Being a deliberate prey of a predator: Researchers’ thoughts after having published in predatory journal

A central question concerning scientific publishing is how researchersselect journals to which they submit their work, since the choice of publicationchannel can make or break researchers. The gold-digger mentalitydeveloped by some publishers created the so-called predatory journals thataccept manuscripts for a fee with little peer review. The literature claimsthat mainly researchers from low-ranked universities in developing countriespublish in predatory journals. We decided to challenge this claimusing the University of Southern Denmark as a case. We ran the Beall’s Listagainst our research registration database and identified 31 possibly predatorypublications from a set of 6,851 publications within 2015–2016. A qualitativeresearch interview revealed that experienced researchers from thedeveloped world publish in predatory journals mainly for the same reasonsas do researchers from developing countries: lack of awareness, speed andease of the publication process, and a chance to get elsewhere rejected workpublished. However, our findings indicate that the Open Access potentialand a larger readership outreach were also motives for publishing in OpenAccess journals with quick acceptance rates.