Predatory publishing

As a lifetime academic who was a first-generation student in the late 1960s era in U.S.A. higher education, I didn't have a clue about how faculty researched, wrote, and got published. In retrospect, even as I drove more deeply into an academic career, obtaining masters and Ph.D. degrees, I had no one to help me understand how to develop a research agenda, build support through dutiful graduate students who would advance my work, and publish in ways that brought citations and therefore reputational advantage to my ideas. Nevertheless, over 40+ years, I made a modest contribution to the literature of student affairs, leadership studies, and higher education internationalization but could I have had more impact?

My own background reflects naiveté that may be similar, but different in other ways, to graduate students who strive to get published today. Australia has now recognized the predatory practices of publishers who solicit unknowing young scholars to publish in their journals, some for a fee. Australia's strategy is to limit recognition of published works based on quality thresholds that are determined by discipline.

To be sure, a solution to the profusion of publication opportunities that result in research and ideas being lost in obscurity is required. I'm less sure if narrowing the window of opportunity is the best solution, especially if young academics are left to fend for themselves in a competitive environment that has often been characterized as "publish or parish." Higher education needs new and different models in order not to perpetuate the cognitive privilege of seasoned and coached academics whose pathway to publishing is both more clear and "greased" with networks and intellectual nepotism.