Is MDPI a predatory journal publisher from China?
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MDPI was included on Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory open access publishing companies in 2014.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI
Very close to it, unfortunately.
Me and my fellow researchers made very bad experiences with MDPI journals. Several critical reviews of very able and respected reviewers have been ignored just to get the money from publishing the paper. Often, they advertise with being from Switzerland (e.g. Geosciences [Switzerland]). I am Swiss, but the MDPI journals are from China.
If I have to select scientific staff and the candidates published a lot in MDPI journals, this is a reason for me not to select them. Furthermore, me and my colleagues do not publish or review papers in MDPI journals anymore.
The science community has to stand together to prevent such publishers from destroying the scientific system. This is particularly important for the young scientists!
Yes Sir. Offices Beijing and Wuhan (China), Barcelona (Spain) and Belgrade (Serbia). https://www.mdpi.com/about Ionut Cristian Scurtu
If it is on the list then it is more likely to be predatory...
Dear Ionut Cristian Scurtu ,
Indeed, this publisher USED TO BE included in the Beall’s list and was subsequently removed one year later (in 2015). Yes, MDPI has been, and in a way still is, discussed vividly. All I want to add to this is that some seem to forget that basically no publisher is flawless. See the frequency by which issues are discussed related to well-established publishers like Elsevier and Springer (Nature): https://retractionwatch.com/
The often heard argument that MDPI is in there for the money is a funny but at the same time sad argument since for example Elsevier is one of biggest money making machines on the globe, see for an interesting article on this: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science
I prefer to stick to the facts. The best guarantee for legitimacy and quality of the published work and publishing practices are matters like:
-Scopus indexing
-Impact factor (from Clarivate and indexed in SCI and SCIE)
-Member of DOAJ (often used as a white list for open access journals/publishers)
-PubMed indexing (for Life Sciences related journals)
-Membership of Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASP) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), MDPI is.
As of September 2020, MDPI publishes 274 academic journals, including 76 with an impact factor out of 149 covered by Web of Science. 154 journals are Scopus indexed and 65 are included in PubMed as well. Could all these (indexing) services be wrong? I don’t think so. So, my conclusion would be no they are not predatory. As a matter of fact, they belong to growing list of well-established open access publishers like Frontiers and PLoS.
Best regards.
I know this publisher pretty well. Briefly saying, it is not a predatory piblisher but definitely not your best choice. Papers in the journals under this publisher actually have a large diversity of quality. Numbers of researchers publish their serious works in an MDPI journal (sometimes you would even wonder why they dont publish them in a better journal), but there are also many people dumping their “rubbish” into the exactly same journal.
Very close to it, unfortunately.
Me and my fellow researchers made very bad experiences with MDPI journals. Several critical reviews of very able and respected reviewers have been ignored just to get the money from publishing the paper. Often, they advertise with being from Switzerland (e.g. Geosciences [Switzerland]). I am Swiss, but the MDPI journals are from China.
If I have to select scientific staff and the candidates published a lot in MDPI journals, this is a reason for me not to select them. Furthermore, me and my colleagues do not publish or review papers in MDPI journals anymore.
The science community has to stand together to prevent such publishers from destroying the scientific system. This is particularly important for the young scientists!
I recommend checking this discussion and replies which can give you a very detailed idea of the people's view of this publisher.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-to-deal-with-Potentially-Predatory-Open-Access-Journals-and-Publishers-the-case-of-MDPIs-Sustainability-journal
Even if they are not in predatory lists now, they are somewhat controversial and well known for several malpractices.
Well, the majority of the MDPI journals have Web of Science indexing, and only WOS indexed journals are considered authentic journals. So according to this point of view, MDPI journals are not fake or predatory.
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