For me, if I read a paper that discusses work that is my area of expertise and that discussion is simply incorrect, I doubt the credibility of the rest of the paper, and the editorial process of that journal.
I am seeing this happen more and more. It is most prevalent in open access journals. Though some are high quality, some are not. It is clear that papers are not reviewed correctly or the authors don't understand the science (also increasingly evident at prestigious conferences). This worries me greatly since these poor quality papers are now being cited in papers in highly respected journals. As time goes by, the errors in the original papers become seen as correct.
Sadly, the damage is done. I used to consider peer-reviewed papers as authoritative but now I am skeptical. Science shouldn't be that way.
Open access is a commendable concept but it is already contaminated by poor content. I fear for the future of peer-reviewed scientific knowledge sharing.
I guess this depends on the community. In business-related communities I do not see this as a major problem. There a quite a few dubious journal that publish every paper if the authors pay for it, but the more respectable OA journals have processes in place that filter out really poor publications.
I agree there are many excellent ones but there are poor ones. I've seen badly-written OA papers that are now cited in mainstream (traditional) journals.
I've seen papers that describe *my* PhD work, get it wrong and not even bother citing my thesis or the papers that accompany it. I've also seen misinformation in my field appear in text books. Now that is a problem that should worry people.
I definitely agree that many poor papers get published in low-tier journals. However, I also believe that such papers get published in top tier journals. Quite frequently, it is a sophisticated methodology that conceals underlying weaknesses...
In order to make it clear what I mean I recommend the brilliant paper from John Ioannidis: "Why most published research findings are false".
Article Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
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