After a more than modest career, some researchers started to publish a very high number of articles, in some cases more than 100 research articles per year, which means one article every three days," said Romania’s top research association, Ad Astra, in March, as it signalled that a troubling culture of publication fraud is taking root.
In Poland, the fightback against predatory publishing has been based on changes to the research evaluation system. Emanuel Kulczycki, head of the Scholarly Communication Research group at Adam Mickiewicz University, said there has been a shift from quantity-focused metrics to a more qualitative approach, encouraging researchers to publish fewer but higher-quality papers.
The Czech Republic presents another interesting case, where the notorious "Kafemlejnek" or "coffee grinder" system of counting research outputs when allocating funding, has been replaced by a more nuanced evaluation method, Methodology 2017+. This prioritises expert reviews over quantity of published papers, to encourage genuine research quality and impact.
There are efforts to combat predatory publishing across Europe. The European Commission’s initiative to reform research assessment emphasises qualitative judgments and responsible use of quantitative indicators. This agreement, endorsed by over 350 organisations, aims to move beyond traditional metrics like publication counts and citations.
