H. Furkan Alkan, PhD

There is an allegation that a journal editor demanded a $300K bribe to publish a manuscript. This editor used to work at Science and now is editor in chief of a top cancer journal. There is no doubt a very shady business that surrounds academic publishing, sustained by rent seekers throughout the biomedical system. Institutions have attached enormous rewards to getting through a journal’s gate while paying far less attention to who controls that gate and how the decisions are made. A major problem in academic research is how much judgment has been outsourced to journal names and the editors who control access to them. Professional journal editors are former scientists who left research for a more straightforward job, often paying far less than a faculty position or a job in industry. Yet universities and scientific organizations have given these editors tremendous power over careers and the allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars. As the biomedical system expanded and became more compartmentalized, there were too many scientists and laboratories for people evaluating them to assess everyone’s work themselves. The journal’s name became a substitute for judging the science. Where something was published determined what it was worth. That judgment carries enormous financial consequences. Academic rank and stature depend on it. Venture capitalists use the journal’s name to reduce the perceived risk of investments. Pharma directs its attention toward those publications. Universities use them to select people for administrative positions, some carrying seven-figure salaries. Having your name on the right papers can open those doors even if the papers were completely wrong to begin with. A Cancer Cell paper can be worth far more than $300K. An author can use it to raise many times that amount from investors and start a biotech company. The financial value attached to the publications a single editor decides to accept could approach a billion dollars while that editor makes $80K. Meanwhile, almost no attention is paid to how qualified these individuals are to make such consequential scientific assessments, why they have been given so much authority, or why their compensation is so low relative to the financial interests surrounding their decisions. That disparity creates opportunities for impropriety. However, this remains an allegation, and the editor is innocent until proven guilty.