Gérard Friedlander, Manuel Tunon de Lara, Christine Clerici and Pierre Tapie warn in the French newspaper La Tribune dated 16/12/25 about so-called ‘predatory’ journals that are proliferating and blurring the line between knowledge and imposture. 

In today’s globalized scientific landscape, so-called “predatory” publications are proliferating, blurring the boundary between knowledge and imposture. Presenting themselves as legitimate outlets, they exploit the author-pays model to sell publications without any authentic peer review. Their expansion threatens the credibility of research, contaminates public decision-making, and undermines trust in science.

In a world where scientific information circulates at high speed, predatory journals have established themselves as a discreet yet fearsome parasite. These journals present themselves as legitimate scientific publications but fail to comply with the fundamental standards of scholarly publishing, notably peer review, editorial integrity, transparency and ethical management of articles. They are capturing an ever-growing share of global academic output while eroding the very foundations of scientific trust. Long perceived as a distant problem, this phenomenon now directly affects the higher education sector, healthcare, and even the economy. No one is immune: neither seasoned researchers, nor time-pressed clinicians, nor institutions under pressure from rankings and bibliometric indicators.

An economic model built on confusion

Predatory journals exploit the ambiguity surrounding the “author-pays” model (APCs), now dominant in the open-access digital environment but still poorly understood. This financial shift has been a small revolution in scientific publishing: the transition from the “reader-pays” model (through subscriptions paid by individuals or institutions) to the “author-pays” model has profoundly altered publishers’ strategies. By presenting themselves as legitimate journals - often with polished websites and titles resembling those of established periodicals - predatory journals target authors rather than readers. Their promise: rapid publication, “accelerated” peer review, and global visibility. Their reality: non-existent scientific validation, fictitious editorial boards, and articles that are almost impossible to retract.

In the health science sector, where evidence must be robust and practices evidence-based, the presence of scientifically unverified articles published within a matter of days represents a genuine risk. For a clinician or policymaker who informs himself through an abundant and heterogeneous body of literature, the line between rigorous and fallacious research can get blurry. Furthermore, of concern is the phenomenon where artificial intelligence systems will draw indiscriminately on available content and will not necessarily be able to sort by the widely different sources of information.

A threat to the credibility of public research

The phenomenon is far from anecdotal. Of the approximately 50,000 scientific journals worldwide, more than 15,000 are estimated to be active predatory journals. Their growth is driven by three well-identified trends:

• The pressure to publish placed on researchers, pushing some authors towards the path of least resistance
• The globalization of research, with emerging academic communities less familiar with international editorial standards
• The inflation of bibliometric indicators, which reward the quantity of publications more than their quality or real impact. Some researchers become “publishing machines”, especially as certain rankings or indicators confer a quantitative “bonus” for publication volume

The damage is multifaceted: dilution of scientific quality, systemic weakening of the literature, reputational harm to misled institutions, and waste of public resources. Predatory journals represent a major negative externality: they impose a collective cost on the scientific system that is disproportionate to the individual benefit they claim to offer.

When editorial fraud contaminates public decision-making

The problem is not confined to academic research. In economics, models used to evaluate public policies rely on empirical studies whose methodological robustness is essential. In healthcare, articles originating from predatory journals have been cited in institutional reports or relayed by the media, sometimes without their dubious provenance being detected.

More worrying still, start-ups, associations or lobbying groups use these pseudo-journals to legitimize products, therapies, medical devices or training schemes. The scientific veneer produced by such journals misleads even informed readers.

Educate, hold accountable, regulate: three pillars to counter predatory publishing

In the face of this threat, the response must be systemic.

1. Educate from the undergraduate level. Learning how to identify predatory journals must be part of core information-literacy skills. This is no longer a specialist knowledge, but a necessity for anyone working with scientific literature.
2. Hold institutions accountable, including research evaluation bodies. Institutions must support their researchers through guidance, reference lists, editorial assistance, and verification of publication venues in evaluation dossiers. Refusing predatory publications in institutional reports must become standard practice. Evaluation of researchers’ “performance” in terms of publications has drifted, for reasons of convenience, towards a purely quantitative, accounting-style bibliometric assessment. It is essential that evaluators return to the substance of articles to identify the discoveries they may contain, adopting a more qualitative rather than a quantitative approach. This is precisely the mission of international initiatives such as COARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment).
3. Strengthen international regulation. Existing valuable initiatives are insufficient (DOAJ, COPE, Think.Check.Submit). Stronger collaboration is needed between accreditation agencies, legitimate publishers, bibliographic platforms, and research funders. The objective is not censorship, but the defence of scientific integrity.

A matter of collective trust

At a time when distrust of scientific and health institutions is growing, the proliferation of predatory journals represents a serious challenge. They do not merely produce poor science: they blur reference points, invert hierarchies of evidence, and fuel a dangerous relativism in which "all publications are equal". At a time when reliance on scientific facts to inform public decision-making is profoundly unsettled (as illustrated by vaccination debates in the United States), allowing predatory journals to flourish entails very serious risks.

Tackling this phenomenon is not only about protecting researchers’ careers or universities’ reputations; it is about safeguarding our societies’ capacity to make informed decisions based on reliable knowledge.

Science is never more fragile than when it drowned in noise. Predatory journals are such a noise. It is our collective responsibility to restore the clarity of the signal.

(*) Gérard Friedlander, Former Dean of the Paris Descartes Faculty of Medicine
Manuel Tunon de Lara, Former President of the University of Bordeaux and France Universities
Christine Clerici, President of Portiqo, Former President of Paris Cité University
Pierre Tapie, President of Paxter, Former President of the Conférence des Grandes Ecoles

> Read in French on La Tribune website's