Talk:MDPI/Archive 4

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Relevant new reference

We are not currently citing this, but maybe we should:

• Oviedo-García, M. Ángeles (August 2021). "Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)". Research Evaluation. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/reseval/rvab020.

—David Eppstein (talk) 17:59, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

• WOW! --Randykitty (talk) 18:13, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Does anyone understand that paper's methodology in calculating self-citation rates? I tried duplicating it for Cells / Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology and didn't get the same numbers. Cells published 1,660 articles in 2019. These were cited 21,099 times in total by 18,845 citing articles. Without self-citations, there were 20,767 citations by 18,652 articles. Comparatively, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology published 115 articles in 2019. These were cited 8,005 times by 7,597 articles, and 7,992 times by 7,586 articles when omitting self-citations. The "standard" way of calculating self-citation rate is the number of journal self-citations expressed as a percentage of the total citations to the journal. That gives Cells a self-citation rate of 1.5% (=[21099-20767]/21099 * 100%) and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology a self-citation rate of 0.16%. Oviedo-Garcia gives 2.54% and 0.85%. How were these numbers calculated? Banedon (talk) 02:13, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

In the same way I'm getting that Sustainability has a self-citation rate of 6.16%, while Oviedo-Garcia says gives 27.69%. If Oviedo-Garcia is right, this exceptionally high self-citation rate should trigger an investigation by Clarivate. Has anyone seen any news that Clarivate is investigating Sustanability? Banedon (talk) 02:18, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

I didn't have time yet to read this article in detail (beyond the abstract), but could it be that they call it "self-citation" if a journal is cited by another journal from the same publisher? That would explain the higher numbers that they get and indicate that MDPI journals are a kind of citation ring. I don't expect to see any news about Clarivate examinations, as far as I can tell, they never say anything about a journal or group of journals being investigated, unless they find something amiss. --Randykitty (talk) 08:11, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Effectively a citation ring, yes. Intra-MDPI citations being abnormally high, combined with the insane ammount of special issues (presumably not subject to the EiC's review, given no one has time to review over a thousand issues per journal per year). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:13, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

The closest-related paragraph I can see from that paper is this:

Data on each selected journal were gathered from the following sections of the MDPI-journal web pages: Home, Editorial Board, Special Issues, APC, and Journal Statistics. Besides, data were collected from JCR (2018) on the Journal Impact Factor and the Impact Factor Without Self Cites. Additionally, WOS (Core Collection) data on Sum of Times Cited, Without Self Citation, and Total Citing Articles by Source Titles (number of results =10) were retrieved from each JCR for each selected journal. Exceptionally, data on the MDPI-journal self-citation rates were collected on 3 June 2020, to assure data accuracy in relation to the 2019 self-citation rates.

It's not clear to me what Oviedo-Garcia did. If Oviedo-Garcia indeed sorted by citations from publisher, then that should inflate self-citation rates from big publishers. But I think at that point the objections are academic and should be answered in the literature. I'll just add that it is possible to tell if a journal or group of journals is being investigated by Clarivate - [1] [2] [3] are examples. I think we should keep an eye on it - if Clarivate investigates the results are probably worth including, if they don't then the paper might be faulty and not worth referencing. Banedon (talk) 13:33, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Banedon, those 3 references are about measures taken by Clarivate after investigations are finished. Whether they're currently investigating any (MDPI or other) journals is unknown. --Randykitty (talk) 14:20, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Clarivate already banned 2020 self-citing journals. This is the time ref this study is referring to. Its here: https://jcr.help.clarivate.com/Content/title-suppressions.htm - no single MDPI journal Kenji1987 (talk) 14:25, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Check this also: https://jcr.help.clarivate.com/Content/editorial-expression-concern.htm. If MDPI really was rigging the system, then Im surprised a tourism scholar had to find out, and not Clarivate Kenji1987 (talk) 14:38, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Currently investigating or after investigating, I don't think it's a big difference. Point is that if Oviedo-Garcia's analysis is correct, Clarivate should be investigating, and with 53 journals in JCR chances are at least some of MDPI's journals are going to be delisted. If that happens it should be visible. Oviedo-Garcia did use 2019 data, meaning that if MDPI's journals are going to be delisted, it should be happening pretty soon. If it doesn't happen, Oviedo-Garcia's analysis might be faulty. The link by Kenji1987 indicates that it hasn't happened, which is concerning. A few other things to point out as well - firstly, Oviedo-Garcia called MDPI's 1000-2000 CHF publication charges "high", yet published in a journal that charges 2678 EUR. Secondly, Oviedo-Garcia compared the journals against the leading journals in the field. It stands to reason that the best journals have better citation metrics than the not-so-good journals, so the analysis that should have beed conducted is a comparison against other similarly-ranked journals. Finally, MDPI have posted a response that includes a chart showing where MDPI's self-citation rate (where they indeed sum across all journals by the same publisher) is relative to other publishers. Several major publishers have higher, just like several have lower. I'm getting the feeling that Oviedo-Garcia's paper is rather seriously flawed, which would be really ironic, since it would imply OUP is a predatory publisher. The paper is very new, only two weeks old as of time of writing. It might be too new to include. If kept (I don't feel strongly either way) I would expect rebuttals soon, when its inclusion should be re-evaluated. Banedon (talk) 23:55, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

