Predatory journals: A potential threat to the dissemination of open access knowledge

Abstract

Using qualitative analytical methods and a corpus of 50 unsolicited email messages sent by predatory publishers and collected over two years, this study sets out to investigate the main themes that prevail in predatory publishing to generate interest and convince authors for submitting their work. It also critically assesses deceptive editorial practices that may flout mainstream academic publication standards and put the quality of scientific research and the advantages of publishing open access at stake. The dataset was iteratively coded and qualitatively analysed by means of NVivo 11 Pro. Findings show that predatory discourse overuses boastful language and relies on self-promotional explicit references to high quality in order to persuade authors, and achieve their predatory aims. The last section discusses the implications of predatory journals for the dissemination of non-validated knowledge, the spread of misconduct and misdirection, and the impact on scholars aiming for visibility in a global academia.