Quote: "My long-term goal—an ambitious one, I know—is to stop the production of predatory journals altogether." I salute your energy and your objective. Having

Quote: "My long-term goal—an ambitious one, I know—is to stop the production of predatory journals altogether." I salute your energy and your objective. Having observed individual scientists over a period of decades and noting the degree to which a modern scientist's professional life is ruled by "publish or perish", I think some very basic changes would have to take place to eliminate phony journals. On the one hand, phony journals, and corner-cutting episodes like the recent retraction of 107 cancer research papers from otherwise legitimate scientific journals[1], only show the desperation in the lives of many scientists and pseudoscientists. On the other hand, freedom of the press allows pretty much any nonsense to be put on paper and online, and efforts to stop phony publications often collide with a very permissive attitude toward printed expression, including those that walk a thin line between fact and fiction. To me, the central problem is that publishers make too much money from technical and scientific publication -- it invites cheating and exploitation. Maybe in the future there will be some kind of publication arrangement that is (a) beyond reproach and (b) not undermined by absurd access prices. 1. http://retractionwatch.com/2017/04/20/new-record-major-publisher-retracting-100-studies-cancer-journal-fake-peer-reviews/ http://retractionwatch.com/2017/04/20/new-record-major-publi...