Does It Pay to Be Published in ‘Predatory’ Journals? - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"The Thompson Rivers business school has 'few incentives not to publish in predatory journals,' Mr. Pyne concludes in an article on his findings in last month’s Journal of Scholarly Publishing. Every faculty member promoted to full professor had been previously published in a predatory journal, and publication in such journals was positively correlated with income and the number of research awards received. In fact, it was being published in highly ranked journals that appeared to carry a price in terms of income, probably because meeting such journals’ standards consumed time that faculty members could have used to earn extra income from teaching, his article says.

Moreover, Mr. Pyne found, the faculty members most likely to have had articles published in predatory journals were those who had been best positioned to know better. All of the school’s full professors had been published in predatory journals, compared with more than two-thirds of associate and a tenth of assistant professors. Three-fourths of full-time, tenure-track professors with research responsibilities had had at least two articles published in predatory journals. Those who had crossed that line had done so, on average, just over four times."