By Jack Dini ——Bio and Archives--March 16, 2024

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Scientific journals release the results of scientific studies in the form of papers which, we are told are reviewed prior to publication by peers-- fellow scientists in the field who are supposed to scrutinize the manuscript and ensure that bad science doesn't get a pass. A predatory journal only pretends to do so. It exists solely to make money. It's like a parasite on the back of the scientific endeavor. What it publishes is of questionable quality. (1)

The public discourse on predatory journals often errs on the side of simplicity. There are good journals, like Nature and Science, and there are predatory journals. The bad journals often come from developing nations.

Distinguishing good journals from bad ones is complicated. As with the distinction between science and pseudoscience, there is no clear line. Over the past few decades, a new movement gained devotees: open access. The idea was that open access publications should be free to be read by anyone, and these journals should make money in some way, often by charging the scientists themselves a fee for publishing, not for reading.

Predatory journals predate the rise of open access, but they benefited from the acceptability of charging authors money for publication. Predation was also facilitated by the Internet. To set up a predatory........

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