The impact score (IS), also denoted as Journal impact score (JIS), of an academic journal is a measure of the yearly . because it is used as a proxy for both quality and integrity. Stay away from Frontiers. fhttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-mechanical-engineering. 2019). 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). https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing. For example, they no longer have webs with typographic errors, but with a much more sophisticated appearance, converting themselves into a non-evident/hidden predatory publisher, in view of their editorial behaviour. 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. 6 ways to spot a Predatory Journal: 1. Assistant Field Chief Editor. All Frontiers journals are published under a Creative Commons Attribution License. h-index) of their authors, generating inflated curricula and doped academic careers (Cortegiani, Manca and Giarratano, 2020a). 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 a consequence of the new context generated by the proliferation of predatory journals, it becomes necessary to review the evaluation policies (Beall 2016). A review of the frequency of special issue publication in the control group was not conducted. Sustainability and Electronics journals showed high self-citation rates (27.69% and 27.46%, respectively) followed by Minerals (26.15%). mimicking names. 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. In 2015, Frontiers Media was classified as a possible predatory publisher by Jeffrey Beall. About Journal : Frontiers in Oncology publishes rigorously peer-reviewed research advancing our knowledge of cancer epidemiology, molecular pathways, diagnosis and imaging, personalized therapeutics, and novel treatment and management strategies.. Field Chief Editor Giuseppe Giaccone at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international . 2020). Only in that way will the editors decisions be based on editorial reasoning rather than any covert intention to inflate citations artificially. Unfortunately, there is no information available on the time from submission to the final decision for the 53 journals under analysis, only minimum and maximum times from submission to first decision, as shown in Figure 4. The use of JCR has been extended, both for the evaluation of academics and institutions of all types, legitimizing the journals that are indexed, which evaluate the publications included in scholarly records when taking decisions on promotion, tenure, grants, etc. 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). Number of special issues of MDPI-journals (2018, 2019 and 2020). 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). Cancers/CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians . Their characteristics are therefore examined to see whether they are equitable with certain definitions of predatory journals. ghttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-process-and-industrial-engineering. Both publishers, Hindawi and Frontiers, were founded by a husband-and-wife team. Scope. (Print ISSN: 2768-6701 | Electrronic ISSN: 2768-6698) Crucial to any future work is to include a wider range of journals for comparison in order to assess whether any differences observed are significant when compared with journals ranked at similar levels within the JCR. It was founded in 2007 by Kamila and Henry Markram. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating . sharon r pine. 2018). With respect to the formal criterion of the composition of the Editorial Board, it has not been possible to evaluate whether all the members who form part of these boards are in fact aware of their roles, due to their very high numbers (16,223 individuals), which could be approached in future research. Researchers should answer the above questions and attend the conference or submit their abstract only if they are satisfied and can answer 'yes' to most of the questions. 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). 10 Point checklist to identify predatory publishers. 2019), the term predatory journal is undoubtedly the most extensive in academia and appropriately describes this malpractice (Manca et al. 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. 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. (https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalForlagInfo.action?id=26778andbibsys=false). Just in the same year 2007, the OA publisher Frontiers was . 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. In 2019, the APCs in JCR-indexed MDPI-journals ranged from 1000 CHF in Agronomy, Diagnostics, and IJGI to 2000 CHF in Marine Drugs and Nutrients with the majority of titles showing an increase in the APC from 2018 to 2019 (Figure 2). (2019): predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices. Moreover, the term predatory journal was found by Jeffery Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado. (2019) highlighted the systematic for-profit publication behaviour (COPE 2019) and its prioritization of self-interest at the expense of scholarship (Grudniewicz et al. 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. 2019), which clearly manipulate the metrics. With the exception of the journal Minerals that had a self-citation rate of 10.75% in 2018, compared to 12.98% for the leading journal (International Journal of Rock Mechanisms and Mining Science) in that category, all the self-citation rates of all the other MDPI-journals were above those of the leading journals within each category. 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. The results presented above showed that the 53 MDPI-journals under analysis possess, to a greater or lesser degree, some of the criteria from various definitions for the identification of predatory journals and may deviate from best editorial and publication practices when e.g. 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. 's (2019) definition. It is necessary to point out that the conclusions of this work must be assessed in the light of its limitations that likewise offer opportunities for new research work. This mega-publisher appeared on Bealls list and was subsequently excluded. Frontiers is merely a symptom of an utterly rotten scholarly publishing system, which is beyond repair. Where an MDPI-journal was ranked in more than one category, the leading journal with a higher impact factor in those categories in 2018 was selected for comparison (Table 2). As Manca et al. A Bibliomtric Analisis of Citers, How to Avoid Becoming Easy Prey for Predatory, Journals and Why It Matters Comparative Medicine. Rotten System. 