Cureus

• 1. Introduction

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  In April 2022, Cureus: Journal of Medical Science posted a list it called a "wall of shame." It named researchers accused of egregious ethical violations, along with the institutions said to have enabled them. Critics objected that the feature placed undue emphasis on corresponding authors specifically. By May 2023 the list was gone. That reversal is one marker in a broader pattern. John R. Adler of Stanford University and Alexander Muacevic of the University of Munich launched the journal as PeerEMed in 2009. It took its current name in December 2012. It is an open-access general medical journal. Anyone can read it, and when certain criteria are met, authors are not charged publication fees. From its earliest days, the journal argued that peer review moved too slowly. What does a medical journal look like when it is built around speed? And what happens when that design runs into the kinds of papers science would prefer to forget?

• 2. Speed as Philosophy

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  In a 2015 exchange published by Retraction Watch, Adler stated the journal's founding conviction plainly. "Yes, Cureus has an unusually fast review process, which is an important part of the journal's philosophy," he said. "We believe that peer review, a focus of our journal through commenting and our unique SIQ process, is potentially a more powerful way to discern truth."

  The SIQ itself is not calculated until after a paper is already published. Before that, articles undergo a formal pre-publication peer review. Once published, any reader can contribute an assessment through a tool the journal trademarked as the Scholarly Impact Quotient. Recognized experts' contributions carry more weight in the final score than those of ordinary readers. The intention was to let the field calibrate the value of a paper after it was already in front of the public. Critics, including librarians and scientists, have questioned whether this creates a system vulnerable to gaming. The concern is that motivated groups could strategically influence a paper's SIQ, distorting the signal the metric is meant to send. That concern took on a different shape when questions arose not about the scoring system, but about the papers themselves.

• 3. A Record of Retractions

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  In January 2024, Cureus retracted 56 papers in a single month. That figure came against a background of years in which the journal's retraction record had drawn sustained critical attention. Retraction Watch has characterized Cureus as having a controversial reputation, citing its volume of retractions as a significant cause.

  One episode from June 2022 illustrates the scope of the problem. Cureus republished a paper that another journal had already retracted. The original had appeared in Frontiers in Medicine on the 19th of July 2021. Frontiers had withdrawn it over methodological problems and concerns about potential violations of medical ethics and human rights. Those concerns related to a COVID-19 proxalutamide clinical trial conducted in Brazil. Earlier in 2022, in April, Cureus had issued notes of concern about nearly 50 papers. Those papers had been published either without the knowledge of the corresponding author or with disputed authorship. Later in 2024, Cureus published a paper by Peter A. McCullough on COVID-19 vaccinations. Retraction Watch has described McCullough as an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. That paper was also retracted. Around the same time, a separate set of questions was forming about how certain research was reaching the journal in the first place.

• 4. Paper Mills and Channels

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  Cureus operates a system of what it calls "academic channels," groupings of papers organized around specific research areas or institutional partners. By November 2024, at least six of those channels had drawn scrutiny from multiple sources. Numerous parties had associated those channels with research paper mills. These are operations that produce scientific manuscripts for sale, allowing researchers to claim authorship of work they did not write. Cureus had previously defended the channels. In November 2024, it closed six of them. The journal stated that it maintains editorial control over all submissions that come through its channels. Whether that control had proved sufficient to screen out mill-produced work is the question the closures implicitly raised. The channel closures came within months of a formal decision that would cost Cureus its place in a major bibliographic index.

• 5. Losing the Index

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  In December 2022, Cureus joined the Springer Nature group of journals. The following years would test what that institutional change meant for its standing. In 2025, Clarivate, which manages the Web of Science database, removed Cureus from its Master Journal List. As of October 2025, the de-listing had taken effect. That removal means the journal will no longer be indexed in Web of Science and will not receive an impact factor. Retraction Watch noted that the Clarivate decision carries both consequences. Cureus retains indexing in several other systems, among them PubMed Central, EBSCO, CNKI, Dimensions, and Google Scholar. For researchers and institutions that use the impact factor as a measure of journal credibility, the loss is concrete. Whether Springer Nature's ownership shapes what the journal becomes next is a question its authors, editors, and critics are all watching.