The Journal Bubble

Inside Higher Ed has a piece by Philip Altbach about the proliferation of dubious academic journals.

Clever people have figured out that there is a growing demand for outlets for scholarly work, that there are too few journals or other channels to accommodate all the articles written, that new technology has created confusion as well as opportunities, and (finally) and somewhat concerning is that there is money to be made in the knowledge communication business. As a result, there has been a proliferation of new publishers offering new journals in every imaginable field. The established for-profit publishers have also been purchasing journals and creating new ones so that they “bundle” them and offer them at high prices to libraries through electronic subscriptions.

Read it here.

I suspect that this is causing increasing problems for struggling but respectable journals in the academic periphery. I know of of least one journal that has had several submitters "disappear" after being asked  to make modest revisions or even deal with problems identified by a turnitin report. One wonders where the papers will reappear.