From personal experience, some journals classified in the predatory list made a real hard job in assessing the manuscript, I remember receiving 3 extensive reports that helped me in improving the content of my paper.

I think the author of the list should review his methodology in classifying these reviews. Some of them are indexed and also impacted.

Totally agree with Dr. Jaouadi.

The main characteristics of scientific publications should include accessibility; different methodological approaches, objective assessment of the quality of the materials and methods, a policy of openness. The availability of the results, the availability of new views allows us to take a new look at the old problem. Secondly, approaches used to study the object can’t be reduced only to a solid and elegant but sometimes meaningless mathematical treatment of all processes whatever the source might be.

Thirdly, the policy of closed access limits the development of science.

Regarding the so-called predatory journals - many open access journals really do serious work on improving our opus magnus. However, these so-called lists of malignant publishers are based on the number of arguments which include, to put it mildly, strange theses. For example, a journal is bad, because there are a lot of articles. Sorry, but if there are many researchers, and if the number of researchers in the world increases? Judging by JSR statistics, average number of articles issued by social science journals amounts for 50-100 per year. If we look at our country, the journal can publish up to 500 articles per year and more. And that is absolutely normal. If the article isn’t cited, then it would be taken into account when determining the bonus and premias for scientists at the end of the year. Personally, I don't understand the issue of the journal with 5-7 articles.

Or, the scientific journal is bad, because it takes money for publication. And this is called predation. And the fact that the leading publishers require to pay 300-500$ just for the fact of article’s review? This is not predation? And the journal guarantees nothing instead. Now that actually is predation. The absence of differences in approaches to estimate the quality of articles creates a vicious circle of "pay and rewrite". The science publications’ world is caught in the situation, where 3-4 main publishing houses dictate the rules of the game to the rest of the world. We saw it somewhere, didn’t we?)) And even see now. And the journals which have their own vision are terminated by mergers, acquisitions, banned out or don’t get in the leading databases, however are presented in others no worse than the first ones.

Publication fee is a normal phenomenon in the scientific world, at least on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Please, you can get the article published for free and wait for six months, a year. Or you can pay and, provided that the article is worthy (unfortunately the definition of articles ‘worthiness in our country, in many great free journals and in "leading" publishing houses are seen in different light) of publishing, it will take from 2 weeks up to 1 months to get it straight to the reader. And still given all the above, Russian system of scientific publications is considered predatory))

Another argument of the advocates of scientific ranks's quality – paid article is quickly published. They think that one should adhere to the thesis that the article should lay and vegetate for months, for a year, when all the results are worthless and fruitless? Moreover, many open access journals are indexed in different databases, different countries and they take great money to pay for the work of editorial board, reviewrs, technical staff, but this does not stop some individuals to make a black list, just because one author published 6 articles or even more  in the journal which is located in some “unreliable countries”. Let me reveal a secret, in our country researchers could write 10, 15, 30, even 100 articles per year if he wishes to and this won’t cause any problems absolutely to anyone. The main feature of the system – pay - publish – get cited – get paid, or don’t pay – wait – get published – get cited with delay – be paid later. In this sense scientific open access journal is a possibility through which each and every author is responsible for the quality of his research. Moreover, the Russian science citation index (Russian analog of Scopus) as well as many other science indices all over the world  pursues no policy of exclusivity in this plan. They do not limit free competition of journals, free competition between authors, free competition of ideas. And that's all.

Therefore, I fully agree with Dr. Said Jaouadi – formulation and even the methodology of these black lists must be checked for objectivity, lack of superiority of one approach over the others, on the diversity of approaches to assessing the quality of articles and of the journals.

Concerning other questions stated. We definetely need to receive reviews of high quality. But once again, the depth and the scale of arguments which support our theses is an open question. As a rule, the results of review should be received by us in 1-3 weeks. Judging by my experience that's quite optimal.

Thanks for the questions stated.

It's really a huge, one could say, a worldwide problem.

Dear Dr. Dmitry Burakov,

I think you gave a sum up for the real situation and you provided a deep analysis for the problem I posed. I totally agree all what you wrote. thanks for reacting.