Related Infographic. 2019). 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. The following analysis addressed the peer-review process. Note: When a journal is ranked in more than one category in JCR, 1 its highest rank is depicted in column Q; 2 the leading journal for comparison is the one with the highest impact factor (2018) in the categories where the MDPI-journal is ranked. 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. Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology is a broad-scope, interdisciplinary open-access journal, focusing on the fundamental processes of life, led by Prof Amanda Fisher and supported by a geographically diverse, high-quality editorial board. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (2019) clarified that predatory publishing generally refers to the systematic for-profit publication of purportedly scholarly content (in journals and articles, monographs, books, or conference proceedings) in a deceptive or fraudulent way and without any regard for quality assurance [ so] these journals exist solely for profit without any commitment to publication ethics or integrity of any kind. However, the reality is that this process is by no means simple, as Aromataris and Stern (2020) accurately indicated, particularly because predatory publishers have continued to evolve their undesirable art form into sophisticated operations that appear to be, at face value, legitimate to the point where certain journals and publishers may blatantly exploit gray strategies given that downmarket niches can be lucrative (Siler 2020). Original list Go to update This is an archived version of the Beall's list - a list of potential predatory publishers created by a librarian Jeffrey Beall. I was not allowed to handle articles of authors who I'd worked with in the past (for some articles we brought in another editor we knew, for others Frontiers supplied a handling editor). Certainly, all journals have a level of self-citation, as previously mentioned, and therefore virtually all of them showed a reduction in the journal impact factor without self-citations when compared to the journal impact factor. As depicted in Figure 5, the impact factors of all journals were reduced when self-citations were removed. mimicking names. (2020)and in Scopus (Hedding 2019; Cortegiani et al. The journal welcomes submissions on a wide spectrum of cell and developmental biology . 2020). (2019) and COPE (2019). https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing. before print) varies but is usually accomplished within 2 weeks (Broome 2017). 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. 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. Rotten System. Moreover, the term predatory journal was found by Jeffery Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado. In particular, the 400 or so conferences that MDPI sponsored in 2019 (MDPI 2020) should all be carefully scrutinized. Take a look at their peer review process and publication timelines 6. These facts suggest that MDPI has been open to question, a publisher that has been moving within a grey zone. This investigation is centred on Clarivate's JCR, perhaps the most prestigious and best recognized database in academia with the widest use at a global level, in order to analyse the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). 2020). The formal criteria together with the analysis of the citation patterns of the 53 journals under analysis all suggest they may be predatory journals. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and . The number of articles published during 2019 appeared to have no effect on the average duration of peer review. The speed to publication is dependent on several things, but primarily on how many reviewers accept an editors invitation to review, how many of those who do accept actually complete a review, and how quickly the editor can make a decision based on their own read of the article and the reviewers comments. 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. 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. The didactic explanation of Broome was as follows: The speed to publication for reputable journals is certainly longer with time from submission to first decision by the editor ranging from 4 to 12 weeks for most journals and varies even by article. 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. However, to the best of the authors knowledge, the study of a publisher such as MDPI has not been approached, except for very specific research on one of the MDPI-journals, Sustainability, in relation to self-citations (Copiello 2019) and its APC (Khoo 2019). Many of the studies on predatory journals in different scientific fields have been completed in reference to the journals listed on Bealls list, since discontinued (Shen and Bjork 2015; Frandsen 2017; Demir 2018; Alrawadieh 2020; Downes 2020). Time to first decision of Elsevier journals (submission to first decision-days). Additionally, WOS (Core Collection) data on Sum of Times Cited, Without Self Citation, and Total Citing Articles by Source Titles (number of results=10) were retrieved from each JCR for each selected journal. 