The most prestigious journals may be publishing the least reliable science

For these reasons, a focus on novelty incentivizes authors, likely against their better knowledge, to make their work appear more novel, e.g., by using the word “novel” more often [ 37 ] or by leaving out references to prior work—a common practice that some journals seem to openly endorse [ 38 ]. Therefore, any journal rank that aspires to capture quality beyond mere novelty must be able to distinguish between submitted, novel manuscripts of the former, unreliable type and the second, reliable kind before actual replications have been attempted. This body of evidence points in the same direction as complementary research showing that selecting researchers based on their productivity also leads to decreased reliability [49,50]: selecting scientists on number of publications and journal rank will, over time, tend to decrease scientific reliability.

Source: journals.plos.org