Fake academia

Fake academia or pseudo-academia is an industry based on imitating established academic institutions without the rigour or checks and balances that are normally associated with them. Most fake academic platforms are profit-driven and exist simply to make a quick buck, although some are "sincere", serving primarily as vectors of communication for crackpots and even new religious movements.

The term "fake academia" covers, but is not limited to, the phenomena of degree mills, predatory publishing, predatory conferences and accreditation mills.

Fake academia is important for the study of linguocrankery, because it often serves to provide a platform and an air of legitimacy to linguistic ideas that would've been unlikely to survive in a real academic setting.

Dangers
Aside from the wider threat of undermining the public trust in science and research, as well as spreading bad scholarship that could cause damage if taken at face value, these groups, especially predatory journals, pose a danger to legitimate researchers who may be fooled by their façade and end up publishing their work there. This can turn out to be borderline career-ruining for the scholars only beginning to establish their credibility, for example masters and doctoral students.

Strategies
Pseudoacademic groups consistently employ a number of tricks in order to convince you of their legitimacy. These are only some of them.

Name mimicry
Universities, journals, scientific conferences, all typically use names that are dry and descriptive. Their "fake versions" tend to stick to a similar naming scheme in order to blend in, although some go a step further and deliberately choose names that are easily confused with their well known and respected counterparts. For example, "Russian Academy of Natural Sciences", which is an institution that houses pseudolinguistic luminaries like Valery Chudinov, sounds almost exactly the same as "Russian Academy of Sciences", one of Russia's top research organisations. Some other examples:


 * Università Popolare degli Studi di Milano (a diploma mill impersonating Università degli Studi di Milano, one of the biggest and most prestigeous universities in Europe).
 * International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation (a predatory journal impersonating the ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics and International Journal of Applied Linguistics (InJAL)).
 * American Academy of Sciences (a predatory conference organiser impersonating the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences).

Hijacked journals
A special case is that of "hijacked", or "clone" scientific journals. These fake journals use the name and information (the ISSN, indexes in international databases) of a legitimate journal to trick researchers into submitting their work, with the promise of publication. However, once the scholar has paid the submission fee, their work is not actually published and they are left with no recourse. Alternatively, they can operate similarly to the "traditional" predatory journal model. In this case, dishonest academics might sometimes knowingly use their services to create the appearance of being published in a reputable journal, without the work required.

When a journal is "hijacked", either a fake website is created for a journal that publishes only in print, or a new website is created for a journal that already has an online presense. Sometimes, journals that are careless about website administration and security are spoofed by hackers. There have been cases of conferences being hijacked in a similar manner.

Unaccredited accreditors
To quell the doubts of even the most sceptical customers, these organisations often claim being accredited or connected to a respectable institution. In reality, they employ the services of accreditation mills or outright lie, claiming that they've been accredited by a recognised organisation or by the government, despite it not being the case. The accreditation mill industry exists to lend false legitimacy to degree mills and other pseudoacademic institutions and form part of the larger fake academic ecosystem.

The specifics of the law concerning accreditation are different around the world, but generally accreditation is required in order for higher education institutions to be able to operate legally or award degrees. Some countries have even started accrediting research journals in order to combat the predatory journal epidemic.

Sometimes impostor organisations take a different route, providing various legal-sounding excuses for their lack of accreditation. For instance, the already mentioned Università Popolare degli Studi di Milano (UPSM) claims that it is an "international university" governed by international law, rather than Italian law. Therefore, it asserts that it can issue degrees in Italy that are valid in Italy, without being accredited by the Italian government. However, in 2021, an Italian court unsurprisingly ruled that UPSM is not a recognized university under Italian law and that its degrees are not legally valid in Italy.

Ghost summoning
Another tactic they use for gaining your trust is presenting respectable scholars as members of their organisations and review boards, as well as listing large companies as their sponsors. However, when these people are contacted, they often have no knowledge of their names or photos being used for advertising by these organizations, and claim no association with them.

This is very devious, because even if you are suspicious of a journal or a conference, if you look up the names of people associated with them, you'll find legitimate and respectable scholars. One specific red flag to watch out for is if these people and sponsors seem to have no connection to the topic of the journal or conference. For example, if a physics professor is on a review board of a linguistics journal, or if IBM is claimed to be a sponsor for a surgery conference, there is likely some tomfoolery afoot.

A positive side?
A notable statistic is that most research that gets published in predatory journals comes from the so-called Global South. Among the top four contributors, the United States has the lowest proportion of predatory articles to those indexed in the Web of Science, at 6%. In contrast, Iran has a ratio of 70%, India has a ratio of 277%, and Nigeria has a staggering ratio of 1,580%. This indicates that a significant portion of the scholarship produced by Nigerian researchers is being published in predatory journals.

This fact leads some scholars to argue that predatory journals serve a valuable purpose by providing a platform for researchers from developing countries to share their work with a wider audience. These scholars may not have the same resources or networks as ones in more developed countries, and may face challenges in getting their work published due to language barriers. Predatory journals may provide an opportunity for these researchers to have their work seen and cited by others in their field. While predatory journals are undoubtedly dangerous and exploitative, their potential benefits to academics in underrepresented regions is something to keep in mind.