Is the MDPI a predatory publisher or is the
MDPI a victim of extortion? Who are other victims of fake blogs (pseudo-blogs)?
GABRIEL DURAND
Ecole Centrale De Lille, Lille, FRANCE
LOUIS GARNIER
Université Savoie Mont Blanc, Chambery, FRANCE
Abstract: - - Recently many
articles have been published about which Publisher is predatory and which is
not. Two controversial web sites existed: a) http://scholarlyoa.org and b)
http://predatoryreports.org
The first Jeffrey Beall's list was closed by the academic authorities of the
University of Denver after strong pressure from MDPI in the year 2014 and from
Frontiers in the year 2017. In the meantime many legitimate and genuine peer
reviewed publishers have been victims of this blog's suspicious policy.
On the other hand
predatoryreports.org was anonymously owned and which had taken Jeffrey Beall's list and made it a flag. Recently the controversial
predatoryreports.org has been hitting
MDPI, FRONTIERS, HINDAWI in a very slanderous way. There was even a site on Cabells Index that said the owners of the
http://www.predatoryreports.org were asking for money from publishers to remove
them from the http://www.predatoryreports.org. Actually they were blackmailing
the Publishers
But a few days ago that site
was shut down (they shut it down).
Regardless, all this has
influenced some academicians in some countries to consider MDPI, Frontiers, Hindawi Journals as Predatory or semi-predatory.
See
https://www.lib.cas.cz/podpora/data/asep/predatori/predatory_journals_eng.pdf
Other victims these blogs in
the past were American Scientific Publishers, Bentham, Benthamopen,
WSEAS, IASTED, NAUN, IAENG, ACTA PRESS....
The Publishers American
Scientific Publishers, Bentham, Benthamopen, WSEAS,
IASTED, NAUN, IAENG, ACTA PRESS and were added in the "black lists" quite
maliciously and ill-intenioned. We have tested the
Publishers: WSEAS, IASTED, NAUN, IAENG, ACTA PRESS, American Scientific
Publishers, Bentham, Benthamopen. These publishers
are important academic publishers with real peer review, actually very strict
peer review and high rejections rates and they do not have any relation with
"predatory" Scam Machines.
Recently Cicero Cena, Daniel
A. Gonçalves, Giuseppe A. Câmara
[1] published an excellent article and they prove that these publishers are
genuine, legitimate and very far from being considered as Predatory
Another anonymous and
suspicious blogs still exists https://beallslist.net/
It had the MDPI as predatory
publisher, but MDPI pressed them and they have included it now as ...
semi-predatory publisher!
Key-Words: - Fake
Blogs, Pseudo blocks, extortion, Blackmail, Predatory Publishers, MDPI,
Frontiers, Hindawi,
1 Introduction
Cicero Cena, Daniel A. Gonçalves,
Giuseppe A. Câmara [1] wrote these:
"The burgeoning
landscape of scientific communication, marked by a booming growth in published
articles, journals, and specialized publishers, prompts a critical examination
of prevailing assumptions. This article advocates for a dispassionate and
meticulous analysis to avoid policy decisions grounded in anecdotal evidence or
superficial arguments.
The discourse
surrounding so-called predatory journals has been a focal point within the
academic community since the Beall and Cabells list. The main concerns include exorbitant
publication fees, low quality of work, journal titles reminiscent of
prestigious journals, and quick acceptance, which raises doubts about the
reliability of the peer-review process adopted by these journals.
By accepting that
these assumptions are true, it seems easy to argue that such “predatory
journals” should be avoided, as no well-intentioned scientists would willingly
expose themselves to this kind of “abusive relationship”. In other words, after
years of hard work where an idea is transformed into scientific data by the
small “miracle” of human inspiration, it is regrettable to discover that the
chosen publisher denigrates the quality of your work because the scientific
community views it with suspicion (or even disbelief) since you published it in
an unreliable platform. The problem is not exclusive to Brazil, but it is
worsened when the country does not have a consolidated national policy that
allocates specific resources for the payment of open access publication
fees".
