Interested in Bioethics Commons? Register your interest and co-dream it with us (~3 min): https://survey.borant.eu/s/bioethics-commons-wcb

Academic publishing is not a neutral vehicle for bioethical knowledge: it embeds implicit and explicit value assumptions that shape who can publish, how credit is assigned, and which voices become authoritative. Recent developments (multiple failures of OA transformative agreements, peer review crisis, OA value extraction) have brought these dynamics to the fore, creating ethical challenges that remain underexamined within bioethics itself.

This contribution synthesizes two ongoing lines of work. First, it analyzes how institutional Open Access agreements can function as sources of infrastructural power, enabling forms of authorship and corresponding authorship acquisition that are justified through access to publishing resources rather than substantive intellectual contribution. We argue that this phenomenon constitutes a distinct integrity risk that is poorly captured by existing authorship and research integrity frameworks, and that it disproportionately affects early-career researchers and scholars at less-resourced institutions.

Second, it situates these risks within a broader normative analysis of contemporary bioethics publishing. We examine how commercial, APC-based models and traditional performance metrics are increasingly misaligned with core bioethical commitments to justice, inclusivity, and epistemic integrity. Building on this analysis, we outline ethically grounded directions for reform, including diamond open access, community-owned publishing infrastructures, and a revaluation of editorial and peer-review labor.