In a sting operation conducted by the journal Science, contributing correspondent John Bohannon uncovered a "Wild West" landscape among fee-seeking publishers -- a part of which use false addresses, false names, overseas bank accounts and superficial "peer reviews" on a routine basis.
"From humble and idealistic beginnings a decade ago, open-access scientific journals have mushroomed into a global industry, driven by author publication fees rather than traditional subscriptions," wrote Bohannon, a molecular biologist and science reporter.
"Most of the players are murky," he wrote. "The identity and location of the journals' editors, as well as the financial workings of their publishers, are often purposefully obscured."
Hoping to test the academic rigor of these journals, Bohannon concocted a false and fatally flawed study on a wonder cure for cancer. Variations of the paper, which were sent to 304 journals, contained experimental blunders that should have been detected during a proper review.
For instance, while the author of the fake paper argued that a specific molecule from a species of lichen inhibited the growth of certain cancer cells, the experiments lacked proper control groups.
Despite these and other problems, a whopping 157 journals accepted it; only 98 rejected it. (The remaining 49 did not get back to the author with a final answer.) The journals that did accept the error-riddled paper demanded fees of as much as several thousand dollars for publication.