I'm a graduate student with, so far, one published article in a peer-reviewed journal. Since the article came out, I've been receiving increasing amounts of "academic e-mail spam" from people wanting me to attend their conferences, publish in their (usually pay-to-publish) journals or order research supplies from them. (The latter kind tend to be the easiest to filter out — even though my field is biomathematics, it doesn't mean I have any use for frozen mouse embryos whatsoever.)
Some time ago, an e-mail turned up asking me to review a manuscript, conveniently attached to the message, for a pay-to-publish open access journal in a somewhat related field. Googling for the name of the publisher, I found them described as e.g. "a borderline vanity press".
At the time, I wasn't really sure how to react. On one hand, I could think of several reasons to just go ahead and review the manuscript:
The main complaint about the publisher seems to be that their peer review is insufficient — a claim supported by the fact that they seem to be picking random grad students as reviewers. Still, given that they're at least making some effort at peer review, surely I should encourage them in that? After all, if nobody agreed to review manuscripts for them, how could they ever improve their review process?
Declining to review the manuscript might deprive the authors — who, if the journal is indeed a "scam", are presumably the victims here — of useful feedback. Surely they at least deserve that much return for their time, efforts and money?
Also, if the manuscript did get published in a scientific journal, no matter how dubious or marginal, it would enter the body of scientific knowledge, and might be used as a reference by others. Given that, surely it is my duty as a scientist to try, given the opportunity, to do what I can to ensure that it is at least correct?
Still, despite these arguments, I initially found the idea of willingly responding to spam to be deeply unsettling at a fundamental, almost visceral level. Also, I felt concerned that, by doing volunteer work for a possibly unethical publisher, I'd be supporting their business model and perhaps lending them an undeserved appearance of legitimacy. In particular, given that the subject of the manuscript wasn't that close to my own field, I worried that it might have errors that I would not be capable of spotting, and that, even if I made this clear in my review, the publisher might still use the review to support the publication of a possibly flawed article.
(Edit: Just to be clear, I wasn't worried that they'd reveal the names of reviewers, just that, even if I was the only one who sent back a review, they might still use it to claim that "yes, the paper was peer reviewed.")
In the end, the decision was actually rather easy: after a cursory glance at the manuscript, it became clear that there was no way I could support its publication as written, especially given that large fragments of it were clearly plagiarized, and I wrote back to the journal stating as much.
However, if I ever receive a similar request again (and I assume I probably will, sooner or later), what do you think I should do with it?
Answer
You have no obligation to accept reviews from any journals.
In the long term, you should of course accept review tasks, since the review system is built on everyone doing their part in return for the reviews you get on your own papers. But if you think the journal is not serious, there is no need to waste your time on a review.
The problem will lie in identifying what is real and what is not. Apart from researching the journal yourself, as you have done, you should also ask more senior scientists of their opinion.
Edit: Following up on the request for additional input on whether reviewing for dubious journals could be harmful in some way:
I think the greatest risk is that you may provide legitimacy to a journal that is not legitimate. It may be harmful to you if the journal in some way represents, let's say, creationism, in that you may become associated with something you really do not support.
I do not see any clear problem for the authors whose paper you review. Their greatest problem, assuming they are common scientists, should be that they submitted it there in the first place.
Personally, I delete all e-mails with requests from journals I do not know of. I know the journals in my field, and the new serious journals that have sprung up have a firm basis in the community, so they are also "known". I do check on some of these unknown journals occasionally, out of curiosity, and I particularly check the sort of papers they publish and the editors of the journal. That usually tells me if the journal is of interest.
Some of these journals may be legitimate, but they end up being extremely narrow regionally in terms of the origin of their authors and editors, and thus probably also their readership. A new journal is a difficult thing to get accepted unless you start with a wide base in the community, so some of these journals may be very legitimate but still have to prove themselves somehow. The problem is how to distinguish good from bad, and that is truly not easy in many cases.
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