I totally agree with what dear professors Mohammed, Ljubomir, and Maria have said. The inventors of the motto "Publish or Perish" are behind all these games of cornering the scholars so as they pay high sums of money collected by invented so-called "honest" publishers & invented "dishonest" publishers.

This publication situation is similar to 2 examples: i) A computer's company invents a virus secretly & after spreading it to many computers globally, the same company will publicize an anti-virus software for sale. ii) A medical company will produce a virus to attack humans or animals & it will prepare a vaccine simultaneously in its R&D section. The first work is kept secret while the second work is publicized.

In all the above examples, profit seeking is the main aim & forget about the declarations about serving humanity or scientific community. In fact, they see themselves as masters who have the right to enslave all the others. Ironically, it is the very same slogan in Old Rome : Rome masters; all those around are slaves.

I am one of the authors that do not get a research grant.  But then most institutions within our Ministry of education provide research grants to the staff.  We used to have a Ministry of Higher education that provided grants, but even when the 2 ministries merged, the grant provision remained the same.

On RG at least, I am able to collaborate with some fine people to do more research, and that makes me quite happy.

Even if we do not send our papers to possible predatory journals, would that even put them out of business? Let's have a good discussion this weekend. I will be back after my duties.

"We hope that tenure and promotion committees can also decide for themselves how importantly or not to rate articles published in these journals in the context of their own institutional standards and/or geocultural locus. We emphasize that journal publishers and journals change in their business and editorial practices over time. This list is kept up-to-date to the best extent possible but may not reflect sudden, unreported, or unknown enhancements." - Beall.

@Mohamed, I only know about predator journals when I got on RG.  I have been thinking and thinking such a lot ever since.  You can see that I do not send my papers to such journals, because I didn't get permission from my college (for papers that I'm a single author).

Dear @Miranda, you are aware that I do respect in full the work of J. Beall and I am subscribed to his newsletters. I use every opportunity to point out some important things brought by him, like fake OA publishers, fake IF, huge payment, fast review for big money..., predatory journals, ..., publishing criminal.

Everyone's ethics will bring answer itself. I do consult J. Beall's list. I do like to read his un-ethical practices.

http://scholarlyoa.com/category/unethical-practices/

Yes, dear Miranda, dear Mohamed.

It is in fact, very much a question of money involved.

As associate Editor of a scientific Journal in my poor Country, I have recently come to learn that there are costs involved in indexing a scientific Journal to PubMed, and the amount of money may grow up to 15.000 euros...

Are we to request our authors to pay for the publication of their scientific work ?

Nevertheless, this is an interesting issue on debate and we should thrive to promote free-of-charges publication of international scientific papers, and also free access to all scientific readers. But the current modern World is far from being perfect, as it is.

Thank you for your interesting question.

Thanks for good info, dear Maria.  You know I have been publishing many papers with SEAMEO RECSAM (Southeast Asia Ministers of Education Organization, Regional Centre for Education in Science and Mathematics).  And another publisher is Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, that is under my university, UPM.  Finally all the funding may be traced to our education ministry.  But the number of papers they publish each year is minimal, only 1 issue a year for SEAMEO RECSAM.  Six papers are accepted a year in 2013, 2014.

I totally agree with what dear professors Mohammed, Ljubomir, and Maria have said. The inventors of the motto "Publish or Perish" are behind all these games of cornering the scholars so as they pay high sums of money collected by invented so-called "honest" publishers & invented "dishonest" publishers.

This publication situation is similar to 2 examples: i) A computer's company invents a virus secretly & after spreading it to many computers globally, the same company will publicize an anti-virus software for sale. ii) A medical company will produce a virus to attack humans or animals & it will prepare a vaccine simultaneously in its R&D section. The first work is kept secret while the second work is publicized.

In all the above examples, profit seeking is the main aim & forget about the declarations about serving humanity or scientific community. In fact, they see themselves as masters who have the right to enslave all the others. Ironically, it is the very same slogan in Old Rome : Rome masters; all those around are slaves.

I totally agree with ALL , interesting question and Very wise answers.

Dear all,

You have forwarded very insightful ideas regarding scientific publication in general and the most unethical and abusive culture of knowledge exploitation for huge profits of money. The tragedy of it is that we scientists are forced to promote our own enslavement and free exloitation by people who utterly have no purpose in science and its decemination to the good of society and science it self but simply to make profit.

