A lot of universities are now considering to blacklist MDPI journals. On the other hand, most of MDPI publications have a fast turn around time and researchers like it. They are open access too. But if universities continue to discourage publishing in MDPI journals, what is the way out?
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute is nothing more than vanity publishing and all most all so called "open access" journals are tainted. At least MDPI has other functions than publishing like enabling the deposit and exchange of rare molecular and biomolecular research samples, etc. Indeed their original name was Molecular Diversity Preservation International. Whenever you have to pay to see your work in print there is a degree of vanity, exclusion of non-well-funded researchers, and fraud to varying degrees. I include Taylor & Francis to Plos Science journals in this critique. The moment you install a publish-or-perish environment combined with money from lobbyists you create the conditions for pathological or nonsense science. MDPI et al perhaps to a certain extent validly see outside, often unpaid, peer review as nothing better than a free editing and grammar service that slows down their profitability.
Muhammad Saad Khan btw great question. You ask for possible solutions since feel terms like predatory journals are more a marketing strategy ploy to hurt competitors than altruistic truthful terms. Therefore, the problem that I will address is how to provide "open access" to the majority of research and institutions that are not funded by either huge commercial interests, or well-endowed schools often working in conjunction with these cartels. First, while I admire the enormous work of reviewers after working with them for over a quarter of a century, they are not well paid, even Editors in Chief are poorly remunerated, and quite often retired and wish to give something back to the scientific domain they have dedicated their lives to. Nothing to criticize, however Einstien, Maxwell, Darwin, etc. seemed to do quite well without them. Peer review did not become widespread until the mid-20th century. Plenty of great science occurred before then. Survival of the fittest theory eventually wins out if you will... without gatekeepers.
My solution is the establishment of virtual journals. Researchgate.org, Academia.edu, Hal open archives https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr, and numerous others will stock preprint articles. To establish and publish a journal on a scientific subject only a few dedicated colleagues are needed,, why not even in the same university or department that agree to organize a yearly, monthly, or weekly journal, with a website, with a page for each issue and links to the articles within. The reputation, as in life, will be earned by hard work, a bit of luck, and the production of innovative articles. Why shouldn't a small institute in France or India publish its journals, or put their stamp of approval on books? We often pay lip service to diversity and complain of the horrific influence of money on science, this is a way around these impasses.
Sincerely
Professor Christopher G. YUKNA
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