Part of the problem, as with hiring and many other aspects of life, publishing and getting funding has become more...

Part of the problem, as with hiring and many other aspects of life, publishing and getting funding has become more about being part of the elite group, as I had shared earlier, when there was an interesting article several months back questioning credibility of published results on sizable number of medical publications, even in highly placed journals.

When there is a closed connected system whether it were to be business, politics or academics, we are prone to see these things happen. Those with far lesser connections are, in a way, forced to opt for other journals out there as they still have to publish part of their job requirements.

By the way, we also need to understand that all those elite journals and media sites out there started from scratch at some point in time, and should be careful about generalizing on every new journal out there.

Originally shared by David Eppstein

"It’s increasingly clear that many academics know exactly what they’re getting into, which explains why these journals have proliferated despite wide criticism. The relationship is less predator and prey, some experts say, than a new and ugly symbiosis."

The article also takes aim at Google Scholar for indiscriminately indexing this material.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/science/predatory-journals-academics.html