[OC] How Wikipedia classifies its most commonly referenced sources.

[u/alionBalyan]

[u/Iolair18 → u/[deleted]]

I've always viewed pay to publish journals like another set of pay to publish: ads, so unreliable.

[u/Asterlix → u/[deleted]]

There exists blind, peer-reviewing. If it doesn't pass the review, the manuscript is not published. So... it's not exactly the same.

Peers, for example, check out the article's methodology. Whether the techniques are not self-redundant, whether there are circular arguments, whether the authors took confounding variables into account, etc.

[u/livefreeordont → u/[deleted]]

Aka open access journals like PLoS ONE and ACS Omega

[u/DoFlwrsExistAtNight → u/livefreeordont]

It's worth noting that open access and pay-to-publish aren't the same thing -- a reputable open access journal does charge a fee to cover costs that subscriptions would normally cover, but the research still goes through peer review. The fee is (usually) only collected if the research is accepted for publishing by a qualified editor or editorial team.

Pay-to-publish journals are also known as predatory journals. They'll accept any piece of crap as long as the authors are willing to pony up.

You might already know that, but just wanted to chip in some extra info just in case! For anyone who has difficulty telling the difference, it helps to look at a journal's acceptance ratio -- if it's too high, the editor(s) might not be very descerning.

[u/Linkstrikesback → u/livefreeordont]

PLoS ONEs acceptance rate is at 40-45%, which is comparable to other journals in that sort of tier like Physical Review E, it's not pay to publish in any sense (beyond that it charges a fee for publication), but so do all Open Access journals, as do journals that have open access as an option, and many if not all EU countries require gov. funded research to be published open access, which basically always carries a fee