Yes, with caveats. Cureus journals use a genuine pre-publication peer review process before publication, and the journal remains indexed in PubMed Central. But Cureus has also generated substantial, well-documented controversy: removal from Clarivate’s Web of Science Master Journal List in October 2025, roughly 125 retractions since Springer Nature acquired the title in December 2022, and a confirmed case of authorship being sold to researchers who hadn’t done the underlying work. This page separates what’s documented from what’s often overstated in casual claims about Cureus.
What Cureus Is
Cureus (formally the Cureus Journal of Medical Science) is an open-access medical journal founded in Silicon Valley in 2009 under the name PeerEMed, renamed Cureus in December 2012, by Stanford neurosurgeon John R. Adler and LMU Munich neurosurgeon Alexander Muacevic. It publishes across medicine and the health sciences, funded primarily through article processing charges (APCs) — the same general business model used by other high-volume open-access publishers such as MDPI and Frontiers. Springer Nature acquired Cureus outright in December 2022, folding it into its health-sciences publishing portfolio. Cureus is indexed in PubMed Central, Google Scholar, Dimensions, EBSCO, and CNKI; as of October 2025 it is no longer indexed in Web of Science (see below).
How Cureus’s Peer Review Process Works
Cureus uses a two-stage model: mandatory pre-publication peer review, followed by an optional post-publication scoring layer. Before publication, submissions are reviewed by an editor and outside expert reviewers, typically on a much faster timeline than most journals — Cureus has stated that more than half of accepted articles are published within about three weeks of initial submission. After publication, any registered user can rate and comment on an article, feeding into a proprietary metric Cureus calls the Scholarly Impact Quotient (SIQ), which weights ratings from verified experts more heavily than those from non-experts. Cureus’s founding editor-in-chief, John Adler, has publicly argued that this post-publication layer is a more powerful mechanism for surfacing a paper’s real merit than pre-publication review alone. Authors whose submissions don’t meet the journal’s language and formatting standards can also pay for an optional in-house editing service before resubmission — a workflow detail that distinguishes Cureus from most traditional subscription journals, and one reason it draws comparisons to other APC-funded, high-volume publishers. For the underlying vocabulary this page draws on, see CASRAI’s peer review entry and the ANSI/NISO Z39.106-2023 peer review terminology standard.
The Documented Controversies
Several distinct, well-documented episodes are often conflated in casual claims about Cureus. Treated separately, with what’s actually documented for each:
The 2025 Web of Science Delisting
In October 2025, Clarivate removed Cureus from its Web of Science Master Journal List, meaning the journal is no longer indexed in Web of Science and no longer receives a Journal Impact Factor. Clarivate cited Cureus no longer meeting its quality criteria, which include adequate and effective peer review and primarily original scholarly content. Web of Science had already placed Cureus’s indexing on hold in September 2024 over article-quality concerns before finalizing the removal in 2025. This is a significant, concrete indexing consequence, distinct from (though related to) the retraction and paper-mill issues below — and distinct from PubMed Central indexing, which Cureus retains.
Authorship-for-Sale and the 2024 “Academic Channels” Closures
In January 2024, Cureus retracted 56 papers connected to an internist at a Karachi medical college who was accused, based on evidence including WhatsApp messages soliciting paid co-authorship slots, of selling authorship on manuscripts to researchers who hadn’t done the underlying work. Separately, Cureus operated a network of sponsored “academic channels” — themed submission collections, often tied to specific institutions or groups — that outside critics repeatedly identified as functioning like paper mills. Cureus initially defended the channels but closed six of them in November 2024. In August 2025, the journal also eliminated its practice of letting authors suggest their own peer reviewers, a policy critics had flagged as a conflict-of-interest risk that enabled exactly this kind of manipulation.
Retraction Volume Since the Springer Nature Acquisition
Cureus has retracted roughly 125 papers since the December 2022 Springer Nature acquisition, a volume well above what’s typical for a comparably sized journal over the same period, according to Retraction Watch’s tracking. Cited causes have included authorship manipulation and plagiarism, and, in an earlier, separate 2021 case, a medical resident whose wife reviewed his own papers without disclosure, resulting in five retractions. Isolated retractions occur at journals across the industry and aren’t, on their own, evidence that a publisher lacks peer review generally — but the sustained volume at Cureus specifically is a documented pattern, not an isolated incident.
Retracted High-Profile Content
Cureus has also published, and later retracted, individual articles that drew wide outside attention, including a 2024 article by a prominent anti-vaccine activist making unsupported claims about COVID-19 vaccines, which was retracted after public scrutiny of its methodology and conclusions.
Is Cureus a Predatory Publisher?
By the definitions used across the field — see CASRAI’s predatory journal entry — a predatory journal is characterized by the absence of genuine peer review behind a publication-fee business model, typically combined with deceptive practices about editorial boards, indexing, or fees. Cureus does not meet that definition on the current record: it operates a disclosed, structured pre-publication review process, discloses its business model openly, and remains indexed in PubMed Central. At the same time, Cureus is a publisher with a genuinely more contested reputation than most comparably sized journals, driven by real, specific, documented episodes: the 2025 Web of Science delisting, a confirmed authorship-for-sale scheme, closed paper-mill-linked channels, and a sustained retraction rate well above what’s typical. Both things can be true: real peer review is happening on submitted manuscripts, and Cureus has also demonstrated real, repeated gaps in catching manipulation before publication.
How to Verify Peer Review Status for Any Journal
The Cureus-specific facts above answer this one publisher’s case, but the more durable skill is knowing how to check any journal yourself. CASRAI’s How to Know If an Article Is Peer Reviewed guide walks through the concrete checks: journal website disclosure of review policy, indexing in recognized databases, editorial board verifiability, and publisher membership in COPE/OASPA/DOAJ. See also CASRAI’s guides on other frequently-questioned high-volume publishers — Is MDPI Peer Reviewed?, Is Frontiers Peer Reviewed?, and Is Taylor & Francis Peer Reviewed? — and the guide to identifying predatory journals and publishers, which covers the warning signs that distinguish a genuinely predatory operation from a legitimate publisher that draws criticism.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Cureus a legitimate journal?
Yes, in the sense that it operates a disclosed, structured pre-publication peer review process and remains indexed in PubMed Central. It’s also a journal with a substantially more contested reputation than most comparably sized publishers, driven by specific, well-documented episodes — both facts are true together.
Is Cureus still indexed in Web of Science?
No. Clarivate removed Cureus from its Web of Science Master Journal List in October 2025, citing the journal no longer meeting quality criteria including effective peer review and originality of content. Cureus no longer receives a Journal Impact Factor as a result. It remains indexed in PubMed Central.
Why has Cureus retracted so many papers?
Cureus has retracted roughly 125 papers since Springer Nature acquired it in December 2022, citing causes including authorship manipulation and plagiarism. A January 2024 investigation led to 56 retractions tied to an authorship-for-sale scheme, and the journal closed six sponsored “academic channels” in November 2024 after critics linked them to paper-mill activity.
What is the Scholarly Impact Quotient (SIQ)?
SIQ is Cureus’s proprietary post-publication metric. After an article is published, registered users can rate it, with ratings from verified experts weighted more heavily than others. Cureus has argued this supplements pre-publication review as a quality signal, though critics have raised concerns that a self-reported, post-publication rating system is vulnerable to gaming.
Is Cureus owned by Springer Nature?
Yes. Springer Nature acquired Cureus outright in December 2022, incorporating it into its health-sciences publishing portfolio. Cureus continues to operate its own submission platform and editorial workflow, distinct from Springer Nature’s other journals.