1088 Email Press 2425 Publishers (2020) in the complex evaluation of a journal, to which another two must be added: combining objectively verifiable criteria with analysis of a journals content and knowledge of the journals background (p.1). 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. 2020). In 2018, the case of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences and Sustainability, with self-citation rates several times higher than those of the leading journals within the same category stands out (a difference of 25.17% and 16.98%, respectively). Such journals possess borderline, uncertain, contested and/or ambiguous legitimacy. The journal Sustainability has the largest Editorial Board with 1,145 members, while the journal Metabolites has a mere 62 Editorial Board members. Though editorial board size is not mentioned in any of the definitions considered (COPE, 2019 and Grudniewicz et al. Frontiers in Oncology publishes rigorously peer-reviewed research across the entire field of cancer research. More specifically, it was remarkable that the number of articles published in some journals skyrocketed in 2019 (a growth of 100% or more between 2018 and 2019 in 23 journals) and some more than doubled or even tripled their production: JMSE (202.5%), Metabolites (228.57%), Electronics (229.66%), Foods (231.48%), Mathematics (239.13%), Antioxidants (240%), Pathogens (253.68%), Processes (254.28%), Cancers (280.25%), JCM (287.77%), Animals (391.2%), Biomolecules (391.7%), Plants (463.24%), Microorganisms (486.36%), Cells (498.97), and Medicina (554.91%). The potential criteria for the identification of a predatory journal and a list of suspicious items are lengthy: journal names may be very similar to prestigious journals; the web page may contain spelling errors and questionable grammatical constructions and/or low quality images; the language on the journal webpage may resemble a hard sell that targets academic authors; the journal may include articles outside its stated scope or may have a very broad scope; submission can be by email instead of a manuscript management system; the editor-in-chief might also act as the editor-in-chief of another journal with a widely different scope, predominance of editorial board members from developing countries; time-lines for publication and fast-track peer-review processes might appear unrealistic; APCs can be low; impact-factor metrics may be unknown; spam emails may invite academics to submit papers; despite the open-access approach, transfer of copyright may be required; and, finally, non-professional or non-journal affiliated contact information may be given for the editorial office (Manca et al. 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. (https://thinkcheckattend.org/) is useful, although further studies are needed to analyse that practice in a detailed manner. Poor Peer Review Practices. The average increase in the number of published articles was 148.93%. Publishing in predatory journals not only devalues the prestige of the author, but it can contribute to the propagation of errors (Forero et al. analysed 93 checklists in a systematic review of checklists for identifying predatory journals from biomedical fields. In summary: 1 researchers should neither send papers for their publication, nor cite them, nor act as reviewers for them, nor form part of their editorial committees; 2 research institutions should inform researchers of the reality of predatory journals and their iniquitous consequences at an individual and general level; and, 3 evaluation agencies and committees should ignore the registers that refer to predatory journals. The journal Nature recently published a definition of the predatory journal (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, . It should be pointed out that, despite the significant advance in the definition proposed by Grudniewicz et al. Frontiers is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, with other offices in London, Madrid, Seattle and Brussels. Its average APC amounts to 1,138USD (OMICS 2020). A Cross-Sectional Comparison, Predatory Open Access: A Longitudinal Study of Article Volumes and Market Charateristics, Is It Such a Big Deal? Frontiers 2019 Frontiers Media 2020 Frontiers Media The impact score (IS) 2021 of Frontiers in Oncology is 5.36, which is computed in 2022 as per its definition.Frontiers in Oncology IS is decreased by a factor of 0.3 and approximate percentage change is -5.3% when compared to preceding year 2020, which shows a falling trend. 2019; Strong 2019), because they undermine its integrity (Vogel 2017; Abad-Garca 2019), its quality, and its credibility (Bond et al. According to Mr Beall (2017), a massive email campaign from MDPI directed at different managerial staff at Colorado University had the aim of excluding the editorial from the list. As such the question arises whether or not this speed is achieved with a thorough peer review in line with editorial and publishing best practices or if the rigor and quality of the peer review process is compromised in order to achieve these speeds. 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). Furthermore, no less importantly, the analysis showed that a large number of the citations that they receive are from other MDPI-journals. 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. (, Shu F., Mongeon P., Haustein S., Siler K., Alperin J. P., Larivire V. (, Xia J., Harmon J. L., Connolly K. G., Donnelly R. M., Anderson M. R., Howard H. A. 2018) with all the consequences that may entail, not only at a scientific but at a social level. Cortegiani et al. Besides, an increasingly high rate of citations from other MDPI-journals was observed. In any case, the first step towards identifying predatory journals is to have a clear definition for their definitive identification. In my opinion, Frontiers journals are only modestly predatory. before print) varies but is usually accomplished within 2 weeks (Broome 2017). The results serve to point out how self-citation rates and intra-MPDI citation rates both followed a rise between 2018 and 2019. (, 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. Even though, on the one hand, the Journal Impact Factor is qualified by Ioannidis and Thombs (2019) as the most widely used, misused and abused bibliometric index in academic science, it is, on the other hand, a widely used tool for curricula evaluation and for making grant awards, as well as being used as a selection criterion for the dissemination of scientific results. Scope. The number of articles published during 2019 appeared to have no effect on the average duration of peer review. From December 2019 to January 2020, almost all MDPI-journals (94.33%) scheduled more than one special issue per week during 2020 while, as previously mentioned, the number of regular issues per year was 12 or less for all journals except Energies which had 2 issues in 2018 (Figure 3). These lists very soon become outdated and incomplete, especially if the resources to keep them updated are scarce. In 2019, almost all 53 MDPI-journals under analysis had intra-MDPI citation rates well above 20% (all except Universe11.87% and Catalysts18.73%), reaching values as high as 56.94% in Electronics, 51.07% in the IJGI, 47.56% in Remote Sensing, and 46.55% in Sustainability (Table 3). Wikipedia lists various controversies about Frontiers articles and resignations of editors. 