Climbing a paper mountain: Academic publishing at a critical juncture

In recent years, academic journals have faced a sharp increase in the number of submissions. This mountain of papers is driven by the intense “publish or perish” culture in academia, in which producing papers is deemed necessary to secure academic promotion. In turn, this fuels an entire industry of “paper mills” churning out studies in exchange for financial compensation (Brainard, 2023). The publishing world has also witnessed a staggering increase in the number of special issues, sometimes under the influence of editors who have been corrupted by authors or institutions willing to do anything to see their work in print (Joelving, 2024). The spectacular advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has further accelerated these trends, making it possible to produce an ever-increasing number of publications and machine-generated reviews without human intervention (Naddaf, 2025).