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Intensified pressure to publish is a hallmark of a rapidly evolving higher education field where the faculty of any hue cannot avoid the 'publish or perish' treadmill. Growing need to publish more and to do so fast have resulted in the proliferation of pseudo scholarly publications many regards as 'predatory'. This article provides a systematic review of research studies on so-called 'predatory' publishing, a new but fast-growing area of research, with a particular focus on the awareness of prospective authors about so-called 'predatory' publishing, the profile of authors publishing in 'predatory' journals and the causal factors encouraging authors to publish in such outlets. It synthetizes the results of research studies on the topic to identify gaps and trends in the existing knowledgebase to guide further research. Results indicate so-called 'predatory' articles are authored by scholars from all fields and levels of academic experience rather than by inexperienced scholars only and 'predatory' contributions are not limited to developing countries, suggesting geographical location and author experience fail to explain the author profile of 'predatory' articles. Findings of this review suggest causal factors include research evaluation policies and publication pressure that emerge from the research environment in which scholars operate authors' limited capacity to publish in 'legitimate' journals and conventions of so-called 'predatory' publishers. This indicates meaningful action might address all these factors in combination, rather than focus on them in isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Gender equity has become a major concern in many professional fields. The rate of women as authors has to be interpreted according to the rate of women in the related professions. In this perspective, studying nurses' population should be of particular interest since, worldwide, nurses are mostly women. Then, our aim was to study gender disparity in nurses' publications. Methods: We selected the three main journals dedicated to nurse publications: International Journal of Nursing Studies, Journal of Nursing Scholarship, and European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing. We included 20 recent consecutive papers from each journal. For each paper, the number of authors, their gender, and rank were recorded. Primary endpoint: overall rate of women as authors. Secondary endpoints: rate of women as first, last, second, and third authors. Results: Sixty papers including 322 authors were analysed. Overall rate of women authors: 74%. Overall rate of women as first author: 82%. Overall rate of women as last author: 72%. Overall rate of women as second and third authors: respectively, 80% and 70%. Conclusion: Almost three-quarters of the authors in these main scientific journals of nursing studies were female. This rate is lower than the gender rate in the nursing profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]