This paper aims to unmask the inadequacy of the review process of a sample of fee-charging journals in economics. We submitted a bait-manuscript to 104 academic economic journals to test whether there is a difference in the peer-review process between Article Processing Charges (APC) journals and Traditional journals which do not require a publication fee. The submitted bait-article was based on completely made-up data, with evident errors in terms of methodology, literature, reporting of results, and quality of language. Nevertheless, about half of the APC journals fell in the trap. Their editors accepted the article in the journals and required to pay the publication fee. We conclude that the Traditional model has a more effective incentive-mechanism in selecting articles, based on quality standards. Otherwise, we confirm that the so-called “Predatory Journals” – i.e. academic journals which accept papers without a quality check – exploit the APC scheme to increase their profits. They are also able to enter whitelists (e.g. Scopus, COPE). Accordingly, poor-quality articles published on APC journals shed the light on the weakness of methodologies based on a mechanical inclusion of academic journals in scientific database indexes, succeeding in being considered for bibliometric evaluations of research institutions or scholars’ productivity.

本文旨在揭示经济学中收费期刊样本的评审过程的不足。我们向104种学术经济期刊提交了诱饵手稿，以测试文章处理费（APC）期刊和传统期刊之间的同行评审过程是否存在差异，这些期刊不需要出版费。提交的诱饵文章是基于完全伪造的数据，在方法，文献，结果报告和语言质量方面存在明显的错误。然而，大约一半的APC期刊陷入了陷阱。他们的编辑在期刊上接受了该文章，并需要支付出版费。我们得出结论，传统模式在基于质量标准的商品选择方面具有更有效的激励机制。否则，我们确认所谓的“掠夺性期刊”（即接受未经质量检查的论文的学术期刊）利用APC计划来增加其利润。他们还可以输入白名单（例如Scopus，COPE）。因此，在APC期刊上发表的质量低劣的文章揭示了基于将学术期刊机械地纳入科学数据库索引的方法论的弱点，从而成功地被用于研究机构或学者的生产率的文献计量评估。