Why would scientific publications need an evidentiary record?

In practice, many journals and publishers do not use evidentiary safeguarding services because they assume they are already covered by what exists: a DOI, a webpage, an institutional repository, a database, or a metadata system. Others simply do not adopt them for very common reasons: limited budgets, lack of time to add new technical routines, or because these risks are perceived as “exceptional” rather than part of the everyday ecosystem of scientific communication.

The problem is that traditional editorial evidence does not always hold up when fraud occurs: a URL can change, a website can be spoofed, a PDF can circulate in an altered form, and an acceptance letter can be forged without the journal’s involvement. And when that happens, the reputational cost does not fall on the scammer—it falls on the legitimate journal, which must explain, demonstrate, and publicly defend its integrity.

The scientific community is familiar with scam practices by groups that profit from publications. This is not only about predatory journals that publish without peer review, but also organized groups that infiltrate journals, impersonate legitimate titles, and then sell acceptance letters, citations, and publications. This affects especially recently consolidated journals that, because of their visibility, become targets of fraud. The result is that legitimate journals are the ones asked to respond—and accused of misconduct.

An evidentiary record makes it possible to assemble verifiable evidence for the public defense of editorial reputation through two services: (1) registering the metadata of legitimately published content (including the reference count) and (2) verifiable storage of official communications. In addition, both services can be complemented by an additional integrity layer—an invisible cryptographic PDF imprint that can be publicly validated—so that later alterations can be detected and provenance can be demonstrated in accordance with the system’s rules. In this sense, it also functions as a tamper-evident record.