It even goes beyond the "soft" sciences. I many years ago when I was finishing my masters we had to submit an abstract on our masters thesis to a journal for publication. I had no intention of actually publishing this project and just chose the first journal that seemed to have an easy online submission process so I could get credit for the assignment. Oh boy, that opened the floodgates. To this day my university inbox (which I occasionally still check) is filled with "requests" for abstracts (of course you have to pay to get published) from dozens of different journals that seem to only exist online though you can pay again to get a paper version printed and sent to you so you can show all your colleagues what an important published researcher you are.
It even goes beyond the "soft" sciences.
Absolutely.
I would like the see Open Access journals take over. They may have some issues of their own, but at least it is not corrupt by design, and far more accessible.
You mean a publishing model where the authors pay to have their work published, is prone to corruption?
I'm shocked.
If journals required legitimate peer review, psychology and sociology publications would mostly disappear.
There's more profit in politics and fantasy, than hard science.