Herbivore journals vs predatory journals – the battle is already lost, what’s next?

Abstract

The authors divided scientific journals into two main categories – “herbivore journals” (subscription journals that do not charge authors for the publication of their articles) and “predatory journals” – paid journals that adhere to unscrupulous editorial and ethical policies. Accordingly, “predatory publishers” are those companies that publish “predatory journals”. As a rule, articles by these publishers are published in the open access mode. The criteria by which scientific publications are classified as “predatory” are considered. It is emphasized that the “charging” nature of the publication does not necessarily make it “predatory”, but creates a situation in which the publisher using the “gold” open access is almost always interested in the maximum number of published works with a significant reduction in the quality requirements for manuscripts sent to the editorial office. The situation with the Jeffrey Beall’s list is briefly considered – the history of its appearance, the criteria for including publishers and some individual journals in it, possible reasons for the abolition, access to the list today. The possible reasons are analyzed why scientists publish in paid journals instead of submitting their articles to free subscription editions, the rating of which, as a rule, is even higher. Considerations of the authors of this article regarding the clear non-obviousness of the advantages of publications in the open access mode for a lot of money are outlined. The current situation with the MDPI publisher, which is very popular among modern scientists and which Jeffrey Bill (and not only him) nevertheless refers to as “predatory” is considered in detail. It is emphasized that the established principles of the existence of “predatory journals” primarily satisfy the authors of the articles themselves, who are attracted by both the speed and the “high guarantee” of the publication process.