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. 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). Moreover, the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series, and Publishers downgraded MDPI to 0 in 2019 and later upgraded it to 1 again. 2019), the term predatory journal is undoubtedly the most extensive in academia and appropriately describes this malpractice (Manca et al. In turn, the publishing house Elsevier reported the average review and production times of its journals in such varied areas as Environmental Science, Computer Science, and Mathematics and Statistics (see Table 4). Henry and Kamila launched Frontiers with a vision to make science open, peer-review rigorous, transparent, and efficient and harness the power of technology to truly serve researchers' needs. Frontiers in Oncology is a broad-scope, multidisciplinary journal covering all areas of cancer research to advance our knowledge of cancer epidemiology to improve diagnosis, therapeutics and management strategies. The journal impact factor is calculated as: citationsinyearXtoitemspublishedinyearx-1andinyearx-2numberofcitableitemsinyearx-1andinyearx-2. The MDPI, with its headquarters in Basel (Switzerland), formerly known as Molecular Diversity Preservation International (https://www.mdpi.com/about/history) that launched its first two journals (Molecules and Mathematical and Computational Applications) in 1996, operates a gold open- access framework. 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. 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. 2020) for inclusion in an objective definition. 2020). JCR-indexed MDPI-journals in (2018) and ranking/leading journal in the category. Wikipedia lists various controversies about Frontiers articles and resignations of editors. 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. As Siler (2020) stated since APC-based OA publishing involves remunerating publishers based on how many articles they publish, this can underpin perverse incentives to accept as many articles as possible to maximize revenue, so predatory journals operate in such a manner, eschewing legitimate peer review or other types of quality control (p. 1386) and prompting an excessive publication of articles, often of inferior quality (Siler 2020). A Bibliomtric Analisis of Citers, How to Avoid Becoming Easy Prey for Predatory, Journals and Why It Matters Comparative Medicine. Even then there's a good chance that . 2019), data show analysed journals have a completely different pattern in this matter when compared with leading journals in the category. Comparable data from other publishing houses, which they rarely publish as aggregate figures, would be of interest, without which any comparison is impossible. Grey lines represent all journals in each category ranked by their 2017 Impact Factor and CiteScore percentiles, with Frontiers in Oncology shown as a red dot. 2020). The impact score (IS), also denoted as Journal impact score (JIS), of an academic journal is a measure of the yearly . COPE and OASPA have retained Frontiers as a member after concerns were raised. 2020b), PubMed (Manca et al. 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. Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports (JCR), a reference for the assessment of researchers and for grant-making decisions, is used as a standard whitelist, in so far as the selectivity of a JCR-indexed journal adds a legitimacy of sorts to the articles that the journal publishes. 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. The size of the editorial board is remarkably higher in all 53-MDPI journals analysed than in control leading journals. 2018; Bond et al. This is an especially important aspect when the external appearance of the predatory journals, such as the OMICS journals, has reached such a level of sophistication that they totally or partially comply with the formal criteria that serve to differentiate between predatory and legitimate journals. As with the number of published articles, the number of special issues for all journals between 2018 and 2019 increased, in such an exorbitant manner that the number of special issues in the MDPI-journals under analysis was easily higher, in the majority of cases, than the number of ordinary issues of 53 MDPI journals analysed since 98.11% of 53 analysed journals published 12 or fewer issues per year in 2018 (data from JCR 2019 edition). This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and . 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'". 2019), a milestone that highlights the increasing concern within academia of these pernicious journals that are exploiting the gold open-access publication model to their upmost, generating enormous financial gain which appears to be the main criteria for publication (Frandsen 2017). analysed 93 checklists in a systematic review of checklists for identifying predatory journals from biomedical fields. Grudniewicz et al. 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. Besides, an increasingly high rate of citations from other MDPI-journals was observed. The author highlights the 'exponential growth' of predatory journals, stating that 'The alarming increase in the number of predatory journals (from 1,800 to 8,000 over the period 2010-4) and the exponential growth (from 53,000 to 420,000 between 2010 and 2014) of the articles that they publish (Shen and Bjork 2015) have rendered futile any effort As shown in Figure 1, the number of articles published in 2019 in each journal varied highly, ranging from 226 in Vaccines to 7,414 in Sustainability. Field Chief Editor Giuseppe Giaccone at Georgetown University is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international researchers. Specifically, with regard to the previously mentioned third step, the analysis of the background of the 53 MDPI-journals in JCR showed drops in their impact factors when excluding self-citations, which could be significant if the level of self-citations exceeded those of the leading journals in those categories in which they are indexed. Despite the fact that impact-factor manipulation may result in criminal liability according to Fong et al. These formal criteria, such as unambiguous determination of APC and Publisher, accurate information on the journal metrics, the inclusion of the name of the editor-in-chief, etc. Title (s): Clinics in oncology. 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). 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). 's (2019) definition. Self-citation and citation cartels deviate from best editorial and publication practices by breaking with publication ethics and integrity, which are defining characteristics of predatory journals according to Grudniewicz et al. Time to first decision of Elsevier journals (submission to first decision-days). Read through past issues of the journal Think. 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, . All journals published by a predatory publisher are potentially predatory unless stated otherwise. JCR-indexed MDPI-journals (edition 2018, released 2019) were selected for the analysis (53 out of 218). It is difficult however to contextualize the analysis of APC in JCR-indexed MDPI journals for two reasons. A review of content output in the leading journals was not conducted. 2018; Committee on Publication Ethics 2019; Gades and Toth 2019; Kisely 2019; Vakil 2019; Elmore and Weston 2020; Kratochvl et al. The revision times of the 53 journals under analysis were surprisingly similar, regardless of the high variability of the articles published in each journal in 2019 and were, in many cases, very much shorter than time spans that may be considered normal. The analysis of journal self-citations is relevant (see Table 2), because the increase in the numerator of the Journal Impact Factor4 boosts it and may be a stratagem to improve the position of a journal in the ranking through coercive citations, online queuing and self-cited editorials (Martin 2016; Wilhite et al. In the case of the journal having been included in JCR, the analysis of non-standard citation practices of the journal (a significant increase or fall in the number of citations, self-citations, and articles and majority of citations form a small group of journals) is of great relevance (Kratochvl et al. Frontiers Media SA is a publisher of peer-reviewed open access scientific journals currently active in science, technology, and medicine. Predatory journals are a global threat to science (Harvey and Weinstein 2017; Grudniewicz et al. dhttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/materials-science/journals/fast-publication. ), rather than professional editors (as with the journals of Nature Research). On this point, the definitions of predatory journals of both COPE (2019) and Grudniewicz et al. 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. , data show analysed journals have a completely different pattern in this matter when with! 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