I have said it in a similar thread we discussed, it simply says, how could people who produce products pay  listing and shelving  costs in a business firm so that the firm sells their hard produced products for consumers  and collect free money, while the producers get nothing? What a wrong system is the one which can not see this and yet enforces people to participate in this scheme of their own exploitation and produce more?

This is one of the wrong pracrices in which learnt members of society unkowingly participate in the exploitation of thier own and scientific activities. Production of ideas, scientific thoughts and discoveries of science and their decemination should be freely entertained in civilized society so that all able members can access to it and utilize it. 

Really interesting question and satisfied discussions  from researcers

Nobody can deny that some open access journals impose a very high article processing charges.  The reputed publishers like Hindawi  are charging very huge publication fees.  There are several good open access journals which charge publication fee, but maintain good standards in peer reviews and selection procedures.  Some journals are not like that.  

Anyway, a very large amount of money is required  for a good journal for managing web accounts, indexing  reviewing . And it is not possible to get sponsorships for all journals too. So the possible ways are either publish articles and make them available on subscription basis or collect article processing charges from authors and publish the articles open access. 

In this highly competitive research world, it is not an easy task to avoid all these so called predatory journals.  But we can identify low quality journals which depends only on article processing charges from authors may be avoided when select a journal for our submissions.

Beall's list to a large extent is helpful. In fact, I was able to avoid a particular publisher after reading his report on the publisher's unethical practice. As someone from a developing country, I know how difficult it is for researchers to access grants or articles in subscription-based journals. As such, I strongly encourage open access, but researchers should try as much as possible to avoid these predatory publishers because they are really doing more harm than good.

Of course, money is the problem, as well as the goal of those journals.

The possibility I found to judge journals, is:

As author: the quality of journal's reviews.  Predator journals use to be more lax in terms of acceptance and criticism.  My publication record is not very high, I have some 58 publications, from some 250 submissions.  And I have noticed, that reviews and criticism can be hard, but always helped my to improve the manuscripts.

Those reviews from predator journals, I felt were more formal, and opened the door for publication easily.

As reviewer: the quality of journal's reviews.  Predator journals have even accepted manuscript for which I clearly gave a negative scoring.  So predator journals do not even respect their own reviewers (who work for free in a volunteer basis).

Some journals even include some show off pseudo ethical absolutism policies (such as do not use your own references in your papers, or do not use your references in your reviews).

I have followed your suggestion, before reading your question: I refrain from submitting my manuscripts, or acting as reviewer for those journals I personally consider only money driven predators.

If a journal does not receive submission, or has no peers to review those, is condemned to disappear.

I cannot quantify how much payment is considered excessive, but a hint can be whether journals offer waiver policies for special circumstances (social, geographical), as well as whether the journal is online only, or whether it includes ads in their hardcopy issues.

As pointed in other threads impact factor is not all.

To know the correct ones you need money again (ISI, etc...), and those indices are also not for free...

RG includes impact factors for many journals (true or not), Publish or Perish software also shows efforts based on google scholar.

In my domain, we still find good quality journals without publication fees.

However, as pointed out before, the society still spins around the money, and can only change through painful revolutions, or with patience little by little.

Dear Dr Nizar and all, thanks for very appropriate answers.  Yes, on RG, Prof Mohamed has advised me to publish anywhere I can publish.  And Enzo has said that he only reads the paper to decide its value!  Some of you do not even bother what is the impact factor or how established is the journal, at all.

Dear Sudev, thanks for more info about Hindawi.  Here I quote some info: The publish or perish culture "has created an opportunity for open access scientific journals with fast turnover times and these now publish approximately 11% of all articles, whereas they were virtually non-existent prior to the 1990s. Titles like PLOS ONE have become major players as the number of articles this megajournal publishes has risen from 138 in 2006 to 23,464 in 2012."

Thanks Dejebie.  You speak for all of us who see the UNHEALTHY situation that we are in.  WE HEARTILY ENDORSE:

"The tragedy of it is that we scientists are forced to promote our own enslavement and free exploitation by people who utterly have no purpose in science and its decemination to the good of society and science it self but simply to make profit."

THERE MUST BE A LEGITIMATE WAY OUT OF THIS MESS:

"...How could people who produce products pay listing and shelving costs in a business firm so that the firm sells their hard produced products for consumers and collect free money, while the producers get nothing? What a wrong system is the one which can not see this and yet enforces people to participate in this scheme of their own exploitation and produce more?"

For me, science isn't a game of winning points like in school, it is the study of Nature, so the question is pointless.

