Introduction

Times change, and so does the transfer of scientific information. While the ‘organized’ transfer of new scientific information occurred initially in the form of presentations during meetings of scientific societies, this became less effective when scientific research proliferated and the number of scientists increased. Scientific journals took over the role of communicator, initially publishing new data in (almost) all fields of science (Journal des Sçavans, 1665), later in the form of discipline-oriented journals. Ongoing specialization in the various scientific disciplines (which we consider here to include natural sciences, medical sciences and technology/engineering-related sciences), led unavoidably to ever more specialism-oriented journals.

The specialization of journals required editors who were experts in the discipline represented by a specific journal. This was not enough, however, when scientific research expanded further and new manuscripts on ever more specialist subjects were submitted for publication. The flow thus became too large—and the specialist material became too complex—for a single editor to handle. Consequently, fellow-scientists were attracted by the editor; jointly they formed the Editorial Board, with the original editor (from that moment on called ‘Editor-in-Chief’) as primus inter pares. The members of the Editorial Board reviewed manuscripts within their specific field of expertise and helped the Editor-in-Chief to find competent reviewers if the required expertise was not present within the Board. Later, the ever increasing flow of manuscript forced journals to look for reviewers outside the Editorial Board, but it remained a main task of the Board to find such reviewers. This procedure was, though not ideal, considered by the scientific community as sufficiently thorough. Editors (helped by the members of the Editorial Board and by reviewers) still were the gate keepers of scientific quality and reliability. This was reflected in the trust that scientists had in the quality of published research, enabling them to faithfully cite articles with earlier findings.

Two simultaneous new eras affecting society

Around the turning from the twentieth to the present century, two new eras (as far as science is considered) started. These developments had a strong influence on society because they changed the landscape of scientific communication fundamentally (Zoccali and Mallamaci 2023). One concerns the objective of science communication; the other one concerns the digitalization of our society.

The perish-or-publish culture

At the end of the twentieth century, society became confronted with organizations that changed their type of leadership: people who had made their career in a company to become eventually CEO in a business or professor at a university no longer were considered to be the most effective; they became replaced by managers, who also became decisive regarding the career prospects of employees. In universities (and comparable science-oriented organizations) this posed a serious problem: how could managers decide which scientist did the best research? Instead of judging scientists on the basis of the quality of their publications, the quantity became the most important tool for such decisions. The earlier “small-is-beautiful” philosophy became thus replaced by the pressure to publish as many manuscripts as possible, irrespective of their relevance, quality and depth. This was the birth of the publish-or-perish culture (Andersen 2023), which is still the rule rather than the exception at most universities.

One of the consequences is that scientists can nowadays no longer by definition trust the quality of scientific publications, and citing articles published in so-called predatory journals (journals not interested in science but primarily—if not only—in collecting so-called ‘article processing charges’ from authors) is therefore now discouraged (e.g., Rathore and Farooq 2021). It remains difficult, however, to distinguish such predatory journals from recognized scholarly ones, as there is a vague ‘grey’ boundary between them (Shamseer et al. 2017); also bibliometric data leave questions (Kokol et al. 2018).

Due to the pressure to publish, the flow of submitted manuscripts changed into a tsunami, but the publishers of scientific journals had only limited space available. This led, following a basic economic rule (shortage triggers higher prices), to a revolution in science publishing: particularly commercial publishers saw an opportunity to increase their profit by asking article processing charges (APC) from authors. The publish-or-perish culture at universities made that researchers could only agree, and the APC became gradually a normal part of the research budget.

Digitalization and predatory journals

Shortly after the publish-or-perish culture had changed universities fundamentally, another revolution affected the entire society: the development of ever cheaper, faster and better computers led to digitalization of our society, obviously including the publishing of scientific information. The new technology offered several advantages, for the publishers (less postage cost, less printing cost, less time required for correspondence), for the reviewers (working in the digital manuscript), for the authors (faster handling, quicker publication, space for more articles in an issue), and for the readers (earlier receipt of an issue, possibility to search electronically).

