By Daniel Merrifield
As another year closes, I find myself reflecting on one of the strongest currents shaping our research culture today: the escalating pressure to publish. ‘Publish or perish’ was once an academic cliché, but it has become a defining reality for students trying to graduate, postdoctoral researchers trying to secure their next contract, faculty members working toward promotion and institutions seeking to maintain rankings and attract funding. In aquaculture, one of the fastest-growing scientific fields in the world, this pressure is magnified.
At Aquaculture International, where I have just assumed the role of Editor-in-Chief , we have seen this trend firsthand. Over the past five years, the number of manuscripts submitted to the journal has tripled. On the surface, this is encouraging evidence of a growing global research community. But beneath that expansion lies a more complicated reality. A rising proportion of submissions are simply not good enough for publication: studies built on rushed experiments, methods lacking the rigor to support their conclusions or hastily written (or increasingly, AI written) manuscripts. Increasingly common, too, is the fragmentation of a single experiment into several smaller papers, a practice that dilutes meaning and clutters the literature.
These concerns are not new. Professor Sandy Shumway has been warning the aquaculture community about predatory journals and declining publication standards for more than a decade, and her 2016 editorial (Beninger et al 2016, Journal of Shellfish Research 35:1–5) remains one of the clearest accounts of how opportunistic publishers exploit the publish-or-perish culture. Her arguments focused on how these outlets erode scientific credibility and divert attention away from carefully conducted, properly reviewed research. Eight years on, her insights feel not only relevant but prophetic.
These issues came into even sharper focus during my recent visit to the World Aquaculture Society meeting in Hyderabad, India. The WAS event itself was rigorous, vibrant and filled with excellent science. But conversations with colleagues revealed a common anxiety about the increasing variability in research quality. Supervisors and reviewers described spending more time triaging weak or incomplete submissions. Early-career researchers spoke about institutional pressures that drive them to publish more quickly than good science allows. The cumulative picture is one of a system that measures success by quantity long before it evaluates quality.
The consequences extend far beyond academia. Aquaculture is an applied discipline; our research flows directly into real-world decision-making. Feed companies use scientific findings to inform formulations and build evidence for new ingredients. Policymakers depend on credible research to shape regulations. Investors rely on robust data to assess technologies and production systems. When the quality of published work declines, the implications cascade outward. A poorly designed nutrition study can inspire flawed feeding advice. A thinly sliced dataset can obscure the true effects of a management intervention. A rushed experiment can misrepresent the benefits (or risks) of a new product. In a sector as tightly intertwined with practical outcomes as ours, weak science is not just a scholarly inconvenience, it becomes an operational hazard.
In this environment, predatory conferences further compound the problem. These events, unlike WAS/EAS meetings or our International Aquafeed/Fish Farming Technology events, offer little genuine intellectual value yet absorb limited research funding that would be far better spent on legitimate scientific exchange. As grant budgets tighten, the diversion of funds to commercially driven, low-quality conferences is an inefficiency our sector can no longer ignore.
So how do we move forward? For journals, reviewers, supervisors and institutions, the answer lies in recommitting to rigor: encouraging deeper, better-planned studies; providing mentorship in experimental design and statistics; supporting reviewers who maintain high standards; and shifting institutional expectations toward meaningful contributions rather than manuscript counts.
But scientific journals cannot shoulder this effort alone, and this is where a top trade magazine like International Aquafeed has a unique and powerful role. While academic publications filter and refine research after the fact, International Aquafeed sits at the interface between science and practice. It reaches the farmers, feed manufacturers, hatchery managers, nutritionists and suppliers who apply research outputs on the ground. We help by highlighting robust, well-designed studies and calling attention to the principles of good experimental practice. We provide plain-language explanations of how to interpret scientific evidence, helping distinguish credible research from weaker or less reliable claims. And perhaps most importantly, International Aquafeed can offer a platform for discussing these issues openly, encouraging a culture that prizes clarity, transparency and scientific literacy across the entire sector, not just within universities.
The global aquaculture industry is shaped not only by what gets studied, but by what gets believed. If the industry is better equipped to evaluate research quality, then poor-quality science loses influence. Industry demand for stronger evidence can pull academic culture in the right direction just as effectively as institutional reform.
As we embark on a new year, the avalanche of submissions to Aquaculture International reminds me how vibrant aquaculture, as a discipline and industry, has become. But vibrancy must be matched by responsibility. Good science takes time, patience, rigour and honesty. These values need champions not just in academic journals but across the wider aquaculture community.
