Global Research Trends in Predatory Publishing: A Bibliometric and Topic Analysis

More than a decade has passed since researchers began discussing predatory publishing, one of the most unethical practices in academia. Nevertheless, few attempts have been made to provide a comprehensive overview of the research on predatory publishing. Therefore, this study conducted bibliometric and topic analysis on 812 papers collected from the Web of Science database. The results showed that, although the annual publication volume decreased slightly in the last two years, the annual citations continued to rise. The United States and its institutions are global leaders in predatory publishing research. The most active journal was Learned Publishing, whereas the most influential was Nature. Furthermore, eleven research topics regarding predatory publishing, academic publishing, or the research community were identified and interpreted. Based on these results, this study discusses agendas such as highlighting the global interest in the issue, the need for large-scale collaboration and a sustainable research environment, promoting the issue of predatory publishing, and the importance of education for stakeholders. The findings are expected to help researchers and policymakers understand global research trends in predatory publishing.