It's very clear. Take a look at Table 3: "Table 3.Intra-MDPI citation rate 2018 and 2019 (top 10 citing journals)" - she only included top 10 citing journals, not all citations, which makes little sense. Kenji1987 (talk) 13:48, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

The analysis is a bit silly comparing MDPI journals with Nature journals, but it is a source that needs to be cited here. Author classifies MDPI as a predatory journal/editorial because self-citations among all the journals are higher than the comparison journals, except for one. The intra-MDPI journal self-citation is also high (no data given on the non-MDPI publishers). Review times are too fast, and too many special issues. Kenji1987 (talk) 00:39, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

@Banedon: you wanna team up and write a commentary on the article? It claims that some journals have 0 editorial board members (nonsense). The table on intra-MDPI citations also doesnt make sense (no idea how she calculated it). No comparable data is given on other publishers also. Article claims that it is problematic that you can't set a limit on having editorial board members from developing countries (which she states is a characteristic of predatory publishers sic!), and the article is full of typos and the graphs are not only low resolution but also very wrong (how can nominal variables be line graphs?), you would expect that this journal would have copy editors? Also Clarivate does not set a limit of 15% self-citations, they ban journals every year with self-cites of 50% or higher but there is no arbitrary limit. Author also cites a MDPI journal, but she doesn't want to cite it so she just copy pastes the link (again how can journals allow these citations?) Last but not least, I think its hilarious to compare MDPI journals with mostly Nature review journals, and then conclude, it must be predatory. Of course you can, but.... Well... Comparing a Porsche with a Lada. Both drive, and thats it. Are you interested? Drop me a message and Ill contact you. In the meanwhile I am adamant that this article is cited here. 100% supportive. Kenji1987 (talk) 12:49, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer. I suspect I lack the expertise to write a comment myself, but I'll be OK participating if the comment focuses on academic issues (so things like "full of typos" should not matter, since those things happen at virtually all journals). Banedon (talk) 23:55, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Full of typos is a problem as there is no decent copyediting from the journal, one of the characteristics of a predatory journal. Well, Im not saying this particular journal is, but it is rather ironic. Kenji1987 (talk) 01:06, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

https://academic.oup.com/rev/advance-article/doi/10.1093/reseval/rvab030/6360986 - and as expected, an expression of concern. Perhaps the study got cited here too fast. Kenji1987 (talk) 12:07, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Possibly. Could very well be MDPI lawyers trying to suppress research. Could be problems with methodology too. Wait and see for now, but in the meantime we shouldn't be citing this. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:38, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

MDPI lawyers threatened Beall, beyond what could be published in his paper about them. MDPI appears to be a bad actor working to suppress criticism with threat of lawsuits. Given the suppression efforts, I think it makes sense to repsonsibly cite the analysis until there is evidence of problematic data published. Remember, MDPI refused to follow COPE when directly told they should retract a paper in Behavioral Sciences https://retractionwatch.com/2018/06/13/journal-corrects-but-will-not-retract-controversial-paper-on-internet-porn/ AllMyChillen (talk) 15:11, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps we shouldnt be citing the study at all untill there is clarity? Kenji1987 (talk) 23:04, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and removed the section. Banedon (talk) 00:24, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Good! And once there is more clarity this study can be included or remain removed. That MDPI lawyers would have a hand in this, is extremely unlikely, if you've actually read the paper. Its full of serious flaws. But no one reads papers anymore. Kenji1987 (talk) 00:49, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't see why you think the existence of flaws (assuming they exist) would make lawyer action less likely. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:55, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

