Clarivate has removed the mega-journal Cureus from its Master Journal List, according to the October update, released today.
The move means Cureus will no longer be indexed in Web of Science or receive an impact factor. As we have reported, it can also mean researchers are less likely to submit to the journal, given universities rely on such metrics to judge researchers’ work for tenure and promotion decisions.
Clarivate put indexing for the journal on hold last September for concerns about article quality, which the journal has been criticized for in the past.
Cureus has retracted about 125 papers since Springer Nature acquired the title in late 2022. Last year, the journal closed six of its academic channels critics described as dressed-up paper mills, and has had to repeatedly retract plagiarized articles, as we’ve previously reported.
In August, Cureus eliminated author suggestions for peer reviewers in an attempt to decrease potential conflicts of interest. The journal has had authorship issues in the past, as we’ve previously reported. In 2021, a medical resident in New Jersey invited his wife to review his papers without disclosing their relationship, resulting in five retractions. In 2019, another author faked reviewer accounts for two well-known neurosurgeons and was discovered only after a routine editorial audit.
Rebecca Krahenbuhl, a communications manager at Clarivate, told us a journal is removed from the Master Journals List when it “no longer meets” 24 quality criteria. These criteria include appropriate citations, adequate and effective peer review, and primarily original scholarly content, according to the company’s website.
Krahenbuhl also told us journals are typically on hold for an average of around six weeks, but in cases where publishers “engage” with Clarivate, the company allows journals to remain on hold for longer “to allow time for publishers to conduct their own investigations and take corrective action should they decide to do so.”
Graham Parker-Finger, the publishing director at Cureus, told us the journal was “very disappointed” in Clarivate’s decision and noted the journal would continue “to offer fast, affordable, trusted and quality-assured publishing for the global medical community.”
John Adler Jr., the founder and editor-in-chief of the journal, acknowledged our request for comment, and noted his nearly 16-year tenure as editor-in-chief would be ending this year. In a LinkedIn post dated October 26, Adler linked to an analysis of neurosurgery papers by country income group and wrote:
The journal industry uses an “aura” of intellectual exclusivity to protect its obscene profits. Journals protect their business franchize [sic] through both excessively complex editorial processes (WOS, COPE), which notably lack any evidence of social benefit, and high prices, which in combination disadvantage authors from developing countries. Nothing scares the journal world more than democratizing journals. 😊
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I don’t know how to edit Wikipedia, but I note that no-one has added something there to reflect this most recent strike against Cureus.
You do it by hitting the edit button and typing. If you do it wrong someone will come along and fix it. But it is a good idea to make an account first, so that your contribution can be identified as coming from you, rather than an IP address.
Or if you’re feeling diffident you can edit the associated talk page and mention the relevant fact.
Does anyone know if Scopus removes journals from their indexing? I would presume, since they have some sort of advisory board for inclusion that it runs both ways. But I’ve never seen any reports of suspended indexing or removals with Scopus. Elsevier has a conflict of interest with its own journals and Scopus, so it’s interesting to see how the manages indexing of their own problematic journals. A couple of Elsevier’s prominent journals were suppressed or delisted in WoS last year, but their standing in Scopus is unscathed (Chemosphere, Science of the Total Environment). Curious. Not Cureus. That’s SN.
Scopus provides frequently updated (monthly?) Source title list as an Excel file (see https://www.elsevier.com/products/scopus/content#4-titles-on-scopus), which has Discontinued Titles sheet. The sheet also provides the reason for discontinuing the journal (e.g., Metrics, Publication concerns).
Request of Dr. Adler: You comment on the “obscene profits” of the publishers to which you sold your journal. Perhaps you can disclose the terms of that sale so readers have a complete perspective.
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People need to make PubMed delist the journal. SpringerNature should also face protest.
It is puzzling that Scientific Reports is still listed on WoS.
Why is a for-profit coorporation in charge of impact factors, and the scientific community seems perfectly ok with this?
I am not sure the scientific community is perfectly fine with it. A significant proportion of the scientists I talk to do not trust IF. As such, they are not going to defend the idea that a public entity should be in charge, they just wish IF to disappear.
Cureus can still save face(or not).
Start by introducing proper peer review for new manuscripts that they receive. There is no need to publish 60 per day and 20k+ a year.
PubMed should delist them until they do so.