Public funds being swallowed up by scientific journals with dubious articles

Sure, predatory publishing at its worst.

The best universities just want to know about the handful of important works (code, primary papers, reviews) you have contributed for annual evaluations. If you spend half your time in research you should be able to average one to two paper-equivalents per year. If publishing in top tier journals with small numbers of coauthors, then fewer is fine.

Large numbers of papers in Hindawi and MDPI makes me roll my eyes. Frontiers is in the grey zone with PLoS One—lots of serious good work, but spotty reviewing process.

The ugly truth—you have to read the papers to make an informed decision—and this applies to an even greater degree to papers in Nature, Science, and Cell as well. The reason “to an even greater degree” is because dubious science with very high impact is functionally worse than crap published in MDPI.

I hope that academic publishing will transform into a truly collaborative workflow through contributions to wiki-like systems for niche subjects. These wikis could evolve into courses, educational films, and books under the guidance of LLMs trained to understand various scientific branches. The current approach is outdated and has long ceased to make sense. An interesting challenge is motivating individuals, potentially through the creation of decentralized brands of minds working together, validating and supporting each other's personal and professional growth. While this may not align with mainstream thinking, scientific research could be a pioneering field that breaks old paradigms and rapidly adopts modern technologies and imprivment oportunities...

And then they probably charge you to read them as well