ArticlePloS one2021
Honest signaling in academic publishing.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Will the widespread use of large language models in scientific writing undermine scientists' critical thinking?PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Screening, sorting, and the feedback cycles that imperil peer review.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Novelty, Consistency, Transparency: The Trilemma of Psychological Sciences and its Consequences on Open Science Practices.International review of social psychology · 2025Article
- Shifting the Level of Selection in Science.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2024Article
- Bridging the information gap in organic chemical reactions.Nature chemistry · 2024Review
- Raising the value of research studies in psychological science by increasing the credibility of research reports: the transparent Psi project.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Inconsistent quality signals: evidence from the regional journals.Scientometrics · 2023Article
- Incentives for Research Effort: An Evolutionary Model of Publication Markets with Double-Blind and Open Review.Computational economics · 2023Article
- Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Academic journals provide a key quality-control mechanism in science. Yet, information asymmetries and conflicts of interests incentivize scientists to deceive journals about the quality of their research. How can honesty be ensured, despite incentives for deception? Here, we address this question by applying the theory of honest signaling to the publication process. Our models demonstrate that several mechanisms can ensure honest journal submission, including differential benefits, differential costs, and costs to resubmitting rejected papers. Without submission costs, scientists benefit from submitting all papers to high-ranking journals, unless papers can only be submitted a limited number of times. Counterintuitively, our analysis implies that inefficiencies in academic publishing (e.g., arbitrary formatting requirements, long review times) can serve a function by disincentivizing scientists from submitting low-quality work to high-ranking journals. Our models provide simple, powerful tools for understanding how to promote honest paper submission in academic publishing.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.