Studying ‘predatory publishing’ in the context of research evaluation: conceptual and methodological challenges

Abstract

Over the past years, the phenomenon of ‘predatory publishing’ has undergone fundamental changes raising pressing methodological and conceptual challenges for its study, particularly in the context of research evaluation. The complex constellation of commercial, evaluative, and scholarly actors and logics now involved necessitates an interdisciplinary, geographically-diverse, and collaborative approach to studying scholarly – and especially ‘predatory’ – publishing. In this piece, we outline four key conceptual and methodological dimensions that, we argue, scholars must account for when studying this phenomenon. Firstly, the constantly changing dynamics of who and what constitutes predatory publishers and practices. Secondly, disentangling the complex relationships between evaluation and practice, accounting methodologically for the myriad factors that influence these ties, and recognising that scholarly practices are not a unidirectional effect of evaluations. Thirdly, scholars must recognise that evaluation regimes are embedded in distinct political economies of academia and that the notion of predatoriness is not universal but culturally, methodologically, and institutionally contingent. Finally, the common practice of using quantitative analyses alone to study questionable publishing practices risks reproducing existing biases and overlooking structural dynamics, and thus mixed approaches incorporating qualitative methods are necessary to ensure a nuanced understanding of the topic. We argue that scholars’ approach to ‘predatory publishing’ crucially shapes what empirical dynamics are observed, and consequently call for scholars to take a holistic approach to studying this phenomenon.