Yes, dear Maria.  Is that (your journal) for medical papers only?  Or does it accept education papers, medical education, science education?  I have put the conversion rate here.

15000 Euro equals

16526.25 US Dollar  (Attached is dear Mehdi's famous but related thread.)

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_you_have_knowledge_about_scams_in_the_academic_world

I wish that as many RG colleagues as possible read the excellent contribution of Professor Dejenie Lakew. His statement (how could people who produce products pay  listing and shelving  costs in a business firm so that the firm sells their hard produced products for consumers  and collect free money, while the producers get nothing? What a wrong system is the one which can not see this and yet enforces people to participate in this scheme of their own exploitation and produce more?) is for all of us to think about in order to see an ongoing "devious" game in which scholars are subjected to slavery in a tricky way. I shall give a small story just to illustrate:

A certain 3rd world university was closed at the start of 1988 for 4 years due to spreading troubles in the country which has meant no use of any utility inside the campus. In 1991, the Council of Deans convened in a rented faraway flat & took a bizarre decision (The annual increase of pay for an assistant professor, who has not been promoted to associated professor for 6 years, will be stopped).They did not count the 3 years before in which no one was able to reach the university's premises. In reality, the decision was to encourage certain scholars to TRANSFER from their homeland knowing that they have capacity to do good research abroad.

For those who understood the secret aim & did not move, huge obstacles were placed in front of them after 1992 to prevent them from any "independent" research. The formula was to do research that serves a particular country in the West & to publish the results in specific journals. When you send your paper, they will go over it & "squeeze all the juices out of it" and then allow you to publish after you pay a staggering fee. The results of your research will never benefit your own country but the university's administration will reward you by promotion.

In conclusion, if one gets involved in such game, then s/he becomes a slave of a foreign country which pays him/her nothing for the services. This, in itself, holds the marks of betrayal of one's own country.         

In my opinion, the more established journals needs to make open access more affordable, for Early Career Researchers or Researchers from developing countries due to limited funds. This is because these are the set of people that are more likely to publish in predatory journals.

If quality OA with high impact factor is affordable, researchers are more likely to publishing there and thereby reducing the market for the predatory journal but if OA still becomes very expensive, Predatory journals will still be filling the gap in the market, just like a black market downtown.

For a researcher, payment for publication is very costly. Researchers have very limited income. Even journals from very good group like ELSEVIER charge some processing fee.

But good open access journals are very helpful for new researchers.

Dear @Miranda, one good article for future discussion.

Should We Retire the Term “Predatory Publishing”?

"Of course, the question of whether Beall is an enemy of OA is ultimately peripheral to the question of whether his list sheds light on a real and serious problem with author-pays scholarly publishing—which, while not synonymous with OA, is highly relevant to OA, given that the majority of OA articles published each year are funded by author-side charges. That question has been debated in many forums, including the Scholarly Kitchen, and probably doesn’t need to be rehashed here. Instead I would like to discuss a different question: what do we mean when we say “predatory,” and is that term even still useful?..."

http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/05/11/should-we-retire-the-term-predatory-publishing/

Dear Dr Nizar, I am sure that your simple 'story' is one of those where life is stranger than fiction, just like Prof Mohamad's earlier 'stories', reality in fact.  Thanks for sharing experiences and dropping bits and pieces for junior people like us, like me.

Dear Subhash, you have said honestly:

'For a researcher, payment for publication is very costly. Researchers have very limited income. Even journals from very good group like ELSEVIER charge some processing fee.'  (So, if the fee is affordable and reasonable, and I have a sponsor, I will send my paper for open access.)

Very wonderful link, dear Ljubomir.  Deserves 100 upvotes my friends!  Yes, the argument is like what Prof Naschie has been describing to us.  So I conclude again- publish wherever we can publish!  (Form Ljubomir's link...)

"It’s important to note that Beall uses the term “predatory” in a fairly specific way. For the purposes of his list, a “predatory” publisher is one that falls short on some or all elements of a multi-page list of criteria of good publishing practices, many of which have to do with the publisher’s honesty (does it falsely claim editorial board members or impact factors?), business practices (does it engage in spam solicitations or steal content from reputable journals?), and transparency (does it hide author charges until after manuscript acceptance or hide its content from search engines?). Publishers that fail on these criteria are suspected of being “predatory,” then, in that they seem to be attracting revenue by deceiving their authors, their readers, and/or those trying to evaluate the scholarly achievements of their authors.

