Predatory Invitations as Extended Phenotype: A Parasitic Spontaneous Order Analysis Across Academic and Literary Publishing

This paper develops a unified theoretical account of predatory publishing as a case of Parasitic Spontaneous Order (PSO) — a self-organizing system of extraction that arises without central coordination and stabilizes through evolutionary dynamics. Drawing on the Extended Phenotype Theory of Law (EPT), the Heteronomous Bayesian Updating (HBU) framework, the Generalized Intentionality Mismatch Theorem (GIMT), and the Dennett-Nash Gap formalism developed in the Lerer Research Program, the paper analyzes predatory publishing practices across two primary domains: academic journals and creative/literary publishing. A live empirical specimen — an unsolicited invitation received on March 30, 2026, purportedly from Studies in Science of Science (ISSN 1003-2053) — is analyzed as a primary case. The paper identifies six structurally isomorphic predatory modalities, establishes six structural invariants common to all, formalizes the fitness function of the Predatory Invitation Phenotype (PIP), models the evolutionary arms race between predatory operators and detection mechanisms, and applies the PSO equilibrium analysis to explain why the system is evolutionarily stable under current institutional conditions. The theoretical contribution rests on arguing that these phenomena are not isolated frauds but instances of a repeatable, structured system that exploits symbolic recognition as its primary currency — with financial extraction as a downstream consequence, not the fundamental driving mechanism.