Particularly the fact that printing was no longer essential, and that the commonly high postal costs could therefore also be avoided, made businessmen worldwide realize that the publishing of scientific journals might be a cheap and easy way to earn high profits. Attracting manuscripts was easy because of the publish-or-perish culture, and the manuscripts needed in principle only reformatting and storage on a website. Many of the other cost (e.g., for reviewing) could also be cut: the authors were supposed only to be glad that no critical questions would be asked. This presumption of the businessmen appeared correct, and both individuals and (commonly new) publishers started thousands of new journals, following the above ideas. The first one was probably the Journal of Biological Sciences, launched in 2001 by ANSINetwork, currently ANSInet. Nowadays, the medical sector is, unfortunately, by far the most represented among the thousands of predatory journals (Van Loon 2023).

Research gap

The workload of scientists, both in academia and commercial organizations, has increased significantly in the past decades. This leaves, as a rule, little time for ‘hobby activities’ such as reviewing manuscripts. Reviewers are rewarded for their commonly time-consuming work only rarely. It is therefore not surprising that journals have ever more problems finding appropriate reviewers. This raises several questions (see the “Methodology” section) that have never been answered satisfactorily. This implies that the entire review procedure is currently under debate, as low-quality (or even fraudulent) publications are a threat for science. Certainly as far as medical publications are concerned, insufficiently reviewed manuscripts pose also a direct threat to public health. The present contribution therefore focuses on the above problems in the medical sector.

Methodology

After the present authors had published (2022) their first joint paper in a medical journal, they became overflown by requests from (mostly medical) journals to contribute a manuscript. The flow did not stop, and in June 2023 the corresponding author decided to monitor these requests. This resulted in only a year time in a list of 510 different journals, including 260 medical journals (more than 50%!). These medical journals were analyzed for their main editorial aspects: (1) do they have an Editor-in-Chief, (2) can de Editors-in-Chief—if present—do their editorial work properly, (3) how do they attract editors, (4) how large are their editorial boards, and (5) in how far can the members of the editorial board be actually involved in manuscript reviewing?

The answers to these questions can only occasionally be given on the basis of data provided by the journals involved: many of these journals seem reluctant to provide information about their way of functioning. Data about the editors therefore come partly from the journals’ websites, partly from searching on internet. Data about the editorial boards (commonly presented as a long list of editors) could, however, be taken directly from the journals’ websites; the country where they work could sometimes be found on the journals’ website, but had in other cases to be searched for on internet, for instance by checking articles that were co-authored by these editors. The data concerning the concentration of editorial functions among specific editors were obtained by painstaking search on internet for names, affiliations and resumes.

The data regarding the number of volumes and the number of published articles in specific years (required for the calculation of the workload of the editors involved in the journal) were obtained by counting all volumes, their issues and their articles in the relevant years.

The findings are presented in the following sections, and some examples are shown in the form of tables that clearly show that many of the medical journals potentially pose a threat to the quality of their manuscripts, and consequently indirectly also to public health.

The search for editors and editorial boards

Many of the new journals promise the scientists that they invite to contribute that their manuscripts will be handled within a short time (often less than a week); another common seductive offer is that the normal APC will be waived partially for authors in low-income countries. The common suggestion that submitted manuscripts will be reviewed by an editorial board/team/panel requires, in spite of the fact that this promise is commonly false, an editor and editorial board. For this reason, many of these journals approach scientists with the invitation to become an editor, suggesting that the ‘title’ of editor will increase their reputation (see also Byard 2022).

Excessive numbers of editors

It is remarkable how many scientists become seduced in this way (Rawas et al. 2020). This results in journals with very long lists of editors (not rarely hundreds); many of them seem to have hardly any experience in the discipline to which the journal is devoted. Particularly in the field of medicine it is easy to find publishers with journals that have so many ‘editors’ that one cannot imagine that they ever will have to show their editorial (or reviewer) expertise.