Beall’s List has been controversial since its establishment for a variety of reasons, some of them obvious (no publisher, whether legitimate or not, appreciates being publicly branded a “predator”), and some of them less so. One of the more subtle reasons for the controversy around Beall’s List lies in the fact that it focuses entirely on OA publishing. Predictably, this has aroused the ire of many in the OA community.."

As a very ancient scientist (retired but still publishing), and one working in a developed country my comments may be a bit peripheral, but here goes:

Most of my research has been published in middle-ranking journals free to authors, and paid for mainly by library subs (and to a lesser extent by individual membership subs to learned societies). Some of the comments in this string strike me as odd: I have been free to submit  papers to any journal I like without having to be a subscriber/member, and, as far as I know, they have been judged on their merits. I guess this varies with discipline (I am a biologist/ecologist). Is it the case that there are no such journals in some other fields? or is it institutional policy that forces people to go for OA? 

Now that I no longer need to advance my career and because my (ex) university cannot use my papers in any govt assessment of output, I take pride in sending to journals whose aims values and standards I respect, even if the don't have very high citation scores.

Despite being in a wealthy country, the nature of my jobs has meant that there was never any prospect of institutional support  for publishing. Never mind "predatory" journals, I cannot afford to pay for each paper I write. While I think Beall's paper is OTT, and clearly has a strong ideological agenda, he has some good points. There are rather few OA journals I would trust, and these, while respectable, are rather expensive.

Finally, as an associate editor for a number of specialist journals (and a reviewer for many more) I have seen my duty as providing helpful, constructive comments, sometimes involving near re-writes, especially for those whose first language is not English, and for those who are in the early stages of their scientific careers. this a service that I doubt is offered by OA journals.

A counsel of perfection, I know, but if there are specialist journals in your field with a proper editorial board, go for them.

Thanks @Robert Cameron.  I have been sending my papers to journals that are funded directly or indirectly by the Ministry of Education here. The review process is strict, at times arduous, but I get to improve my paper.  That is the important thing.

BETWEEN A JOURNAL OF MY EDUCATION MINISTRY WITHOUT IMPACT FACTOR THAT PUBLISHES FEW ARTICLES WITHOUT COST, AND ONE ON BEALL'S LIST WITH IMPACT FACTOR, I SHOULD CHOOSE THE FIRST?  OR SHOULD I CHOOSE THE SECOND?

Dear Prof  Naschie, besides being very intelligent, it's evident that you have a sense of humor.  Thanks.

(Dear Enzo, I will send the paper to the online journal where Prof Fong is one of the editors.  Fong is attached to science university of Malaysia, in Penang.  Last year, I also sent a paper on Translation/ protein synthesis to that journal.)

Dear Miranda,

I had experience a few years ago of helping a journal not on the ISI to get itself on the list. I know that it managed to do this, subject to a number of conditions. There are many journals in this situation, I think. It would be worth talking to your Ministry of Education to see if they would be prepared to do what is needed. From an official point of view, it would add to their prestige if they could say that some of their publications were in the index, as it would indicate that work they sponsored was internationally recognised. It sounds as though they apply rigorous standards, so their material deserves to qualify.

But you raise a difficult question. If an OA journal has managed to get into the index, I guess it is not in the "predatory" category, though if its charges are high and its index is low, I would stick with the Ministry. Easy for me to say, though, as I am a secure retiree!

Maybe is time to remember and rethink it. Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers - By Jeffrey Beall , 3rd edition / January 1, 2015

"Evaluating scholarly open-access publishers is a process that includes closely, cautiously, thoroughly, and at times skeptically examining the publisher's content, practices, and websites: contacting the publisher if necessary, reading statements from the publisher's authors about their experiences with the publisher, and determining whether the publisher commits any of the following practices (below) that are known to be

committed by predatory publishers, examining any additional credible evidence about the publisher, compiling very important "back-channel" feedback from scholarly authors, and taking into account counter-feedback from the publishers themselves..."

Dear Robert Cameron, I have published my papers with our local journals that are directly or indirectly financed by the education ministry.  I feel that it's right to do this because I have been discussing education policies, especially ETEMS/PPSMI and MBMMBI.  The first one is 'English in Teaching Math and Science'.  PPSMI is the Malay acronym.  Under this policy, implemented in 2003, schools and colleges use English to teach Math and Science.  However under MBMMBI, schools reverted back to the national language, in 2012.  In college, we continue with ETEMS.

