Category Archives: oa.mdpi

Is MDPI a predatory publisher? – Paolo Crosetto

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“So, is MDPI predatory or not? I think it has elements of both. I would name their methods aggressive rent extracting, rather than predatory. And I also think that their current methods & growth rate are likely to make them shift towards more predatory over time.

MDPI publishes good papers in good journals, but it also employs some strategies that are proper to predatory publishers. I think that the success of MDPI in recent years is due to the creative combination of these two apparently contradicting strategy. One — the good journals with high quality — creates a rent that the other — spamming hundreds of colleagues to solicit papers, an astonishing increase in Special Issues, publishing papers as fast as possible — exploits.This strategy makes a lot of sense for MDPI, who shows strong growth rates and is en route to become the largest open access publisher in the world. But I don’t think it is a sustainable strategy. It suffers from basic collective action problems, that might deal a lot of damage to MDPI first, and, most importantly, to scientific publishing in general….

A predatory publisher is a journal that would publish anything — usually in return for money. MDPI rejection rates make this argument hard to sustain. Yet, MDPI is using some of the same techniques of predatory journals….”

MDPI Experience Survey (3 mins completion) | Dan Brockington

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“I have created this survey to learn more about the variety of experience of MDPI journals and communications about them. Experiences of, and responses to, MDPI journals in the research community are varied. I would like to see if there are any patterns in the views about this group of journals.

I am a professional academic based at the University of Sheffield in the UK. I have put together this survey in my capacity as an interested observer who has published two blogs about MDPI publication trends (available here https://danbrockington.com/blog-list/). I have not been asked to do this by anyone, or by the MDPI.

I will write up results and share them on my blog. The data from this survey will also be put in the public domain with the blog, except for responses to question 2, 3 and 9 below, which will not be shared, to ensure complete anonymity. If at any point you decide you do not want to complete the form please just shut the browser window and no responses will be collected. You can also edit your responses after completion….”

MDPI – Publisher of Open Access Journals

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A pioneer in scholarly open access publishing, MDPI has supported academic communities since 1996. Based in Basel, Switzerland, MDPI has the mission to foster open scientific exchange in all forms, across all disciplines. Our 287 diverse, peer-reviewed, open access journals are supported by more than 67,200 academic editors. We serve scholars from around the world to ensure the latest research is freely available and all content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

Remote Sensing Open Access Journal of MDPI: Current Progress and Future Vision | HTML

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“Remote Sensing Open Access Journal (OAJ) of MDPI was the first open access journal in remote sensing that began publishing in the year 2009. It published about 100 articles per year then, but now publishes above 3000 articles per year, the highest by any remote sensing international journal. It is now a well-recognized and respected international journal of repute in remote sensing, where the very best scientists in the subject from around the world publish regularly. In 2019, 8381 articles were submitted, but only 36% of them were published, which indicates a very high interest in publishing in the journal, but at the same time, there is a critical review process where a large number (64%) of the articles were rejected either at submission or during the peer-review process. Maintaining an impact factor of 4.509 with such a high number of publications is itself a testament to the quality of the articles published. Remote Sensing Open Access Journal of MDPI can easily further increase its impact factor swiftly, if 20–30% of the lesser ranked articles are not published. However, this creates a problem where very good articles are rejected solely based on novelty or unfounded, and often biased, subjective criticism of the value of the article. The journal follows a rigorous peer-review process involving two or more reviewers (most often three or more reviewers) followed by single or multi-tiered editorial scrutiny. Typically, multiple rounds of reviews and editorial scrutiny are involved.

Remote Sensing OAJ of MDPI is now a well-recognized leading open access journal that allows free downloads of the articles from anywhere in the world with simple internet access. Its review is fast with a median of 45 days from submission to publishing. It has rich set of articles, as evidenced by the journal performance parameters in Table 1. These articles are written by some of the best researchers on the subject from around the world. In 2019, articles originated from 118 countries. Nearly 70% for these articles came from China and the USA, followed by European countries (Germany, Italy, the UK, Spain, France, the Netherlands), Canada, and Australia. Remote Sensing OAJ provides readers and authors statistics on each article, such as the number of downloads and number of citations. Remote Sensing OAJ ranks #1 amongst all remote sensing journals in terms of Eigenfactor scores (0.06661) and normalized Eigenfactor scores (8.1265). It increased its citations by 12,516 in 2019 (36,083) compared to 2018 (23,567), the highest increase in the year by any Remote Sensing Journal. Remote Sensing of Environment with 62,697 citations, and IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing with 46,565 citations rank above Remote Sensing OAJ in 2019….”

