The Market for Lemons: How predatory journals make a new quality journal unsustainable for business?
Nobel prize winner George Akerlof described how the quality of goods is degraded due to information asymmetry between buyers and sellers, leaving only “lemons” behind. Lemon is a vehicle with several manufacturing defects that buyers don’t know while buying. The mechanism: Suppose buyers can’t distinguish between a “peach” (high-quality car) and a “lemon”. A dishonest seller can sell the “lemon” saying it as “peach” at a price that is the average value of lemon and peach. So, in the market of lemon and peach, selling lemon will continue and sellers holding peaches will start leaving the market (as buyers can’t distinguish between lemon and peach, and lemon will have a lower price than that of peach). It produces a positive feedback loop because, when enough sellers of peaches leave the market, willingness to pay for buyers will decrease (as the average quality of cars on market decreased) leading to even more sellers of peach to leave the market. Due to lemons, or predatory journals, n...