It is always tricky to pick out some example, but such examples offer the most convincing information. One such example is Spandidos Publications, a Greek Publisher with 12 medical journals in English (+1 in Chinese). The twelve English-language journals have jointly—in addition to 12 Editors-in-Chief and 65 Associate/Deputy Editors—not less than 3246 scientists presented as editors, Members of the Editorial Board or Members of what Spandidos mentions as the Editorial Academy. The in total 3323 ‘editors’ had jointly to handle 7804 articles for the past 5 volumes of each journal (the rejection rate is not known but probably almost 0), which implies some 2.3 articles per editor, during a period of commonly several years. Comparison of the number of ‘editors’ with the number of articles published in these journals (Table 1) shows no logical relationship.

Table 1 English-language journals and numbers of their various types of editors of Spandidos Publications (journals accessed September 11–12, 2023)
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It can be worse: as another example (of many more possible ones), the Baishideng Publishing Group, officially located in a suite in Pleasanton, California, USA (though probably effectively located in China, considering its Chinese daughter/sister company with the name F6 Publishing) publishes 47 medical journals (46 in English, 1 in Chinese). 45 of the 46 English-language journals provide data about the editors; one (World Journal of Surgical Procedures) does not (and did, when asked, only refer to the journal’s webpage that kept indicating the same error for the nine months that we checked it). The following numbers (see also Table 2) therefore are calculated on the basis of the available data from the other 45 journals. These (mostly fairly new) journals published since their establishment jointly 267 (yearly) volumes with 1546 articles, handled by 97 Editors-in-Chief, 100 Associate Editors and 2968 Members of an Editorial Board. Analysis of the first (alphabetically ordered) 7 journals in Table 2 indicates that they jointly published 50 volumes; the average per journal was 7 volumes with 221 articles, corresponding with 32 articles per volume. The 20 Editors-in-Chief, 16 Associate Editors and 680 Members of an Editorial Board (in total: 716) of these 7 journals had to handle 1546 articles, implying that each ‘editor’ had on average to handle 1546: 716 = 2.2 articles, spread over a period of, on average, 7 years, implying 0.3 articles per editor per year. One might question whether such duties require so many editors, apart from the question of these editors were, indeed, really involved, for instance as reviewers. The number of the Members of the Editorial Boards of the Baidisheng journals (and those of many other predatory publishers) must be considered outrageous, particularly considering that “the modal journal has 11 editorial board members” (Nishikawa-Pacher et al. 2023).

Table 2 Journals and numbers of their various types of editors of the Baishideng Publishing Group (journals accessed September 10, 2023)
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The large number of editors of such journals are most likely due to the requests that many of the new journals send to scientists to join the journal as an editor, even if the invited scientist has not any experience in the subject covered by the journal (the second author, not a medical professional, received several such requests from medical journals, including a request to become Editor-in-Chief).

Changing attitudes of editors

Being reviewer, member of an editorial board or editor is a time-consuming activity. Being Editor-in-Chief is even much more time-consuming. Numerous scientists therefore refrain from such activities. Other scientists, however, seem to collect as many editorial positions as possible. This may be understandable as far as it concerns acting as a reviewer (this activity can be scientifically very rewarding), but, if so, the invitation should mention that it concerns being part of a reviewers pool or—at most—a member of an Editorial Board. Both aspects are dealt with in the below sections.

Excessive functions held by experienced scientists

However difficult it may be to find a capable Editor-in-Chief, and however overloaded experienced researchers and editors tend to be, it appears that some of them seem to consider themselves as some kind of Superman. Once again: it is tricky to provide some examples, but they are enlightening. The first example concerns a Professor of Internal Medicine. When checked on internet (August 2023–June 2024), he was found to hold 13 positions as Editor-in-Chief, 1 position as Associate Editor, and 48 positions as Member of an Editorial Board (in total 62 positions). It seems physically impossible that he holds all these positions (Table 3) doing the work properly that may be expected by 62 science-devoted journals.

Table 3 Combined editorial functions of a professor of Internal Medicine (according to the respective journal websites, August 2023–June 2024)
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A second example concerns a retired cardiovascular surgeon. He holds (following internet; checked August 2023–June 2024) 6 positions as Editor-in-Chief, 1 position as Associate Editor, and 57 positions as Member of an Editorial Board (in total 64 positions: Table 4). Although retired, these positions would jointly require much more time than even a retired professor can have.

