A point needs to be brought out here. This article is not about traditional academic journals. It concerns journals of a kind that have been popping up like mushrooms in recent years. The article refers to them as "open access". I'm not fond of the term, since there are certainly selective, reliable journals that still allow submissions from anyone and publish articles on the web without a paywall. Regardless, plenty of more-or-less fake journals have been founded recently. As a researcher, I get solicitation e-mails from them every day.
It is true that it can be difficult for someone not in the relevant field to tell the difference between different kinds of journals. I know the difference, since I've heard of the major journals in my field, I know many of the editors, etc. But a science journalist might have more trouble with it.
For fields like medicine, this can matter a lot. It's the same problem we see with SEO and the like: how, in the modern world, do we form a robust measure of reputation and reliability?
Well put. I think Science does have some conflict of interest here, but I also think they are one of the good guys in the publishing business, and that this is a worthwhile subject for an expose.
Like you, I get (about 1/week) blind offers to submit articles to this or that journal, and even (at a lesser frequency) offers to be an editor (unpaid!). It stinks to high heaven [1]
Getting back to Science, their individual subscription rates are reasonable (~$150/year = 52 issues), their public health articles are available immediately after publication, and their other articles are available after 1 year. They are run by a non-profit institution (AAAS), so they are less motivated to jack up their fees.
I was not able to find institutional fees for Science.
[1] Here are the most recent 5: "International Transaction of Electrical and Computer Engineers System" (sounds like a joke), "Entropy", "The Open Software Engineering Journal", "Journal of Robotics", "The Open Electrical & Electronic Engineering Journal".
It's a problem. How do we get people who aren't in a particular field to distinguish between something like PLoS ONE, which is legitimately selective and reliable, but just trying something innovative and new, or the legitimately high quality CS conference proceedings that publish only on arXiv; from journals that accept anyone and publish online, with no barrier to their entry into publishing, or the many people who simply throw their papers onto arXiv and leave things at that?
The internet has many opportunities for academic publishing, but many dangers as well. Academic publishing has relied on the barrier to entry in publishing to filter out incredibly bad journals, or make it clear that they are scams that simply charge high publishing fees; now anyone can create a journal, with low publishing fees, that may be quite legitimate or may be a scam.
It is true that it can be difficult for someone not in the relevant field to tell the difference between different kinds of journals. I know the difference, since I've heard of the major journals in my field, I know many of the editors, etc. But a science journalist might have more trouble with it.
For fields like medicine, this can matter a lot. It's the same problem we see with SEO and the like: how, in the modern world, do we form a robust measure of reputation and reliability?