Dive Brief:
- A recent article in The New York Times highlights a growing industry around "fake academe" — which consists of booming business for fraudulent scholarly journals and conferences.
- One India-based company promises a 24-hour review and acceptance process completed by "experts," but the NYT investigation found the entire operation is a scam to collect publication and conference fees from unsuspecting scholars.
- Jeffrey Beall, a tenured librarian at the University of Colorado Denver, has created a website tracking "predatory open access scholarly publishers" in the field; the list has gone from 18 to 923 in the last five years.
Dive Insight:
With increasing pressure to publish and present papers via scholarly outlets, professors have become prime targets for such a predatory scheme. Much like the challenge of helping students identify fake news, departments may find themselves providing guidance to faculty on proper vetting of academic outlets.
But beyond this lies the question of how tenure and promotion should be considered to begin with. In a climate increasingly focused on student outcomes and support for marginalized students, should teaching and service-oriented tasks be weighted more heavily than academic productivity? And with persistent budget cuts equating to fewer faculty on payroll, is there really sufficient time for scholars to complete research and publications, or should the "publish or perish" model be re-evaluated?