Abstract

Scholars engage with so-called predatory or questionable journals for many different reasons. Among the contributing factors are monetary payoffs and the possibility of fast track faculty positions or promotion. It has been claimed that fast tracking promotion by using predatory publication outlets is an increasing problem. This study analyses the authors publishing in predatory journals with a focus on authors repeatedly publishing in predatory journals. In this study, a set of so-called predatory journals indexed in Scopus was used. The data included 243,396 authorships of articles and reviews published from 2004 to 2021 by 169,742 unique authors. This study finds that 55% of the authors publish in one of these journals only once, 34.5% publish 2–5 times in these journals, 6.3% publish in them 6–10 times, and 4.2% publish more than 10 times. Furthermore, this study finds that the mean and median number of articles and reviews is correlated with the number of articles and reviews in predatory journals. Finally, authors publishing in predatory journals do not confine themselves to these journals and also publish in validated journals as well.

Key points

• An analysis of publications shows that half the authors have only published once in a predatory journal.
• The authors with most publications in predatory journals also show the highest publication volume in total.
• Articles in predatory journals represent 15%–25% of authors’ Scopus-indexed articles and reviews.