Thanks Tanya for your message. I agree. Some of these journals publish a low quality level of papers and they do this to receive more money. Unfortunately, some open access journals do the business instead of scientific activities.

PLOS ONE is certainly a model for high-quality open access journals. The biggest issue I see with the increase in Open Access journals is the massive increase in predatory journals which have arisen. I get several emails a week soliciting publications in these bogus journals. To me, this is frightening as it increases the risk for misinformation to be spread. I would prefer to see efforts made to help reputable journals become more Open Access, rather than the creation of these new, low-quality, scam journals.

In reading this, I’m thinking that there are always many sides to a story. For Ana’s lab boss putting his name on her work, I would assume that in most situations this is completely justified. While journals differ slightly in their requirements for authorship contribution, many PIs readily meet the criteria because they have likely been the ones that: obtained funding for the project (even if it was a grant specifically given to a PhD student, or post doc, the mentors assisted with this, and the mentorship they provide is part of the scoring criteria for most jr investigator grants); provided expert insight on study design; analysis and interpretation of the data; and drafting/critical revision of the manuscript. Just another view on the situation!