Problematizing ‘predatory publishing’: A systematic review of factors shaping publishing motives, decisions, and experiences

This article systematically reviews recent empirical research on the factors shaping academics' knowledge about, and motivations to publish work in, so‐called ‘predatory’ journals. Growing scholarly evidence suggests that the concept of ‘predatory’ publishing’ – used to describe deceptive journals exploiting vulnerable researchers – is inadequate for understanding the complex range of institutional and contextual factors that shape the publication decisions of individual academics. This review identifies relevant empirical studies on academics who have published in ‘predatory’ journals, and carries out a detailed comparison of 16 papers that meet the inclusion criteria. While most start from Beall's framing of ‘predatory’ publishing, their empirical findings move the debate beyond normative assumptions about academic vulnerability. They offer particular insights into the academic pressures on scholars at the periphery of a global research economy. This systematic review shows the value of a holistic approach to studying individual publishing decisions within specific institutional, economic and political contexts. Rather than assume that scholars publishing in ‘questionable’ journals are naïve, gullible or lacking in understanding, fine‐grained empirical research provides a more nuanced conceptualization of the pressures and incentives shaping their decisions. The review suggests areas for further research, especially in emerging research systems in the global South.


INTRODUCTION
Within the field of scholarly publishing, there is a growing realization that the broad concepts of 'predatory' journals and 'predatory' publishing practices are no longer analytically helpful (Allman, 2019;Anderson, 2015;Eriksson & Helgesson, 2018).
Such concepts are freighted with normative judgements, setting up Manichean oppositions between 'good' and 'bad' publications.
The labelling, since Beall, of up to 20,000 journals as 'predatory' is simplistic, and an unhelpful mapping of a complex and increasingly diverse global academic publishing landscape. Eriksson and Helgesson (2018) suggest that the term 'predatory' is too broad, confuses misconduct with poor quality, and fails to focus on ways to support this developing scholarly landscape. Smart (2017) asks whether a phenomenon that appears to be 'predatory' might actually be the emergence of a new alternative publishing economy, partly driven by the rapid acceptance of Open Access publication models within emerging academic systems. Focusing solely on the publishers, she suggests, ignores 'what is happening in international academia that forces publication of more articles' (ibid, p. 104).
This paper begins with a short overview of the history of 'predatory' publishing (Beall, 2010) showing how the research literature has been dominated by attempts to define the characteristics of 'predatory' journals (Grudniewicz, 2019). The paper then systematically reviews (Kennedy, 2007) recent empirical research on the factors shaping academics' choices to publish in 'predatory' journals and uses the findings to suggest an agenda for future research, guided by the research question: What is the existing research evidence on academic authors' motivations for and experiences of publishing in so-called 'predatory' journals? The review's findings refute simplistic representations of academic ignorance or lack of knowledge, and the value of understanding the institutional pressures, drivers and incentives shaping individual strategies and decisions. Our recommendations for further research include a more holistic approach to understanding individual scholars' publications, experiences, motivations, and rationales.

The history of labelling publishers as 'predatory'
Scholarly concerns about the academic integrity of journals and peer review practices long predated the work of librarian Jeffrey Beall. In 1996, Jeffrey Sokal submitted a spoof article to a social theory journal to test the robustness of social science peer review (Ross, 1996;Sokal & Bricmont, 1998). Further stings strengthened this sense of unease (Bohannon, 2013;Djuric, 2015).
With the publication of 'Beall's list', the concept of 'predatory' publishing quickly entered academic discourse. Beall, a librarian at the University of Denver, Colorado, used the term to describe academic publications of questionable quality whose publishing practices were characterized by solicitation, high Article Publishing Charges (APCs), and little to no peer review (Beall, 2012). He began publishing a list of publishers on his Scholarly Open Access blog that he deemed 'predatory', with the numbers rising from 18 in 2011 to more than 920 in 2017. Other terms including 'questionable', 'hijacked', 'fake' and 'false' have been used to describe such publishers, but 'predatory' stuck, and has become by far the most common descriptor in public debate and academic papers.
