MDPI – Predatory Journals and Conferences

December 30, 2023

MDPI, Frontiers and Hindawi journals may be downgraded in Finland

Map, highlighting Finland and a statement about three publishers may be excluded from Finland's research assessment.

In a tweet, Veli-Matti Karhulahti said:

“Not confirmed yet but all MDPI, Frontiers & Hindawi journals planned to be erased (level 0) from Finnish academic assessment by end of 2024. Should be clear that if you’re a researcher here, a high time to stop submitting/reviewing for those journals.“

Here some things that sprung to mind when we read this.

1) It would be useful when (and if) this comes to pass that the reasons why are given. Most people will assume that it is because they are being classified as predatory journals but is that the reason? It could be that the decision makers feel that:

⭕️The APCs are too high.

⭕️There are too many special issues.

⭕️Are they considered predatory journals?

⭕️The journals are not considered predatory, but they do not feel that the journals procedures are robust enough?

⭕️Are the journals being exploited by paper mills and the Finland authorities are worried about the reputation of those journals.

You might be aware that Wiley recently acknowledged an issue with Hindawi journals (which it had bought) as they were being targeted by paper mills. We tweeted on this. You can see the Wiley statement here.

⭕️They could have carried out some detailed analysis on acceptance rates (for example) and decided that it does not meet what they would expect from publishers they are funding.

⭕️They may just been err’ing on the side of caution and have doubts about these publishers and are taking the view that “the world ain’t short of scientific journals, so why not just exclude them”.

⭕️ They may feel that the publishers are more focused on the financial returns, rather than maintaining the quality and integrity of the scientific archive.

Whatever the reason, it would be useful to know.

2) Does Finland already have a restricted list and are these publishers being added to that list, or is this a “new” list?

The obvious publisher that may be on an existing list is OMICS. Are they? Does anybody know?

3) In some of the comments we received to our tweet on this topic, some suggested that there may be a case to just restrict specific journals, rather than restricting the entire publisher’s portfolio.

Is that sensible? We add the following comments by way of context to this question.

⭕️ It could be argued that a publisher has responsibility for all the journals it publishes and, even one bad journal, is a reflection across the entire portfolio.

⭕️ It could equally be argued that the quality, processes and robustness of a journal is down to the Editor-in-Chief and if a journal is well run, should it be treated in the same way than a less well run journal from the same stable.

⭕️ If you look at the reports of the way some publishers manage their journals, there is a view that the editors (EiCs and Associate Editors) have less control than you might expect and the publishers are managing a lot of the key processes and making a lot of the key decisions.

⭕️ What, if any role, does the fact that specific journals are indexed by COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, Scopus and Clarivate have on any decision making process? Does it mean anything if a journal (or even a publisher) is reognised by bodies such as those listed? Does that feed into the decision making process?

4) We wonder whether the publisher’s themselves have been included in any discussions that have (are) taking place or whether this discussion is taking place without them?

5) It was reported a month or so ago (not sure of the exact timing) that Malaysia had banned the use of public research funds being used to pay APC’s for these three publishers (note, this is different to banning them entirely in that country).
Other universities (in China we believe) have banned submitting to these publishers.

Does anybody have a complete list of where these publishers have been banned, restricted, named as unsuitable (however you want to phrase it)?

6) Will these restrictions, should they come about, be of concern to the three publishers mentioned?

7) The report says that these publishers may be restricted by the end of 2024. Why does it take so long to make a decision?

Final comments

This is an interesting story and one we will watch with interest.
This article was originally posted as a tweet. You can see that tweet here.
If you want to see what we have been saying about MDPI, take a look at out Twitter (X) feed on this topic.
If you want to see the publishers web sites, they are available here: MDPI, Frontiers and Hindawi.

November 22, 2023

There appears to be a black market for MDPI vouchers

We saw a message (see main image) that suggests that there is a black market for MDPI vouchers. In essence (it appears) that if you have an MDPI voucher, worth $1,000, if you give that up, then they will give you an authorship position on a paper.

We have the following questions about the information in the image shown.

It looks like “they” are looking for people who have an MDPI voucher (value of $1,000). If you do, you are invited to provide key information.
In return, “for every $1,000 voucher” they can provide you with a free position in one of their articles, either as first or second author.

So, how does this work?

Do you have to give up your voucher? If so, presumably these unethical people will then use it for something else. Support #PaperMills perhaps?
What journal do you get offered in return? Do you think it will be a Scopus or a Clarivate journal, or could it be something of lesser quality (side stepping the “does Scopus/Clarivate = quality” debate)? Could it even be a predatory journal?

Here are some questions for #MDPI, should they wish to answer.

If you issue a voucher, presumably, it is to a named author or reviewer?
We assume that each voucher has a unique code, so that if a voucher is redeemed, you know who it was assigned to?
Can any voucher be used by anybody, or only the person that it was issued to?

These are genuine questions as we have not had any personal experience with your voucher initiative.

The original Facebook post can be seen at: https://facebook.com/groups/reviewer2/posts/10160702082780469/

Note: You may have to be a member of the group to read it and, of course, it could be deleted/edited at any time.

