Yes,
“There is an inherent bias towards (an address in) developing and underdeveloped countries, which are perceived to be of low standard and of poor quality”;
but no,
“This bias itself precludes a level playing field and a fair competition based only on merit”.
As Jeffrey mentioned above ““Leveling the playing field” is not a justification for lying or hiding information from people”.
First, most articles in these open-access, low standard journals, come from developing and underdeveloped countries. Just because these countries need a place to increment the curricula of its academics. There’s no reason to lie just to attract american or european articles. This is nonsense. They are trying to attract dishonest or ingenuous people.
There is a large number of honest journals based on developing and underdeveloped countries, with the purpose of publishing research of regional relevance. Some of them eventually receive an impact factor. In these cases, a large number of papers coming from other regions of the world are submitted … without lies or hidden information.
This is the case of Scielo-based journals (Latin American, mostly brazilian jounals) or Research4Life (Hinari etc) journals.