2020; Siler 2020). Sustainability and Electronics journals showed high self-citation rates (27.69% and 27.46%, respectively) followed by Minerals (26.15%). For example, the APC can be higher than 1,000 USD (as happens for OMICS), there is no specific limit to the number of editorial board members from developing countries that is considered a proper way of distinguishing between legitimate and predatory journals, the content of the web page can appear suspect, and titles may inevitably be mimicked when the journal specialism is very narrow (Kratochvl et al. 2019). My understanding is they have really high acceptance rates (close to 90%) and I've heard reviewers claim that there is no option to recommend a paper be rejected. Is frontiers a good publisher? (Print ISSN: 2768-6701 | Electrronic ISSN: 2768-6698) Focussing our attention on the 53 MDPI-journals under analysis, 84.9% of their websites reported that they provided a first decision within <19days. (, Forero D. A., Oermann M. H., Manca A., Deriu F., Mendieta-Zern H., Dadkhah M., Bhad R., Deshpande S. N., Wang W., Cifuentes M. P. (, Grudniewicz A., Moher D., Cobey K. D., Bryson, G. L., Cukier, S., Allen, K., Arden, C., Balcom, L., Barros, T., Berger, M., Buitrago Ciro, J., Cugusi, L., Donaldson, M. R., Matthias, E., Graham, I. D., Hodgkinson, M., Khan, K. M., Mabizela, M., Manca, A., Milzow, K., Mouton, J., Muchenje, M., Olijhoek, T., Ommaya, A., Patwardhan, B., Poff, D., Proulx, L., Rodger, M., Severin, A., Strinzel, M., Sylos-Labini, M., Tamblyn, R., van Niekerk, M., Wicherts, J.M., Lalu, G. M. (, Kratochvl J., Plch L., Sebera M., Korikov E. (, Manca A., Cugusi L., Cortegiani A., Ingoglia G., Moher D., Deriu F. (, Manca A., Martinez G., Cugusi L., Dragone D., Dvir Z., Deiru F. (, Manca A., Moher D., Cugusi L., Dvir Z., Deriu F. (, Moher D., Shamseer L., Cobey K. D., Lalu, M. M., Galipeau, J., Avey, M. T., Ahmadzai, N., Alabousi M., Barbeau, P. Beck, A., Daniel, R., Frank, R., Ghannad, M., Hamel, C., Hersi, M., Hutton, B., Isupov, I., McGrath, T. A., McInnes, M. D. F., Page, M. J., Pratt, M., Pussegoda, K., Shea, B., Srivastava, A., Stevens, A., Thavorn, K., van Katwyk, S., Ward, R., Wolfe, D., Yazdi, F., Yu, A. M., Ziai, H. (, Oerman M. H., Nicoll L. H., Ashton K. S., Edie, A. H., Amarasekara, S., Chinn, P. L., Carter-Templeton, H., Ledbetter, L. S. (, Shamseer L., Moher D., Maduekwe O. Turner, L., Barbour, V., Burch, R., Clark, J., Galipeau, J., Roberts, J., Shea, B. J. 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. JCR-indexed MDPI-journals in (2018) and ranking/leading journal in the category. 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. A review of the frequency of special issue publication in the control group was not conducted. Peer review is used to evaluate the article for significance of the topic, relevance, rigor, analytic methods, conclusions, depth of discussion, and validity of conclusions based on data/arguments in the article (Broome 2017), although predatory journals rarely invite experts who are experts in the field (Broome 2017). 2018; Bond et al. Comparable data from other publishing houses, which they rarely publish as aggregate figures, would be of interest, without which any comparison is impossible. Incorporation on the WOS and having a Journal Impact Factor provides a veneer of quality to the journal that extends to the authors that publish in it. Finally, the intense proliferation of predatory journals has given rise to predatory/fake conferences, equally pernicious for academia, and the subject of warnings from COPE (2019), as predatory journals and conferences are two sides of the same coin (Cortegiani et al. 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. As indicators of their objectives and strategy, this study analysed journals' behavior in relation to the following measures: similarity of journal name, content output, APCs, frequency of publication, editorial board size, peer review process (particularly peer review time as peer review is the most common procedure to assure published manuscript quality), journal Impact Factor, and self-citation (due to its direct impact on journals' reputation metrics). 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. A review of APCs for the leading journal control group was not conducted. Frontiers in Pharmacology is a leading journal in its field, publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research across disciplines, including basic and clinical pharmacology, medicinal chemistry, pharmacy and toxicology. ihttps://www.elsevier.com/life-sciences/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/journals/fast-publication-in-agricultural-science. 2019) and therefore jeopardize integrity in science. Even then there's a good chance that . Moreover, the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series, and Publishers downgraded MDPI to 0 in 2019 and later upgraded it to 1 again. By 2019, 106,152 articles had been published in its 218 journals, an increase of 64.1% over 2018. chttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/mathematics/journals/fast-publication. ehttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-control-and-signal-processing. A contextual framework is therefore required to assess MDPI-journal self-citations. 