Citation contagion: a citation analysis of selected predatory marketing journals

To date, limited studies have examined the citations of articles published in predatory journals, and none appears to have been done in marketing. Using Google Scholar (GS) as a citation source, this study aims to examine the extent of citations of (articles published in) 10 predatory marketing journals. Citation analyses indicate that the most cited predatory marketing journal gathered 6296 citations since it was first published in 2008. Four of the 10 predatory journals gathered over 732 citations each since they were launched (i.e., highly cited). Three other journals were cited between 147 and 732 times (i.e., moderately cited). The three remaining journals received below 147 citations each (i.e., trivially cited). Findings show that the 1246 articles published in these 10 predatory journals, and which are visible to GS, received 10,935 citations, with 8.776 citations per paper. About 11.624% of these 1246 articles were cited 13 times or more. The most cited article received 217 citations, of which 21 are from journals indexed in Clarivate Analytics’ Social Sciences Citation Index. Based on these findings, this study concludes that the conventional marketing literature has been already contaminated by predatory marketing journals.