Some argue that the rapid growth of Open Access since the late 1990s (Laakso et al., 2011) facilitated opportunities for predatory publishing (Beall, 2013). In the face of growing complaints about spam and solicitation e-mails from OA journals (Eysenbach, 2008), Peter Suber (2009) (Bell, 2019;Nobes & Harris, 2019;Nwagwu, 2015). Nwagwu (2016, p. 62) argues that the rise of open access publication in Africa is a direct response to 'the state of academic journals in Africa and the rest of the South before the open access regime', and that it plays a key role in addressing 'local' problems, making scholarship visible and available to all.
Beall remains a highly controversial figure within the field of scholarly publishing (Crawford, 2014;Esposito, 2013). He took a particular dislike to the Open Access journal movement, claiming that the movement was 'anti-corporatist', and sought to deny the freedom of the press to companies it disagrees with (Beall, 2013 and publishers (296) on both lists. This suggests that either some journals are erroneously classified, or, more likely, that a 'grey zone' exists in which journals have some characteristics that meet both sets of criteria. The quality of peer review was vaguely defined and therefore difficult to assess (Strinzel et al., 2019).
Despite this controversy, the 'p-word' continues to be widely used within debates about scholarly publishing. This discourse is often perpetuated by op-eds and commentaries warning readers of the dangers of publishing in the 'wrong' journals (Grudniewicz, 2019), often published alongside the main research paper (Cobey et al., 2018, Cobey et al., 2019. Efforts to define and demarcate 'predatory' publishing continue. These are actively promoted by the major biomedical and scientific journals. Nature sponsored a 2019 'summit' of researchers and publishers to come up with a definitive definition of 'predatory' publishing (Cukier et al., 2020). The result: 'predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices' (Grudniewicz, 2019). The definition sustains the existing normative assumptions. While the participants at this summit recognized the limitations of the concept, they agreed that 'changing an already established term would likely be confusing to the scientific community' (Cukier et al., 2020, p. 4).
Sociological critiques, such as that of Bell (2017) and Allman (2019), also problematize the 'predatory' journal label. For Bell, attention to these publishers' (exaggerated) profits and the supposed 'victimization' of researchers 'is a serious oversimplification of a much more complicated issue ' (2017, p. 659). Bell instead suggests that these journals might be viewed as 'parodies', as they blur the lines between 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate' journals. Allman (2019) argues for seeing these journals as redistributing resources, techniques and expertise, and even as a force that can 'disrupt exploitation' (2019, p. 423). As authors, we share this discomfort with the normative academic discourse. We are not alone, and there has been a good deal of critical discussion of the concept of 'predation' in this journal and elsewhere. Our aim is to go beyond critique and counter-critique. Rather than attempt a critical discourse analysis, we felt it was important to systematically review original empirical research on the factors shaping scholarly publishing decisions in what have been characterized as 'predatory' journals.

Beyond ascriptions of scholarly ignorance
Early research studies suggested that those publishing in so-called 'predatory' journals were more likely to be based in the global South, including India, China and various parts of Africa. Shen and Björk (2015) found that, in total, three quarters of the authors in their extensive survey of predatory publications were from Africa and Asia. Xia et al. (2015) identified four geographical clusters of 'predatory' publishers (Nigeria, India, the UK and the USA) but also concluded that most were 'young and inexperienced researchers from developing countries' (ibid, p. 1406). They went on to suggest that the 'economic and sociocultural conditions in these developing countries have contributed to different patterns of authorship. Xia et al. (2015) sought to try and describe these conditions in some depth, but others continue to interpret these practices as the result of academic ignorance and lack of knowledge (Panjikaran & Mathew, 2020). Kingori and Gerrets (2019) question the perceived 'geographies of authenticity' that lie behind these assumptions, suggesting that 'perceptions of what is real or fake' are shaped by Northern attitudes about researchers in the 'Global South' (ibid, p. 382).