Sometimes, I wonder if open access journals would provide more exposure of my work and my colleagues'.  But here, I research without a grant.  If I have a collaborator with a grant, perhaps we could publish on open access.  In this place, some people do have a grant, but they prefer to have an easy life and do the minimum.  Thanks.

Thanks dear Ljubomir, your posts always provide that extra information so that I make a right decision.  Just like you, Mehdi, calls the impact factor a bogus measurement when it is applied to researchers, because it was never meant to be applied to researchers but to journals.  But human nature is such that this type of errors is easily propagated.  (Just recently at church, a dear friend reminded me that the number 6 that applies to mankind is short of 7, the number of perfection.  Imperfection is within me.)  

Dear Prof Mohamed, I got on RG since 2013, and in a few days I learned that I must not joke on this forum.  Nor is it right for me to think my own opinions must be always right.  Please give me ideas how I can get my papers into journals like JRST, that seem to accept most articles from US, although it's an international journal.  Perhaps JRST is not interested in what is going on in science education in my country?  Thanks.

What a false practice dear @Miranda. We should consult Beall's list, or, at least, read his info.

Strange Website Claims it is a Respected Citation Index!

"This new website describes itself this way:

The Institute of Science Index (ISI) was founded by Arthur S. Parr in 1960. It was acquired by the International Association for College and University Education(IACUE) in 1998, became known as IACUE ISI and now is part of the Social and Science business of the multi-billion dollar IACUE.

Close, but not the real thing...

The website is dense — it offers several lists of journals and lots of other information. Someone put a lot of effort into it, but the fake names and vague similarity to the real ISI betray it as just another suspicious, scholarly-publishing related website..."

http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/10/27/strange-website-claims-it-is-a-respected-citation-index/

Yes, Ljubomir.  I do read all the emails that I receive from Beall.  Yes, there are journals that do such a quick review, and I can detect some inconsistencies but they are indexed by DOAJ, Google scholar, even RG.  Some friends have written to me how quick and easy it is to publish my paper in these journals.  (I am glad that RG is working again, back in service again.)

Dear @Miranda, this webinar is instructive for researchers, especially the young one, and it is related to your initial tread.

http://libraryconnect.elsevier.com/articles/2015-10/webinar-now-available-how-assist-researchers-sharing-their-research-data?utm_campaign=ELS_Library%20Connect%20monthly%20newsletter&utm_campaignPK=61977433&utm_term=OP7599&utm_content=140037792&utm_source=32&BID=430090539&utm_medium=email&SIS_ID=0

Thanks Ljubomir.  I am watching the webinar on my laptop.  I will be back when I can manage.  From Mobile.

DEAR PROF NASCHIE, NOW THAT IS VERY WISE INDEED!

"WHY DO NOT CONCENTRATE Completely ON THE QUALITY OF THE PUBLISHED PAPER AND IN FACT FORGET Completely THE PUBLISHER." - Prof Naschie.

Then the concerns raised by dear Dejenie that we agree with can be RESOLVED!

And citations are more valuable than impact factors.  (Please give feedback, even if you disagree, thanks.)

A paper would be a scientific product which contributes to increase knowledge. However, in this last period it is becoming also a business. Where is a correct balance? I think that the quality of the research is the only good parameter.

I BELIEVE THAT ALL OF US AGREE WITH ENZO.

"A paper would be a scientific product which contributes to increase knowledge. However, in this last period it is becoming also a business. Where is a correct balance? I think that the quality of the research is the only good parameter."

IS IT BECAUSE WE ARE HUMANS THAT IT'S NOT EASY TO KEEP THE RIGHT BALANCE.  I will be back when I can.  I need to improve a paper for a journal.  A journal (M) may be GOOD, EXCELLENT BUT IT HAS NO IMPACT FACTOR, and the paper must be polished to be published in it.  While another journal (N) requires us to pay, has some impact factor, and makes it easy for us to publish.  But by Enzo's logic above M has better quality articles than N.

I do hope that you will not pay dear @Miranda, even that you have enough money, so do publish in Journal M! I do agree with Enzo! 

Hello friends, now I need to ask a few questions.  

Why does RG and other places index some journals on Beall's list?

Does it mean that those are (better) safe journals and not predator journals?

Or is there other reason?

If they are truly predator journals, what should RG and the others do?

What would happen to papers if the journals are removed?

Where would the papers be published, what journals are available to allow this?

Please inform. Thanks.

Miranda

Article A second chance for authors of hijacked journals to publish ...

Dear friends, this is very strong warning. 

