Demarcating spectrums of predatory publishing: Economic and institutional sources of academic legitimacy

The emergence of open access (OA) publishing has altered incentives and opportunities for academic stakeholders and publishers. These changes have yielded a variety of new economic and academic niches, including journals with questionable peer‐review systems and business models, commonly dubbed “predatory publishing.” Empirical analysis of Cabellʼs Journal Blacklist reveals substantial diversity in types and degrees of predatory publishing. While some blacklisted publishers produce journals with many severe violations of academic norms, “gray” journals and publishers occupy borderline or ambiguous niches between predation and legitimacy. Predation in academic publishing is not a simple binary phenomenon and should instead be perceived as a spectrum with varying types and degrees of illegitimacy. Conceptions of predation are based on overlapping evaluations of academic and economic legitimacy. High institutional status benefits publishers by reducing conflicts between—if not aligning—professional and market institutional logics, which are more likely to conflict and create illegitimacy concerns in downmarket niches. High rejection rates imbue high‐status journals with value and pricing power, while low‐status OA journals face “predatory” incentives to optimize revenue via low selectivity. Status influences the social acceptability of profit‐seeking in academic publishing, rendering lower‐status publishers vulnerable to being perceived and stigmatized as illegitimate.