We agree with Cicero
Cena, Daniel A. Gonçalves,
Giuseppe A. Câmara and Cicero Cena, Daniel A. Gonçalves,
Giuseppe A. Câmara [1] continue
"Therefore,
instead of simply accepting that the expansion in the number of journals
occurred primarily via a proliferation of suspect journals, we invite the
community to delve more deeply into who defines and how we define what
predatory journals are. To do so, it is necessary to employ the skepticism that
is so cherished in our daily academic activities and explore the topic, its
potential consequences, and even the underlying interests that may influence
decision-makers.
In Brazil, master’s
and PhD programs are evaluated every four years by an agency directly
subordinate to the Ministry of Education (CAPES). Throughout this interval, the
heads of post-graduation programs meet at CAPES headquarters to deliberate on
the key parameters chosen for comparative analysis during the evaluation
process. Recently, after one of those meetings, a non-official, highly
threatening message circulated on WhatsApp, derived
from a post on the “Predatory Journals” website that placed the publishers
MDPI, Hindawi, and Frontiers “behind bars. It seems
that behind the stage of science, a handful of people (whose interests we
ignore) want to decide which scenario will be used for the scene without
talking with those who are writing the script.
Apparently, part of
the Brazilian scientific community with decision-making power has chosen to
accept, as an act of faith, the post on the mentioned website. They simply
assumed MDPI, Hindawi, and Frontiers to be predatory
without distinguishing between the journals published by these entities.
However, the prestige of a journal is primarily defined by the quality of the
editorial board and its ability to appoint reviewers capable of (a) discerning,
among the proposed publications, which ones are relevant and (b) foreseeing, to
some extent, which research can bring visibility to the journal. When these
criteria are applied to the peer-review system, with all the inherent
idiosyncrasies of the individuals who make up the system, they generate a
significant heterogeneity of prestige among journals, even those published
under the same editorial label.
Returning to the
post, the suggestive image places the logos of these publishers behind bars
with the subtitle “major predatory publishers”. The post mentions that starting
from January 2023, Zhejiang Gongshang University
would no longer consider articles published by these publishers in its academic
performance evaluations. The text also suggests that the “banning” of these
publishers by CAPES is an ongoing process. Yet, the post ends arguing that we
should follow the example of Zhejiang Gongshang
University, one of the top three Chinese universities (it is worth noting that
according to Times Higher Education, the mentioned university is not among the
top three in its country). The original post also appeals to a certain
“trickery” of the training researchers, warning them that their performance
depends on the opinion of their employers and that “wasting money to get your
papers accepted in the shortest possible time may not help you in the long
term”.
Well, some
skepticism is welcome when science administrators in Brazil spread unofficial
information with the intention of influencing the community to advocate for
interests that remain undisclosed. This echoing of “truths” is mere rhetoric
and must be scrutinized, as will be demonstrated here. One hypothesis is that
the bearer of the message himself did not critically analyze it before
accepting it as truth. This assumption is especially troubling when considering
its potential position in the decision-making hierarchy of science and
technology in our country, subjecting our entire community to rules guided by a
biased viewpoint.
To substantiate the
discussion, let us analyze some data from two major publishers, Elsevier and
MDPI. The first one is a well-established publisher with numerous prestigious
journals across various fields of knowledge, while MDPI is an alleged “predatory
publisher”. The Article Processing Charges (hereafter referred to as APC) of
MDPI, which encompasses 422 journals, range from 500 to 2900 Swiss Francs, with
an average value of approximately 1500 Swiss Francs (around USD 1670). On the
other hand, Elsevier has 2729 titles with APCs ranging from USD 200 to 10,400 and
an average APC of USD ~2900.
