Hundreds of scientific journals are being challenged by AI, study reveals

Europa Press

La Jornada Newspaper, Wednesday, September 3, 2025, p. 6

Madrid. An artificial intelligence (AI) platform that searches for questionable scientific journals has flagged more than 1,400 as "potentially problematic" on a list of nearly 15,200 open-access journals on the internet.

The study, published in Science Advances and led by the University of Colorado at Boulder, addresses an alarming trend in the research world.

Daniel Acuña, lead author of the study and an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, receives email reminders several times a week: these spam messages come from people posing as editors of scientific journals, usually ones Acuña has never heard of, offering to publish his articles for a high fee.

These publications are sometimes referred to as "predatory" journals. They target scientists, convincing them to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to publish their research without proper vetting.

“There has been a growing effort among scientists and organizations to verify these journals,” Acuña said. “But it’s like playing whack-a-mole. You catch one, and then another appears, usually from the same company. They just create a new website and give it a new name.”

His group's new AI tool automatically filters scientific journals, evaluating their websites and other online data based on certain criteria: Do the journals have an editorial board with established researchers? Do their websites contain many grammatical errors? Acuña emphasizes that the tool isn't perfect. Ultimately, he believes human experts, not machines, should make the final decision on a journal's reputation.

But at a time when prominent figures are questioning the legitimacy of science, curbing the proliferation of questionable publications has become more important than ever, he said.

“In science, you don't start from scratch. You build on the research of others,” Acuña said. “So, if the foundation of that tower collapses, everything collapses.”

Extortion

When scientists submit a new study to a prestigious journal, it typically undergoes a practice called peer review. Outside experts read the study and assess its quality—or at least, that's the goal.

A growing number of companies have attempted to circumvent this process in order to profit. In 2009, Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, coined the term "predatory journals" to describe these publications.

They often target researchers outside the United States and Europe, such as in China, India, and Iran, countries where scientific institutions may be young and the pressure and incentives for researchers to publish are high.

“They say, 'If you pay $500 or $1,000, we'll review your article,'” Acuña explained. “They don't actually offer any service. They just take the PDF and post it on their website.”

Various groups have attempted to curb this practice. Among them is a non-profit organization called the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Since 2003, volunteers have flagged thousands of journals as suspicious based on six criteria. (Reputable publications, for example, often include a detailed description of their peer-review policies on their websites.)

But keeping up with the proliferation of these publications has been a daunting task for humans.

To speed up the process, Acuña and his colleagues turned to AI. The team trained their system with data from the DOAJ and then asked the AI ​​to examine a list of nearly 15,200 open-access journals on the internet.

Of these posts, the AI ​​initially flagged more than 1,400 as potentially problematic.

Acuña and his colleagues asked human experts to review a subset of the suspicious journals. The AI ​​made mistakes, according to the humans, flagging approximately 350 publications as questionable when they were likely legitimate. This still left more than 1,000 journals that the researchers identified as questionable. “I think this should be used to help preselect a large number of journals,” he explained. “But the final analysis should be done by human professionals.”

It's not a black box

Acuña added that the researchers didn't want their system to be a "black box" like other AI platforms.

“With ChatGPT, for example, it's often hard to understand why it suggests something,” Acuña said. “We tried to make ours as easy to understand as possible.”

The team found, for example, that questionable journals published an unusually high number of articles. They also included authors with more affiliations than more legitimate journals, and authors who cited their own research, rather than that of other scientists, with unusually high frequency.

▲ Tour of the ice giant in warmer waters. Photo courtesy of the British Antarctic Survey.

AFP

La Jornada Newspaper, Wednesday, September 3, 2025, p. 6

Paris. A giant iceberg that broke off Antarctica 39 years ago, once the world's largest, is melting in warmer waters, scientists say.

At the beginning of the year, this ice colossus, dubbed A23a , weighed nearly a trillion tons and covered nearly 4,000 square kilometers—50 percent larger than the surface area of ​​Luxembourg.

But as it drifted northward, and therefore toward less cold regions of the Southern Ocean, large chunks broke off.

Its current size is 1,770 square kilometers, with a width of up to 60 kilometers, according to an AFP analysis based on satellite images from the European Copernicus service.

"I'd say it's really coming to an end (...) It's just rotting away at the roots. The water is too warm for it to survive. It's constantly melting," Andrew Meijers, an oceanographer at the British Antarctic Survey, told AFP.

"I expect this to continue for the next few weeks, and in a few more, it will be unrecognizable," he added.

A23a broke away from the continent in 1986 before running aground in the Weddell Sea, where it remained anchored to the ocean floor for more than three decades. In 2020, it set off again, carried like other icebergs by the powerful Antarctic Circumpolar Current.

In March 2025, it ran aground again, not far from South Georgia, and there were fears that it could threaten the livelihoods of penguins and seals.

He finished his journey around the island, gaining speed as the powerful waves and milder waters of this ocean wore him down.

Scientists were “surprised” that it had lasted so long. “Most icebergs don’t make it that far,” Meijers added, adding that they are “doomed” once they leave the protection of the Antarctic climate.

Iceberg formation is a natural process, and scientists estimate that the rate at which Antarctica produces them has increased, likely due to climate change caused by human activities.