Research assessment is in dispute. E-journals, which arose from ICT, made it possible to share scientific articles widely and calculate research metrics automatically. However, it also rejected those who could not afford the cost. It also pressured researchers to the so-called “publish or perish” mode and ultimately led to a negative incentive system resulting in salami-sliced research. The new research paradigm Open Science is shifting the research from competition to collaboration, and the research assessment from academic excellence to societal impact. This paper discusses the inextricably linked relation between scholarly communication and research assessment through the lens of this paradigm shift.

Commercial publishers expanded into the academic market only after the 1960s. The competition based on the journal impact factor (IF) became overheated only after 2000. Originally, academic journals held their own publication purposes and editorial policies to keep the activity-record of academic organizations and academies. Without understanding this background, submission of research works, especially based on a short-sighted calculation of profit and loss, may lead to negative consequences in future cost and science policy. Numerical indices do not reflect the quality of research. It is important to seek different evaluation measures from various perspectives.

Metrics-centered evaluation of research activity has brought serious consequences for research integrity, such as research misconduct and questionable research practice in scholarly publishing. A rapid increase in the number of research papers has been accompanied by predatory publishing and fake paper factories, “paper mills”. Scrutiny by scientific journalism, such as Retraction Watch, post publication peer review systems, such as PubPeer, and plagiarism-detecting tools, in addition to allegations by individual researchers, counteract against recent unsound research practice. The pandemic of Covid-19 sheds light on flaws in the peer review system and the immature relationship between our society and scholarly publishing. Every player in the research community is increasingly responsible for the promotion of research integrity.

A modern preprint submission is a style of scholarly publication in which pre-reviewed manuscripts are uploaded on the web. With emerging trends to solve inherent problems of the current peer-review system, open science policy, and rapid sharing of academic research in the coronavirus disaster, the preprint submission is attracting more and more attention. ChemRxiv is a chemical preprint server that was launched in 2017. The number of preprint submissions is expected to increase in the Japanese chemical community. In this article, an overview of preprints is firstly introduced, then the future of academic publishing and research communication in this preprint era is discussed.