Concerns about Dirty Data in the ORCID Database!

"ORCID identifiers are supposed to be for individual researchers, but there is concern that predatory publishers and journals are successfully registering for ORCID numbers, and using the numbers as a badge of legitimacy, a use that goes against ORCID’s mission and policies...."

http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/10/29/concerns-about-dirty-data-in-the-orcid-database/

Excellent information, Dear  Ljubomir Jacić.

Excellent feedback dear @ Mehdi.  Outstanding researchers will not read or cite papers in predator journal, once they are certain that the journal is predatory.  From mobile.

Thanks Ljubomir.  I received that email from 'Beall'.  For the first time, I replied his email.  (Now I will see what is the response.)

"Thanks for all the mails I received. Do predator journals get removed at all?

They are very attractive to researchers in the developing countries. It's so much easier to publish in them and get impact factor points, than to publish in my local online journals that do not hesitate to tell me to improve my papers, and do not give impact factor points, although it may be indexed by Scopus."

The scientific community is facing a 'pollution problem' in academic publishing, one that poses a serious threat to the "trustworthiness, utility, and value of science and medicine," according to Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, director of the Division of Medical Ethics in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Medical Center.

http://www.science20.com/news_articles/journals_and_publication_pollution_denialism-154566

I agree with professors Subhash & Mohamed. Publishing is a profit-seeking business which cannot be described as purely honest or straightforward. A list of the "good" guys & the "bad" guys is suspicious since it will give an advantage edge to one side. Scholars can win this game if they publish their results in journals that charge no cost or the lowest possible cost. If the research is excellent, its results are bound to gain huge interest wherever it is published.

Dear all, I have been very busy trying to reduce the length of a paper not so successfully. Apologies to all.  For me, my own teaching and research writing takes up most of my time.  But you will be able to understand this, having experienced it yourselves.

I got some good answers to this question.  Allow me to quote here:

"I have my own ideas of evaluating or announcing the quality of journals. If a journal is peer-reviewed , that is a good journal.  If it publishes everything just for a fee, that is not a good journal...I am sure those Malaysian journals are good journals even if they are not indexed in Thomson Reuters and do not have an Impact factor. Indeed, Impact factor is not an indicator of the quality of the journals, but many of scholars and university admins are misled by Impact factor."

Dear friends, it is very huge business! Regarding Elsevier, here are some numbers.

"Every year, researchers submit around 1.2 million manuscripts to 2,300 Elsevier journals; 1.3 million reviewers support the peer review process and 350,000 articles are published. The submission and publication process is a huge task for editors, authors and reviewers, and an editorial system that can manage it well for all users is vital to ensure timely publication of high quality articles.

We have spent the last couple of years working on a new proprietary editorial system for Elsevier, called EVISE®. The next release in November this year will support the majority of journals in Elsevier’s portfolio. By October 2016, we aim to have all Elsevier journals running on EVISE, supporting an improved user experience, improved editorial speed and increased quality content..."

https://www.elsevier.com/reviewers-update/home/featured-article/rolling-out-our-new-editorial-system-evise

Improved user experiences, editorial speed and quality content are fine.  Let's wait and see.  In the meantime, I publish anywhere I can.  Thanks for a good link, @ Ljubomir. From mobile.  

Publishing Journals has become a huge profitable business that is why we are seeing mushrooming growth in appearance of many new journals. And when money making is the aim, who cares about quality, science, ethics, etc. I agree with Dear Mohamed El Naschie. Beall’s work is very important.  However, with the problem of predatory publishers and pseudo-journals as large as it is, any new journal, on the list or not, is going to be mistrusted. When more and more publishing taking place online and no regulation to keep predatory  publishers in check, there has been a spike in new journals coming online to meet the demand.

Dear all

Effectively, for several journals, the criterion of the quality seems to become negligible facing to the payment . The Indexed open access journals are generally expensive and not allowed to most researchers. I add that this problem is different from one domain to another. For example, it’s very easier to get impact points in the medical domain than in mathematics. Thus, predatory publishers and pseudo-journals exist.

For those who have not seen Beall's work, I recommend looking at "The Scholarly Kitchen" website, as it has many good items on these concerns., including  contributions from him. Mohamed El Naschie has it right: there is villainy  preying on vanity and desperation both in "predatory" open access journals and at the high citation end of subscription journals. There is a great mix of honest and dishonest practice, fueled by the  desire of academic and state bodies to have easy and uncontested  ways of determining who gets jobs, which institutions get support etc.

