The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) is a leading ethics-promoting organization associated with academic publishing. COPE continuously fortifies its ethics guidelines, also serving as a warning portal of “predatory” publishing behavior. A 2019 COPE discussion document on “predatory publishing” lists 16 warning signs of predatory publishers/journals. Grounded in legitimacy theory, this study examines, by adopting COPE’s 16 warning signs of “predatory publishing” as criteria, the case of a current COPE member publisher, Academic and Business Research Institute (AABRI). Our assessment reveals that, according to COPE’s own stated criteria, AABRI would be considered as “predatory.” The objective of this case study was to appreciate whether COPE’s 16 warning signs may be insufficiently sensitive to detect a predatory journal or publisher, or whether those criteria require an adjustment if the journal/publisher is academically legitimate but is found to be otherwise. If such criteria were to be used widely by academics (and others) to characterize journals or publishers, but result in a surprising or undesired negative classification (“predatory”), then this may have widespread ramifications not only for global academia but also for scholarship and society at large. An incorrect classification could also negatively impact the COPE “brand” of ethical and scholarly legitimacy.

出版道德委员会 (COPE) 是与学术出版相关的领先道德促进组织。COPE 不断强化其道德准则，同时也是“掠夺性”出版行为的警告门户。2019 年 COPE 关于“掠夺性出版”的讨论文件列出了掠夺性出版商/期刊的 16 个警告信号。本研究以合法性理论为基础，以 COPE 的 16 个“掠夺性出版”警示标志为标准，考察了 COPE 现任成员出版商学术与商业研究所 (AABRI) 的案例。我们的评估表明，根据 COPE 自己规定的标准，AABRI 将被视为“掠夺性”。本案例研究的目的是了解 COPE 的 16 个警告标志是否不够敏感，无法检测掠夺性期刊或出版商，或者如果期刊/出版商在学术上合法但被发现不合法，这些标准是否需要调整。如果此类标准被学者（和其他人）广泛使用来描述期刊或出版商的特征，但却导致令人惊讶或不受欢迎的负面分类（“掠夺性”），那么这可能不仅对全球学术界而且对学术界产生广泛的影响和整个社会。不正确的分类还可能对 COPE 的道德和学术合法性“品牌”产生负面影响。