The assumption that so-called 'predatory' publishers solely target early career researchers in the global south is challenged by more recent work. Researchers from all over the world publish in emerging or non-mainstream journals, with one recent study noting that scholars in both India and the USA are substantial contributors to 'predatory' journals' (Cobey, 2017;Cohen et al., 2019).
A growing body of research explores the publication motivations and experiences of academic researchers more broadly. This work shows how particular academic cultures and institutional incentives shape publishing decisions. Examples include detailed research into South Africa's system of financial rewards to scholars who publish and its distorting impact on academic cultures (Muller, 2017;Snowball & Shackleton, 2018;Tomaselli, 2018), the tiered payments made to China's scholars for publishing in internationally indexed journals (Xu, 2019), the impact of ranking systems in Brazil (Perlin, Imasato, & Borenstein, 2018), the attitudes of Nigerian scholars to low-cost 'local' journals (Omobowale, Akanle, Adeniran, & Adegboyega, 2014) and Colombian academics' decisions to publish in 'non-mainstream' Spanish-language journals for teaching and personal development purposes (Chavarro, Tang, & Ràfols, 2017). The purpose of this systematic review is to survey this work, and in so doing to move the scholarly debate on from a normative focus on defining, classifying and judging 'predatory' publishing practices. The review's focus on the evidence about the perspectives of researchers (and also, in two cases, journal editors) puts into question the dominant consensus that 'vulnerable' authors are being exploited and preyed upon by powerful commercial journals. The review summarizes and distils the main findings from this work, and makes a number of recommendations for further research. • Papers examining awareness of 'predatory' publishing but not reasons for choosing to publish in such journals • Papers that are not evidence-based (e.g. commentaries, editorials)

Scope of the review and search terms
In the third round of filtering the 18 papers were read in full.
It became clear that not all focused on experiences of reasons for publishing in 'predatory' journals. Three focused on publishing in, or knowledge of, open access journals and made only marginal mention of 'predatory' journals in terms of awareness. One was a literature review rather than empirical research. These were eliminated to leave a total of 14 remaining papers. In reading these 18 papers, we also took note of other potentially relevant studies included in the reference lists and not captured in the initial literature search (9 papers) and downloaded and read these. Of the nine, only one was relevant. This left a result of 15 papers. Finally, an additional paper that appeared in our background reading but was not captured in the literature search as it used the term 'non-mainstream' as a synonym for 'predatory', was included, for a final total of 16 papers. Please see Fig. 1 for an illustration of the article filtering process and Table 1 summarising the characteristics of the 16 papers.
The final 16 papers were then read, discussed and tabulated by both authors. They analysed and compared the findings of each study, focusing on knowledge about the publishing process and the key factors underlying an individual researcher's decision to publish their work.
In addition, editorials and op-eds were identified and quantified within the initial unduplicated results in order to understand the composition of the literature on 'predatory' publishing. This category included editorial notes and statements on 'predatory' publishing, opinions and commentaries, and news articles in publications like Times Higher Education and Nature reporting on 'predatory' publishing.

Findings and emerging insights
More than half (394; 57%) of the 686 title-filtered results on 'predatory' publishing consisted of brief commentaries/editorials in natural/medical science journals describing 'predatory' publishing and advising authors on how to avoid such journals. Common phrases in these publications included 'beware', 'what you need to know', 'threat', 'caution', and 'problem'. In general, these publications were found in journals in the STEM fields (particularly natural, biomedical, and engineering disciplines) as well as library science or publishing journals; there were very few results from social science or humanities. This demonstrates how the discourse around so-called 'predatory' publishing is perpetuated across the sciences, as well as the potential for a conflict of interest, given the gatekeeping role played by established journals.
