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Author: Ritu Dhand

Chief Scientific Officer

The significant growth of academic publishing in recent years has led some to argue the system is reaching a breaking point. Ritu Dhand suggests that globalisation and changing quality thresholds should prompt a rethink about where and why strains exist in the current research system. 

Blog was originally published on the and is re-published here with permission.

Is there a growing problem of “too many low quality” research publications? This is a question many in the sector have considered, but what lies behind it? One way addressing this question is by setting it in the context of two decades of rapid evolution in the research publishing landscape. By doing so we can shed light on this ‘’ and at the same time bust some of the myths this framing seeks to maintain.

Global growth in research – western dominance of editors and reviewers
 

From 2003 to 2023 the research landscape has grown nearly 200% from 1,515,000 , to 4,793,000. The diversity of these publications has also increased, with over two thirds of research contributed by researchers in western nations in 2003, but only about 40% of research being contributed by western nations in 2023. Around 40% of all citable documents are now contributed by researchers in Asia. 

This increased diversification helps to explain the surge in number of research articles, but what of its perceived quality? In 2023, in the region of 45% of all citations were to research documents produced by western nations, notably around 40% of all citations were to research produced by researchers from Asia. Indeed, for two consecutive years Clarivate has announced that .

However, this diversity is not reflected on editorial boards, which remain broadly the same as twenty years ago. Journals with the majority of , will also be inviting the from western nations and this presents a challenge. Lack of diversity creates inequality in assessment of research due to the existence of where editors will tend to use reviewers from the same regions as they are based. Thus, the burden of peer review for this significant growth in research papers rests predominantly on the shoulders of western researchers. Arguably then, if a global research audience was truly engaged in editorial positions and in peer review – there would be less strain on publishing activity.

The need to redefine ‘impact’ and ‘quality’ in assessment of research
 

Open Science has also positively changed the number of research papers being published by recognising the value of other forms of research. The true benefit of a research community practicing open research was seen , where researchers and journals were taking a more inclusive approach, seeing the merit of negative results in removing redundancy and saving researcher time, valuing the validated data & experimental design papers for supporting reproducibility and using foundational studies as the building blocks to hit key milestones faster. Impact wasn’t defined by a citation metric; impact was defined as research that advanced the pace of discovery. The result – we went from a fatal global disease to effective drugs and vaccines in eighteen months.

Yet, despite the impact shown and lessons learnt, similar article types are today frowned on by researchers as ‘low quality’, as their value is not captured by current citation behaviours. Indeed, it has been of funded research . Whilst elements of this type of research may be technically unsound, a large proportion of this research consists of papers that advance the pace of rigorous research in the laboratory. This presents a waste of funder money as well as researcher time – a estimated that up to €26 billion in Europe alone is wasted due to duplicated work.

"similar article types are today frowned on by researchers as ‘low quality’, as their value is not captured by current citation behaviours"

Established inclusive journals like PloS, Scientific Reports, BMC series and more recently Frontiers and MDPI are publishing large proportions of this research. The high numbers of articles published in these journals show the level of demand. Inclusive journals tend to be larger because there are fewer of them (estimates of >95% of all journals being highly selective – rejecting 75-90 % of submitted papers). Larger inclusive journals also tend to be because they tend to have journal impact factors in the 0-5 range, but any one paper could be garnering tens to 100s of citations. Indeed, comparison of ��������’s Inclusive journals with selective journals that sit in the same IF range reveals Inclusive journals publish a similar proportion of the highest impact papers as well as authors from the top research institutes. Considering other impact metrics also reveals; over a third of the research published in ��������’s inclusive journals is directly contributing to addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Why do we do research?
 

As a research community, we are facing a landscape that is arguably driven by factors that are taking away from the ethos of why we do research – to learn, collaborate and advance knowledge.

Active researchers need to be able to learn from all forms of validated research. There remains a need and a place for both selective and inclusive journals across a range of impact factors to effectively serve our researchers, science and society. We need to ensure there remain high peer review standards on all journals, selective or inclusive and continue to to maintain trust in the published literature.

Ensuring there are measures in place that enable the better recognition of all validated research, is essential for building a more equitable and accessible scholarly landscape. This means embracing both selective and inclusive journals as complementary forces in advancing global knowledge. As a global research community, we all have an active part to play in making this work. The total number of articles being published shouldn’t be a problem in a digital world, we need improved filtering, alerts and search to give researchers sufficiently customised results. We need to and utilise the global researcher community to power peer review. And given its seventy years since the impact factor was created, it’s time to increase the type and scope of metrics to better reflect the value of research in a globally diverse and inclusive research landscape. Most importantly, we need to keep at the forefront of scientific debate – who we are serving and why we are in the business of doing research.