Science depends on honesty, but increasing career pressure is driving the rise of paywalls, predatory journals, and fake or heavily manipulated AI-generated papers from paper mills, all of which undermine academic freedom and integrity. The Stockholm Declaration (see Sciii – Science & Innovation Integrity and Sabel & Larhammar, 2025) is a call to action — for universities, academies, science societies, and funders — to reevaluate current publishing models and outline a global plan to stop this harmful development.

The declaration proposes a series of recommendations:

(i) Academia should regain control of publishing through non-profit publishing models (e.g. diamond open-access).

(ii) Incentive systems should reward quality rather than quantity, reducing the gaming of publication numbers and citation metrics that distorts academic excellence.

(iii) Mechanisms independent of publishers should be implemented to prevent and detect fake publications and fraud.

(iv) Legislation, regulations, and policies should be developed to strengthen publishing quality and integrity.

PEEER stands behind the Stockholm Declaration as part of a wider movement — including actions from DORA, the Leopoldina Working Group, and the Spanish Association of Terrestrial Ecology among others — aimed at addressing the crisis in academic publishing. We encourage authors, editors, and reviewers to adopt the Joint Statement by Editors on Principles for #BetterPublishing and to prioritize non-profit publication venues such as Biogeography.