Trust, quality assurance and the classification of academic publishers
Trust, quality assurance and the classification of academic publishers
The behaviour of publishers is central to the sustainability of trust in the academic world. The internet and the open access publishing movement have transformed the modern academic publishing industry through the inherent ease of setting up an academic publishing operation by any institution, professional association or commercial body.
In consequence, a very large number of new and primarily online publishers have surged into the industry since the early 2000s from around the world. The ethics, governance, trustworthiness and vulnerability to malign exploitation of these publishers vary hugely. The scope of malign behaviours includes citation and authorship malpractice; paper mills which forge and market content for profit; false content, and bribery and corruption in the editorial process.
These factors individually and collectively threaten to undermine the global ecosystem of trustworthy knowledge creation and research investment by nations with a flood of fakery. The recent explosive growth of artificial intelligence systems further empowers malevolent behaviour and threatens further harm to the industry.
Modern bibliometric systems can closely analyse the performance of authors, institutions, journals and their publishers with a range of indices and data analytic tools. However, these analyses are demanding of human and technical resources and of scarce bibliometric expertise. There is as yet there no system for the validation and classification of publishers, of the transparency and ethical basis of their business practices, and of their defences against malpractice.
The formal development of such a system is overdue. In this essay, the author sets out a range of issues of relevance to the quality assurance of academic publishers, so as to encourage debate on this complex and controversial subject, where there are many competing interests and a very strong profit motive with high margins for the successful participants.
Academic Publisher Classification, Open Access Publishing, Scopus, Web of Science, Publication Fraud, Trustworthy Publishers, Paper Mills, Patent Mills
University of Southampton
Rew, David
36dcc3ad-2379-4b61-a468-5c623d796887
5 September 2025
Rew, David
36dcc3ad-2379-4b61-a468-5c623d796887
Rew, David
(2025)
Trust, quality assurance and the classification of academic publishers
(Essays in the Art and Science of Academic Journal Editing and Publishing)
University of Southampton
39pp.
Record type:
Monograph
(Working Paper)
Abstract
The behaviour of publishers is central to the sustainability of trust in the academic world. The internet and the open access publishing movement have transformed the modern academic publishing industry through the inherent ease of setting up an academic publishing operation by any institution, professional association or commercial body.
In consequence, a very large number of new and primarily online publishers have surged into the industry since the early 2000s from around the world. The ethics, governance, trustworthiness and vulnerability to malign exploitation of these publishers vary hugely. The scope of malign behaviours includes citation and authorship malpractice; paper mills which forge and market content for profit; false content, and bribery and corruption in the editorial process.
These factors individually and collectively threaten to undermine the global ecosystem of trustworthy knowledge creation and research investment by nations with a flood of fakery. The recent explosive growth of artificial intelligence systems further empowers malevolent behaviour and threatens further harm to the industry.
Modern bibliometric systems can closely analyse the performance of authors, institutions, journals and their publishers with a range of indices and data analytic tools. However, these analyses are demanding of human and technical resources and of scarce bibliometric expertise. There is as yet there no system for the validation and classification of publishers, of the transparency and ethical basis of their business practices, and of their defences against malpractice.
The formal development of such a system is overdue. In this essay, the author sets out a range of issues of relevance to the quality assurance of academic publishers, so as to encourage debate on this complex and controversial subject, where there are many competing interests and a very strong profit motive with high margins for the successful participants.
Text
The Classification of Academic Publishers D Rew 05.09.2025
- Author's Original
More information
Published date: 5 September 2025
Additional Information:
David Anthony Rew, MA MB MChir (Cambridge) FRCS (London)
Honorary Consultant Surgeon to the Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, UK
And to the Clinical Informatics Research Unit.
Former Member of Council, Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE, 2008-2010
Former Editor in Chief, European Journal of Surgical Oncology, 2003-2009
Subject Chair for Medicine to the SCOPUS Content Selection Advisory Board, Elsevier BV,
The Netherlands, 2009 to the Present
Keywords:
Academic Publisher Classification, Open Access Publishing, Scopus, Web of Science, Publication Fraud, Trustworthy Publishers, Paper Mills, Patent Mills
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 504371
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/504371
PURE UUID: f0abd276-2c8b-48bf-8f8d-866409792da0
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Date deposited: 08 Sep 2025 16:58
Last modified: 13 Sep 2025 02:18
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