Introduction

Abstract

In the ‘Introduction,’ Amy Koerber lays the groundwork for understanding the complexities of the academic publishing landscape. Likening the scholarly knowledge production process to reality television, this chapter gives a glimpse at the elaborate tangle of players and scenarios academic authors need to navigate in order to publish their research. This chapter introduces the term “predatory publishing” and gives a brief overview of how the term entered the academic publishing scene, along with other relevant sources that explore the topic. The complex case of the publisher, MDPI, is shared to show how new publishers are disrupting the traditional academic publishing models and creating an environment where authors need to use a range of tools and techniques to ensure their work will be published and archived properly. This chapter also explains other potential pitfalls (e.g., fake peer review) that authors must be aware of, before presenting an argument that inclusivity and diversity must be included in discussions about equitable knowledge production distribution in the global flow of academic research. The chapter concludes with an overview of the rest of the chapters in the volume.