We originally tweeted about this issue. The tweet can be seen here.

May 17, 2023May 17, 2023

Is MDPI a predatory publisher?

Woman holding a sign saying "MDPI: Predatory or not? You decide"

There has been a lot of discussion recently about whether MDPI is a predatory publisher. Indeed, this discussion has been going on for many years dating back to when Jeffrey Beall added this publisher to his list.

But, the recent discussion was reignited (in our view) by MDPI being added to another list, which prompted MDPI to respond via their web site.

In this article we look at some of the recent discussion that has been going on, as well as some previous papers/articles, and also suggest a way how this discussions can be taken forward so that it gets advanced towards, we hope resolution. Our suggestion includes a way that enable the discussion to take place in an environment where everybody views can be expressed and are subject to independent peer review.

Predatory-Reports.com

On the 23 Feb 2023 (and updated on 12 Apr 2023), Predatory Reports added all of the journals published by MDPI to their list of predatory journals. At the time of writing (29 Apr 2023), MDPI’s portfolio of journals comprises 426 journals.

The reasons given for taking this course of action were outlined in a number of blog posts they had made (in addition to the one listing all the journals that had been added to their list). These posts were:

Is MDPI a predatory publisher? (9 Apr 2022)
MDPI Self-Citation Problem (6 Jul 2022)
MDPI Peer Review Problem (20 Feb 2023)

As a side note, we question the dates on these articles, For example the 9 Apr 2022 articles refers to data (the number of journals published by MDPI) in Apr 2023 so we suspect that the year may be wrong?

When reading these articles, what struck us was the amount of data in them, particularly the one dated 9 Apr 2022. There has obviously been quite a bit of research in producing all the facts/figures that were presented. We have more to say about this later.

MDPI’s Response

In response to all their journals being added to Predatory Reports list MDPI issued a statement (14 Mar 2023).

The response opens with “Scholars have reported a suspicious website (predatoryreports.org) that has made false claims against the legitimacy of MDPI journals. The anonymous website in question lacks transparency and rigor in its evaluation criteria, and has an apparent bias against MDPI and open access publishing”.

This leaves little doubt as to their view on being added to Predatory Reports list of predatory journals.

The full response is worth a read, especially if you read the Predatory Reports articles, so that you get a view from both sides.

Our Tweets

After seeing the Predatory Reports had classified all of MDPI journals as predatory, we decided to take a look at MDPI.

Our first tweet made it clear that we were not accusing MDPI of being predatory (or not) as we like to present our own evidence and then, even if we don’t/can’t decide, to let others make an informed decision.

Following that first tweet, we have made a series of other tweets that (we hope) presents factual information.

At the moment, for us, the jury is still out whether MDPI is predatory or not. Actually, there is likely to be a grey area where there is what some would call predatory type behaviour and there are also some excellent examples of good practise – but we are still not in a position to make even that call.

Paolo Crosetto

Another resource we have seen is an article by Paolo Crosetto. This article was written in 2021, but is still very relevant to the ongoing discussion. Paolo uses the term “aggressive rent extraction” to classify the way MDPI does business, adding that there are elements of predatory behavior and he predicts over time that they are more likely to move in that direction.

Paolo’s article is definitely worth a read.

Special Issues

One of the issues (sic) that Paolo draws out is the explosion of special issues, what has led to the significant increase in published articles over the past few years. This is also mentioned in a Science article, which suggests that one of the reasons MDPI journals have been delisted from Clarivate Web of Science is (in part) due to the number of special issues that they publish.

We have also commented on MDPI special issues, but viewed through a different lens. For example, we found one special issue that had only one paper (our tweet was made on 28 April 2023 and as at 17 May 2023, still only one paper had been published) where the three editors were authors. We note that the special issue is still open, so (we assume) that more papers will be published. However, we raised two questions.

Why is a paper written by the three editors the first paper that is published in the special issue? It could be argued that they knew that they were going to edit the special issue, so they had it ready but, personally, we think we would have delayed the paper until a few others had been published, otherwise it leads to the type of discussion we are having here.
If they were editors of the special issue, how was the reviewing of this paper carried out. We assume that the three authors did not review/handle the paper, but how was it done?

Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)

Later in this article, we suggest that critiques of publishers should be done in such as way that it is subject to peer review. In fact, this has already been done for MDPI.

The story is outlined in this Retraction Watch report (and in our tweet) but essentially a paper was published (https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvab020) that said MDPI exhibited predatory behavior. The journal received an Expression of Concern” which led to the article being retracted and replaced with a revised version.

You can read about the changes that were made to the article at the Retraction Watch report. We do not believe that the original version of the paper is available any more, which is a shame as normally, in our experience, a retracted article remains as part of the scientific archive and the revised paper would be a new entry in the archive. This would have allowed the interested reader to compare the “before” and “after”.

It is not known who raised the Expression of Concern.

Delisting of journals

Recently, MDPI had two of its journals delisted from Clarivate’s Web of Science, which is regarded (along with Scopus) as where you want your journal to be indexed. One of the journals delisted was its flagship journal (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health).

