Well, it is a matter of science versus fake/fraud. Many people enjoy reading fake news, many times these fake news are more interesting, this is why they are more appealing. But they are fake. Science is science. Although I agree that scientists should also improve their communications skills when writing. Regarding the novelty of the publications, I tend to disagree. The problem in many scientific fields is exactly the lack of replication.

Regarding predatory and fraud I recommend following https://retractionwatch.com/

About the replication crises I suggest: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/replication-crisis

But interesting question.

Best,

Facing the pandemic situation, I am very often confused about what is fake and what is political correctly ... so the confusion of "normal" people is more than obvious.

But my question was not about fake ... it was more about "predatory" science.

Somebody told me that in the top journal rejection rate is by 90%. Supply capacities (number of academics) grew by several hundred percents, the demand (publishing) capacities grew by dozens of percents. The rise of MDPI or other "predatory" journal Is rationale result of it.

Searching for review information I found that sometimes more usable sources I find in "predatory" journals than in premium journals. Besides the availability is the question if they are not "too scientific". They are perfect regarding HOW they are written but somehow I am missing the core WHY they were written. I can imagine such approach by natural sciences, but by social sciences I consider the "value background" as very important. Such science pour science seems to me by similar in it core as predatory activities.

But maybe I am wrong and my scientific value is too poor to understand real science.

i am interested in your use of the word 'predatory'. You did not provide a definition. From my point of view, what i perceive as the most important problem in publishing, is the attitudes of editors. There is a considerable amount of censorship by editors of established journals. if he or she disagrees with you, you do not get published, regardless of how competent or original your article is. editors are concerned about readership and are scared that if they deviate then no one will read their journal. Many are also snobby and like top universities only. However, academic progression and reputations depend on work being published. This leaves the way open for open access journals. there are many and of varying rigorousness. So we have a problem in academia. But labelling open access journals as i think you are doing, as predatory and therefore not worth publishing is a mistake. They fulfill a need. We need better quality publishing values and attitudes. The system needs overhauling.

Dear Valerie,

Definitions of predatory journals are various but rather vague. In my perception, there is one important criterion - payment before peer review. By others criteria, it is always some level of subjectiveness included.

It is challenging to discover the "quality" of peer review from the outside if it should be anonymous. You accept some suggestions helping the contribution. By rejection, you mostly would disagree with the explanation (if you are not a predator and use the trial-and-error procedure).

My question is if there are "predatory scientist"? Quality of articles is often even by high-level journals measured by formal quantitative attributes, citation, use of scientific methods, the complexity of literature review etc. It is almost impossible to reject such an article because it is "perfect", but somehow the "reason" of the existence is missing.

To exaggerate, you can publish a scientific top paper that will prove that women are different from men. If you make it really scientific with high probability, it will go through a peer-review process.

Rastislav,

I am not sure what you mean by 'predatory scientists'. There are scientific frauds that are known to have been perpetrated. When I teach psychology I list ten such known frauds. there are academics who are incompetent yet whose work still gets published in open access journals. There are academics who produce data then make claims that are not supported by the data, yet they still get published. In my experience this latter issue is important but not addressed especially if the research is done by a high ranking university.

You are right about various issues to do with peer reviews.

My experience however is that peer review is done before payment, not after. However, there may well be journals where this is not the case.

Yes, both mentioned types I would call predatory, because of their origin, formal appearance, the financial background, networking and citation history they "eat" from the feed - journals capacity.

As my financial sources are limited to go through APC I have limited experience. Once I made a submission to a journal which "changed" the website, and in three days I have got information to pay a fee to go through peer review. I checked the situation and discovered that it was not a change of a website, Google found a journal with a very similar name (one word more) and as I visited it after few months I perceived it as the changed web. ;o)))