Researchers are constantly under pressure from their faculty to publish articles. This enormous pressure forces researchers to publish their research output as frequently as possible. However, most of the time it is not easy to publish articles on high impact factor journals; rejection is pretty common.  For instance, nature rejects 93% of articles it receives for publications. Moreover, it takes a long period of time to publish accepted articles. There is also high Article Process Charges (APCs) for Gold Open Access journals. Combination of all these factors force researchers to look for alternative avenues to publish their research output.  No researchers are immune to these challenges. Yet, these are pretty much daunting challenges for researchers based in developing countries.

Publishing on open access journals is getting traction. As most of them are new, the rate of rejection is low. Besides, they do not have much work overload to keep authors to wait before they see their published articles online. Coupled with the emergence of open access journals, there are several predatory open access publishers, which promise fast track publishing: less time and money to publish articles. In fact, predatory publishers are fast and charge relatively low APCs. Nonetheless, predatory publishers do not provide high quality peer-review and editorial services. On top of that, predatory publishers target academics with a barrage of spam emails asking them to publish on what they claim to be Gold Open Access journals. All these issues combined together make scholars in developing countries victims of predatory journal publishers.

The Conversation | Why developing countries are particularly vulnerable to predatory journals