Is global scientific production overheating, with the risk of ceasing to be sustainable? This is one of the conclusions reached by a group of four European researchers by calculating, sometimes for the first time, various indicators that describe this production.
Their data, published in Quantitative science studies, shed light on a key sector of the scientific world, newspaper publishers, who share a lucrative economic sector (estimated at $26.5 billion in 2020). Among the best known we find Elsevier (publisher of the lancet), Springer (editor of Nature), MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, recent Swiss player) or Wiley, which grew by absorbing Hindawi, another newcomer to the sector. Their income comes from subscriptions or “publication fees” paid by the authors of the articles, which become free to read for everyone, or both.
Between 2016 and 2022, the number of articles published and indexed in the two main databases, Scopus and Web of Science, grew by almost 50%, reaching 2.8 million articles. Other databases, such as Dimensions, cover more newspapers and count up to 4.5 million texts in 2020 per year… At the same time, the population of researchers grew, but less rapidly, by 16% between 2015 and 2022, even taking into account countries such as India and China.
“The mountain we carry is growing”laments Paolo Crosetto, co-author of the study and economist at the National Research Institute on Agriculture, Food and the Environment. This pressure has had consequences, with proofreaders increasingly in demand, difficult to “hire” (their work is free) and who sometimes outsource this work to their students, or now to generative artificial intelligence tools. The specialized site Retraction Watch maintains a list of editorial committees that have resigned due to disagreements over business models, productivity, etc.
“Risk of slipping”
But this volume indicator is not the only cause for concern. By focusing on editorial policies, the length of peer review, the rejection rate of articles, and a “quality” criterion, the impact factor, these researchers question the quality of output. A growing editorial practice questions: the multiplication of “special editions”, or special editions, dedicated to a research subtopic, the editorial responsibility of which is entrusted to a researcher. Eighty-eight percent of the 213,344 MDPI articles were published under this tag in 2022. “These special numbers no longer have anything special because they have become very numerous”laments Paolo Crosetto.
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