- Reviewing is a formal form of scientific discussion and is usually a paid part of a scientist's job (as is authoring).
- The success of certain journals, including their influential power, may indeed not be based on scientific quality.

The positive side:
- what's bad about success? Both in volume as well as in economic success?
- also scientists are human, if the total number of publications increases, the number of "bad" ones will increase, too.
- There is digital help to find a way through the vast scientific literature forest.

First the negative issues:
- scientific publications increase exponentially, who can read this all?
- scientific fraud such as "authorship trading" or simply bad research is increasing
- it difficult to find reviewers
- journals earn a fortune while added value is generated by non-paid scientists

I have seen this a lot that material scientists use XRD as a "fingerprint method" completely ignoring the underlying physical origin. AI doesn't make it better...

Makes sense, now I have Lucky Luke in mind, shooting at a barn door...

As a native English speaker, doesn't the unit "barn" irritate you ("hay house")?

On the way from Heathrow to ISIS, the taxi driver always asked: "The scenic route, Sir?" - "Yes, please!"

My personal(!) highlight was the talk of Kristina Komander from Uppsala University showing new ways to prepare hydride thin films by hydrogen implantation.

This happens, but it is only a linear effect. And there are tools to find similar papers (plagiarism software). Many journals apply this already routinely. What is more relevant is the growth of S&T in general, in the past particularly in China and India - resulting in exponential growth.

I am not that sure whether an increase of papers is bad. If we can warrant the same quality (and that is a system's question), then it just means that the research output is increasing, which is a good thing! That's for what we are paid!

Yes, I regret not being able to join, but: I am on the DSL 2025 conference in Naples, it also has its charms...

"an increase in the volume of submissions" should not be a problem for finding reviewers: every author MUST willing to review at least the same number he/she publishes. How to enforce this I don't know...

Jetzt kriege ich Hunger!

Yes, it not clear whether it tells something about LinkedIn or about you...