What causes peer review scams and how can they be prevented?

Peer review is regarded as one of the mainstays of academic publishing. It is conceivably the most trusted method (Nicholas et al., 2015) to weed out invalid and suspicious research and improve the quality of published research. Therefore, journals across disciplines have adopted peer review as a core part of the publishing process to uphold academic standards of ethics, validity, and reliability. However, peer review is not a flawless system (Benos et al., 2007); some of the criticism directed at it stems from the fact that peer review is subject to human judgment and biases, lacks transparency, and can be abused. This knowledge has prompted discussions about replacing or augmenting peer review with metric-based assessment to evaluate quality and impact of research. Nevertheless, an independent review that compared the peer review system with metric-based alternatives concluded that peer review remains the most trustworthy method of assessing quality in academic publishing and should “continue to be the ‘gold standard’ for research assessment ” (Wilsdon et al., 2015). However, owing to the over-reliance on peer review as the only wall between submission and publication, the peer review system has been targeted as a soft spot by authors, editors, and third-party services. There have recently been some widely publicized incidents of peer review scams and mass retractions that reveal the extent to which the peer review system has been exploited; for instance, in September 2015, Springer retracted 64 of their published papers (Retraction of articles from Springer journals, 2015) alleging fake peer reviews, while in July 2014, SAGE retracted 60 papers (Retraction notice, 2015) because a researcher had assumed multiple fabricated identities to manipulate the journal ’s online submission system. These are just two examples! In fact, fake peer reviews have been responsible for as many as 15% of retractions since 2012 (McCook, 2015). While this might seem like a small proportion of the vast number of papers published annually, the rampant instances of peer review rigging bring into question the credibility of science. This situation warrants re flection on the reasons behind these scams and ways to improve the modern publishing system. These are some of the factors I consider responsible for the rise of peer review scams.