How Scientific Publishing Risks Becoming Vanity Press
At its heart, science should be about the pursuit and exchange of knowledge. Yet behind every laboratory, every manuscript, and every citation lies a deeper force: the Demand for Recognition (DfR). Scientists write papers not only to share discoveries but to be seen—to gain acknowledgment from peers, to secure careers, to elevate institutions.
This demand is natural. Recognition fuels careers, builds trust, and distributes resources. But as with any powerful driver, it creates opportunities for exploitation. Nowhere is this clearer than in the rise of fee-based publishing, where the act of scientific dissemination is increasingly reduced to a financial transaction.
A Case in Point: World Journal of Neuroscience
Consider the World Journal of Neuroscience (WJNS), published by Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP). After submitting a manuscript entitled “The Demand for Recognition: A Neural Mechanism at the Heart of War, Climate Collapse, and Endless Growth,” the author received the following preliminary review reply:
- “Before we move forward, I’d like to inform you that the publication fee is 999 USD. Can you confirm if that works for you? Please note that we don’t offer complimentary publications.”
- “What you submitted is not a complete article. A complete article should be no less than 10 pages, about 3000 words.”
Notice the sequencing: the fee is the first and most important requirement, preceding any meaningful peer review. The request to extend the paper to 10+ pages reads less like a call for scientific rigor and more like a demand to meet the appearance of legitimacy.
Here the journal exposes the logic of a recognition marketplace: knowledge is secondary, recognition is primary, and recognition is for sale.
Recognition as Currency
The example of WJNS is not an isolated case—it is a window into a wider transformation. Publishing has become an industry of recognition and vanity, functioning through three interconnected loops:
- Authors: Driven by career pressure, they pay for publication to secure CV lines, tenure, and grant eligibility.
- Journals: They sell recognition tokens (articles in “peer-reviewed” outlets) to sustain themselves, regardless of actual impact.
- Universities: They count publications and impact factors, feeding the cycle of quantity over quality.
In this system, recognition becomes a currency—traded, inflated, and commodified.
Predatory or Merely Honest?
The World Journal of Neuroscience charges $999 openly, making the recognition economy explicit. Critics call this predatory publishing, and rightly so: it exploits researchers’ hunger for recognition, especially those under pressure or from less prestigious institutions.
But it would be naïve to claim that predation exists only on the margins. Even elite publishers like Springer, Elsevier, or Wiley now operate article processing charge (APC) models, where open access publication routinely costs thousands of dollars. Prestigious journals justify this as sustaining quality, but in practice, they also monetize recognition.
The difference between WJNS and Nature is not in whether recognition is sold—it is in how much prestige backs the token. One sells cheap vanity, the other sells branded prestige. Both function within the same economy of recognition.
Consequences for Science
- Erosion of Trust: If publication can be bought, the symbolic boundary between rigorous and vanity work collapses.
- Inflation of Output: More papers are published, but with diminishing knowledge value. Citations and page counts inflate, but meaning does not.
- Inequality: Wealthy institutions can afford recognition; underfunded researchers risk invisibility regardless of merit.
- Performance over Truth: The form of being “publishable” overtakes the substance of contributing to knowledge.
Vanity or Knowledge?
The case of the World Journal of Neuroscience illustrates a profound danger: science is drifting toward becoming an industry of recognition and vanity, rather than a collective search for truth.
This is not only a publishing problem but a structural one. As long as authors, journals, and institutions are locked in loops of recognition, knowledge will be a by-product of a system designed to produce prestige.
The Demand for Recognition may be a universal human driver—but when it dominates the architecture of science, the result is not enlightenment but performance. If recognition becomes the goal and truth becomes the ornament, then the promise of science risks devolving into the practice of vanity.
Conclusion
The $999 “fee for recognition” from the World Journal of Neuroscience is not just an anecdote; it is a symptom. It reveals how deeply the Demand for Recognition has been monetized, how prestige has been commodified, and how knowledge risks being displaced by vanity.
Science, if it is to maintain its integrity, must confront this reality. Otherwise, the industry of recognition will keep growing, while the substance of knowledge quietly fades.
