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This article systematically reviews recent empirical research on the factors shaping academics' knowledge about, and motivations to publish work in, so-called 'predatory' journals. Growing scholarly evidence suggests that the concept of 'predatory' publishing'used to describe deceptive journals exploiting vulnerable researchersis inadequate for understanding the complex range of institutional and contextual factors that shape the publication decisions of individual academics. This review identifies relevant empirical studies on academics who have published in 'predatory' journals, and carries out a detailed comparison of 16 papers that meet the inclusion criteria. While most start from Beall's framing of 'predatory' publishing, their empirical findings move the debate beyond normative assumptions about academic vulnerability. They offer particular insights into the academic pressures on scholars at the periphery of a global research economy. This systematic review shows the value of a holistic approach to studying individual publishing decisions within specific institutional, economic and political contexts. Rather than assume that scholars publishing in 'questionable' journals are naïve, gullible or lacking in understanding, fine-grained empirical research provides a more nuanced conceptualization of the pressures and incentives shaping their decisions. The review suggests areas for further research, especially in emerging research systems in the global South.

In this article we argue that the knowledge economy is reshaping anthropological research and popular understandings of ethnography. Interviews with British social anthropologists working in, and outside, academia provide insights into how the practices and meanings of ethnography are being reworked. UK policy expectations that research (and its impact) can be measured, monitored and accounted for in monetary terms place particular demands on qualitative social research. To make our case, we focus on the prominence of the business metaphor of the 'value chain' in contemporary accounting practice and its use in the quantitative measurement of social research. Within social anthropology this new economy of measurement can be seen in debates over fieldwork practice. We show that as anthropology departments harden their methodological allegiances to fieldwork, very different understandings of ethnography are being developed beyond the academy. We conclude that methods, and debates over methods, are prisms through which to understand the changing social and economic expectations placed upon qualitative research.

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