alt Hacker NewsIt doesn't surprise me it happens within the Elsevier ecosystem. Elsevier has a long tradition of scientific misconduct and scientifically immoral behavior (see Wikipedia).
The operating margin of Elsevier is around 40% which is huge! At the end mostly paid by tax-payer money.
Personally, I never review or publish with Elsevier.
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I am skeptical it is a problem isolated to Elsevier. Given the LLM craze now prioritizes open access, https://andrewpwheeler.com/2025/08/28/deep-research-and-open..., it would not surprise me people start gaming MDPI in the same way for example.
One of the reasons why in Germany universities were able to collectively negotiate better open publishing deals with Wiley and Springer, but Elsevier just flat out refused to agree to any better terms for three years.
(See Project DEAL: https://deal-konsortium.de/en/agreements/elsevier)
You are in very very good company. The British mathematician Timothy Gowers famously boycotts Elsevier also
https://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-...