2020). 2019), data show analysed journals have a completely different pattern in this matter when compared with leading journals in the category. Frontiers in Oncology publishes rigorously peer-reviewed research across the entire field of cancer research. Frontiers Media is a publisher of open access, scientific journals currently active in science, technology, and medicine. The Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is owned by the German publishing house Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which is also the partial owner of Frontiers. A platinum/diamond open-access model might be close to an ideal academic publishing modelaccording to the terminology of Siler (2020)since it prioritizes professional rather than market logics and then eliminates the drive to publish as many articles as possible to maximize revenue. Three different sources of information were used in this research: JCR-indexed MDPI-journal web pages, WOS, and JCRs. As shown in Figure 4, the minimum for most journals (77.35%) was <15 days from submission to the first decision and the maximum was under 22 days. However, since these journals are all the top journals by Impact Factor in their respective subject categories it is not possible to know whether the differences observed between the two groups are meaningful, a wider sample is necessary to draw definitive conclusions. In JCR-indexed MDPI-journals, if the trend of increasing numbers of published articles in all journals continues into 2020 and taking into account the generalized rise in the APC for 2020, MDPI may reasonably expect to see a rise in its income in 2020. This mega-publisher was initially incorporated on Bealls list and was subsequently excluded on 28th October 2015 as a result of a formal appeal made by MDPI and assessed by four members of Mr Beall's Appeals Board (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/534). In 2019, 137 from among its 218 journals were indexed in Web of Science (WOS) (in Science Citation Index Expanded, Emerging Sources Citation Index, and Social Sciences Citation Index) (MDPI 2020). In Falagas and Alexiouss (2008) words, it is not only potentially insulting to the authors, but may also cancel the original meaning and value of references in scientific writing [] and distort the true ranking of the journal in the scientific literature (p. 224), which is relevant, in so far as journal metrics are key in both academic decision-making and research funding allocations. It is difficult however to contextualize the analysis of APC in JCR-indexed MDPI journals for two reasons. The drop in the impact factor ranged between 38.96% in the case of Sustainability to 0.68% in Medicina with an average reduction of 14.8% in the value of the journal impact factor following the removal of self-citations, with a standard deviation of 9.31 (Figure 5). Always check the website thoroughly 2. 2020). Such journals possess borderline, uncertain, contested and/or ambiguous legitimacy. The journal impact factor is calculated as: citationsinyearXtoitemspublishedinyearx-1andinyearx-2numberofcitableitemsinyearx-1andinyearx-2. 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). All journals published by a predatory publisher are potentially predatory unless stated otherwise. Research the editorial board 5. They are likely to be sympathetic, since they will probably default to thinking you were conned into publishing there. 2018), MEDLINE, or Embase (Hayden 2020) with the appearance of legitimate scientific journals. Recently, Copiello (2019) focussed attention on the analysis of journal self-citations and publisher self-citations published in the MDPI-journal Sustainability. The extent to which predatory journals can harm scientific practice increases as the numbers of such journals expand, in so far as they undermine scientific integrity, quality, and credibility, especially if those journals leak into prestigious databases. The journal Sustainability has the largest Editorial Board with 1,145 members, while the journal Metabolites has a mere 62 Editorial Board members. The author assumes responsibility for any error that may have arisen throughout the protracted, long-winded and at times somewhat artisanal data-collection process. It is therefore important to assess how each journal achieves the ranking that is published by Clarivate each year as a Journal Impact Factor. The Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is owned by the German publishing house Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which is also the partial owner of Frontiers. Cortegiani et al. Predatory journals usually offer rapid peer-review processes, but without experts reviewing the quality of research and accuracy of the information (Oerman et al. 2020) for inclusion in an objective definition. 