Here in UK, I have to say that I would rather politicians made resource allocations than my fellow scientists. Surprising? But big groups in science sequester funds on majority votes where the politicians may be swayed by a broader perspective.

HiI've experienced to be aan editor in a predatory journal. The fictive editor in chief reads te submitted articles and published them even with mistakes and other languages since google translations keeps some words in teir original words. I think hat there two insexing systems i qualify serious and correct npg and wos.

Regards

Thanks @ Profs Robert Cameron, Mohamed and all.  Being the author of this thread, I will ask that we discuss fairly.  Yes, Yogesh has said it simply:

"Publishing Journals has become a huge profitable business that is why we are seeing mushrooming growth in appearance of many new journals. And when money making is the aim, who cares about quality, science, ethics, etc."

From The Scholarly Kitchen: 

"It’s important to note that Beall uses the term “predatory” in a fairly specific way. For the purposes of his list, a “predatory” publisher is one that falls short on some or all elements of a multi-page list of criteria of good publishing practices, many of which have to do with the publisher’s honesty (does it falsely claim editorial board members or impact factors?), business practices (does it engage in spam solicitations or steal content from reputable journals?), and transparency (does it hide author charges until after manuscript acceptance or hide its content from search engines?). Publishers that fail on these criteria are suspected of being “predatory,” then, in that they seem to be attracting revenue by deceiving their authors, their readers, and/or those trying to evaluate the scholarly achievements of their authors."

http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/05/11/should-we-retire-the-term-predatory-publishing/

This was sent to my message box, and I think it's useful:

"To me, this is a very important question. Open access journals are based on the idea that important findings must circulate free to help their implementation and accelerate advances in health care, nature protection, etc. Another, not advertized intention is getting profit from publishing. And so, now we got many journals and publishing companies that became predatory just motivated for a high profit.

In past (not so remote) publishing scientific results was possible in the journals of professional societies (some still exist, e.g., the Ecology and other journals published by Ecological Society of America). But then publishing giants bought most of these journals, and gradually the non-profit model of science publishing became for-profit. This brought competition among the publishers where the “open access” model is just a new way to the commercial use of science publishing. But the commercial publicing also reduce strongly the importance of scientific professional societies…

I think that it is us, the researchers, who shall be more active, organize societies and pay fees to publish the results of our research through open reviewing and using professional networks. Non-profit model shall be back but based on new technologies, e.g., similar to those we use here in RG."

Thanks @Bachir Benarba, for feedback.  I have seen papers that were published by a journal and I believe there was error.  But still published all the same.  

All of us can make mistakes, and honestly hope that reviewers will point out the errors so that they can be corrected.  Besides that, our sentences may not be easily understood by others, although they may seem so logical to ourselves.  Again we value the reviewers who give feedback.  

Last month, I sent a paper to a local journal, and I also did some improvement to my paper.  Far better to correct the error than the reverse situation.  I will prefer doing corrections than quick and easy publishing.  From mobile.

I sincerely endorse the view of Mohamed El Naschie "DO NOT TRUST ANY LIST. TRUST ONLY YOUR OWN JUDGEMENT AND DO NOT BE BRAIN WASHED BY ANY ONE WITH OR WITHOUT LISTS". He has put forward his views convincingly and highlighted valid points on the issue.

Having spent quite a lot of time browsing round this issue, I have found that it is immensely complicated (and very depressing). One source of good information and links to more discussion can be found in "Cites and Insights" a regular set of articles produced by Walt Crawford. I am not sure about the permission to attach the articles, but the site is easily reached by Google. There are two particularly useful pieces on "Ethics and Access": Vol 14(4):  April 2014 and Vol 14(5): May 2014. Both are quite long, but apart from dealing with two subjects (Beall's list in the first, an attempted Sting on OA Journals in the second), they offer pretty good advice about how to detect the obvious fake journals. I would find these useful when following Mohamed's advice or Yogesh's. Apart from that, I drew three conclusions: 1.There are many thoughtful and helpful librarians out there. If you are lucky enough to have one in your institution, they would know how to check things out for you. 2. Beall made some good initial points, but his methods and objectivity are questioned by many other librarians. 3. Although it does not deal directly with Miranda's original question, it appears that even very highly-cited subscription Journals are susceptible to fraudulent papers ; the peer review system is clearly not working as well as it is supposed to.