While no time restrictions were set in conducting the literature search, all 686 title-filtered papers on 'predatory' publishing were published after 2011. This shows that a whole new field of knowledge was opened up by Beall, as the term was simply not used before 2011. Most of the existing empirical studies tended to assess the prevalence of so-called 'predatory' journals or citations of 'predatory' journals in a particular field, or the extent of overlap between journals on black and whitelists, and how these lists have changed over time.
This remainder of this section begins with an overview of the included papers and their characteristics, including the methodologies they employed. It then discusses the main findings, which are grouped into four categories: (1) motivations: institutional and national contexts, (2) knowledge of academic publishing practices, (3) editors, and (4) conceptualizing 'predatory' publishing.
The final review corpus of 16 includes 10 papers published in the fields of librarianship and scholarly publishing, as well as the USA. One focuses solely on the experiences of Danish researchers (Shaghaei et al., 2018). This distribution and the findings that emerge demonstrate two things: that more empirical research is being carried out in the global South on the factors shaping academic publishing practices, and that an attention to specific national/regional contexts is important.
Fourteen of the 16 articles carry out surveys of academics, either via e-mail or online. Survey response rates varied significantly, from 54% (Bagues, Sylos-Labini, & Zinovyeva, 2019) down to 10% (Alrawadieh, 2020). In several cases the respondent population is sizeable, perhaps because of the nationality or perceived institutional legitimacy of the researcher team. For example, 480 of the 2,000 India-based scholars approached by Seethapathy et al. (2016) completed surveys, as did 580 Italian early career scholars (out of 1,080) approached by Bagues et al. (2019). None of the 16 were assessed and filtered on methodological grounds for potential bias. This would have been difficult given the range of methods. Some draw general conclusions from FIGURE 1 Flow chart of article filtering process. also identified and sent a survey on response strategies, and 17 responded. The countries with the most authors were USA, Nigeria, Taiwan, Malaysia, Turkey, and India, and 59% of the articles were never cited. Although ECRs were more likely to publish in predatory journals, evidence suggested that some experienced researchers also publish in these journals. The survey analysis revealed 4 key reasons for publishing in predatory journals: (1) pressure for publication (for promotion, etc.), (2) lack of awareness, (3) high submission and rejection rates in legitimate journals, and (4)  'When asked about factors that influenced their decision to submit to the selected journal, participants noted academic and professional factors (e.g. publishing pressure, for tenure), factors related to the journal (fit of paper with journal, perception of quality), factors related to the paper published (difficulty in publishing elsewhere due to low originality of the research, previous rejections), desire to disseminate research, invitation from the journal, recommendation from a colleague or personal factors (lack of mentorship, lack of knowledge, personal motivations to publish). In addition to general publishing pressure, seven respondents (8.5%) noted that they had to publish as part of degree requirements or did so to support the CV of a student' (4). Notably, most researchers believed they received substantial feedback from the journals. 'Of the individuals, 59.7% admitted that they were forced to publish articles on the part of their professors that sometimes led them to plagiarize and write a wishywashy paper to submit and receive the term grade' (8). Supervisors thus perpetuated publish or perish pressure (symbolic violence). Participants identified high impact factor, quick publication, and low fees as most important qualities of journals, and those who published in predatory journals chose to due to fast publication, superficial peer review and low fees. Further, most universities do not provide enough support for research but do link promotion to publishing history. Reasons authors selected journals included e-mail invitations, familiarity with the journal, and prior (prepredatory) reputation. All authors reported peer review of 'average' quality with publication time ranging from 1 to 3 months. Two of the four reviewers were not aware they were listed as reviewers for the journal, but the other two were satisfied with the reviewing process. All four editors were aware that they were listed as editors and were selected through a review of their experiences.
