"掠奪性期刊"已成為全球學界共同面臨的議題。過往研究多以偽科學期刊稱呼這類期刊,然而,這種稱呼強調的是知識的生產,而"掠奪性期刊"涉及的是知識的傳播,不免存在分析上的落差。論文從默頓的科學社會學著手,視學術期刊為一種制度性的建構,其中涉及的制度包含編輯委員會、同儕評閱與稿件登記制的建立,而"掠奪性期刊"除了將這些制度商品化之外,也以低廉的出版費用誘使資源不足的學者投稿。這造成學術共同體對學術期刊的共識被打破,也讓重點大學與一般大學的學者,彼此之間基于科學規范的整合更為不易。

Predatory journals have become a common issue facing the global academic community.Previous studies have mostly used the concept of pseudoscience to analyze such journals.These,however,focus on the production of knowledge,while predatory journals involve the dissemination of knowledge,which is significantly different at the level of analysis.Starting from Merton’s sociology of science,this article regards academic journals as an institutional construction,including the establishment of editorial boards,peer review and the date of manuscript registration.In addition to commoditize such institutions,predatory journals also use low publishing fees to entice scholars who have insufficient resources to contribute their papers.This has broken the scientific community’s consensus on academic journals,and has also made it more difficult for scholars to integrate with each other based on scientific norms between those who are affiliated to leading universities and those to common universities.