Abstract

Scholarly, open-access publishing has made scholarly research freely accessible, but some unscrupulous publishers are exploiting the model for their own profit. The author-pays open-access model finances scholarly publishing with fees charged to authors at the time a paper is published. This model creates a conflict of interest, for the more papers a publisher accepts, the more revenue it earns. This article describes how to identify these "predatory" publishers and describes the unethical practices they engage in