This is The Guardian.

Scientific publishing might sound niche, but it's the backbone of the scientific method.

Papers, sent into journals, are where scientists share their most groundbreaking, exciting and

world-changing discoveries. Where does your next cancer cure come from? Where does your gene therapy

come from? How do you know how to deal with the next pandemic? Publishing papers is how

science gets done. But researchers are increasingly speaking out about a system that's

putting them under huge strain. Many argue it's reaching a crisis point. This is something I wish the

public knew more about. If there's anything you take away from this, dear listener, it is that

the scientific publishing system and

the academic job market are a bit broken.

And that has consequences, not just for the scientists, but for all of us.

At a moment when governments and influencers with massive platforms are using shoddy, spurious studies to bolster scientific misinformation, high-quality, reliable science is more important than ever.

So today we're asking, what's going on with scientific publishing?

And can it be fixed?

From The Guardian, I'm Madeleine Finley, and this is Science Weekly.

Ian Sampel, thanks as ever for joining me.

Now, as the science editor, you are very familiar with how science publishing works.

So give me the basics.

Well, for most scientists, publishing your results after you've done your experiment or your investigation is the final part of that project.

It's like, I've got the funding, I've done the work, I've written up all the results, here you go, and that is for all the other scientists out there

to read, you include exactly how you've done things, exactly what your results are, how you've

interpreted them. And this is essentially how the progress of science is recorded and built upon.

...