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Pseudo or perish: problematizing the ‘predatory’ in global health publishing

ABSTRACT In this paper, case story methodology is used to construct the narrative of a publisher of scholarly journals. Real-world examples are compiled within a single fictionalized narrative to enable identification of salient contextual features to help identify boundaries and points of difference between forms of pseudo and legitimate or credible scholarly publications. Moving beyond a distributional lens, Eric Hobsbawm’s theory of social banditry is contrasted with neoliberalism and applied to problematize the demonization of an array of publishing practices labeled as predatory. How some vehicles of open access publication come to be understood as exploitative within academe’s hierarchies of prestige can reflect forms of stigma and discrimination not wholly evident in status quo discourse regarding publication in scholarly journals. In the absence of ethnographic evidence, the case story methodology—itself a manifestation of pseudoscience—is found to be an adept method with which to consider the global health problem of predatory publishing.