We have commented on this delisting in a previous post, which asks whether a significant number of articles that MDPI publishes is the reason why two of its journals were delisted.

Way Forward

The articles by Predatory Reports, Paolo, our tweets and our articles (like this one) all have to be treated with caution, for two reasons.

Predatory Reports and our Twitter account/web site are anonymous. Speaking (only) for us, we prefer to remain anonymous at the moment as we are aware of the issues that Jeffrey Beall faced when he published his list. We do not wish to suffer the way he did, although there are arguments that he could have been more transparent and robust in the way he added journals/publishers to his list.
We are also aware of the arguments/feelings that we should be more transparent and let everybody know who is behind our Twitter account and web site but we realise that we only have one shot at this.
Paolo, for which we salute him for, does not hide behind this cloak of secrecy. We wonder if this, in any way, has harmed, or helped his career?
The main reason though, why blog posts, web sites, Twitter accounts etc. have to be treated with caution is because they are not subject to external validation or, what we would normally term, peer review.
In a recent paper [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12109-022-09913-1] it was suggested that there should be a peer review process for publishers. That is, an evidence base is presented and this can lead to a conclusion (or not) whether a given publisher is predatory.
Importantly, the evidence/conclusions must be subject to peer review. Doing this opens up the scientific process to the issue that we are trying to address. That is, any decision whether a journal/publisher is predatory is subject to peer review, so it is not just a single person making that decision. It also enables the journal/publisher the right of reply either through the original journal (if the authors contacted the journal/publisher) or through a response paper which, again, would be subject to peer review.

If it is not possible to publish a peer reviewed paper, and we recognise that many journals/publishers may be reluctant to publish such papers, then evidence should be drawn from the peer review literature or from sources where the data that is used is archived and available.

That is, a view on a given publisher should not be based on an opinion. Anything that is presented must be backed up by evidence, which others can access and validate; should that be necessary.

Conclusion

We would encourage those who have carried out research into MDPI (or indeed other publishers), assuming they believe that their evidence is strong enough, to consider putting their evidence out for peer review.

We don’t say this lightly. It will be a lot of work, the authors will have to reveal their identities and the editors/reviewers of the journal they select to submit to may not agree with the evidence that is presented. But, at least, it will follow the scientific process that we all rely on for every other paper that we write or, at least, any paper that we write that we want to be taken seriously.

Having said that, an analysis of MDPI has been published, which does conclude that it exhibits predatory behavior. If you are considering submitting to an MDPI journal, due diligence should be carried out (which should be done for any journals you are considering submitting to) and should include reading this paper, which is the best resource we have at the present time.

April 17, 2023May 17, 2023

Increasing number of articles: Is this why Clarivate delisted MDPI’s flagship journal?

We have been tweeting about MDPI, making sure that we do not state whether they are predatory (or not) as we just don’t know. The jury is still out (as far as we are concerned) so, for now, we are presenting facts/figures and allowing discussion to take place.

One of the topics we have touched upon is their flagship journal (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health) being delisted from Clarivate Web of Science. This was reported in Science and MDPI posted a response.

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Clarivate did not provide a reason why it delisted International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, along with about 50 others including another one from MDPI (Journal of Risk and Financial Management), but there is a lot of speculation. Amongst the most popular suggestions is that the number of articles the journal publishes has significantly increased and does this affect the quality of the papers?

Increase in the number of papers

The Science article mentioned the increase in the number of papers published, across the MDPI portfolio. Of particular note is the number of special issues that MDPI publishes. Figure 1 is a graphic from the Science article that shows the comparison between the number of special issues published by MDPI and some other publishers. It is apparent that MDPI publishes more special issues that the other publishers shown in the graphic.

On our Twitter feed we looked at how many articles the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health had published year-on-year. You can see that tweet here, (we note that there is a mistake in the tweet as we said that the journal had been delisted by Scopus, but we should have said Clarivate Web of Science).

The main message from that tweet was a figure, which we have shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 certainly shows a rise year-on-year but as 2023 is only part way through, it begs the question “Is this going to continue this year?” Only time will tell but we can try and make a prediction.

Figure 3 shows the number of papers that are published every day (we tweeted about this here).

For the complete years (2005-2022), this means taking the total number of papers published in that year and dividing by 365 (or 366). For 2023, we divide the number of papers published so far and divide by 101, the number of days that had passed in 2023 when we collected the data.

Based on Figure 3, it looks as if the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health will publish more journals in 2023, than it did in 2022 which, was already a record year. But, as we say, time will tell. We plan to revisit these stats in a few months, just to see how things are progressing.

So what?

Does it matter that one of MDPI’s journals has seen a significant rise in the number of articles it publishes year-on-year? To be honest, we do not know. There is simply not enough evidence and not enough comparative data.

We are currently working to address this. We have two sets of comparison in mind, which should provide more context and, perhaps, answer the question whether this rise in one journal should be seen as a problem, or is just par for the course. It might even be seen as a positive condition.

We’ll get back to you when we have collected the data and carried out the analysis.

In the meantime, let us know your thoughts in the comments.