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> I think charging money is a necessary signal that this particular gatekeeper is doing a good job.

I’ve never seen the slightest relationship between the charge to read a paper and the quality of review.

Because there isn't such a relation. It's a thing people believe when they don't have actual experience with peer review. If anything, predatory journals and low-quality pubs can charge more, since publication is more guaranteed (and researchers reaching for these pay-to-publish journals are more desperate).

It's a reputation economy. Like review sites. They start off truthful, and then as time goes on incentives shift to bad actors to subvert it. Or they just sell out their reputation.

Yelp, TripAdvisor, wire cutter, hell even Google results themselves.

Once you start poisoning that well, it's difficult if not impossible to claw it back.

I tend to agree, but keep in mind that most likely you just don't even bother reading the shittiest of the shittiest papers just based on title and abstract. And for every good article there are like 10 unindexed shitty ones.

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