OUP is an academic juggernaut. I dont think they have much to fear of MDPI. Id say just read the article, the MDPI lawyer hypothesis would then become less likely. Kenji1987 (talk) 00:59, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't see why an expression of concern makes lawyer action more likely either. Neither does it make lawyer action less likely. It's just an unrelated piece of news. If anyone is jumping to conclusions about how this might be due to MDPI lawyer action, they might want to examine internal biases, because that's what it looks like to me. Banedon (talk) 02:58, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Internal biases, or not forgetting the past history of MDPI harassing bearers of bad news to the point that they were forced to go away, potato, potahto. Nevertheless, whatever conclusions we might jump to, the only actionable information is the paper and the expression of concern, not our speculation. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:09, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 September 2021

There is a new peer-reviewed paper about MDPI that should be included. I suggest the text and citation be added as below. I suggest this end the third paragraph concerning general criticisms of MDPI.

A quantitative analysis of MDPI's citation pattern supported that it appeared to be a predatory publisher.Oviedo-Garcia, M Angeles (2021). "Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)". Research Evaluation. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/. {{cite journal}}: Check |doi= value (help); External link in |doi= (help) Specifically, the analysis identified an extremely high rate of self-citation commonly observed in predatory journals. AllMyChillen (talk) 15:06, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

This was discussed a couple of sections above. I'm of opinion it should not be added as long as this expression of concern remains. Banedon (talk) 01:17, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

What Banedon said. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:54, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Crawdaunt You might be interested in the above. Banedon (talk) 01:58, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Crawdaunt addition here contains many questionable additions. First of all, the use of primary sources and self-research should not be here (https://oxfordjournals.altmetric.com/details/111666243/twitter & https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/2979). Second the expression of concern is not due to the complaints of MDPI as it is incorrectly stated in current page (https://academic.oup.com/rev/article/30/3/420/6360986). Take a look at the article yourself, it's hilarious, and that probably caused an expression of concern. Banedon may I ask you to re-edit or remove this particular section until current study is in the clear? Otherwise I'll do it, but probably in a few days to get more feedback first. Kenji1987 (talk) 04:46, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm waiting too, don't think it's urgent. Banedon (talk) 08:16, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

I’m happy to remove or re-edit. I felt like some justification for scope was necessary to warrant inclusion, but can take out altmetric and soften. I have read the article and the comment by MDPI. While the article indeed goes off on few… questionable tangents… the undisputed fact remains that MDPI has one of the highest self-citation networks in publishing. They address this in their comment, but their interpretation of their data is rather peachy compared to how it appears without their insistence that it’s normal/fine.

I do think it is a major controversy. I don’t see how the expression of concern changes that? Crawdaunt (talk) 06:48, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

The problem with an expression of concern is that it could indicate a poor paper that should not have been accepted. See section above for some analysis. I still haven't seen evidence Clarivate is investigating for excessively high self-citation rates, either. I am in favor of removing all mention of the paper as long as the expression of concern remains. The other article you added, for the Nutrients journal, is keeping in the spirit of the rest of the section, although the more I think of it the more dubious I get of the section as well. Lots of controversial articles are published every year by virtually every publisher (e.g. this was published in Nature Astronomy, this was published in A&A). I would prefer to see some kind of allegation of peer review failure on MDPI's part, or the section could well become longer than the rest of the article in the future. Banedon (talk) 08:16, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Banedon

Expression of Concern is kind of expected to be paired with controversy. I think you can look at the Expression of Concern from both sides. This is a controversy surrounding MDPI, but it does not have to assume MDPI is somehow in the wrong. Nevertheless it is an ongoing controversy worth mentioning (in my opinion).

Re: the controversy section: I think the frequency and rate of controversy is the reason it is featured so prominently on MDPI's Wiki page. Of course major journals have bunk slip through, but the rate of controversy per article published is very different. There is an overwhelming sentiment in the research community that MDPI is a controversial publisher for reasons of rigour and quality. This is distinct from other publishers where controversy typically stems from paywalls and article processing charges. There is another recent and fairly professional and respectful discussion of MDPI publication practices here at the following link, where MDPI also got to comment in its defence on the analysis later: https://paolocrosetto.wordpress.com/2021/04/12/is-mdpi-a-predatory-publisher/ The core message of this blog post hits similar tones as the peer-reviewed (and Expression of Concern) article listed, but with a much more respectful and less inflammatory discussion.

