We churn out more & more papers *per scientist*, at an increasing pace, in a rapidly changing publication landscape.

Why? How? Want to make sense of this?

In a new paper just published in Quantitative Science Studies we dive in & look for answers.

direct.mit.edu/qss/article/do… Growth in paper is no news.

A brief history of "there are too many papers nowadays": Science, 1980s (with ~1/6th of today's papers; left); and Ibn-Khaldun, 1360s (with ~1/1000th of today's paper; right)

The good old times weren't so good after all.

So why all the fuss?

Mission: impossibile.

Ask a modern chatbot (GPT 4o), out of a multi-billion company and bailed as the future of the species, to draw a...

**Crocodile without a tail**

Try 1 Try 2

About to publish in a scientific journal? Want to know more about specific publishers?

We released The Strain Explorer, where you find data on Turnaround times, output, shares of special issues, and impact factor inflation.

Here:

Read along for a 🧵 pagoba.shinyapps.io/strain_explore…
Turnaround times -- from submission to publication -- are a marker of review quality and of efficiency of editorial handling.

You might want to avoid journals taking a year to reply.

But very fast revisions with no variance across papers might not be a good signal either.

Academic publishing is in deep trouble.

We all know it: paper mills, thousands of Special Issues, retractions, skyrocketing APCs...

What is going on?

@danbrockington , @HansonM90 , @pagomba & me we have a preprint just out, with tons of data.

A 🧵

arxiv.org/abs/2309.15884
First, the problem.

In the end it's simple: we publish A. LOT. OF. PAPERS.

We added ~900k papers/year since 2016.

This crunches more and more time off a limited - and stagnant - number of scientists. And it costs a LOT of money.

It's not sustainable.

We call this *strain*.

I got interviewed by Science about MDPI's IJERPH losing its impact factor.

A small thread to list what we know of this case as of today (29.3) -- if you know more, chip in.

A 🧶

science.org/content/articl… First: Clarivate de-listed several journals last week -- this means these journals will not have an IF any more.

Here is their statement, where they did not provide reasons for any particular journal, not the list in itself.
clarivate.com/blog/supportin…

Ok this is big.

Web of Science just removed the MDPI flagship journal IJERPH from their lists. This means IJERPH has no more an Impact Factor.

Why is this big? What are the implications? 🧵 First, the facts. WoS announced several de-listings with the aim of keeping the publishing sector clean.

IJERPH loses its IF alongside ~50 other journals.

This impacts nearly all publishers, from Elsevier to Hindawi.

clarivate.com/blog/supportin…

Is intellectual property good or bad for innovation?

If it's bad, would we be able to transition from the current IP regime to a new, no-IP one?

In a paper freshly accepted at JEBO @ismaelbensliman, Raul Magni-Berton, Simon Varaine & me we attack this question in the lab.
🧵👇 First thing first -- the paper is ungated (for a limited time) here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1gIghc24a-em6

Data & analysis are openly available here: github.com/paolocrosetto/…

Pre-reg and supplementary material here: osf.io/uckbw/

This is the scientific publishing industry for you.

MDPI milks you for money. Nature milks you for money. Elsevier, Wiley, Frontiers... you name it.

They do little and reap large benefits.

The game is rigged, and they always win.

We ought to stop playing.

How? A thread.

https://twitter.com/BorsboomDenny/status/1541148916011438080

The problem is simple to state, very hard to solve.

Publishers really own one thing only -- the reputation of the journals. We want to publish in high-ranked journals. And they control access to those. This is Elsevier, Nature. They profit by keeping quality high, volume low.