Remote Sensing Open Access Journal of MDPI: Current Progress and Future Vision | HTML

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“Remote Sensing Open Access Journal (OAJ) of MDPI was the first open access journal in remote sensing that began publishing in the year 2009. It published about 100 articles per year then, but now publishes above 3000 articles per year, the highest by any remote sensing international journal. It is now a well-recognized and respected international journal of repute in remote sensing, where the very best scientists in the subject from around the world publish regularly. In 2019, 8381 articles were submitted, but only 36% of them were published, which indicates a very high interest in publishing in the journal, but at the same time, there is a critical review process where a large number (64%) of the articles were rejected either at submission or during the peer-review process. Maintaining an impact factor of 4.509 with such a high number of publications is itself a testament to the quality of the articles published. Remote Sensing Open Access Journal of MDPI can easily further increase its impact factor swiftly, if 20–30% of the lesser ranked articles are not published. However, this creates a problem where very good articles are rejected solely based on novelty or unfounded, and often biased, subjective criticism of the value of the article. The journal follows a rigorous peer-review process involving two or more reviewers (most often three or more reviewers) followed by single or multi-tiered editorial scrutiny. Typically, multiple rounds of reviews and editorial scrutiny are involved.

Remote Sensing OAJ of MDPI is now a well-recognized leading open access journal that allows free downloads of the articles from anywhere in the world with simple internet access. Its review is fast with a median of 45 days from submission to publishing. It has rich set of articles, as evidenced by the journal performance parameters in Table 1. These articles are written by some of the best researchers on the subject from around the world. In 2019, articles originated from 118 countries. Nearly 70% for these articles came from China and the USA, followed by European countries (Germany, Italy, the UK, Spain, France, the Netherlands), Canada, and Australia. Remote Sensing OAJ provides readers and authors statistics on each article, such as the number of downloads and number of citations. Remote Sensing OAJ ranks #1 amongst all remote sensing journals in terms of Eigenfactor scores (0.06661) and normalized Eigenfactor scores (8.1265). It increased its citations by 12,516 in 2019 (36,083) compared to 2018 (23,567), the highest increase in the year by any Remote Sensing Journal. Remote Sensing of Environment with 62,697 citations, and IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing with 46,565 citations rank above Remote Sensing OAJ in 2019….”

Guest Post – MDPI’s Remarkable Growth – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“Standing for Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, MDPI is no stranger to controversy. In 2014, the company was named to Jeffrey Beall’s infamous list of predatory publishers. After a concerted rehabilitation effort, they were removed from Beall’s list. Since then, incidents include editors at one MDPI journal resigning in protest over editorial policies and more recently, questions raised over waiver policies that favor wealthier, established researchers over those with financial need. Just last week, a leader in the scholarly communications community felt compelled to publicly ask, “Is MDPI considered a predatory publisher?

Despite these ongoing questions, MDPI has flourished as a publisher, and authors have flocked to their journals. Based on SCImago data, at least 16 publishers were larger than MDPI in 2015 in terms of journal paper output. As of 2019, 71 of MDPI’s 250 journals have an Impact Factor (Clarivate’s JIF), an indication of rigorous peer review and impact (measured in citations), and MDPI has become the 5th largest publisher, publishing 110k papers per annum, including 103k research articles and reviews. They are firmly positioned ahead of Sage, ACS, and IEEE. Growing at ~50% YTD (despite COVID-19), MDPI may soon overtake Taylor & Francis for the spot of the 4th largest publisher in the world.

In 2019, they also became the largest Open Access (OA) publisher, moving ahead of Springer Nature, which published 102k Open Access papers (93k research articles) in fully OA and hybrid journals….”

MDPI Journals – 2015 to 2019 | Dan Brockington

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“In a previous blog (published December 2019) I explored the performance and changes of the MDPI journals, examining their growth up to the end of 2018. Since I wrote that blog, data for 2019 are now available – and they are more remarkable than before (Table 1). Submissions in 2018 were over 140,000. In 2019 they were just under 240,000. Over 64,000 papers were published in 2018; in 2019 over 100,000. Estimated gross revenues (see note below Table 1) have increased by nearly 60 million Swiss francs. A downloadable PDF of this blog and the source data are available at the end of the document….

In this blog I reflect on what these trends mean for the arguments of my last blog – specifically, does growth demonstrate signs of vanity publishing? I also reflect on the responses to the first open letter that I wrote to the MDPI. The headline findings are that I believe that the growth has continued at the same rate (if not greater) because the journals provide a service that increasing numbers of academics find useful. At the same time the experience of publishing with an working for these journals remains uneven….”

MDPI Journals – 2015 to 2019 | Dan Brockington

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“In a previous blog (published December 2019) I explored the performance and changes of the MDPI journals, examining their growth up to the end of 2018. Since I wrote that blog, data for 2019 are now available – and they are more remarkable than before (Table 1). Submissions in 2018 were over 140,000. In 2019 they were just under 240,000. Over 64,000 papers were published in 2018; in 2019 over 100,000. Estimated gross revenues (see note below Table 1) have increased by nearly 60 million Swiss francs. A downloadable PDF of this blog and the source data are available at the end of the document….

In this blog I reflect on what these trends mean for the arguments of my last blog – specifically, does growth demonstrate signs of vanity publishing? I also reflect on the responses to the first open letter that I wrote to the MDPI. The headline findings are that I believe that the growth has continued at the same rate (if not greater) because the journals provide a service that increasing numbers of academics find useful. At the same time the experience of publishing with an working for these journals remains uneven….”

