We won’t defeat predatory journals by making a list of them

So, we should not create lists of predatory journals and we should tackle the disadvantages of the global south and young academics - meantime those same people in the global south and at the start of their academic careers are being exploited by a (yes) "predatory" publishing industry that takes a lot of money off them and fails to conduct acceptable levels of peer review. I was always in favour of the open access movement but it has provided an opening for (yes) "predatory", for-profit publishing and has failed to respond adequately to what in many respects is an existential threat to what otherwise is a very worthy goal.

Is Science or IEEE Access predatory for the very same reasons? They asked for APC fees throughout the process. Now, in terms of scrutiny, perhaps they do have a point: it takes one month to get published in MDPI - you read it right: one month, from submission to publication. I was peer review, and once ask for the dataset, the authors replied they couldn't provide me, I made a note to the editor and even so, it went to publishing. I turn on the 'whatever' button on that one.

As the article notes, many of these predatory journals have high impact factors and current systems reward people who publish with them. However, to me this sounds like an argument in *favour* of making such lists and stigmatising them in the hopes that the systems rewarding such publications change. Certainly a good outcome would be that those evaluating research output start using whitelists, but until they do I will certainly continue to raise awareness of the journals where often no real peer review occurs in which papers can be bought and sold. For example, this week I saw an advertisement to buy authorship in a special issue of a journal whose impact factor would suggest its one of the top mathematics journals there is (however I don't know any mathematician who would actually publish in it). I guess I agree that language matters though, and would prefer they be called vanity journals rather than predatory journals, because I believe the people publishing with them understand the situation. But either way, I don't think trying to silence those who make lists of such journals is fighting on the right side of this battle.

It may be worth taking a risk management approach, as you would for natural disasters: mitigating negative impact rather than thinking you can make predatory journals all go away. Can you isolate the worst examples through blacklisting, warnings and so on. Then, what are the worst potential consequences of academics publishing in the other journals? For example, suppose some contentious research is likely to affect public policy. How can you interrupt that chain of events?