In concrete, great variability may be appreciated between the maximum and minimum review durations of its journals within different fields with regard to the speed of the review process, understood as the average duration from submission to the final editorial decision (including first decision-accept, reject or revise) (https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/materials-science/journals/fast-publication). 2019), the term predatory journal is undoubtedly the most extensive in academia and appropriately describes this malpractice (Manca et al. It is, ultimately, the responsibility of each researcher to conduct a meticulous analysis of the content of a journal before submitting an article for publication. Even so, the identification of predatory journals is still a crucial aspect in the maintenance of quality and scientific integrity. None declared. bhttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/computer-science/journals/fast-publication. 2020) for inclusion in an objective definition. Further complicating definitions of predatory publishing, are the existence of what could be called grey journals and publishers, occupying quasi-legitimate niches between whitelists and blacklists. Data were collected between 2 December 2019 and 4 January 2020. In some cases, where an MDPI-journal was indexed in more than one JCR category, the non-MDPI-journal with the highest impact factor was chosen for comparison. With respect to the formal criterion of the composition of the Editorial Board, it has not been possible to evaluate whether all the members who form part of these boards are in fact aware of their roles, due to their very high numbers (16,223 individuals), which could be approached in future research. Besides, JCR-indexed MDPI-journals mimicking names and publicly claimed rapid publication is in direct breach of the COPE/DOAJ/OASPA/WAME Principles for Transparency and Best Practices in Scholarly Publishing. JCR-indexed MDPI-journals betray both traits through a steady increase in number of their published articles (sometimes to several hundred in just one regular issue) and special issues. fhttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-mechanical-engineering. Our chance investigation started after a message from a stranger took me inside a predatory conference and has uncovered how predatory science has ensnared scientists at every level and made a small fortune for the conference organizers. The physicist Ahmed Hindawi and his wife, the mathematician Nagwa Abdel-Mottaleb, started their publishing house in their home country Egypt in 1997; 10 years later they converted Hindawi to open access. Unfortunately, there is no information available on the time from submission to the final decision for the 53 journals under analysis, only minimum and maximum times from submission to first decision, as shown in Figure 4. The results serve to point out how self-citation rates and intra-MPDI citation rates both followed a rise between 2018 and 2019. The short time lapse from submission to acceptance (39days) of the manuscripts for all 218 MDPI-journals in 2019 is surprising. The increase in the number of published articles between 2018 and 2019 ranged from 554.91% in Medicina to 18.3% in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJGI). This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and . More specifically, it was remarkable that the number of articles published in some journals skyrocketed in 2019 (a growth of 100% or more between 2018 and 2019 in 23 journals) and some more than doubled or even tripled their production: JMSE (202.5%), Metabolites (228.57%), Electronics (229.66%), Foods (231.48%), Mathematics (239.13%), Antioxidants (240%), Pathogens (253.68%), Processes (254.28%), Cancers (280.25%), JCM (287.77%), Animals (391.2%), Biomolecules (391.7%), Plants (463.24%), Microorganisms (486.36%), Cells (498.97), and Medicina (554.91%). This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating . The number of special issues was over twice the number of ordinary issues in 92.45% of the MDPI-journals under analysis. 2019). Besides, an increasingly high rate of citations from other MDPI-journals was observed. The librarian, Jeffrey Beall, while at the University of Colorado and now in retirement, coined the term to identify journals that, overlooking quality peer-review processes, seek to generate income exclusively through the APCs that the authors are expected to pay and who are then sent misleading information on citation indexes and spam-related marketing (Beall 2012; Laine and Winker 2017). ghttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-process-and-industrial-engineering. 2019), with those articles likely not to have undergone an acceptable editorial and peer-review process. before print) varies but is usually accomplished within 2 weeks (Broome 2017). Aurora, United States. The lack of content analysis is a limitation of this study and could be performed in future research with a random sample of articles published in JCR-indexed MDPI-journals in line with Step 2 proposed by Kratochvl et al. The COPE/DOAJ/OASPA/WAME Principles for Transparency and Best Practices in Scholarly Publishing stipulate that journal names should not be easily confused with another journal and that journal websites should not guarantee very short peer-review times (as a member of COPE and DOAJ, MDPI could hardly argue that it ignores those Principles). The same information was collected from journal web pages, WOS (Core Collection) and JCR for leading journals in each JCR category where the MDPI-journals were indexed. The problem is that each of these criteria, above all if taken in an isolated way, are questionable and may occur singly or together in non-predatory journals. Second, only limited insights are possible because not all the journals in the control group are in the framework of gold open access (which would allow a direct comparison). It is beyond the scope of this research to answer that question based on the analysis conducted, further research is needed to address this key question. From a prescriptive viewpoint, Teixeira da Silva and Dobrnszki (2017) understood that the initial review could not reasonably last longer than 12months, to which another 12months have to be added for subsequent revision of the paper, amounting to as many as 8months, in the case of a process with three revisions. 