A report done at Thompson Rivers University estimates that spam emails aimed at professors cost academia more than $1 billion annually in lost productivity.

Macroeconomist Peter Tsigaris did the report with two other professors.

He says those “spam emails” in particular are predatory journals – which is research published by professors in illegitimate journals. The report assumed that each professor spends at least five seconds looking at an email, which would work out to more than $100 per year for each prof, assuming a salary of $50 per hour.

“The purpose of our paper was to basically create awareness. Especially in education, for faculties around the world that are eager to publish their work, to be careful.”

Tsigaris says TRU – and other institutions around the world – likely lose between $200,000 and $400,000 in lost productivity each year from reading predatory journals. He points out it can be hard to differentiate predatory journals from journals published legitimately.

And he says the opportunity cost from spam emails doesn’t stop there for academia.

“When you add all the other spam emails, worldwide, it comes across at more than $2 billion dollars per year. Which is, quite large,” Tsigaris says.

The report says to combat the opportunity cost of spam emails, a cost could be brought in for mass emailing journals, or penalties could be stiffer for publishing research in predatory journals. It also proposes that email-filtering technology could be improves and incentives could be raised for professors who publish in legitimate journals.