Most journals make money primarily through subscriptions by academics and libraries/databases, and thus do not charge any fees. However, we are in the age of open access and there are a high number of open access journals that make content free to read online. Open access is useful for scholars who wish to disseminate their work more widely or whose funding agencies require publication in an open access format. Since open access journals don’t finance their publishing by subscriptions, they usually charge authors a processing fee for accepted articles. This publishing model is even being adopted by the traditional subscription-based journals and publishing companies whereby researchers are charged extra (usually, $1500-$2000) to allow their manuscripts to be open access. Other high-quality journals charge authors for merely submitting a paper to minimize submissions of manuscripts that are, for whatever reason, unsuitable for the journal. Generally, many authors consider publication charges acceptable given the added value and benefits provided by publishing in a journal of repute.
The rise of predatory journals and publishers
There is nothing wrong with the open access financial model as long as the journal or publisher is a legitimate one and performs the peer review and editorial work it promises. Unfortunately, there has been a tremendous proliferation of journals or publishers that prey on academicians for financial profit via submission fees or article processing charges for open access articles without meeting scholarly publishing standards. These predatory journals claim to conduct peer review but publish all or most submitted manuscripts without external peer review which is the hallmark of traditional scholarly publishing. Also, they do not follow the accepted standard policies regarding issues such as management of potential conflicts of interest, transparency (such as costs involved), and archiving of journal content.
The main reason for the rise of predatory journals is the requirement within the academic community for researchers to publish as much as possible (publish or perish). These journals send emails that are directed personally to recipient researchers, faculty, or graduate students with a promise for a fast peer review process and sure acceptance of a submitted manuscript for author fees that are lower than those of legitimate journals. However, the fees are usually higher and become apparent when the author is long into the publishing process. Others send spam emails inviting faculty and PhD students to review for them or to join their editorial boards. Luckily, there are some details you could look further into to assess if the journal is legitimate or questionable and useful resources you can use to identify and avoid predatory journals.
What are their motives?
Predatory journals are driven by money and not research. They are formed with the sole purpose of earning money from unsuspecting researchers. Hence, they accept submitted manuscripts with bogus or minimal peer review and upon article acceptance, charge authors exorbitant article processing fees before online publication proceeds- if it even proceeds at all! Others predatory journals are scams and not really journals at all; usually, they are web pages started by individuals in third-world countries to scam early career faculty and PhD students looking to publish their research. Nowadays, it is very easy to create a journal website that looks reasonably serious or even a copy of a reputable journal with a title similar to an already established journal with the aim of tricking authors to pay to publish in a journal that they believe is legitimate. These journals may even make false claims about their impact factor and indexing. However, the articles that they think are published never appear on the journal website.