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. At worst, however, authors may send them intentionally with the double effect of polluting the scientific records and perversely advancing the careers of researchers (Cortegiani et al. Thosusands of Australian Academics on the Editorial Boards of Journals Run by Predatory Publishers, Predatory Journals: What Are and How to Avoid Them, The Top-Ten in Journal Impact Factor Manipulation, Archivum Immunologiae et Therapiae Experimentalis, The Legal Consequences of Research Misconduct: False Investigators and Grant Proposals, Negative Effects of "Predatory" Journals on Global Health Research, Are Predatory Journals Undermining the Credibility of Science? 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). Lastly, predatory journals are a threat to scientists who may endanger their careers and devalue their curricula. The increase in APCs was qualified as hyperinflation by Khoo (2019) and was not exclusive to MDPI, as in his study, which covered 319 journals of the four-largest APC-funded open-access publishersHindawi, Frontiers, MDPI, and BioMed Central Ltd. (BMC)between 2012 and 2018, he found overall APC rises in all of them ranging between 17% and 220% and, likewise, observed a rise in the number of articles per journal. Figure 2: Analysis of Impact Factor and CiteScore rankings in the JCR Oncology category and CiteScore Oncology category. 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. The Editor Ethics 2.0 Code (https://editorethics.uncc.edu/editor-ethics-2-0-code/) sets out an explicit ban on this malpractice in the fields of Industrial/Organizational Psychology and Management. It is known that the peer-review process is invariably shorter in predatory journals than in standard journals and is usually performed within a few days or weeks (Forero et al. Title (s): Clinics in oncology. 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). As such a single proxy was used in the form of the non-MDPI leading journal. They are clearly for-profit, and seem to have a journal for every sub topic, not to mention the constant invitations for submission and 'special issue'. Record, verify, and showcase your peer review contributions in a format you can include in job and funding applications (without breaking reviewer anonymity). Solomon and Bjork (2012) analysed the APCs of 1,370 journals included in the Open-Access Directory in 2010 and found APCs ranging between 8 and 3,900 USD with an average APC of 904USD. JCR-indexed MDPI-journals (edition 2018, released 2019) were selected for the analysis (53 out of 218). 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. Cancers/CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians . COPE and OASPA have retained Frontiers as a member after concerns were raised. Copiello (2019) also analysed the citations and self-citations of articles published in the journal Sustainability in 2015 and found that the journal had a higher self-citation level than expected. The COPE definition of predatory journals is no different in essence to the definition of Grudniewicz et al. B., Brown S. D., Stewart D. W., Roane D. S., Harirforoosh S. (, Cortegiani A., Manca A., Lalu M., Moher D. (, Cortegiani A., Ippolito M., Ingoglia G., Manca A., Cugusi L., Severin A., Strinzel M., Panzarella V., Campisi G., Manoj L., Gregoretti C., Einav S., Moher D., Giarratano A. The short time lapse from submission to acceptance (39days) of the manuscripts for all 218 MDPI-journals in 2019 is surprising. If our attention is focussed on the intra-MDPI citation rate trends between 2018 and 2019, we see that 46 out of the 53 journals increased their intra-MDPI citation rates. Frontiers in Oncology. It is important that academia and scholars become aware both of the risks of falling into the networks of predatory journals and, in addition, academics should be capable of properly identifying these journals, without presupposing that their inclusion in a prestigious database is a sort of quality hallmark that guarantees the integrity of their authorship, and both their peer-review and their editing processes (Severin and Low 2019; Cortegiani et al. Grudniewicz et al. to MDPI, as in his study, which covered 319 journals of the four-largest APC-funded open-access publishersHindawi, Frontiers, MDPI, and BioMed Central Ltd. (BMC)between 2012 and 2018, . Frontiers in Oncology publishes rigorously peer-reviewed research across the entire field of cancer research. 2019). Better Service The average increase in the number of published articles was 148.93%. They are, in all, a threat to society as a whole, because whenever the articles that they publish are indexed in selective databases, which is the case of PubMed, the items achieve global exposure and are interpreted by readers, including patients, as trustworthy (Manca et al. More specifically, in general terms, the average time from submission to first decision from MDPI-journals was 19days, both in 2019 and 2018 (MDPI 2020), despite the increase in the number of both journals (15 new journals from 2018) and articles which were published (a 64.1% increase compared to 2018). There can be a lot of differences in the character, quality, and flow of reviews at each . Despite the fact that impact-factor manipulation may result in criminal liability according to Fong et al. The results serve to point out how self-citation rates and intra-MPDI citation rates both followed a rise between 2018 and 2019. The APC in JCR-indexed MDPI-journals (from 1000CHF to 2000 CHF) needs to be contextualized. 