As the world’s population grew, the number of scholars increased in the academia which forced scholarly organizations to increase the number of research publications in their journals. The rise of Internet in the 1990s worsened this problem as policies regarding how readers could access publications changed. Some of the conniving entrepreneurs took advantage of this issue by creating journals that could be accessible to members of the public for free of charge, while forcing authors to pay for publication fees and not giving them proper benefits for publishing their work.
Adapted from University of Central Missouri