Predatory Publishing and the Imperative of International Productivity: Feeding Off and Feeding Up the Dominant

European research policy and research evaluation. The imports of “internationalization” manifest prominently in how particular value is attached to “international visibility,” “international impact,” or the international character of publication venues. The international is used as a trope on a number of levels: in EU funding schemes, in project goals that guide national assessment exercises, in output measurements, in the formulation of institutional research missions, and in tenuretrack criteria. Especially in smaller countries, such as the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, the international is often taken as an unquestioned proxy for quality, proving recognition of value and impact beyond the “academic pods.” Consequently, the international, the national, and the local constitute a clear normative hierarchy. For example, it is taken for granted that international excellence encompasses national excellence and (as such) is supposedly more valuable. Inspired by Lin and Law’s discussion of “modes of international” (2013, 2014), we argue in this chapter that gaming metrics, predatory publishing, and exploiting the model of gold open access (Beall, 2012) can be partly understood as a logical response to the imperative of internationalization going wild. It enacts a different, yet dubious, alternative mode of internationalization for those researchers and institutions who fail— for better or worse— within the established mode of international, with its epistemic and economic centers in the global, Anglophone North/West. In this chapter, we zoom in on a recent misconduct case in the Czech Republic to show how the imperative of internationalization and productivity inscribed in the country’s research assessment framework impinges on institutional and individual publication strategies and produces a market for gaming in the academy. 7 Predatory Publishing and the Imperative of International Productivity: Feeding Off and Feeding Up the Dominant