Publishing in predatory tourism and hospitality journals: Mapping the academic market and identifying response strategies

Abstract

The exponential growth of open access publishing has sadly encouraged the emergence of numerous predatory publishers and journals harming the scientific community and threatening scholarly communication. While the issue has received some attention from the academic community in medical and applied sciences, much less work has been done within the realm of social sciences. Specifically, despite the gravity of predatory publishing as unethical practice and its negative effect on the progress and quality of tourism and hospitality research, empirical investigation on the topic remains very limited. The present study used a mixed method design combining data from 612 articles published in 13 potential tourism and hospitality predatory journals with data from two surveys drawing on authors’ experiences as well as tourism and hospitality most prolific scholars’ perceptions. The findings reveal that predatory journals are succeeding in targeting a wide range of researchers regardless of their career experience from both developed and developing countries. Lack of awareness of predatory journals, pressure for publication, and high rejection rates in legitimate journals were found to be the key motivations for publishing in predatory journals. Raising awareness of predatory journals and reconsidering tenure and promotion requirements were suggested as the best response strategies to curb predatory publishing. The study offers several theoretical and practical implications and proposes avenues for future research.