2020). 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. I served as a special issue editor and the peer review process they require is above board, rigorous, and transparent. BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Continued In Part by: Baillire's clinical oncology Merger: Clinics in haematology ISSN 0308-2261 Hematology/oncology clinics of North America ISSN 0889-8588 Publication Start Year: 1982 Publication End Year: 1986 Frequency: Three no. Even then there's a good chance that . I don't see Frontiers as predatory. 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. 2018; Committee on Publication Ethics 2019; Gades and Toth 2019; Kisely 2019; Vakil 2019; Elmore and Weston 2020; Kratochvl et al. A review of APCs for the leading journal control group was not conducted. However, this solution could only work in the medium to long term. 2019). The following analysis addressed the peer-review process. (2019) and COPE (2019). 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? Likewise, Cabells blacklist and whitelist, now referred to as predatory journals and analytics https://blog.cabells.com/2020/06/08/announcement/, listed more than 12,000 predatory journals in October 2019 (https://blog.cabells.com/2019/10/02/the-journal-blacklist-surpasses-the-12000-journals-listed-mark/). Frontiers Media SA is a publisher of peer-reviewed open access scientific journals currently active in science, technology, and medicine. Once again, days from submission to first decision varied greatly, even within the same research field in Elsevier journals, while the MDPI-journals under analysis presented much greater homogeneity and, even, less difference between the maximum and the minimum times, which is to say the lowest intervals. 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). A further relevant aspect worth focussing upon is the size of the Journal Editorial Board. 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. It is therefore important to assess how each journal achieves the ranking that is published by Clarivate each year as a Journal Impact Factor. Despite the fact that impact-factor manipulation may result in criminal liability according to Fong et al. Although highly variable between journals, Teixeira da Silva and Dobrnszki (2017) found no great variation between science, technology, engineering and medicine publishers: 3-4weeks for peer review means about 6weeks until to the first editorial decision (Teixeira da Silva and Dobrnszki 2017). 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). Although some have proposed alternative terms, such as pseudo-journals (Laine and Winker 2017; Elmore and Weston 2020), fake journals (Demir 2018), deceptive journals (Elmore and Weston 2020), and opportunistic journals (Bond et al. Certainly, uniformly accepted criteria to identify predatory journals are still to be fixed, but those that already exist may indeed be considered as signs that together can provoke doubts over the objectives of scientific dissemination of certain journals and editorials. Research the editorial board 5. Even so, the identification of predatory journals is still a crucial aspect in the maintenance of quality and scientific integrity. Finally, self-citation and intra-MDPI citation rates artificially increase the impact factors of JCR-indexed MDPI-journals that is quite clearly in breach of best practice and integrity in science. It may therefore be appreciated that the reputation of MDPI Publisher has undergone ups and downs over the past few years and has both its critics and supporters, which makes it an interesting case study. Lastly, predatory journals are a threat to scientists who may endanger their careers and devalue their curricula. The author assumes responsibility for any error that may have arisen throughout the protracted, long-winded and at times somewhat artisanal data-collection process. All the more so, if it is taken into account that, in addition, the editorial staff of MDPI is formed of researchers who have to organize their time for revision among their other professional activities (research, teaching, dissemination, evaluation, grant applications, etc. Both the increases in APC and the number of articles and special issues in JCR-indexed MDPI-journals may raise questions about the practices in use and their potential fit to these definitions. In addition, it is highly unusual to have an article accepted without revisions. bhttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/computer-science/journals/fast-publication. In October 2014 I was approached by a colleague of mine, Frederic Kaplan, from EPFL, for a favour. So, another aspect deserving further investigation are the impressive numbers of faculty staff on the Editorial Boards of MDPI-journals, above all if compared with the leading journals from each category. 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). However, they've done a pretty good job maintaining reputation, though it certainly differs per-journal. Time to first decision of Elsevier journals (submission to first decision-days). The same information was collected from journal web pages, WOS (Core Collection) and JCR for leading journals in each JCR category where the MDPI-journals were indexed. Once accepted, time to posting the final word document online on a reputable journals Web site i.e. A definition of the frequency of special issues of MDPI-journals ( 2018, 2019 2020. Curricula and doped academic careers ( Cortegiani, Manca and Giarratano, )... Of cancer research leading journal control group was not conducted controversies about Frontiers articles and of! 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