The misalignment of incentives in academic publishing and implications for journal reform

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2401231121
• Publication Date: 2025-01-27T20:09:11Z
• Authors: Jennifer S. Trueb...; David B. Allison; Sarahanne M. Field; Ayelet Fishbach; Stefan D. M. Gail...; Gerd Gigerenzer; William R. Holmes; Stephan Lewandowsky; Dora Matzke; Mary C. Murphy; Sebastian Musslick; Vencislav Popov; Adina L. Roskies; Judith ter Schure; Andrei R. Teodorescu
• Keywords: Viewpoints; Scope (computer science); Scholarly Communication; Publication; Scientific Communication

For most researchers, academic publishing serves two goals that are often misaligned—knowledge dissemination and establishing scientific credentials. While both can encourage research with significant depth scope, the latter also pressure scholars to maximize publication metrics. Commercial companies have capitalized on centrality of enterprises knowledge recognition extract large profits from academia by leveraging unpaid services reviewers, creating financial barriers dissemination, imposing substantial fees for open access. We present a set perspectives exploring alternative models communicating disseminating research. Acknowledging success new depends their impact existing approaches assigning credit prioritize prestigious publications metrics such as citations factors, we provide various viewpoints reforming evaluation.