Predatory journals exploit structural weaknesses in scholarly publishing

Abstract

There's nothing inherently wrong with the open-access publishing model, but to be successful, it must be managed properly, in a way that benefits science, those who carried out and reported the research, and the readers and other “consumers” of the research. Not all open-access journals are predatory, nor are all subscription journals of high quality. Any human-based enterprise will prove imperfect over time. Still, the gentlemen's agreement functioned, for a long time, to promote quality, honesty, and scientific integrity in scholarly publishing. The tacit agreement was made between researchers and publishers, with each agreeing to act in good faith and with integrity. The agreement was much easier to keep when authors did not have to engage in financial transactions with commercial publishers. This characteristic of gold (author-pays) open-access has opened the door to crookedness in science, and it's not just the publishers that lack integrity. Academic evaluation systems that still merely look at the number of published articles by a given scientist also help drive the corruption