No matter how it's rationalized, the current academic publishing system is structurally exploitative and ethically indefensible. Researchers, who conceive, design, execute, and write up their studies bear the full intellectual, financial, and emotional weight of scholarly production. Peer reviewers, typically senior academics and field experts, rigorously evaluate these manuscripts, often juggling this task alongside their own demanding workloads, and almost always without remuneration. And yet, paradoxically, it is the publishers, who neither originate the research nor participate in the peer review, who ultimately assert control over the final scholarly output. These entities extract disproportionate value from a system they do not build, monetize the very knowledge they did not help create, and impose either exorbitant Article Processing Charges (APCs) under the guise of open access, or gatekeeping subscription fees that restrict public access to publicly funded research. This is not merely an inefficient model, it is a parasitic one. It thrives on unpaid academic labor, commodifies knowledge as a luxury good, and systematically obstructs the free flow of information. Such a framework betrays the spirit of science, which depends on openness, collaboration, and shared intellectual progress. Under these conditions, the moral line between prestigious publishers and so-called “predatory” journals begins to erode. If the defining feature of a predatory journal is the extraction of value without fair contribution, then how different is a legacy publisher that profits from uncompensated labor and restricts access to research? If systemic exploitation is the norm, can any journal truly claim to be non-predatory? Until academic publishing is realigned with the principles of fairness, transparency, and reciprocity, it cannot escape the charge of institutionalized predation, no matter how polished its branding or long its impact factor.