How Credible is Peer Review?

. . Peer-reviewed articles are no necessarily as credible as they are promoted to be.  Web-publishing and "open-access" facilitates the establishment of journals that indiscriminately publish papers.  When many of these sources charge the author to publish, they create an additional "conflict of interest." The more papers they accept; they more money they make.
. . A cottage industry has consequently grown up to provide so-called "peer-reviewed" certification.  Some journals are members of networks that republish articles so as to inflate statistics for authors, organizations, and politicians for private gain in in the process damage the credibility of real science.
. . In an article "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?" written by Science correspondent John Bohannon that describes his investigation of peer review among fee-charging open access journals. Between January and August 2013, he submitted fake scientific papers with obvious scientific flaws to 304 journals owned by many fee-charging open access publishers. Sixty percent of them accepted it.
. . Jeffrey Beall, a librarian for 23 years at Auraria Library, University of Colorado Denver, in Denver, Colorado., challenges predatory open access publishing on his website www.scholarlyoa.com. He provides a surprising and exceedingly long list of culprits.  Before referencing an article, check out the credibility of the source on Beall's compendium.