Predatory Publishing: The Downside of Open Access Publishing

Abstract

The proliferation of the internet, digital publishing, communication technology and competition among different publishing houses has led to swift changes in the publishing industry. Open access has become another great movement in the community of publishing as well as for academic scholars. The initiative of open-access is for free access of information without any barriers. But today, this unrestricted barrier-free access is the leading cause of predatory publishing. These fraudulent publishing firms main focus is to extract money from authors by guaranteeing publishing of article in peer-review journals. It is a very critical issue in the research community and affects the moral of publishing. These journal publications are creating an unwanted noise in the publishing sphere and one can’t determine which is real and which is fake. It’s very difficult to differentiate. The reason behind these problems is not the publishers alone; many academic researchers are also to be blamed for creating such type of challenges. Authors should avoid this type of publishing firm for his/her research. These sham publishing companies spread over a very large scale and without any controlling steps it could be a very serious situation in the near future. This paper highlights the predatory publishing concept, its growth, main reason behind growing and what are the precautions that must be followed to control this fraud.