In July, Springer Nature sold Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States, in print since 1845. Springer Nature sold it because, the company contends, consumer science journalism was getting in the way of its core business. Yet that explanation raises a larger question: if science journalism no longer fits within one of the world’s largest scientific publishers’ core business, what does?

Increasingly, the answer is academic publishing. Publishing research papers has become far more than a way to communicate scientific discoveries. The prestige of the journals that publish those discoveries now shapes careers, funding decisions, and the direction of scientific research itself. When journal prestige becomes a proxy for scientific quality, the consequences extend far beyond publishing.

Early-career scientists face a daunting task. They must prove their worth within their niche discipline and secure a coveted tenured faculty position. The path has been mapped out: the most papers published in the most prestigious journals. 

The deeper problem is that a system built around journal prestige shapes what science gets done, how fast it moves, and whose work gets seen. 

Yet, while publication records can reflect productivity and sustained effort, they are an imperfect measure of scientific quality. The incentive structures of scientific publishing, together with those of academia, often reward what is most publishable rather than what is most valuable to scientific progress.

Thus, our current system incentivizes prestige over merit, and the result benefits no one but the publisher’s bottom line. We argue that changing the system requires shifting how journal prestige serves as a proxy for scientific quality. When equating prestige with quality shifts, the entire research infrastructure can be improved so researchers are not chasing prestige journals and the publishing industry is not chasing profit. 

Changing how scientists perceive academic grit does not require burning down the system we are standing on. The scientific community ultimately decides what is considered prestigious, where we submit our work, and what academic norms are moving forward. 

The Costs Are a Symptom, Not the Disease 

The deeper problem is that a system built around journal prestige shapes what science gets done, how fast it moves, and whose work gets seen. 

We come to this argument from different directions. One of us, Hannah, conducts soil research on vineyards. Fundamental to the project are the relationships she has built with grape growers and winemakers. Yet when her work is finally published there is no guarantee those growers will be able to easily access the material, or that the wine industry beyond the academic paywall will be able to take the findings and apply them more broadly.

The other, JP, has committed years to experiments, failed analyses, and revised manuscripts that often seemed to be judged less by what they contributed to science and more by which journal ultimately agreed to publish them. Like many scientists, he was then asked to pay over $10,000 in article processing charges just to make that research publicly available. That money could have funded follow-up experiments, a student’s salary, or an entirely new project.

There are two central critiques of current publishing venues. First, systems that reward publication volume can encourage researchers to pursue smaller, lower-risk projects that generate a steady stream of papers rather than tackle more ambitious questions whose answers may take years to emerge. 

The current system encourages researchers to pursue projects that appear feasible and likely to produce publishable results within a grant cycle, potentially discouraging more longer-term, higher-risk research.

Second, the most prestigious journals often prioritize work framed as highly novel or paradigm-shifting, creating incentives for researchers, in some cases, to oversell their findings, stretch their conclusions, or emphasize the most provocative narrative over the most accurate one. 

The costs of this system extend beyond publication fees. Researchers also pay an opportunity cost by investing their time in work that is most likely to be published while replication studies and well-executed negative results — both essential to scientific progress — remain undervalued and underreported.

The same incentive structure extends beyond publishing — it extends to where grants are centralized, who is eligible to apply for funding, how grant applications are processed within institutions, and what timelines scientists have to complete their work. Hypercompetitive funding environments reward projects that appear feasible within a grant cycle, making it harder to pursue ambitious questions whose answers may take years to emerge. 

Many scientific leaders have argued the current system encourages researchers to pursue projects that appear feasible and likely to produce publishable results within a grant cycle, potentially discouraging more longer-term, higher-risk research.

The Replication Crisis Did Not Come from Nowhere

Scientific journals were not invented to decide careers. They were invented to solve a practical problem. 

In 1665, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and Journal des Sçavans became the world’s first scientific journals, creating a permanent record of discoveries and allowing scientists to establish priority while exchanging ideas across long distances. Formal anonymous peer review was still centuries away. 

As scientific research expanded dramatically after World War II, peer review became institutionalized and journals gradually assumed a much larger role. Editors, not outside reviewers, typically decided what to publish, and journals functioned primarily as archives of scientific communication rather than as gatekeepers of professional success.

Commercial publishers ultimately make strategic decisions based on business priorities. Whether those priorities always align with the long-term interests of science and society is an increasingly important question.