I say all this in defence of the controversy section featuring so prominently. It is an earned distinction that other Open Access mega-publishers (like BioMed Central) do not necessarily have to suffer. I do agree that it could be presented/organized differently to avoid it just sprawling into a mass of snippets. Perhaps a section on sting operations and Beall's list, and a separate (less prominent) section listing controversial articles.

edit: I see the PaoloCrosetto article was discussed above as well. Not proposing this meets Wiki standards, but I think it's relevant that some of the major conclusions of this good analysis and the questionable Research Evaluation Article overlap - as support that the Research Evaluation article isn't total bunk. Crawdaunt (talk) 13:56, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Crawdaunt if we measure "controversy" by whether an article is retracted, then there has actually been analysis of whether "the rate of controversy per article published [by MDPI] is very different [from other publishers]". See [4]:

No matter how MDPI achieves a speedy publication process, it is clear that the research community has not rejected their approach so far. MDPI’s content has been growing, it has become increasingly citable, and it is not retracted at an alarming rate.

The publisher reported 19 retractions in 2019, equivalent to 0.5 retractions per 1,000 papers (assuming that retractions refer to year t-2). As a point of contrast, I could locate 352 papers on Elsevier’s ScienceDirect that included the phrase ‘this article has been retracted’ in 2019, implying 0.5 retractions per 1,000 papers (again, assuming that retractions refer to year t-2).

I would suggest being careful here, because we seem to be straying into the WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS territory where because MDPI is a predatory publisher all criticism of them is true and must be included in the article, even when its reliability is in doubt. Banedon (talk) 14:11, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Banedon This is fair. I hate the Scholarly Kitchen post by the way. They imply that a journal having an indexed impact factor alone is somehow proof of legitimacy. One of the core issues being addressed in the Research Evaluation article is how high self-citation rate artificially inflates Impact Factor. MDPI's own public comment confirms that they are an extreme outlier in having high self-citation particularly when you factor in total publications (though they claim it is within reasonable bounds). The contrast with Elsevier is cherry-picking. Elsevier publishes an order of magnitude more articles than MDPI, and so its rate of total controversies and self-citation is justifiably higher: there are more total articles citing and to be cited in the Elsevier profile. And more total articles that might receive attention for retraction.

I would likewise take care not to assume retraction is somehow the endpoint justification of controversy. Even the Science article on arsenic being used as a backbone for DNA was never retracted. Instead it was later contradicted by a follow-up article. The willingness of a publisher to retract articles is implicit in whether articles will get retracted. Having lots of controversial articles that are not retracted is itself a sign that the publisher is constantly letting in research of questionable quality, and is both unwilling to change its practice, and unwilling to admit fault.

Banedon "No matter how MDPI achieves a speedy publication process, it is clear that the research community has not rejected their approach so far." - I don't think this is true... There are numerous public instances calling for a boycott of MDPI journals. And I would add that being increasingly cited is not the same as being more citeable. Something like SciMago Journal Rank is a measure of citability, while Impact Factor is only a measure of total citations (regardless of where those citations come from).

If you didn't know, impact factors are provided by Clarivate. It is very hard to get one - the journal needs to be indexed by Web of Science, and fulfilling the criteria [5] is very difficult, so difficult that most journals never get there. Accordingly, having an indexed impact factor is a proof of legitimacy (this assumes a legitimate impact factor). Furthermore, the comparison with Elsevier is per 1000 papers hence it accounts for the fact that Elsevier is the larger publisher. I don't know why you bring up the Science arsenic article as well. Are you implying Science (or the publisher publishing it) is "constantly letting in research of questionable quality"? They didn't retract the controversial article either (neither did Nature for the water memory paper, for that matter). You mention "the willingness of a publisher to retract articles", but retractions are typically initiated by the editors of the journal or the authors of the article [6]. There are many people publicly boycotting MDPI journals, but there are also many people publicly supporting their journals (see how many editors & authors they have). They are definitely controversial, but it's not like the article claims MDPI aren't controversial, and there is a large controversies section. Finally are you aware that the impact factor as calculated by Clarivate only uses citations from other articles published in Web of Science-indexed journals? There is no "regardless of where those citations come from" - they necessarily come from other Web of Science journals, and as mentioned above these are all legitimate journals.