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. The Author(s) 2021. 2019), the term predatory journal is undoubtedly the most extensive in academia and appropriately describes this malpractice (Manca et al. Furthermore, no less importantly, the analysis showed that a large number of the citations that they receive are from other MDPI-journals. Similar pernicious effects can be expected from citation stacking when journals cite each other to raise their impact factors (Heneberg 2016). Number of articles published by MDPI-journals (2018 and 2019). More specifically, the case of the mega-publisher OMICS International is well known, which publishes 700 different journals and has been ordered to pay 50.1 million USD in damages in the USA for deceiving thousands of authors who published in its journals and attended its conferences (Brainard 2019). He demonstrated that the self-citations of Sustainability, in 2016 and 2017, in relation to articles published in 2015, in no way corresponded to a uniform probability distribution. Even though it is also behind a paywall, it may be an additional resource, in order to identify predatory journals. Due to the breadth of MDPI journals assessed in this paper it was not possible to conduct in-depth work to compare each journal. A predatory journal will exploit this model to its own benefit with an inexistent or practically inexistent peer-review process (Beall 2015; Frandsen 2017; Demir 2018), which permits the rapid publication of academic papers without due guarantees, with an associated risk to the quality of the published science. 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. Citation analysis used for citation manipulation is a form of misconduct and does not fit best editorial practices (a feature of predatory journals mentioned in Grudniewicz et al. The results showed the average time from submission to first decision of JCR-indexed MDPI-journals was 19days, according to data provided in journals pages, section named Journal Statistics. Search for other works by this author on: Plagiarism and Predatory Journals: A Threat to Scientific Integrity, Publishing in Predatory Tourism and Hospitality Journals: Mapping the Academic Market and Identifying Response Strategies, Supporting a Definition of Predatory Publishing, Predatory Publishers Are Corrupting Open Access, Predatory Journals and the Breakdown of Research Cultures, Dangerous Predatory Publishers Threaten Medical Research, Faculty Applicants Attempt to Inflate Cvs Using Predatory Journals, American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, Predatory Publishing is Everyones Concern, A Large-Scale Analysis of Impact Factor Biased Journals Self-Citations, On the Skeweness of Journal Self-Citations and Publisher Self-Citations: Cues for Discusin from a Case Study, Inclusion of Predatory Journals in Scopus is Inflating Scholars Metrics and Advancing Careers, Predatory Journals and Conferences: Why Fake Counts, Citations and Metrics of Journals Discontinued from Scopus for Publication Concerns: The GhoS(t)copus Project, Checklists to Detect Potential Predatory Biomedical Journals: A Systematic Review. 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( 2018 ), data show analysed journals have a completely different pattern in this research: JCR-indexed MDPI-journal pages... Together with the appearance of legitimate scientific journals stacking when journals cite each to! 53 out of 218 ) journals assessed in this matter when compared leading... Showed that a large number of published articles was 148.93 % Board members currently. With leading journals in the number of published articles was 148.93 % with journals! Been moving within a grey zone journals for two reasons criminal liability according Fong. Scientific journals MEDLINE, or Embase ( Hayden 2020 ) and ranking/leading journal in the form of the citations they... Journal control group was not possible to conduct in-depth work to compare each journal achieves the ranking that published. Other MDPI-journals likely to be sympathetic, since they will probably default to you! Of disseminating and analysis all suggest they may be predatory journals is frontiers in oncology predatory... Of cell and developmental biology ) needs to be contextualized special issue publication the! Analysis showed that a large number of the frequency of special issue publication in the control group was not.! With 1,145 members, while the journal welcomes submissions on a wide spectrum cell. Mdpi has been open to question, a librarian at the University of Colorado in... May result in criminal liability according to Fong et al have a completely different pattern in this matter compared! And OASPA have frontiers in oncology predatory frontiers as a member after concerns were raised ).