Early critics may
argue that they do not pay to publish in Elsevier, but they overlook the fact
that CAPES has two access contracts with Elsevier that together add up to
around USD 127 million. Furthermore, there is a collective assumption that
Elsevier values the quality of its publications, unlike MDPI, which would be a
factor in classifying the latter as predatory. However, although we do not have
the statistics, we and many of our colleagues review manuscripts for both
platforms. Therefore, if the reviewers define the quality of a journal, and if
the pool of reviewers is similar in both cases, what justifies the discrepancy
in the quality of works between the analyzed publishers? Furthermore, if the
papers published by MDPI are of low quality, why do their journals have
increasingly higher impact factors? Does the scientific community tend to cite
poor-quality works as an example? What kind of science are we practicing then?
Continuing this
reasoning, we extracted the number of papers published from 2019 to 2023 for
both publishers using the Web of Science platform. In this period, Elsevier and
MDPI published 3,167,221 and 1,172,615 papers, respectively. Cross-referencing
these numbers with the retracted papers by the same publishers, through a query
in the Retraction Watch Database, we observed that Elsevier and MDPI had 2305
(0.07%) and 142 (0.01%) retracted papers, respectively, during the period.
Also, the median impact factor of 528 Elsevier journals classified as devoted
to the Chemistry field in the Qualis 2017–2020 (a
scale of prestige used by CAPES) is 4.45, while for MDPI’s 66 journals, it is
3.70. This difference should not be overlooked, but we cannot be absolutists.
Similar to a researcher’s H-index increasing with the number of publications
and over time, it is expected that something analogous would happen with the
impact factor of MDPI journals. A complete understanding of this scenario would
require a statistical analysis beyond the scope of this text.
A key aspect that
challenges claims without evidence is the scrutiny of published works, a
characteristic supposedly absent in predatory journals. In MDPI, many reviews
are available alongside the publication, allowing for an evaluation of the
entire review process until the manuscript is accepted. Furthermore, in some
cases, it is even possible to identify the reviewers and assess whether they
are experts in the field.
Another
counterpoint is the three-year contract to access the Elsevier database
(2023–2025). We cannot predict the future, but from 2021 to 2023, Brazilian
scientists published 52,299 articles in Elsevier. If we had paid the average
APC (USD ~2900) in the open access model, the investment would have been
approximately 1.2 times the current contract. It is important to highlight that
this contract expires on 31 December 2025, while the timeframe for open access
is indefinite. If everyone is in a similar situation, maybe we should all pay
APCs, and become free from the paywall model.
The data presented
here provide enough material to outline the present scenario. In essence, the
available data do not justify the banishment of certain publishers from the
scientific scene, even though there may have been lapses in the practice of
individual journals. The underlying suggestion is that we should be more
cautious before adopting a binary logic. Furthermore, instances of misconduct
practices are also observed in supposed “serious publishers”. Let us not forget
recent examples from PLOS ONE and Scientific Reports.
We believe the
prejudice against new publishers is partially based on the following scenario:
the management of science in Brazil lies in the hands of senior researchers who
were trained in a different scientific environment. Most of them have
well-established groups with a good infrastructure and abundant workforce.
Hence, it is easier for these groups to maintain a high rate of scientific
production (10+ papers per year). Since the volume of submissions is high, the
flow of publications remains at the same level, even if it requires waiting for
the longer processing time (including resubmissions) of publishers as Elsevier.
On the other hand,
the relatively shorter times of processing submissions of publishers like MDPI
allow researchers from smaller groups, typically younger, to give momentum to
their intermittent production, eventually reaching similar numbers of papers.
This scenario
suggests a generational friction point in the Brazilian scientific community:
Thanks to the rise of short-time processing publishers, the scientific production
rate in smaller centers may be approaching that of the top Brazilian
universities. Let us test this hypothesis: in a query regarding the Scopus
database, we compared the number of publications weighted by the number of
authors from 2000 to 2023 between a prestigious Brazilian university and an
emerging one (Figure 1). For this, we chose three of the top ten Brazilian
universities according to the World University Ranking 2023 [7] to represent
the consolidated ones. The top three universities in the Central-West region
are the emerging ones chosen for comparison. It is noted that from 2015, there
is a more pronounced inflection in the curve of emerging universities, partly
explained by the renewal of the teaching staff, thanks to programs that promoted
the expansion and universalization of postgraduate
studies in Brazilian public universities.