Thanks Prof.Mohamed El Naschie and All. As a researcher, our duty is to work in the interest of science and not to endorse/advocate any publishing house. It’s all business. Some very established high IF Journal publishers had also faced crisis of trust in their initial phase. Randy Schekman, a cell biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the 2013 crops of Nobel Prize winners has said “Some journals (he termed them as "luxury" scientific journals) aggressively create their brands, in ways more conducive to selling subscriptions than to stimulating the most important research. Like fashion designers who create limited-edition handbags or suits, they know scarcity stokes demand, so they artificially restrict the number of papers they accept. The exclusive brands are then marketed with a gimmick called "impact factor" – a score for each journal, measuring the number of times its papers are cited by subsequent research. Better papers, the theory goes, are cited more often, so better journals boast higher scores. Yet it is a deeply flawed measure, pursuing which has become an end in itself – and is as damaging to science as the bonus culture is to banking.” Please see attached file.

Brief Comment about the sentence that dear Dr. Yogesh Tripathi wrote: (Better papers, the theory goes, are cited more often, so better journals boast higher scores.). I think that this is another part of the GAME & Dr. Tripathi is right upon describing it as theory to let us pay our attention. The citation can be increased easily even for a worthless paper if there is agreement by many persons from different countries about (Cite me & I shall cite you... You do this to me & I shall do that to you)!

Citation is not a big deal in many cases & when journals use citations to boast themselves, they are getting a highly probable false reputation. However, they will use this reputation to gain more money from scholars who are not aware of the game.

I think that we serve Research Gate, the respected colleagues in this site, and all humanity when games, concerning research & publication, are exposed. It is wise to see the world as it is rather than what our wishful thinking may imagine. There are no pure priests in all this business; here only money talks.  

Dear Prof Mohamed, I do not know why the posts should be downvoted.  I have been honest, I did not downvote any post.  You can check that I upvoted the popular answers and some others that I really like.  My post was downvoted, but it does not matter now.  I thank all of you.  I have sent off my paper, and I must work on another paper now.  Thanks again. (PUBLISH ANY WHERE WE CAN PUBLISH, THAT'S THE RIGHT WAY.)

Fair discussion should not bring downvotes. On the contrary, this is very good thread where we have rich discussion, sometimes different opinions which is very good for the thread. 

Very right Prof Ljubomir. The discussion is on a pertinent issue and we all should enjoy comments from both sides of the fence and encourage others to participate. Everyone is free to post his/her opinion, so there is no point in down-voting anybody's comment.

Dear Ljubomir, it's unfortunate that certain people are scientists in name, but not in their nature, and they are always present on RG.  Do you remember the occasion when there was some bug in the RG software, and for about 7 hours, we could all see the demoted posts, featured posts, approved questions etc.  One day, the same may suddenly happen, to reveal the anonymous folks.  But it's ok, adversities will always make us stronger.  Besides, although my research and teaching and studying are important, I really set my heart on things above.

So far, I have seen 3 profiles on RG where the impact factor has 'dropped'.  I'm not taking risks.  The paper was sent to a UK journal; after all the last paper by E and me was already sent to my local SEAMEO journal (Southeast Asia ministers' of education organization).

As stated earlier, we do not have obligation to trust any list of journals, but there is no damage if we consult it for some info. 

For example, I have realized today about More Apparent Template-Plagiarism from BioMed Central brought by Beall's alert mails. I find it very useful!

"...In this case, the original paper is “Decreased expression of microRNA-124 is an independent unfavorable prognostic factor for patients with breast cancer.” It was submitted to the journal in November, 2014 and published at the end of April, 2015. There is no evidence or indication of any ethical problems with this earlier paper.

The later paper is entitled “Down-regulated microRNA-124 expression as predictive biomarker and its prognostic significance with clinicopathological features in breast cancer patients.” According to the paper, it was received on June 3, 2015, accepted on August 28, 2015, and published on September 29, 2015.

Like the last case, this later paper is short, with only about two pages of text. It does not cite the earlier paper. Much of the text almost or nearly matches the text of the earlier paper...."

http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/11/03/more-apparent-template-plagiarism-from-biomed-central/

Dear Yoghesh, unfortunately certain people on RG hide behind a mask, but as long as our reason on RG is TO DO A BETTER RESEARCH, TO BE BETTER INFORMED, THOSE PEOPLE DO US NO REAL HARM.

YES, LJUBOMIR, I HAVE BEEN GETTING EMAILS FROM BEALL, AND OTHERS AND KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SOME FALSE CITATION MATRICES!  But on certain things that I don't know a lot, I keep quiet.