Academic journals: Are open access article publishing charges enabling a dark side?

"For some years the major commercial publishers of academic journals have offered authors the option to purchase open access status for their academic research articles [1]. This is now an established and respected option, but in recent times a 'dark side' has emerged. The term 'dark side' was used by Declan Butler [2], in a Nature article with the subheading, 'The explosion in open-access publishing has fuelled the rise of questionable operators', and comments on the concept of 'predatory publishers': ... the goal of predatory open-access publishers is to exploit this model by charging the fee without providing all the expected publishing services. [2] The term 'predatory publishers' was drawn from Jeffrey Beall, who in another Nature article drew a contrast between the early pioneers in open access publishing, who established many benefits, and the more recent appearance of 'predatory publishers' [3]: Then came predatory publishers, which publish counterfeit journals to exploit the open-access model in which the author pays. These predatory publishers are dishonest and lack transparency. They aim to dupe researchers, especially those inexperienced in scholarly communication. They set up websites that closely resemble those of legitimate online publishers, and publish journals of questionable and downright low quality. [3] ... Perhaps the most remarkable commentary is due to Science correspondent John Bohannon [8], who during 2013 conducted a large scale "sting" operation in which he submitted fake scientific papers to 304 journals each published by a different fee-charging, open access publisher. Published in Science in 2013 [4], and also receiving its own Wikipedia article [9], John Bohannon's investigation showed that "60% of them are not doing peer review" [8], because each 'paper was designed with such grave and obvious scientific flaws that it should have been rapidly rejected by editors and peer reviewers, but 60% of the journals accepted it' [9].  Bohannon's article [4] ignited a brief but passionate debate during October 2013, illustrated (for example) by Peter Suber's 'New 'sting' of weak open-access journals' [10] and Ernesto Priego's 'Predatory journals and defective peer review are general academic problems... ' [11]. According to my reading, the debate centred mainly upon whether Bohannon's article was unfairly tarnishing open access journals that did maintain high standards, and upon perceptions of methodological deficiencies and ethical flaws in the research. Few correspondents gave any prominence to the circumstances of the authors who had their articles accepted by the journals in Bohannen's investigation, though he stated that it was prompted by an email detailing 'the publication woes of Aline Noutcha, a biologist at the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria' [4]. What prompts or misleads authors into submitting their research articles to a journal that may be characterised by Butler's [2] definition of predatory open-access publishers? Is it desperation about obtaining an acceptance from a better-established journal; or pressures to score a publication in an English language, international journal; or if seeking open access, a lack of funds to purchase OA from a better-established journal; or sophisticated deception by a predatory publisher? ..."