Latest news with #academicpublishing
The Independent
05-08-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Study finds organised scientific fraud is now a booming industry
An organised underground network of individuals and groups is enabling fraudulent research and increasingly undermining the integrity of science, an alarming new study warns. Researchers from Northwestern University in the US conducted a large-scale data analysis of scientific literature and found that sophisticated global networks were systematically undermining the integrity of academic publishing. The study, published in the journal PNAS, says the publication of fraudulent research is outpacing the growth of legitimate scientific works. Researchers say the findings should be a wake-up call for the scientific community to act before the public loses confidence in the scientific process. "This study is probably the most depressing project I've been involved with in my entire life," Luís AN Amaral, a complex social systems researcher from Northwestern University and one of the study's authors, said. "Science must police itself better in order to preserve its integrity.' Scientific fraud typically involves fraudulent research practices such as falsification of data or plagiarism that may lead to retracted papers. These practices were generally believed to be isolated actions of individuals taking shortcuts to get ahead in an increasingly competitive field. But the latest study uncovered an underground network operating in the shadows 'to fake the process of science'. "Millions of dollars are involved in these processes,' Dr Amaral said. In the study, researchers analysed datasets of retracted publications, editorial records and instances of image duplication from major aggregators of scientific literature like Elsevier's Scopus and the National Library of Medicine's PubMed. They also combed through data from scholarly journals removed from databases for failing to meet quality or ethical standards and from articles highlighted by the popular science integrity blog Retraction Watch. They found a network of "paper mills", brokers and infiltrated journals that churned out large numbers of manuscripts and sold them to academics seeking to quickly publish new work. The manuscripts were usually of low quality, featuring fabricated data, manipulated or even stolen images, and plagiarised content. "Not only can they buy papers, but they can buy citations. Then, they can appear like well-reputed scientists when they have barely conducted their own research at all,' Dr Amaral said. Researchers said they had only now started to scratch the surface of this network. "Paper mills operate by a variety of different models," Reese Richardson, another author of the study, said. 'They often sell authorship slots for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. A person might pay more money for the first author position or less money for a fourth author position.' Academicians appear to push fraudulent research for publication using a number of strategies. In some cases, groups of researchers collude to publish papers in multiple journals. When their fraudulent activities are discovered, they quickly retract the papers. Some people pay to have their papers accepted for publication in journals through a 'sham peer-review process'. The latest research also underlines the role of brokers who enable mass publication of fraudulent papers in compromised journals. "Brokers connect all the different people behind the scenes," Dr Amaral explained. 'You need to find someone to write the paper. 'You need to find people willing to pay to be the authors. You need to find a journal where you can get it all published. And you need editors in that journal who will accept that paper.' These underground organisations sometimes go around established journals and instead look for defunct journals to hijack. When a legitimate journal stops publishing, some bad actors take over its name or website and surreptitiously assume its identity. "This happened to the journal HIV Nursing. It was formerly the journal of a professional nursing organisation in the UK, then it stopped publishing, and its online domain lapsed,' Dr Richardson said. 'An organisation bought the domain name and started publishing thousands of papers on subjects completely unrelated to nursing.' Researchers call for a multipronged approach to combat this network that undermines the integrity of science. They emphasise the need for enhanced scrutiny of editorial processes, improved methods for detecting fabricated research, and a radical restructuring of the system of incentives in science. Scientists also call for further research to understand the networks facilitating this misconduct. "If we're not prepared to deal with the fraud that's already occurring, then we're certainly not prepared to deal with what generative AI can do to scientific literature," Dr Richardson said. "We have no clue what's going to end up in the literature, what's going to be regarded as scientific fact and what's going to be used to train future AI models, which then will be used to write more papers.'
Wall Street Journal
23-07-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Informa CEO Bets on AI to Accelerate Growth
Informa INF 4.94%increase; green up pointing triangle aims to accelerate its top-line growth in the coming years with help from artificial intelligence, its chief executive said. The U.K. events and academic-publishing group sees AI as a way to save time, make its marketing services more appealing to customers and generate more licensing revenue from content sitting in its archives.