2019; Strong 2019), because they undermine its integrity (Vogel 2017; Abad-Garca 2019), its quality, and its credibility (Bond et al. analysed 93 checklists in a systematic review of checklists for identifying predatory journals from biomedical fields. However, this fact only partially could explain the notable increase in output content for just 43.39% of 53-MDPI journals received their first impact factor in 2017 or in 2018 while the increase in output content is observed for the all 53-MDPI journals. The APC in JCR-indexed MDPI-journals (from 1000CHF to 2000 CHF) needs to be contextualized. As depicted in Figure 5, the impact factors of all journals were reduced when self-citations were removed. (2019) state that predatory journals prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and that their behaviour includes deviation from best editorial and publication practices. Poor Peer Review Practices. 2020). Once accepted, time to posting the final word document online on a reputable journals Web site i.e. Frontiers is merely a symptom of an utterly rotten scholarly publishing system, which is beyond repair. Is frontiers a good publisher? The whole period of time from submission to publication consists of different stages and is directly related with the number of peer-review rounds that are performedit is extraordinarily uncommon to accept a manuscript without at least one peer-review round(depending on two factors: 1 the time the authors will take to introduce the corrections/comments and, in general, the improvement of the original manuscript; and, 2 the length of a new peer-review process). However, this solution could only work in the medium to long term. Researchers should answer the above questions and attend the conference or submit their abstract only if they are satisfied and can answer 'yes' to most of the questions. In 2015, Frontiers Media was classified as a possible predatory publisher by Jeffrey Beall. Its average APC amounts to 1,138USD (OMICS 2020). A further relevant aspect worth focussing upon is the size of the Journal Editorial Board. 2020). IJERPH, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health; IJGI, ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information; IJMS, International Journal of Molecular Sciences; JCM, Journal of Clinical Medicine; JMSE, Journal of Marine Science and Engineering. The high rate of self-citations of the journal Sustainability is coherent with data that the journal itself provided in its bibliometric review over the period 200918 (https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/5/1655), showing that Sustainability ranks first in citing journals (2,496 cites) very much over the Journal of Cleaner Production that occupies second position (658 cites) in this bibliographic review. As mentioned above, MDPI reports state that the median time from submission to publication for all its 218 journals was 39days in 2019 (MDPI 2020) as it was in 2018 when MDPI published 203 journals (MDPI 2019). 1. 2018). Shedding further light on MDPI-journal citing sources, the top 10 MDPI journals for citations listed on the WOS were analysed and intra-MDPI citation levels were identified with other MDPI-journals. In fact, high impact factors may merely be due to citation cartels instead of true and legitimate scientific interest (Ioannidis and Thombs 2019). Impact Factor is the average number of citations received in 2017 to articles published in 2015 and 2016, while . ehttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-control-and-signal-processing. Elsevier provided a framework to assess time from submission to first decision in relative terms (Table 5). I don't see Frontiers as predatory. (2020)and in Scopus (Hedding 2019; Cortegiani et al. 2019). Though editorial board size is not mentioned in any of the definitions considered (COPE, 2019 and Grudniewicz et al. WOSPredatory Reports328Frontiers19951SCIE4SSCI223MDPI 422 ! This may suggest a form of post-production misconduct, due to the manipulation of citations, which affects the impact factor of the journal, its visibility and its influence. ), rather than professional editors (as with the journals of Nature Research). All the more so, if it is taken into account that, in addition, the editorial staff of MDPI is formed of researchers who have to organize their time for revision among their other professional activities (research, teaching, dissemination, evaluation, grant applications, etc. These actions will send out a clear message to researchers to refuse to publish in and to support predatory journals. (2019) and COPE (2019). BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. As a consequence of the new context generated by the proliferation of predatory journals, it becomes necessary to review the evaluation policies (Beall 2016). Better Service Although highly variable between journals, Teixeira da Silva and Dobrnszki (2017) found no great variation between science, technology, engineering and medicine publishers: 3-4weeks for peer review means about 6weeks until to the first editorial decision (Teixeira da Silva and Dobrnszki 2017). Even then there's a good chance that . After Frontiers was listed as a potential predatory publisher, Nature News has reported on the scientists' protests about this addition to the "controversial 'Beall's List'". COPE and OASPA have retained Frontiers as a member after concerns were raised. He is the person who