Medical publishing looks objective from the outside, but behind the curtain it’s a high-pressure, incentive-driven system where great science can get buried and mediocre work can slip through.

In this special Prove It episode, Paul Wicks interviews a senior journal editor who remains anonymous (“The Secret Editor”) and explains how papers really move through the sausage factory: desk decisions, editorial boards, associate editors, peer review overload, and the surprisingly human judgments that shape what gets published.

They unpack the profit engine that reshaped scientific publishing, why “read the journal guidelines” is the #1 rule for getting accepted, and how the explosion in submissions has turned peer review into an arms race, ripe for gaming and burnout.

Finally, they tackle AI’s impact on submissions and publishing workflows, and why the deeper fix may be changing academic incentives, not just blaming publishers.



00:00 Meet the “Secret Editor”

02:14 The Dirty Secret: Scientists Keep Handing Publishers Power

04:37 How One Deal (Pergamon Press) Helped Create Today’s Publishing Machine

06:39 From Conferences to Peer Review: Why Journals Became the Battleground

08:57 #1 Rule to Get Published: Read the F!*%$ing Guidelines

12:51 The Submission Game: Acceptance Rates, Timelines, and “Cascade” Journals

17:33 Desk Rejections, Human Bias, and the 60-Manuscript Speed-Run

21:10 Open vs Blind vs Double-Blind Peer Review (And Why None Is Perfect)

24:44 How Bad Actors Game Peer Review, and Why Paying Reviewers Gets Messy

31:31 “Where Is My Paper?” Inside the Nightmare Workflow (20 Queues, 250 Manuscripts)

36:12 AI in Publishing: Some Editors Embrace It… Others Reject Anything “Near AI”

43:49 Blow It Up or Fix Academia? The Real Incentives Behind the Chaos