Table 4 Editorial functions of a retired cardiovascular surgeon (according to journal websites, August 2023–June 2024)
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Many more examples can be found by checking internet. We checked the 510 journals that approached us during a year (July 2023–June 2024), and we found that concentrations of editorial functions are not a rare phenomenon. A highly alarming aspect is that such a concentration of editorial functions appears restricted to the medical sector: it was not found in any of the 250 journals devoted to other disciplines. Even more alarming is that the two editors of whom the functions are indicated in Tables 3 and 4 appear to continue collecting editorial positions, even though it is obvious that they could not even fulfill all their duties appropriately in August 2023 when they held ‘only’ 46 and 43 positions, respectively. The concentration of editorial positions among a small group of established medical researchers is possibly due to the common contacts between established scientists in medicine during conferences, etc. Such common contacts may result easily in some kind of co-optation regarding editorial positions. It is noteworthy in this context that the scientists mentioned in Tables 3 and 4 share a position of Editor-in-Chief of the same journal. Moreover, they have several publishers in common regarding journals in which they hold editorial positions. This suggests that some form of co-optation, or at least recommendation, exists as far as editorial positions are concerned.

Such an ‘editorial incrowd’ seems undesirable for objective judgments about the acceptability of submitted manuscripts. But the concentration of so many editorial functions within one person is even more undesirable for another reason: it is impossible to imagine that a single person can do all required editorial activities appropriately, as all these functions (and particular the function of Editor-in-Chief) require much time.

Excessive functions collected by young scientists

In contrast to the above-mentioned ‘incrowd editors’, some—commonly relatively young—scientists seem to apply for editorships in numerous new medical journals. This is made easy because many journals send requests to join their editorial board. This leads commonly to unjustifiable large editorial boards. An example is the Medical Journal of Clinical Trials & Case Studies (initiated in 2017 by Medwin Publishers) with 1 Editor-in-Chief, 28 editors, and 267 Associate editors (journal’s website accessed December 18, 2023). Volume 7 (2023) had 4 issues with, respectively, 3, 7, 10 and 11 contributions. It is obvious that the editorial handling of only 31 contributions in a year does not need almost 300 editors. The above figures suggest (and this is found correct by checking medical journals on internet) that the large majority of particularly the Members of the Editorial Boards are scientists from universities in countries with little international recognition (Table 5). This seems to imply that these scientists hope to find recognition on the basis of their editorship, following the standard of most universities (Byard 2022). This is the more likely since several names of these Editors can be found on editorial lists of other new medical journals. It is also interesting in this context that not only some scientists are collecting as many editorships as possible, but that the just-mentioned journal (like many others) seems to have a similar interest: collecting editors from as many countries as possible (Table 5).

Table 5 Countries of the various types of editors involved in the Medical Journal of Clinical Trials & Case studies (accessed December 18, 2023)
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It can thus be deduced that the new medical journals recruit two types of editors: those who form an “old boys’ network” and those who are looking for recognition on the basis of a title, rather than on the basis of accrued expertise. Neither seems to be beneficial for the journals involved, as it is still widely agreed upon in the scientific community that high-quality reviewing is a conditio sine qua non for trustworthy science (Mavrogenis and Scarlat 2023).

Discussion

The editorial philosophy of most new medical journals seems fundamentally different from that of the ‘old’ scholarly medical journals. Obviously, the experience-based data presented here are no proof, but they form a sound basis for convincing interpretation. It should be realized in this context that new journals are launched every day, so that it is—apart from the impossibility to check the giant number of journals—not feasible to present an up-to-date overview with all relevant data.

It is nevertheless clear that the majority of new medical journals want to establish large editorial boards and that a significant number of medical researchers and practitioners are willing to join these boards (see Tables 3 and 4 as examples), possibly because they are commonly presented by the journals with the ‘title’ of Editor. It can be calculated that this leads to a situation where these ‘editors’ (who are most likely not supposed to carry out any real editorial work, but rather form some kind of pool of potential reviewers) are not really functioning.