Omobowale et al. (2014) Nigeria (publishing often in local journals, difficulty accessing indexed journals, pressure to publish internationally) 'The primary focus of this article is the context of foreign paid publishing in Nigeria as a dimension of peripheral scholarship and academic dependency' (668) In-depth interviews with 30 academics in social sciences/ humanities and science, and 8 key informant interviews. Data was analysed via content analysis. 'Specifically, the spread of patronage has continued to be bolstered due to four primary reasons: first, previous successful utilization by academics of such sub-standard paid-for foreign journals to achieve promotion; second, the desire of 'academics' who are 'weak' in empirical traditions to have rapid promotion; third, sheer ignorance on the part of prospective authors about the status of sub-standard foreign paid journals; and fourth, the acceptance of these pay-to-publish international journals without adequate scrutiny by the A&PCs' (670-71). Some of the excerpts also suggest a spectrum of sub-standard paid-for journals. Mixed methods-questionnaire (109 participants) + interviews with 32 participants from Egypt who had published in journals mentioned within Beall's list. Results suggest that most participants appear unaware of predatory journals and are used to pay to publish. In selecting Arabic journals, decisions were based on journal rank assigned by promotion board, but English journals selected for publishing cost and speed. Further, 'interviews revealed that many participants tried to publish in indexed journals. However, the success rate in publishing was very low, which led them to search for an easier alternative to publish' (228). Most participants were happy with journal choices, so long as the promotion board accepted them.
Yeoh, Cazan, Zaib, Muss, and Jacic (2017) Developing Asian countries and Europe 'This study reports on the experiences of researchers in publishing their research papers, their encounters with these questionable journals, and their perceptions on them, and we will focus on how the respondents manage to navigate through the challenges of predatory publishing' (56) Questionnaire (open-ended) sent to researchers in Asia and Europe (15 participants each) who had published in journals listed by Beall. Questionnaire was developed by the authors (three European, two Asian) based on their own experiences and research in predatory publishing. 10 participants used black lists and white lists to check journals before publishing, and 15 had published in journals on Beall's list. Participants believed that inexperience and desire to publish quickly were reasons to publish in predatory journals, though most of them had negative notions of these journals, characterizing them as 'fake' and business-oriented. Participants believed institutions needed to spread awareness through creating black and white lists and that researchers need to be more diligent. They also noted that 'personal lack of rigour, finding resources, lack of good journals and their high rejection rates and high fees of genuine open access journals' (64) were reasons why it was difficult to practice 'ethical publishing'. limited survey response rates, while others offer insightful analyses based on a few in-depth interviews. There may well be weaknesses in their research designs, leading to a risk of biased analysis. Most offer only limited accounts of the particular challenges of doing research in this sensitive area, such as lowresponse rates, selection bias, or sampling challenges. The experiences of Demir (2018) are telling. Of the 2,310 authors of supposed 'predatory/fake' journals that were approached to participate in a Skype interview, only six agreed: in the end none actually participated. We also learn little about the academic career stage of the respondents (e.g. how many are undergraduate or postgraduate students) and how this might shape what are perceived to be 'questionable' publishing decisions.

Motivations: Institutional and national contexts
These studies underscore the importance of understanding academic publishing decisions in the light of specific institutional or national incentives and expectations. Several go into detail on the role of incentives (monetary and promotion-based) in shaping publication decisions. In an increasing number of countries, a publication is a necessary condition for the award of the doctoral (and sometimes even Masters) degree. One study points to Iran's requirements that students publish their work in order to graduate (Ebadi & Zamani, 2018), another points to the willingness of Turkish universities to pay their staff for publications (Demir, 2018), while a third describes how the Ghanaian universities make publications a requirements for promotion (Atiso et al., 2019). All these papers demonstrate the pressures on early career researchers, be they staff or students. This pressure to develop a publication record drives journal demand and explains the rise in the volume of published research articles as well as the variability in quality control procedures among journals. The turn to 'international' open access publishers, which often offer low APCs and rapid publication cycles, is a straightforward way of meeting tenure requirements or bolstering a Curriculum Vitae. Respondents to Omobowale et al. (2014) describe the politicization of this process. These institutional requirements are partly designed to build research capacity and publication outputs, but can lead to unhealthy distortions and consequences for individual researchers. Decisions are also shaped by funding incentives: there is a growing literature on academic gaming and rent-seeking created by publication subsidies (Tomaselli, 2018;Mouton & Valentine, 2017;Muller, 2017). These are some of the consequences of being largely excluded from a publication system a dominated by the disciplinary interests of academics based in the global North.
