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Predatory publishing is a growing and global issue infecting all scientific domains. Predatory publishers create counterfeit, not (properly) peer-reviewed journals to exploit the open access (OA) model in which the author pays. The plethora of predatory marketing journals along with the sophisticated deceptive practices of their publishers may create total confusion. One of the many highly likely risks of that bewilderment is when peer-reviewed, prestigious marketing journals cite these pseudo-marketing journals. This phenomenon is called citation contamination. This study aims to investigate the extent of citation contamination in the peer-reviewed marketing literature.

Using Google Scholar as a citation gathering tool, this study investigates references to four predatory marketing journals in 68 peer-reviewed marketing journals listed in the 2018 version of the Academic Journal Guide by the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABSs).

Results indicate that 59 of the 68 CABS-ranked peer-reviewed marketing journals were, up to late January 2021, contaminated by at least one of the four sampled predatory journals. Together, these four pseudo-journals received (at least) 605 citations. Findings from nonparametric statistical procedures show that citation contamination occurred irrespective of the age of a journal or its 2019 Journal Impact Factor (JIF). They also point out that citation contamination happened independently from the fact that a journal is recognized by Clarivate Analytics or not.

This study investigated citations to only four predatory marketing journals in only 68 CABS-listed peer-reviewed marketing journals.

These findings should sound an alarm to the entire marketing community (including academics and practitioners). To counteract citation contamination, recommendations are provided for researchers, practitioners, journal editors and academic and professional associations.

This study is the first to offer a systematic assessment of references to predatory journals in the peer-reviewed marketing literature.

Although many in academe have speculated about the effects of pressure to publish on the management discipline – often referred to as “publish or perish” – prevailing knowledge has been based on anecdotal rather than empirical evidence. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on the perceptions of management faculty regarding the pressure to publish imperative.

The authors surveyed faculty in 104 management departments of AACSB accredited, research‐oriented US business schools to explore the prevalence, sources, and effects of pressure to publish.

Results indicate that pressure to publish affects both tenured and tenure‐track management faculty, although the latter, as a group, feel significantly more pressure than those who are tenured. The primary source of this pressure is faculty themselves who are motivated by the prospects of enhancing their professional reputation, leaving a permanent mark on their profession, and increasing their salary and job mobility. The effects of pressure to publish include heightened stress levels; the marginalization of teaching; and research that may lack relevance, creativity, and innovation.

The sample was intentionally restricted to faculty from management departments affiliated with research‐oriented US business schools and does not include faculty from departments that are less research‐oriented and, therefore, would be expected to put less pressure on their faculty to publish.

Although the effects of pressure to publish are not necessarily always negative, the paper offers some fundamental suggestions to management (and other) faculty who wish to mitigate the deleterious effects of pressure to publish.

Although the findings may not be surprising to more seasoned faculty, to the authors' knowledge this is the first time they have been documented in the published literature. As such, they advance discussions of “publish or perish” beyond mere conjecture and “shared myths” allowing management faculty to more rationally debate its consequences and their implications for academic life.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether preprint servers are a disruptive technology for science, librarians or information seeking among the general population.

This column explores what preprint servers are, how they are used in the world of science, how their usage changed in response to the deluge of COVID-19 related research papers and how they might impact the work of librarians and society in general.

Preprint servers are not a highly disruptive technology, but they do challenge both scientists and librarians to understand them better, use the information they find on them with care and educate society in general on topics such as peer review and the importance of using well-vetted, good quality science in making important decisions.

Up until the past year and a half, only a small segment of the librarian profession needed to be concerned with preprint servers. With the increasing presence of references to non-peer-reviewed articles from preprint servers in popular media reports, most librarians now need to know something about this technology. It is also useful to consider how the technology might benefit and create challenges for their work.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the sources and qualities of information on climate change commissioned by the US Congress from its affiliated research bodies.

Cited material in reports commissioned by Congress from three legislative research bodies were categorized and tallied for the years 1990‐2005. Qualities of cited material, such as indicators of primary‐level data analysis and references to peer‐reviewed academic scholarship were considered.

