MDPI Special Issues – A Money Machine Operation?
Da-Wen Sun （孙大文）
Members（科学院院士）of Royal Irish Academy, Academia Europaea, Polish Academy of Sciences --- Fellows（院士/会士）of IAFoST, iAABE, IAR, AIIA, AAIA, CIGR, AFST(I), IAgrE, IEI --- 2015-2024 Highly Cited Researcher --- h-index = 165
Since January 2021, I began to be bombarded with emails inviting me to contribute to Special Issues (SI) published by MDPI with a total of more than 200 invitations. Some SI invitations are even outside my field. Although some journals in publishing these SI have a credible impact factor, I have some doubts about the quality of these journals as this massive drive of SI invitations is unusual.
I just checked Wikipedia about MDPI, and it states that there are controversies about MDPI. In 2021 Fosso and N?land argued that MDPI dilutes research by playing on academics' "vanity and desire to embellish their CV, " and has "an aggressive focus" on "flooding the market with rapidly published special issues motivated purely by profit."?Scientists Anders Skyrud Danielsen and Lars M?lgaard Saxhaug referred to MDPI as a "money machine fraud operation."
I always publish my research in well-established traditional journals that carry no page charge, such as those published by Elsevier, Springer and Taylor & Francis, these journals normally have an excellent international reputation. Since last year, UCD has had OA contracts with the major scientific publishers to allow authors not to pay Article Publishing Charge (APC) while publishing in OA, and therefore many of my recent papers are published in these journals with open access.
Below is the list of invitations that I have received in the last five months, and I leave it to you to judge yourself about these invitations if you receive one. ?
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GEPEA - ONIRIS - head of "Processes applied to Bio Resources" (CNRS 6144 Research Unit) IAEF President (2019-2023)
1 个月Dear DaWen Thanks for your message. For your information, there are actually 703 Special Issues opened in the FOODS journal. Best wishes alain
Associate Professor at Amity Institute of Food Technology, Noida, India
2 个月The free availability of predatory articles leads new researchers to cite this paid research, which in turn inflates the impact factor of these journals. This practice undermines the true value of impact factor, h-index, and citations as measures of research quality.
Curator's Professor of Physics at University of Missouri-Kansas City
3 年I fully agree with all your opinions. I did published a few articles under these invitations, fast and cheap. The fact is the so-called traditional high reputation Journals are also money making machines. Some of them ask up to $10,000 for publishing if accepted. The current situation for the whole publication industry including those from reputable large scientific societies is unsustainable.
-- Professor & Associate Dean, School of Agriculture, Dept of Food Technology, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara
3 年True picture of present scenario. Really a problem for researchers who are doing good work but can not afford APC
Assistant Professor
3 年Frontiers is also practicing same. So many SI, so many editors and repeated invitation.