‘Mind-boggling’: US CDC orders gender-related terms cut from scientific papers www.nature.com/articles/d41...

These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Parallels between Trump’s government and Orwell’s 1984 are striking: language manipulation, “alternative facts,” and efforts to control public discourse echo Newspeak and reality control from the novel. When leaders rewrite words and history, democracy faces real Orwellian risks. #Trump #Orwell

Every fascist regime is against science. 🤬 #Predatory #Publishing

Universities Must make misconduct reports public! #Predatory #Publishing

Why Universities Should Make Misconduct Reports Public: A call to action from our co-founders

Math journal editors resign to launch open-access title ‘free from pressure or influence'

🚨 Misalignment in academic publishing! Researchers face pressure to prioritize metrics over knowledge dissemination, benefiting commercial publishers. The authors advocate for alternative models to ensure research is accessible and valued beyond prestige. #OpenScience www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨 A shady network, Oxbridge Publishing House, operating from a mansion in Birmingham is buying up #scientific journals, turning them into profit-driven machines by inflating publication fees and publishing low-quality studies. 🤑 english.elpais.com/science-tech...

☢️ Research that shows how private funding corrupts science: Biomedical research: doi.org/10.1001/jama... Pharmaceutical industry: doi.org/10.1371/jour... doi.org/10.1371/jour... doi.org/10.1002/1465... Sugar industry: doi.org/10.1001/jama...

Good to remember: Plan S, designed to flip scholarly publishing to OA, have been influenced by Frontiers. Leaked emails reveal close consultations between Robert-Jan Smits & Frontiers' CEO, raising questions about the plan's conception & transparency. ☢️ forbetterscience.com/2019/07/11/f...

The patterns leave no doubt that @mdpiopenaccess.bsky.social and @frontiersin.bsky.social are predatory publishers. Quantitative Science Studies (2024) 5 (4): 823–843. @mitpress.bsky.social doi.org/10.1162/qss_...