Predatory Publications in the Era of the Internet and Technology: Open Access Publications are at Risk

Abstract

This article is intended to highlight the issue of predatory journals and how they have been used to degrade the open-access journals to be perceived as predatory ones. Since many of the predatory journals are available for readers free of cost over the internet (which is among one of the many features of open-access journals/publications), the international wave of the scientific community against predatory journals stigmatized and victimized the entire open-access model of scientific publication to be perceived as substandard quality. This article critically analyzes the definitions of predatory journals and identified key characteristics of predatory journals. It is observed that lack of peer-review and charging high Article Processing Charges (APC) from authors are the two most common features of predatory journals, whereas open-access journals strictly adhere to peer-review criteria and have a clear guideline and information about the article processing fee. Knowingly or unknowingly, several authors mentioned that predatory journals are mostly open access, an overgeneralization of the author pay model upon which open access lies. Peer-review is an essential component of open access journals but not predatory journals; thus, considering predatory journals under the broad notion of open-access model of publication is unfair, stigmatizing and victimizing the open-access journals and keeping them at risk of degradation. Associating open-access journals with predatory ones is a nuisance as both have different aims, modus-operandi, and quality concerns. Therefore, there is a dire need to make policies to discourage predatory practices without victimizing the noble idea of open-access journals/publications. Keywords: open access, predatory journals, article processing charges, peer-review