Förderung von Gold Open Access: Abkommen mit MDPI

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From Google’s English:  “At the beginning of 2019, the new open access agreement between 15 Austrian research institutions, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Gold Open Access Publisher MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) came into force. The agreement enables scientists from these institutions to publish their articles in the publisher’s over 190 Gold Open Access journals using a simplified workflow and institutional cost management.

In addition to an institutional discount, the agreement offers the participating Austrian research institutions comprehensive reporting on expenditure and research results at the institutional and consortium level. The full transparency of the agreement published on Zenodo should also be emphasized: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2536007 …”

MDPI | Article Processing Charges (APC) Information and FAQ

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“MDPI publishes all its journals in full open access, meaning unlimited use and reuse of articles, in addition to giving credit to the authors. All our articles are published under a Creative Commons (CC BY) license.

Authors pay a one-time Article Processing Charge (APC) to cover the costs of peer review administration and management, professional production of articles in PDF and other formats, and dissemination of published papers in various venues, in addition to other publishing functions. There are no charges for rejected articles, no submission charges, and no surcharges based on the length of an article, figures or supplementary data. Some items (Editorials, Corrections, Addendums, Retractions, Comments, etc.) are published free of charge.

Here is a breakdown of how our APCs are used. In calculating these values, we have followed recommendations from the Fair Open Access Alliance, an organization that promotes sustainable and transparent scholarly open access publishing. This also makes MDPI fully compliant with the requirements of Plan S, a key funder initiative to promote Open Access….”

MDPI | Article Processing Charges (APC) Information and FAQ

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“MDPI publishes all its journals in full open access, meaning unlimited use and reuse of articles, in addition to giving credit to the authors. All our articles are published under a Creative Commons (CC BY) license.

Authors pay a one-time Article Processing Charge (APC) to cover the costs of peer review administration and management, professional production of articles in PDF and other formats, and dissemination of published papers in various venues, in addition to other publishing functions. There are no charges for rejected articles, no submission charges, and no surcharges based on the length of an article, figures or supplementary data. Some items (Editorials, Corrections, Addendums, Retractions, Comments, etc.) are published free of charge.

Here is a breakdown of how our APCs are used. In calculating these values, we have followed recommendations from the Fair Open Access Alliance, an organization that promotes sustainable and transparent scholarly open access publishing. This also makes MDPI fully compliant with the requirements of Plan S, a key funder initiative to promote Open Access….”

An Open Letter to MDPI publishing | Dan Brockington

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“Dear MDPI,

 

Your journal publications have grown dramatically, and quite extraordinarily. But there are sceptics who suggest that this reflects low standards and distorting financial incentives. I was one of them. To prove my views I explored trends in publications of 140 journals for which data were available from 2015 onwards. But doing so proved me wrong; I could not sustain my sceptical view. Instead I think I have a better understanding of why researchers are so keen to publish with you. But my exploration also makes plain challenges that you will face in the future, that are caused by your remarkable success. In this letter I describe your growth, the lack of substance to sceptics’ criticism and the challenges which your success creates. I also describe potential solutions to them. Here is the word version of it….”

MDPI supplies full-text articles to Publications Router | Jisc scholarly communications

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“The open access publisher MDPI is now supplying full-text articles to Jisc’s Publications Router, enabling them to be automatically deposited into institutions’ repositories. This streamlines institutions’ processes for capturing and showcasing their researchers’ publications, helping them to demonstrate compliance with funders’ open access policies.

Based in Basel, Switzerland, MDPI publishes over 200 peer-reviewed, open access journals in a variety of scientific, technical, engineering, medical and other disciplines. In 2018, MDPI contributed well over 60 000 open access articles to DOAJ. All articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), allowing them to be shared and re-used freely….

MDPI supplies daily feeds to Publications Router upon publication of the articles concerned. Nearly all of them are published within 15 days of acceptance, so institutions will receive them very promptly. The notifications include the full text in the published version of record, with no embargo, so the articles can be exposed immediately for public view. They are accompanied by rich metadata, including confirmation of the immediate CC BY licence, minimising the need for any manual intervention or checking….”

MDPI 2019: price increases, some hefty, and more coming in July | Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir les savoirs communs

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n brief: MDPI has increased prices, in many cases quite substantially (some prices have more than tripled). Even more price increases are anticipated in July 2019, which will have the effect of doubling the average APC and tripling the most common APC. Unlike other publishers’ practices, there are no price decreases. Comment and recommendation: open access advocates, along with policy makers and research funders, and keen to support a transition to open access. In my opinion, the enthusiasm of payers to support APC journals is causing an unhealthy and unsustainable distortion in the market. My advice: stick with green OA policy. Require deposit of funded works in an open access repository. This is a better means to ensure ongoing preservation and open access, and exerts market pressure in a way that is more suited to the development of an economically sustainable open access system.