Predatory journals enter biomedical databases through public funding

Predatory publishing is an international, cross disciplinary threat to the integrity of the scientific system • A worrying number of articles published in predatory journals are indexed in biomedical databases such as PubMed, the free access biomedical database maintained by the National Library of Medicine • Public funding, under open access policies, seems to be the mechanism by which articles are displayed in PubMed. • Providing guidance to publicly funded authors on how to publish their work in legitimate open-access venues will likely stop the wasteful use of public money to cover the fees of predatory journals.