Predatory Publishers Threaten the Integrity of Research and Scholarly Communication

Abstract

This article provides a brief introduction to the problem of predatory publishers, those that exploit the gold open access publishing model for their own profit. They use spam to solicit article submissions but often fail to conduct a proper peer review. They accept most articles submitted in order to quickly earn the payments from authors. Because they introduce pseudo-science into the scholarly record, predatory publishers are hurting science and communication of science.