analyzed and observed a growing number of the exploitative academic journals charging author fees without the proper quality and the published papers. Predatory journals usually offer rapid peer-review processes, but without experts reviewing the quality of research and accuracy of the information (Oerman et al. a year Country of Publication: England Publisher: As the above results show, the review periods for all JCR-indexed MDPI-journals are similar and are commonly shorter than considered normal, despite the variation in number of published articles and themes. (2020). Thus, universities, funding institutions, or any institution that evaluates scientific activity can disincentivize the submission of manuscripts to predatory journals and the acceptance of roles on their editorial committees, ignoring these milestones in the evaluation process of a curriculum vitae (Forero et al. The following analysis addressed the peer-review process. Moreover, the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series, and Publishers downgraded MDPI to 0 in 2019 and later upgraded it to 1 again. Elseviers review speed (submission to final decision in days). Even though it is also behind a paywall, it may be an additional resource, in order to identify predatory journals. FBL is dedicated to publishing advances in all aspects of cellular and molecular biology of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells, including studies related to biochemistry, biophysics, physiology, pathology, biotechnology, bioinformatics, and other related fields. Besides, the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishersjointly operated by The National Board of Scholarly Publishing and the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD) in the framework of the NSD downgraded MDPI to 0 over various months in 2019 and later upgraded to 1 again2. Ramn y Cajal. At the same time, if there is a lack of awareness of predatory journals among scientists, then they will evaluate those publications as if they were legitimate and may naively send papers to predatory journals. It was founded in 2007 by Kamila and Henry Markram. However, some articles from some predatory journals are in fact indexed, both in PubMed (Manca et al. Where an MDPI-journal was ranked in more than one category, the leading journal with a higher impact factor in those categories in 2018 was selected for comparison (Table 2). Journals Suppressed from 2018 JCR Data2019 releasein https://help.incites.clarivate.com/incitesLiveJCR/JCRGroup/titleSuppressions.html), which as a consequence, will receive no impact factor for 1 year, due to the distortion of the rank of the journal in each category that no longer accurately reflects the journals true participation, by way of citation, in the scholarly literature of its subject (https://support.clarivate.com/ScientificandAcademicResearch/s/article/Journal-Citation-Reports-Explanation-of-Missing-Dropped-or-Suppressed-Journals?language=en_US). No longer merely a medium for dissemination, scientific journals are now a key foundation for appointments and funding in scientific research (Shu et al. The people assessing you can be divided into two broad categories: those who think Frontiers is predatory, and those who don't. In the former case, they are likely to consider you a victim. 2020) [italics added]. Predatory journals, harmful to academia and science, . MDPI founder and current president is Shu-Kun Lin, Ph.D (https://www.mdpi.com/about/team). (2019) highlighted the systematic for-profit publication behaviour (COPE 2019) and its prioritization of self-interest at the expense of scholarship (Grudniewicz et al. Frontiers in Oncology. The results showed that the self-citation rates increased and was very much higher than those of the leading journals in the JCR category. Focussing our attention on the 53 MDPI-journals under analysis, 84.9% of their websites reported that they provided a first decision within <19days. Peer review is a system of safeguards which, despite its limitations, fulfils its function reasonably well of ensuring that false research, of low quality, with serious flaws or inaccurate information is not disseminated, thereby avoiding misinformation (Elmore and Weston 2020; Siler 2020). Regarding journal names, aforementioned Principles state they shall be unique and not be one that is easily confused with other journal or might mislead potential authors and readers about the journals origin or association with other journals. Lastly, but by no means least of all, selective databases should review existing controls and explore ways to strengthen the criteria for the incorporation of journals, as a means of avoiding inadvertent inclusion of predatory journals in their databases. Data on each selected journal were gathered from the following sections of the MDPI-journal web pages: Home, Editorial Board, Special Issues, APC, and Journal Statistics. In spite of its important role in science, it was considered too subjective an aspectpartly because, as with journal quality and deceitfulness, it is impossible to assess(Grudniewicz et al. JCR-indexed MDPI-journals (2018)/leading journal in the category. Original list Go to update This is an archived version of the Beall's list - a list of potential predatory publishers created by a librarian Jeffrey Beall. (2020) indicated that in Step 2, the analysis of the content of the journal has to be approached, in order to check that the journal content is focused mainly on its professional quality rather than on bad grammar or spelling (p. 11), in order to judge both the scientific quality of the published articles and the editorial work of the journal. Founded in 2007 by Kamila and Henry Markram average APC amounts to 1,138USD ( 2020... Additional resource, in order to identify predatory journals the results serve to point out how self-citation increased! 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