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Wiley's (NYSE:WLY) Q1 Sales Beat Estimates
Academic publishing company John Wiley & Sons (NYSE:WLY) reported revenue ahead of Wall Street's expectations in Q1 CY2025, but sales fell by 5.5% year on year to $442.6 million. Its GAAP profit of $1.25 per share was 16.8% above analysts' consensus estimates. Is now the time to buy Wiley? Find out in our full research report. Revenue: $442.6 million vs analyst estimates of $435 million (5.5% year-on-year decline, 1.7% beat) EPS (GAAP): $1.25 vs analyst estimates of $1.07 (16.8% beat) Adjusted EBITDA: $125.6 million vs analyst estimates of $125.3 million (28.4% margin, in line) Operating Margin: 17.3%, in line with the same quarter last year Free Cash Flow Margin: 28.7%, down from 35.1% in the same quarter last year Market Capitalization: $2.00 billion 'We delivered another strong year of execution as we met or exceeded our financial commitments, drove profitable growth in our core, expanded margins and free cash flow, and extended further into the corporate market through AI licensing and partnership, science analytics, and knowledge services,' said Matthew Kissner, President and CEO. With roots dating back to 1807 when Charles Wiley opened a small printing shop in Manhattan, John Wiley & Sons (NYSE:WLY) is a global academic publisher that provides scientific journals, books, digital courseware, and knowledge solutions for researchers, students, and professionals. A company's long-term sales performance can indicate its overall quality. Any business can put up a good quarter or two, but the best consistently grow over the long haul. With $1.68 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, Wiley is a mid-sized business services company, which sometimes brings disadvantages compared to larger competitors benefiting from better economies of scale. As you can see below, Wiley's revenue declined by 1.7% per year over the last five years, a rough starting point for our analysis. We at StockStory place the most emphasis on long-term growth, but within business services, a half-decade historical view may miss recent innovations or disruptive industry trends. Wiley's recent performance shows its demand remained suppressed as its revenue has declined by 8.9% annually over the last two years. This quarter, Wiley's revenue fell by 5.5% year on year to $442.6 million but beat Wall Street's estimates by 1.7%. We also like to judge companies based on their projected revenue growth, but not enough Wall Street analysts cover the company for it to have reliable consensus estimates. Software is eating the world and there is virtually no industry left that has been untouched by it. That drives increasing demand for tools helping software developers do their jobs, whether it be monitoring critical cloud infrastructure, integrating audio and video functionality, or ensuring smooth content streaming. Click here to access a free report on our 3 favorite stocks to play this generational megatrend. Operating margin is one of the best measures of profitability because it tells us how much money a company takes home after subtracting all core expenses, like marketing and R&D. Wiley has done a decent job managing its cost base over the last five years. The company has produced an average operating margin of 11.8%, higher than the broader business services sector. Looking at the trend in its profitability, Wiley's operating margin rose by 1.9 percentage points over the last five years, showing its efficiency has improved. This quarter, Wiley generated an operating margin profit margin of 17.3%, in line with the same quarter last year. This indicates the company's overall cost structure has been relatively stable. We track the long-term change in earnings per share (EPS) for the same reason as long-term revenue growth. Compared to revenue, however, EPS highlights whether a company's growth is profitable. Wiley's full-year EPS flipped from negative to positive over the last five years. This is encouraging and shows it's at a critical moment in its life. In Q1, Wiley reported EPS at $1.25, up from $0.46 in the same quarter last year. This print easily cleared analysts' estimates, and shareholders should be content with the results. We also like to analyze expected EPS growth based on Wall Street analysts' consensus projections, but there is insufficient data. We were impressed by how significantly Wiley blew past analysts' EPS expectations this quarter. We were also happy its revenue outperformed Wall Street's estimates. Zooming out, we think this was a good print with some key areas of upside. The stock remained flat at $40.72 immediately after reporting. Is Wiley an attractive investment opportunity right now? What happened in the latest quarter matters, but not as much as longer-term business quality and valuation, when deciding whether to invest in this stock. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here, it's free. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Nature looks to open up 'black box' of science by publishing peer review files
The scientific journal Nature wants to show people the nitty gritty of academic publishing. In a Monday editorial, the journal announced it would include peer review files with the papers it publishes, offering access to once behind-the-scenes processes in which reviewers critique scientific papers and authors respond with changes. Publishing peer review files at Nature has been optional since 2020; starting Monday, it is now automatic. 'Our aim in doing so is to open up what many see as the 'black box' of science, shedding light on how a research paper is made. This serves to increase transparency and (we hope) to build trust in the scientific process,' the Nature editorial said. 'Making peer-reviewer reports public also enriches science communication: it's a chance to add to the 'story' of how a result is arrived at, or a conclusion supported.' Opening up the peer review process is growing more common among scientific journals, but Nature is one of the largest and most influential journals to adopt the practice. When a science study is submitted to a credible journal, the study will undergo a peer review, a process in which experts in the field probe the work for poor reasoning, bad research practices and data errors, among other issues. These outside experts share their feedback to journal editors and the authors in what are called referees' reports. 'Peer review improves papers,' the editorial said. 'The exchanges between authors and referees should be seen as a crucial part of the scientific record, just as they are a key part of doing and disseminating research.' Nature's new process will make the referees' reports and authors' responses public by default. The journal's move comes at a time when trust in science has dipped. A Pew Research Center poll in fall 2024 showed that confidence in scientists had dropped about 10 percentage points from 2019 to 2024, and only 45% of Americans viewed scientists as good communicators. Michael Eisen, the former editor of the scientific journal eLife and a proponent of revamping the scientific publishing process, said he viewed Nature's decision as 'a move in the right direction overall toward more transparency in publishing.' 'I think seeing the sausage is good,' Eisen said, adding that he thought it could help improve trust in science. 'There's a lot of criticism that stems from lack of understanding. That lack of understanding, from my point of view, stems from lack of transparency from scientists and science over what the process is.' Eisen said the move could help skeptics of science see how much rigor and questioning is applied to key topics. 'With a vaccine paper, I think it would be good if people saw the scrutiny a paper goes through. It would help people understand and appreciate the science and how it's contextualized better,' Eisen said. At the same time, it could help prevent the overstatement of splashy findings. 'Maybe it will help people get past the idea that when a paper is published it's bulletproof and there's no questions remaining,' Eisen said. Eisen said Nature could also make public its reviewers' comments on rejected manuscripts, which sometimes get published by other scientific journals. 'The real radical move is publishing the reviews of all papers,' Eisen said. 'Seeing what questions came up in the reviews of accepted papers is one thing; seeing why papers were rejected by journals is another.' This article was originally published on
Bloomberg
10-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Academic Publishers Sign AI Deals as Trump Cuts Research Funding
Academic publishers are rushing to sign licensing deals with artificial intelligence companies, carving out a new revenue stream as US research funding cuts dim their outlook. Informa Plc 's Taylor & Francis signed a $10 million deal with Microsoft Corp. last year to provide the tech giant access to part of its library to train large language models, or LLMs. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc is looking to 'monetize academic content through AI deals,' it said in its latest set of results, while John Wiley & Sons Inc. announced partnerships with Amazon Web Services and Perplexity earlier this year.
