Science Publishing in Crisis: Challenges and Solutions

Science relies on integrity and trustworthiness. But if disinformation and fake infiltrates the permanent scientific record of books and journals with the support of AI that even accelerates the fake, we have a fundamental problem in our “intellectual infrastructure”. It damages the scientific, medical and economic progress of our knowledge-based societies. Several factors drive the publishing crisis: on the one hand – the pull-factor – a reputation economy where scientists under career pressure in a “publish-or perish” culture too often behave unethically using shortcuts to reach their goals (promotion, salary raises, reputation) by purchasing AI-generated fake publications with plagiarism, fake data, text and images. This demand is satisfied by different “push-factors”: ‘paper mills’ offering fake-publications for sale, by predatory journals and conferences, fake reviews, and even some publishers that do not stop this fraud effectively. The results are manifold: a rising number of low-quality and several hundred thousand fake publications per year, editor and reviewer fatigue, misguided or irreproducible experiments, disinformation and escalating publishing costs that devour funding from taxpayers intended for research. Because it is high time to reform current publishing models to stop this unhealthy development, this session will present the consensus recommendations of an expert meeting held at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm in June 2025 and published in Royal Society Open Science (sciii-it.org/stockholm-declaration). A global plan was outlined with 34 action items within four topics: (i) Academia should resume control of publishing using non-profit publishing models (e.g. diamond open-access); (ii) Adjust incentive systems in academia to merit quality, not quantity, where the gaming of publication numbers and citation metrics distorts the perception of academic excellence; (iii) Implement mechanisms to prevent and detect fake publications and fraud which are independent of publishers; (iv) Draft and implement legislations, regulations and policies to increase publishing quality and integrity. This session brings together perspectives from academia and the publishing industry in a constructive dialogue on practical solutions. Dan Larhammar and Bernhard Sabel present the Stockholm Declaration’s recommendations. Steven Inchcoombe responds from a research publishing leadership perspective, outlining concrete industry initiatives against predatory publishers, paper mills, and enhanced quality control measures. All three speakers will have shared practical implementation proposals in advance to enable focused discussion. Format: Three 15-minute presentations followed by 45 minutes of moderated discussion on collaborative approaches to restore integrity in scholarly publishing.