Beware of scientific scams! Hints to avoid predatory publishing in biological journals

Our motivation for writing this editorial is to alert the academic community about the risks of predatory publishing in Biology. By piggy-backing on the open access (OA) movement and taking advantage of the “publish or perish” culture in a system that prioritises quantity over quality, predatory publishing has grown exponentially in recent years and spread across all areas of knowledge. Thousands of predatory journals and books have emerged and (provided a fee is paid) they publish scientific papers and chapters without submitting them to rigorous peer review. Now there are even predatory meetings, which promise to accept talks and publish complete works for a fee, also without reviewing them properly. These profit-making machines can damage both academia and society, putting at risk the quality of science and public trust in it, the well-being of the population, the conservation of biodiversity and the mitigation of climate change. We show the modus operandi behind invitations to contribute to predatory journals, books and meetings and suggest ways to separate the wheat from the chaff. Finally, we discuss the need to create regulatory agencies that perform a careful and systematic evaluation of the activities carried out by publishers

Conflict, connectivity, and confluences: limitations and possibilities for Amazon riverine ecosystem protection

In September 2021, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for the protection of 80% of the Amazon Basin. This call was made in recognition of its contribution to local and global ecosystem services, many of which are provided by some of the world's longest free-flowing rivers. However, spanning nine countries and 40% of South America, governing this critical Basin has proved difficult. In particular, the lack of protection of rivers has permitted the degradation of the Basin’s riverine ecosystems in exchange for development. In this study, I asked what socio-economic factors are degrading the integrity of riverine ecosystems in the Basin and what lessons can be learned from environmental governance in the Amazon to inform the creation of a basin-wide river conservation system. To address these questions, I employed (1) policy analysis; (2) qualitative and quantitative analysis of an international survey, and (3) discourse analysis of gray literature and semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that riverine degradation is largely caused by a complex combination of development activities that are mostly promoted by policies that intersect at multiple scales, such as national agendas for frontier expansion, bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements, and regional integration schemes that aim to export commodities to global market. Although market activities have substantial environmental costs, there are ways for Amazonian countries to collaborate and mitigate environmental degradation. Building on existing protection strategies across scales, a river conservation system grounded in integrated water resource management principals could protect riverine connectivity and improve conservation governance

Global Analysis of Durable Policies for Free-Flowing River Protections

Freshwater ecosystems are poorly represented in global networks of protected areas. This situation underscores an urgent need for the creation, application, and expansion of durable (long-term and enforceable) protection mechanisms for free-flowing rivers that go beyond conventional protected area planning. To address this need, we must first understand where and what types of protections exist that explicitly maintain the free-flowing integrity of rivers, as well as the efficacy of such policy types. Through policy analysis and an in-depth literature review, our study identifies three main policy mechanisms used for such protections: (1) River Conservation Systems; (2) Executive Decrees and Laws; and (3) Rights of Rivers. We found that globally only eight counties have national river conservation systems while seven countries have used executive decrees and similar policies to halt dam construction, and Rights of Rivers movements are quickly growing in importance, relative to other protection types. Despite the current extent of protection policies being insufficient to tackle the freshwater and biodiversity crises facing the world’s rivers, they do provide useful frameworks to guide the creation and expansion of protections. Ultimately, as countries act on global calls for protections, policy mechanisms must be tailored to their individual social and ecological geographies

Brazil’s democracy and sustainable agendas: A nexus in urgent need of strengthening

Sustainable agendas are often threatened by divergent political viewpoints. This was evidenced by the January 2023 coup attempt in Brazil. The 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda faces various challenges and relies on safeguarding institutions and democracy itself. For megadiverse countries such as Brazil, strengthening the nexus between democracy and governance is fundamental

Deep into the mud : ecological and socio-economic impacts of the dam breach in Mariana, Brazil.

We review the ecological and socio-economic impacts ofthe catastrophic dam failure in Mariana, Brazil. Tailing management practices by Samarco mining company ultimately caused a dam breach that abruptly discharged between 55 and 62millionm3 of tailings into the Doce River watershed. On November 5th, 2015, a tsunami of slurry engulfed the small district of Bento Rodrigues, loading the Doce River and its estuary with toxic tailings along a 663.2 km trajectory, extending impacts to the Atlantic coast. Acute ecological impacts will adversely affect livelihoods of more than 1 million people in 41 riparian municipalities by reducing local access to fisheries resources, clean water, crop production sites, hydroelectric power generation and raw materials. The threats to riverine human communities are particularly critical for the disadvantaged populations from remote areas that rely on subsistence agriculture and fisheries, and are uniquely vulnerable to long-term heavy metal exposure. At the landscape scale, we predict multiple negative impacts, ranging from alterations of the genetic diversity of fish populations to long-term vegetation loss and poor regeneration in contaminated areas. Consequently, compromised soil stability and runoff control will increase the risk of further geomorphologic disturbance, including landslides, bank failure and mass movements. We propose spatially explicit long-term monitoring frameworks and priority mitigation measures to cope with acute and chronic risks. We posit that, from a national perspective, disastrous impacts like that of Doce River may become more frequent, given the recent regulatory changes that undermine both institutional governance structures and enforcement of environmental regulation