Of the three agencies, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) makes reference to peer‐reviewed academic scholarship most often. Nevertheless, only around a quarter of all cited material in CBO reports are from academic journals and comparatively few cites are to articles in top‐tier journals. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) cites its own past publications more often than it cites peer‐reviewed scholarship.

Refereed academic journals are not the only source of rigorous scientific information in the reference materials used by the three legislative research bodies. Primary‐level data are found in governmental gray literature, and these data are analyzed by the legislative research bodies in their reports to Congress. The research bodies also make use of peer‐reviewed research by private research organizations, though these latter materials may not be published in academic journals. Further research is needed to determine whether and to what extent the legislative research bodies' reports are consequential in shaping lawmakers' deliberations versus other sources of information and persuasion, e.g. reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, news reportage, constituent perspectives, witness testimony in hearings, campaign contributions, etc.

Legislative research organizations are official conveyors of policy‐relevant information to Congress. It is reasonable to expect these organizations to provide competent analyses derived from peer‐reviewed science. The present paper suggests that commissioned reports by these organizations vary in terms of the range of source materials relied on, but reference materials are seldom derived from top‐tier academic journals. At least one research body, the CRS, frequently refers to its own reports as a major source for information on climate change. Two out of three of the legislative support bodies make greater use of governmental gray literature versus academic scholarship.

References to purported shortcomings in the legislative research bodies' technical/analytical capacities exist in the public affairs literature, but are anecdotal. The present paper offers an empirical exploration of this concern, focusing on the most important environmental problem of the time.

In this chapter we consider the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act’s (IDEA 2004) provision that requires that students’ special education services in their individualized education programs be based on peer-reviewed research (PRR). We begin by reviewing federal legislation (i.e., Educational Sciences Reform Act, 2002, IDEA 2004; No Child Left Behind Act, 2001; Reading Excellence Act, 1998), which influenced the PRR principle and eventually the PRR language in IDEA. Next, we examine the US Department of Education’s interpretation of PRR in IDEA 2004 and review administrative hearings and court cases that have further clarified the PRR requirement. Finally, we make recommendations for teachers and administrators working to meet the PRR requirement when developing intervention plans for students with disabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the literature on information literacy and library instruction from 2001‐2010 published in the annual, comprehensive topical bibliography published in Reference Services Review.

The authors examined 3,527 articles contained in the annual bibliography from 2001‐2010 and identified 2,052 which appeared in peer‐reviewed journals. Using the 2,052 articles identified as peer reviewed, the authors then determined the location of the primary author, the journal that published the article, whether the journal was from the discipline of library science, what type of research the article contained, and the key themes present.

The number of articles in peer‐reviewed journals has grown substantially over the ten‐year period. Most articles (70 percent) were published by authors residing in the USA, but articles from Asia and Africa are now being seen on a more consistent basis. Reference Services Review has published the most articles on this topic during the period, but information literacy has also branched out into other non‐library‐specific disciplines. Empirical or theoretical research articles make up less than 50 percent of the total articles published, while case‐study type descriptions of programmatic or teaching initiatives continue to be the most published article type. Key themes continue to be collaboration, assessment, and the application of technology to instruction efforts.

The findings are limited to peer‐reviewed articles published in English‐language journals.

While other articles have examined aspects of the body of information literacy literature, this study encompasses a more comprehensive and thorough data set.

As a response to the claims that much of management academic research is irrelevant from the practitioner perspective, this study aims to empirically investigate whether books serve as effective knowledge distribution agents and whether peer‐reviewed publications are used in the development of book content.

A citation analysis of 40 authored and nine edited books was done, followed by a survey of 35 book authors.

This study refutes the previous claims that management academic research has made little impact on the state of practice. Peer‐reviewed sources, such as refereed journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings, are used to develop the content of knowledge management and intellectual capital (KM/IC) books. Even though most business professionals do not directly read academic articles, the knowledge existing in these articles is delivered to them by means of books and textbooks.

Scholarly research has played a significant role in developing the KM/IC field. This study confirms the existence of the indirect knowledge dissemination channels where books serve as knowledge transmission agents. Therefore, academics should not change their research behavior. Instead, infrastructure should be developed to facilitate the transition of scholarly knowledge to practitioners. The question is not whether academic research is relevant, instead it is whether it reaches practitioners in the most efficient way.

