This El País article details the expulsion of Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN) from the Clarivate indexing system, a major blow to its reputation. The journal, under the editorship of Damià Barceló, had ballooned its output to nearly 10,000 articles annually, including scientifically dubious papers such as one claiming jade amulets could prevent COVID-19.
The scandal highlights the deep structural rot in academic publishing. With the shift to “Open Access,” the business model moved from “pay-to-read” to “pay-to-publish.” This created a perverse incentive: the more papers a journal accepts, the more money it makes. Elsevier, the owner of STOTEN, reportedly operates with a 38% profit margin—accumulating $1.5 billion in 2024 alone.
The article argues that this “factory farm” approach to science, driven by the “publish or perish” culture in academia, is funneling billions of public research dollars into the pockets of private publishing giants like Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley, often at the expense of scientific rigor.
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