Commercial involvement in academic publishing is key to research reliability and should face greater public scrutiny

The publishers of scholarly journals, particularly the large for-profit publishers, have failed to ensure journal publication is transparent in process and output. They have failed to sustain and invigorate peer review. By relying on the print tradition of publishing, which focuses on the short research report, they have failed to sufficiently support innovations which take advantage of digital platforms for archiving, distributing and critiquing scholarly work. We review the consequences of this for research reliability and call for greater scrutiny of for-profit academic publishing.