5. Avoiding the Pitfalls of Predatory Publishing: Guidance for Graduate Students and Junior Scholars

Amy Koerber, Ph.D., is Professor in Communication Studies and Associate Dean for Administration & Finance in the College of Media & Communication at Texas Tech University. Dr. Koerber's research agenda explores how experts make effective arguments in contexts of health, science, and medicine. Toward this end, she employs multiple research methods, including textual analysis as well as interviews and focus groups. Although her doctoral training is based in classical rhetoric, her current research employs a wide variety of theoretical frameworks, and she is especially interested in scholarly approaches that facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge-making. Dr. Koerber’s last book, From Hysteria to Hormones: A Rhetorical History, was published by Penn State University Press in April 2018 and was awarded the President’s Book Award at Texas Tech University.

Jesse C. Starkey, Ph.D. is an independent grant writer and strategic communication consultant, serving clients in the academic, private, and non-profit sectors who are seeking to make positive social change in their communities. She has a Master's degree in Higher Education Administration from Sam Houston State University and a Ph.D. in Media and Communication from Texas Tech University. Her experience bridges the academic and industry worlds, and her research examines communication in areas of social change, including scholarly knowledge production, social movements, and mental health. Dr. Starkey served as a research assistant for the STEPP project during her Ph.D. program, assisting with all aspects of the research design, data collection and analysis, and report writing. She continued working with the research team after graduation as an editor and project manager.

R. Glenn Cummins, Ph.D., is a professor of Journalism and Creative Media Industries at Texas Tech University. His research interests fall under the umbrella of media psychology and examine audience response to and processing of media as a function of message content, structure, and individual characteristics. His research has employed a variety of novel measurement approaches to studying individual cognitive and emotional processing of media messages, including psychophysiology, eye tracking, continuous response measurement, and more. He formerly served as Associate Dean for Research and Grants in the College of Media & Communication at Texas Tech where he helped grow the College’s sponsored research goals and facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations between communication scholars and partners across and beyond the university. He has been part of research teams sponsored by the NSF and USDA.

Lyombe Eko, Ph.D., is a professor in the College of Media & Communication, Texas Tech University. His areas of research and teaching are comparative and international communication studies, as well as comparative information and communication technology law, policy, and ethics, with a focus on Africa, the European Union, the United States, France and the UK. He also studies visual communication, human rights, and freedom of expression. He has published award-winning books on comparative international communication law and policy. He has also published numerous, widely cited articles in international law review and media studies journals. He has been an associate professor, Director of Graduate Studies, and Director of the African Studies Program at the University of Iowa. He has also taught at the University of Maine, Orono. He earned his Ph.D. in Journalism from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Before his academic career, he was a journalist at Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV), and an editor/translator, at the African Broadcasting Union (URTNA) in Nairobi, Kenya.

Kerk F. Kee, Ph.D., is Professor in the College of Media & Communication at Texas Tech University. His research primarily focuses on information diffusion and innovation adoption in scientific organizations, and secondarily in health communities and pro-environmental societies. Broadly speaking, his research interests lie at the intersection of information dissemination, technology use, and scientific work. Besides the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded research co-authored with colleagues in this book on predatory publishing, he is also working on an NSF project looking at designing an AI-driven platform and chatbot with algorithms to filter COVID-19 related publications based on different levels of evidence (e.g., meta-analyses vs. randomized controlled trials vs. editorials/expert opinions without empirical support), in order to help clinicians and medical professionals screen and rank a large amount of (mis/dis)information on COVID-19, a data deluge problem that became overwhelming during the pandemic. Kee received his Ph.D. in organizational communication from the University of Texas at Austin.