Many of the 16 articles focus on the particular publication challenges faced by researchers in 'emerging' research universities (Bawa, 2009) or countries on the margins of the 'global science system' (Marginson, ). But this phenomenon is not solely a Southern response to geopolitical marginality or the gatekeeping practices of 'Northern' academia (Collyer, 2016). Shaghaei et al. (2018) describe how early career researchers in Denmark also felt under similar pressures to publish, and made decisions partly based on the speed of publication, perceptions of impact, OA, and readership, rather than on existing knowledge of a journal or an awareness of its reputation. The challenges of academic precarity and 'impact factor fundamentalism' are shared globally even if the structural inequalities and exclusions are felt much more strongly on the peripheries. This is supported by existing literature on 'mainstream' publishers. Memon (2019) notes that 'predatory' practices also happen in established journals, while Eve and Priego (2017) discuss the harms caused by existing academic publishing cultures.

Knowledge about academic publishing
The papers vary widely in the depth of their analyses of academics' knowledge about the publishing process. Their interpretations partly depend on whether psychological or sociological explanations are favoured. Cohen et al. (2019) detect a broad lack of awareness among editors and authors of the concept of so-called 'predatory' publishing. Kurt (2018) suggest that 70% of researchers (mostly from the developing world) were unaware of the concept.
Drawing on local knowledge but also local prejudices, Omobowale et al. (2014) refer judgementally to the 'sheer ignorance' of some Nigerian authors. Atiso et al. (2019), on the other hand, claim that Ghana's academics are aware of the difference between legitimate and so-called 'predatory' journals, but that the latter 'take advantage of scholars' frustrations by offering a quick and easy path to publication (as opposed to the long, tortuous and uncertain journey of traditional publishing)' (ibid, p. 279). This could also be understood as a lack of tolerance for the slowness, inequities and unpredictability of peer review in an academic culture already defined by gatekeeping and patronage. Some researchers reported perceptions of themselves as less well trained and resourced, or as conducting research that would not appeal to Western journals. This was exacerbated by their sense of lack of English skills.

Editors
Only two articles investigate the views of editors of journals (Cohen et al., 2019;Oermann et al., 2016). The former found that 40% of these editors had no knowledge that their journal was viewed as being of questionable quality, while the latter notes that half of the reviewers surveyed were unaware that their name was even associated with the journals. This suggests that many editorial boards have very limited engagement with the journals that bear their names, especially in the humanities and social sciences. Some are unable to commit the necessary time, while a number of journals have very little editorial direction.

Conceptualizations of 'predatory' publishing
Twelve of the 16 articles used Beall's list of 'predatory' publishers to inform their research design. In each case, the research team started by identifying journals listed as potentially predatory by Beall, and then went on to contact authors of papers published in those journals. This approach makes it difficult for these authors to then question the associated deficit assumptions about individuals' naivety or lack of knowledge. Three papers use the term 'predator' but do not use Beall's listing of journals to inform the survey sample and research design (Omobowale et al., 2014;Atiso et al., 2019;Ebadi and Zamani, 2019). Only one paper (Chavarro et al., 2017)

Summary
This corpus of 16 articles offers a rich set of empirical cases that support more general theorizations of knowledge flows within a global knowledge system (Collyer, 2016;Kie n c, 2017;Sidaway, 2016 A final challenge for the review was the value-laden connotations of academic vulnerability conveyed by the term 'predatory publisher'. In some articles this led to a contradiction between their initial conceptualization of 'predation' and their empirical findings. However, a study's adoption of the predatory term does not necessarily reflect the views or values of authors given the term's widespread adoption within the research community. We also brought our own positionality to this research, and knew we needed to be explicit about our views about the normative values connoted by the concept. There is a role for empirical research in this area adopting a more self-reflective and less judgemental position about the factors shaping publishing decisions.

