  We comment on a recent article by Laakso et al. (arXiv:2008.11933 [cs.DL]),
in which the disappearance of 176 open access journals from the Internet is
noted. We argue that one reason these journals may have vanished is that they
were predatory journals. The de-listing of predators from the Directory of Open
Access Journals in 2014 and the abundance of predatory journals and awareness
thereof in North America parsimoniously explain the temporal and geographic
patterns Laakso et al. observed.
