TechTakes

Scientific Reports did not have what one would call a sterling reputation prior to this. Mathematical physicist John Baez wrote,

If you're a physics crackpot who wants to publish in a prestigious-sounding journal, I recommend Nature Scientific Reports! You have a good chance of getting your paper in!

Try making it look like "Mass–Energy Equivalence Extension onto a Superfluid Quantum Vacuum". [...] This paper looks like a lot of the emails I get. It would never be published in a serious physics journal:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-48018-2

And it's not the only crackpot physics paper that's been published by Nature Scientific Reports!

Here's a much crazier paper in Nature Scientific Reports:

https://nature.com/articles/s41598-019-46765-w

It's called Maximum Entropy (Most Likely) Double Helical and Double Logarithmic Spiral Trajectories in Space-Time. You have to read it!

My guess is that Nature Scientific Reports doesn't have mechanisms built in to enforce the oppressive hidebound orthodoxy that dominates the other physics journals. So if you have a revolutionary new theory, submit your paper here!!!

Flavio Nogueira in the comments:

I have been in a meeting with the editors of SRs and its editor in chief years ago during an APS March Meeting. I can tell you that some editors were truly pissed off, as papers rejected after peer reviewing ended up being published anyway...