This raises the questions of (1) why journals want to incorporate so many scientists, and (2) why so many scientists want to lend their names to often dubious journals.

The underlying wish of the new journals to make a reliable impression

The first question must have a financial answer, as the only objective of predatory journals is to optimize their profits. It might well be that the journals hope (if not expect) that the ‘editors’ feel morally obliged to submit manuscripts to their ‘own’ journals; this cannot be effective, however, if the scientists who become seduced to accept editorial functions take so many of these functions that they never will be able to submit, within a foreseeable time, a manuscript to each of these journals (unless the journals urge to submit material, however low the quality may be).

This would be consistent with both the ‘only for profit’ philosophy of predatory journals, and their ‘we don’t care about quality, because the articles are not supposed to be read’ philosophy. This is widely recognized nowadays as a threat to science (e.g., Bhattacharya 2022; Rupp et al. 2019), but it is still insufficiently recognized as a threat to the medical trustworthiness and, consequently, to public health.

The search by young scientists for recognition

The answer to the second question must be that collecting editorships can be attractive for scientists who have no or little recognition yet, either because their research is of low quality, or because they are employed by universities or other organizations that are not interested in—or have insufficient financial possibilities for—high-quality research and publishing. This is well expressed if the editorial boards are analyzed for the countries where the editors (also indicated as members of the Editorial Board) are employed. An example is shown in Table 5, which indicates that the pertinent journal distinctly must have selected the editors from as many countries as possible (61!). The countries from which most editors come are certainly not the countries with the highest scientific output, and the countries with a high scientific output are mostly badly represented in the list of editors. Analysis of the expertise of the editors indicates that few are recognized experts in their fields; this can, understandably, not be further detailed here because these data are privacy-sensitive. It can nevertheless be deduced that the unreasonably large editorial boards as exemplified in Table 5 consist mainly of young scientists who do not have the quality or possibility to carry out high-quality research and to publish these results.

The high article processing charges (APC) that many journals ask may also well play a role in this context, but this cannot explain everything because established scholarly journals may waive the APC, whereas this seems to be done by predatory journals only in the case of an emergency (the fairly common situation of a complete lack of manuscripts that may lead to years of interruption in the publishing scheme and occasionally to termination of the journal).

Conclusions

From the beginning of science publishing, editors have taken the role of gate keepers of quality. This has come to an end when, triggered by the publish-or-perish philosophy at universities, predatory journals were launched in ever larger numbers, particularly in the medical sector. It has been recognized that they do, as a rule, not or hardly review submitted manuscripts, but they try to hide this by presenting—commonly continuously growing—editorial boards. They do so by inviting scientists (often in combination with a request to submit a manuscript). It appears that two groups of scientists are inclined to accept such an invitation: (1) established scientists who form “old boys’ networks” that expand by some type of co-optation, and (2) particularly young scientists seeking for some recognition. This has two unwanted consequences: (1) journals with such large editorial boards that potential authors cannot judge the quality of the scientists that may become involved in the review of their manuscript, and (2) scientists may ‘collect’ dozens of editorial positions.

Both situations imply that the quality of the journal and the published articles cannot be guaranteed. It should be noticed in this context that such a guarantee did not exist in the ‘pre-predatory’ age either (as shown by the forced retraction of articles and the notice about fraudulent publications), but such problems were exceptionally rare, due to the commonly critical reviewing of manuscripts by experts in the pertinent discipline. The fact that numerous new journals promote themselves by promising publication within a few days (after payment!) is definite proof that no serious review is involved. This will result in diminishing quality and consequently eventually lead to loss of credibility and trust by society. Employers and discipline-oriented organizations should therefore advise their employees and members not to take any editorial position in any predatory journal. And, not less important, decision makers responsible for the quality of social activities (such as healthcare) should take measures to counteract the irrational growth of poorly qualified editors that should be gate keepers of the quality of healthcare.