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Who Will Referee the Referee? — The ACS As Publisher and “Approver”
"How big a deal is this? The conflict of interest is blatant in the case of Chemical Abstracts and Journal of Chemical Education, and it is somewhat subtler in regard to the “Highly Recommended” journal list, 63% of which is comprised of ACS titles. But in both cases the conflict is real, and seems to have gone largely (though not entirely) without public comment up until now. It may be that ACS is handling these conflicts honorably, but how can we know for certain? At the very least, this issue seems to bear more and wider discussion."