Alongside legitimate forms of open access, the shift of scholarly journal publishing from print to digital has led to the rise of online-only predatory journals. Though they resemble legitimate scholarly journals, predatory journals merely claim to practice rigorous peer review and employ high editorial standards while doing neither.
Predatory journals will publish almost any scholarly article in exchange for an up-front fee while rejecting few or no submitted manuscripts (so long as the authors are able to pay the fee, of course). The existence of predatory journals creates confusion over what constitutes legitimate scholarship and what does not. In a world where the findings of scholarly research influence important decisions impacting the wellbeing of people and the vitality of economies around the world, the fact that second- or third-rate articles published in predatory journals could be influencing those decisions is both disturbing and dangerous.
