Evidence Engines: Common Rhetorical Features of Fraudulent Academic Articles

Abstract

Predatory publishers deliver neither the editorial oversight, nor the peer review of legitimate publishers, and benefit from those whose positions require academic publications. These publishers also provide a home for conspiracy theorists and pseudoscience promoters, as their lack of scrutiny offers fraudulent academic research articles a veneer of scholarly credibility. While most predatory journals were designed to dupe researchers, the fraudulent articles they often publish are designed to be found by members of the public, and their accessibility ensures that unlike legitimate research, they are likely to be employed as evidence by those seeking evidence. While studies have examined the common features of predatory journals, their emails, and their websites, this essay situates fraudulent academic articles in posttruth discourse, offers a taxonomy of illegitimate research articles, and highlights their common rhetorical features, in the hopes that the concepts discovered here can further contribute to pedagogy and public understanding.