Predatory journals enter biomedical databases through public funding

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