Cicero Cena, Daniel A. Gonçalves,
Giuseppe A. Câmara [1] continue:
One last aspect
deserves a brief comment: publishers like MDPI enable young researchers to be
guest editors for special volumes. This policy minimizes the comparative
advantages that well-established graduate programs had until recently in the
evaluation cycles promoted by CAPES.
A colleague once
reflected that “The dominant force will always resist the emerging one… even
though both have problems, the more powerful ones can shape the narrative that
suits them… but that’s the game… and the emerging publishers have to respond to
this debate.”
This essay does not
aim to exhaust the subject, and we acknowledge that there is still much to be
considered on the topic. Our reflections are primarily a call to action for the
scientific community to engage in a comprehensive and nuanced debate on the
complex issues surrounding scientific publishing. Certainly, we can devise
smarter solutions for the current model, but we will not do so without a broad
debate, where the arguments of various stakeholders are considered. It is time
to debate policy decisions based on evidence, considering the diverse interests
and perspectives within the scientific ecosystem, rather than in “hallway
conversation”.
2 Like MDPI and Frontiers several other
victims of the Black Lists of the fake Blogs exist
Like MDPI and Frontiers
several other victims of the Black Lists of the fake Blogs exist!
Other victims fake Blogs in
the past were American Scientific Publishers, Bentham, Benthamopen,
WSEAS, IASTED, NAUN, IAENG, ACTA PRESS....
The Publishers American
Scientific Publishers, Bentham, Benthamopen, WSEAS,
IASTED, NAUN, IAENG, ACTA PRESS were added in the these blogs maliciously and ill-intenioned.
We have tested the Publishers: WSEAS, IASTED, NAUN, IAENG, ACTA PRESS, American
Scientific Publishers, Bentham, Benthamopen. These
publishers are important academic publishers with real peer review and they do
not have any relation with "predatory" Scam Machines. See [2], [3],
[4], [5], [6], [7].
References:
[1]
Cicero Cena,
Daniel A. Gonçalves, Giuseppe A. Câmara, Should I Buy the Current Narrative about Predatory
Journals? Facts and Insights from the Brazilian Scenario, Publications (MDPI),
2024, 12, 7
[2] Mihiretu Kebede, Anna E. Schmaus-Klughammer
and Brook Tesfaye Tekle,
Manuscript Submission Invitations from
‘Predatory Journals’: What Should Authors Do?,
The KoreanAcademy
of Medical Science, Volume 31, Number 5, May 2017, pp 709-712.
[3] Kyle Siler, There is no black and
white definition of predatory publishing
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/05/13/there-is-no-black-and-white-definition-of-predatory-publishing/
May 13th, 2020
[4] Nikos Bardis,
Lambros Ekonomou, Pierre
Borne, Klimis Ntalianis,
Paolo Mercorelli,Michael N Katehakis,
Nikos Kintzios, Cornelia Aida Bulucea
and Maria Isabella GarciaPlanas,
Business and Economics: Metrics and Peer
Review in the journal: “WSEAS Transactions on Business and Economics”, Journal
of Physics: Conference Series
doi:10.1088/1742-596/1564/1/012025https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1564/1/012025/pdf
[5] Papers rejected from WSEAS, but
accepted in IEEE, Springer, Hindawi, Elsevier, MDPIin recent
years:http://wseas.org/multimedia/journals/rejected-from-wseas-published-in-ieeespringer-elsevier-etc.zip
[6] Quality Control of WSEAS Journals,https://wseas.com/qualitycontrol.php
Contribution of Individual
Authors to the Creation of a Scientific Article (Ghostwriting Policy)
[7] Megan O'Donnell,
Understanding Predatory Publishers
https://instr.iastate.libguides.com/predatory/id
The authors equally contributed in the
present research, at all stages from the formulation of the problem to the
final findings and solution.