How Clarivate is clamping down on bad actors in academic publishing

In the past three years well over a hundred journals have been delisted by Clarivate, the owner of Web of Science. This is the result of the analytics firm getting tougher on journals failing to meet its quality selection criteria. The Taylor & Francis journal Bioengineered is the latest to fall foul of the crackdown after it was delisted in April. Staff at the journal discovered that the publication had a problem with paper milling that has already led to over 80 papers being retracted with hundreds more suspect, according to one analysis. Delisting is a serious penalty for a journal as it means that Clarivate will no longer index their papers, count their citations or give the title an impact factor.

Senior vice president at Clarivate and editor-in-chief of Web of Science, Nandita Quaderi, spoke to Chemistry World about what triggered the organisation to step up its screening processes, how the new system works and what she thinks needs to change in academic publishing to disincentivise bad practices, such as paper mills.