CONCLUSION
The results of this systematic review are revealing. They demonstrate how few empirical studies have explored the factors shaping authors' motivations for publishing in so-called 'predatory' journals. At the same time, the number of academic commentaries condemning 'predatory' publishing continues to grow. Consistent with prior reviews (Cobey et al., 2019), our initial set of 749 papers included more than 350 papers (57% of the total) that were commentaries and editorials. These tend to perpetuate a discourse of caution and fear, warning that so-called 'predatory' journals are deceptive, exploit inexperienced researchers and publish poor-quality research.
The corpus of 16 papers allows a rich comparative analysis of the different institutional environments shaping academic practice on the peripheries of the global science system. By attending to local geographical and institutional contexts, and drawing on the authors' own knowledge of these university cultures, the 16 articles offer a complex portrait of the publication incentives and pressures on individuals, and the ways in which 'emerging' (Meneghini, 2012) or 'non-mainstream' (Chavarro et al., 2017) journals play a valuable role for knowledge production and dissemination. Read comparatively, the studies offer rich insight into the considerations taken into account by researchers in choosing where and how to publish. These include previous experiences of rejection, finances, knowledge of the field, career requirements, and other contextual considerations. Publishing decisions need to be understood less as the result of individual predilections than as situated within a system of incentives, pressures and expectations.
The empirical evidence summarized here suggests that many academics knowingly turn to 'non-mainstream' journals to advance their careers, cognisant of the challenges they face (English language proficiency, slow publication cycles, a lack of conceptual capital, 'Northern' disciplinary gatekeeping) when publishing within existing journals. Sidaway points to the growth in these journals as directly related to 'issues of hegemony' and the 'uneven geographies of power' (Sidaway, 2016, p. 391 This review demonstrates the importance of conducting research that uses empirical findings and data to develop new conceptual understandings and explanations of academic publishing practices. It signals the importance of moving beyond deficit theories of academic 'ignorance' in this area, and of developing more holistic analyses of academic practice within institutional contexts and environments, as well as approaches the acknowledge the asymmetric circulation of knowledge within the global science system. It highlights a number of areas for further research: • Comparative surveys and interviews with scholars in different national systems (especially those on the margins of the global science system) who have chosen to publish in nonmainstream journals. This would help to understand the range of pressures, expectations and incentives placed on individual scholars, and how these might change over time or over the course of an academic career. A Masters student who needs a publication quickly in order to graduate or apply for an academic post might make a different choice at a subsequent career stage. There is insufficient attention to the processual dimensions of publishing across an academic career and the timing of individual choices in most accounts of predation.
• Interviews with journal publishers and editors offer an invaluable complement to the perspectives of individual academics.
Their views allow a more nuanced understanding of the symbiotic relationship between journals, authors, readers and publishers, and supplement attempts to classify and accredit journals based on supposedly objective criteria (e.g. numbers of articles, regularity of publication, level of peer review etc.).
• Extended country-specific case studies would facilitate a comparative mapping of evolving publication choices and practices in the context of institutional and national incentives and regulatory environments. Individual choices and publication trends are often driven by university regulations or requirements, such as making publication a requirement for graduation, or the introduction of a list of accredited journals.
• Longitudinal studies that tracked journal quality and academic reputation over time would complement snapshot assessments of quality. Many journals struggle initially and may be forced to publish poor-quality work, until they have a track record that allows them to apply for accreditation, to be indexed or included on whitelists. Funding support, visibility and institutional support all shape these reputational journeys.
Again, detailed case studies would offer further insight.
• The development of conceptual frameworks that go beyond 'dependency theory' explanations to understand the complex transnational flows of academic knowledge and how these link to local institutional contexts and academic relationships to shape the academic career.