[jklein11]

Do articles that are published in journals meet some sort of specification? If you find a study that was published in a journal do you automatically find it more credible than a random article you find on the internet? If so, what has the journal done to achieve that credibility.

The way I see it, the value academic journals provide is to verify that the study is from a reputable source. It's not the distribution of the articles that you are paying for, it is the curation.

Something like Sci-Hub would not be able to exist without the publications first verifying that the studies are legitimate.

I know very little about the world of academic publishing, so I'm not sure if my take on this situation is totally off.