The internet fundamentally changed how scientific knowledge could be shared. Early advocates of electronic publishing envisioned a system in which discoveries could circulate rapidly, access barriers would diminish, and scientific communication would become more decentralized. Instead, mergers and acquisitions concentrated much of the world’s scholarly publishing within a handful of commercial companies, even as the cost of distributing digital research continued to fall.

Since the 1970s, the five largest publishers have steadily expanded their dominance across scholarly publishing, with market concentration accelerating during the digital era. Springer Nature’s decision to sell Scientific American while doubling down on scholarly publishing reflects a broader reality. Commercial publishers ultimately make strategic decisions based on business priorities. Whether those priorities always align with the long-term interests of science and society is an increasingly important question.

The Infrastructure for a Different Model Already Exists

Today, scientists no longer need to wait months, or sometimes years, for their work to begin contributing to scientific conversations. Preprint servers allow discoveries to be shared almost immediately, giving other researchers an opportunity to build on new findings, identify errors, and improve manuscripts long before journal publication. Rather than limiting scientific discussion to a handful of anonymous reviewers, preprints invite scrutiny from the broader scientific community. 

Earlier access to new discoveries can inform ongoing research and have real-world implications immediately. Earlier access means clinicians, policymakers, other researchers, and the greater public can engage with emerging evidence sooner, while maintaining transparency about the formal peer review process.

Increasingly, researchers are embracing a Publish, Review, Curate model. Scientists first publish their work as a preprint, communities of experts openly review and improve it, and organizations curate articles based on the crowdsourced feedback, rather than entirely gatekeeping, the work becomes visible. 

Earlier access to research can accelerate collaboration, identify errors more quickly, and help important evidence reach the scientists and decision-makers who need it most.

Under Publish, Review, Curate, peer review exists to accelerate discovery, increase transparency, broaden participation in scientific critique, and preserve rigorous evaluation while reducing the journal’s role as the sole arbiter of scientific credibility. This collaboration and vetting is what peer review was originally meant to do and is why it is considered the gold standard. However, under the current model, peer reviewers have become anonymous free labor for publishing houses.

Online preprints have grown more than 60-fold over the past three decades, getting discoveries to readers an average of 14 months before journal publication. As the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated, earlier access to research can accelerate collaboration, identify errors more quickly, and help important evidence reach the scientists and decision-makers who need it most.

Preprint review services like Review Commons, eLife, Peer Community In, and PREReview are showing that rigorous peer review can happen outside the journal system entirely. In legal and philosophy scholarship, journals are venues for discussion and critique as opposed to gatekeepers of what counts as legitimate knowledge. 

How Should Science Be Evaluated?

The question is no longer whether better alternatives exist. It is whether the field will recognize and reward them. Changing how scientists are evaluated is harder than it sounds. 

Some institutions are beginning to recognize this shift toward open science. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute now evaluates applicants using researcher-controlled preprints rather than relying exclusively on journal publications, reflecting a broader movement toward assessing scientists based on the quality of their work rather than the prestige of the venue in which it appears. 

Similarly, the MIT Graduate Student Council has called for hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions to be decoupled from journal prestige.

Through disentangling the idea of quality science from journal prestige, the scientific incentive structure can be flipped to emphasize value and rigor.

However, a larger shift requires more institutions to participate. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, a global initiative to evaluate the outputs of scholarly research, has been signed by thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions explicitly committing to stop using journal prestige in hiring and promotion decisions. 

Lasting reform requires pressure from all directions. Universities and research institutions must change how they evaluate scientists. Individuals must challenge their own notions of prestige. Researchers can embrace the new infrastructure by prioritizing preprints and open science. 

Through disentangling the idea of quality science from journal prestige, the scientific incentive structure can be flipped to emphasize value and rigor. Scientists today must own and shape the future of discovery. 

The promise of open science is not only that more people can read research, but also that more people can actively engage with the scientific process. 

We thank Celine Tsoi, Emma Sol Taylor-Brill, Krystal Kauffman, Julie Wenah, Marissa Scavuzzo, Shiwei Mitchell-Wang, Neil Young, and Doga Tasdemir for their thoughtful feedback and edits.

Disclosure: JP Flores is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) through the Gilliam Fellows Program. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of HHMI.