Another page was discussing predatory journals and I thought it was a good segway for further discussion in this group. The discussion on pseudoscience seems to have become a standstill (I have been adding comments but it does not become active).
The issue about low impact journals and predatory journals is also not transparent, nor clear within the available guidelines of this SE. I am very concerned that there is a denigration and bias against "low impact journals" or low quality journals which tends to be open-access for "high impact journals" which tend to be not accessible to the public and also usually too academic for the public. The bias towards high impact journals I do not think should apply for this SE though the discussion should not exclude those journals. The problem is that if we enforce this standard of "high impact journals" then there will be a extremely limited pool of us in academia that are able to adequately engage with the discussion and access the breadth of the literature.
This group needs to be transparent and upfront about this bias as to not constantly traumatize newcomers (like I was) for standards that are not obvious and with a tone that implies gullibility and poor education. Poor access to journals should not be the limitation nor the standard for access to this SE.
Having said that, I think predatory journals are definitely off limits and need to be actively discouraged. There needs to be far more explicit expectations detailed in the FAQs or help page for the group needs to have information about predatory journals (either the code of conduct or expected behaviour, etc).