This is the most comprehensive empirical investigation of the role of books in academic knowledge transition ever conducted.

The aim of this study is to examine how reviewers for academic journals learn to carry out the task of peer review and the issues they face in doing this.

A total of 45 reviewers completed a questionnaire which asked about their experience in doing peer reviews, how they had learnt to do them, and the issues they faced in doing these reviews. Follow up emails were also sent to reviewers in order to seek further elaboration on the answers they had provided in the questionnaire.

Over half of the reviewers had learnt to do reviews by reading reviews of their own submissions to peer‐reviewed journals. Others had learnt to write reviews by just doing them; that is, by practice. The most challenging aspect for the reviewers was writing reviewers' reports that were critical but still constructive. There was no consensus on the most straightforward aspects of writing peer reviews.

The study has implications for reviewer development, proposing an experiential, “learning by doing” approach to the training of reviewers rather than a didactic, information transmission style one.

The study has implications for reviewer development, proposing an experiential, “learning by doing” approach to the training of reviewers rather than a didactic, information transmission style one.

The study provides insights into how reviewers learn to write peer reviews and the challenges they face in doing this. The paper also suggests strategies for improving reviewer development which can have benefits, especially for early career researchers.

Thousands of preprints related to Covid-19 have effused into the academic literature. Even though these are not peer-reviewed documents and have not been vetted by medical or other experts, several have been cited, while others have been widely promoted by the media. While many preprints eventually find their way into the published literature, usually through integrated publishing streams, there is a small body of preprints that have been opaquely withdrawn/retracted, without suitable reasons, leaving only a vestigial or skeletal record online. Others have, quite literally, vanished. This paper aims to examine some of those cases.

For peer-reviewed literature, a retracted academic paper is usually water-marked with “RETRACTED” across each page of the document, as recommended by ethical bodies such as the Committee on Publication Ethics, which represents thousands of journals and publishers. Curiously, even though pro-preprint groups claim that preprints are an integral part of the publication process and a scholarly instrument, there are no strict, detailed or established ethical guidelines for preprints on most preprint servers. This paper identifies select withdrawn/retracted preprints and emphasizes that the opaque removal of preprints from the scholarly record may constitute unscholarly, possibly even predatory or unethical, behavior.

Strict ethical guidelines are urgently needed for preprints, and preprint authors, in the case of misconduct, should face the same procedure and consequences as standard peer-reviewed academic literature.

Journals and publishers that have silently retracted or withdrawn preprints should reinstate them, as for regular retracted literature, except for highly exceptional cases.

This study aims to investigate resistance behaviour among academics in an Indonesian institution of higher education. The context was institutional policy change on international peer-review publication, and the objective was to associate resultant resistance behaviour with personality, trust in management, social influence and intrinsic reward.

The study used a cross-sectional design and surveyed 150 junior, mid-career and senior academics at the University of Brawijaya, Indonesia. Resistance behaviour was measured using Oreg's resistance behaviour instrument. Data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

Dispositional resistance to change was the strongest factor in resistance behaviour among academics following the adoption of a new policy concerning international peer-reviewed publication, while intrinsic reward was the factor that most consistently contributed to all aspects of resistance. Trust in management and social influence within the academic organisation were related to resistance behaviour among academics to publishing in peer-reviewed journals.

This study proposes a multi-dimensional measure of attitude to investigate resistance behaviour in an academic organisation. This measure meets the challenges inherent in mapping invisible resistance behaviour in the context of an institution of higher education. The multivariate analyses that we used enabled us to compare and to test individual factors of resistance (i.e. dispositional resistance to change) and organisational factors of resistance (i.e. trust in management, social influence and intrinsic reward) simultaneously. This study is also the first investigation of academic resistance to policy change intended to improve research culture concerning peer-reviewed publications in Indonesia; the Indonesian case is interesting in the international literature on developing research culture as the country's educational system is still developing and is less likely to provide a positive research culture than institutions in countries with more established systems of higher education.