Please try to be objective. It is really looking to me like you have already decided that MDPI is predatory, which is why you are drawing all the worst-case inferences, even when the evidence is not there. Banedon (talk) 15:34, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Banedon Woah now, I think you are assuming a lot and reading into things in a strange way.

1) I am not implying Science has predatory behaviour. I brought up the Science article as a point to emphasize that retraction is not sufficient to demonstrate an article had an underlying flaw. It's a famous example. That is all. A journal's willingness to retract an article is in many cases a sign of quality. Genuinely obvious predatory publishers never retract papers, so you cannot rely on the journal to be its own judge and jury by using retraction as a litmus test. Retraction count is not a good metric of predatory behaviour.

2) Yes I know what an Impact Factor is. Obtaining one is the very starting line to being a reputable academic publisher, not a gold star that forever assures quality. This is emphasized by the abuse of publication metrics like IF or h-index, which can be inflated by self-citations. A very high self-citation rate is brought up in the Research Evaluation article, and agreed to by MDPI in their own internal statistics. Your use of having indexed journals with IFs indeed is a whopping point in favour of legitimacy. But not for the issue of whether MDPI is increasingly more citeable. Again, SciMago Journal Rank or an equivalent citation metric is a better reflection of citeability, as the SJR internal algorithm controls for the diversity of citing journals (and thus controls for self-citation networks). Journals that excessively cite themselves have a poor ratio of IF/SJR. See Falagas et al.

3) I don't want to make this a tit-for-tat, but you accuse me of not being objective, and then use a weird equivalence of how despite many calls to boycott MDPI, some people also support MDPI. Of course. But the reason for the boycott is scientific rigour, and there are not similar calls to boycott other mega publishers like e.g. BioMed Central. Even Frontiers Media seems to have a better reputation than MDPI (despite many parallels). E.g. here: https://twitter.com/pazjusticiavida/status/1334690095803342848?s=20 or here: https://twitter.com/bayesianboy/status/1309175892359380996?s=20 . These are obviously small samples restricted to the Twitter community, but you would never find such numbers from polls asking "is BMC a predatory publisher?" despite both being models of Open Access Mega Publishing. There is indisputably a public debate specifically about MDPI being predatory (also evidenced by the number of articles published on the topic, discussed on this web page, and the edit history of this page). This debate on scientific rigour does not exist for the most reputable publishers. This is evidence that MDPI is perceived as a predatory publisher by a not-insignificant group, and it is a bit bizarre to suggest that by recognizing this, I am not being objective.

I don't know about this. "retraction is not sufficient to demonstrate an article had an underlying flaw" Really? If an article is retracted it must have some underlying flaw. Can you find a retracted article anywhere that doesn't have an underlying flaw? "Obtaining one is the very starting line to being a reputable academic publisher, not a gold star that forever assures quality." Are you aware that Clarivate regularly curates Web of Science and journals get delisted all the time, and that once you are delisted you cease to have an impact factor? "which can be inflated by self-citations" Are you also aware that excessive self-citations gets you investigated by Clarivate [7]? 3) misses the point entirely. Nobody denies that MDPI is a controversial publisher (and I know some who think Frontiers is worse than MDPI). How is that related to the fact that you have inserted a disputed paper into this article? Focus on what you inserted please. Are you claiming that Oviedo-García's article is not disputed? Are you claiming that disputed articles should be inserted into Wikipedia articles? Are you claiming that disputed articles should not be inserted into Wikipedia articles, unless it is about MDPI, in which case it should? Banedon (talk) 01:16, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for de-escalation. 1) Retracted articles do almost always have significant flaws. My comment is to say that number of retractions depends both on flaws in the articles and the publisher's willingness to recognize them. A publisher that doesn't retract flawed articles will not have a high number of retractions, but is nevertheless dubious. 2) I am. That is why Bentham Science and OMICs publishing groups have both been delisted by the likes of Clarivate and SCImago. I think it's a fair point to say that MDPI is not yet arbitrated as a predatory publisher, and so Wikipedia should not outright call it one. But I do think there is a distinction between the label predatory publisher and controversies around exhibiting predatory publishing behaviour (or as Paolo Crossetto put it: "aggressive rent extractors"). I think that term is apt, but unfortunately the convo above has already agreed that Crossetto's economist background is not sufficient to be deemed an expert source on publishing ethics (for fair reasons of consistent editing policy). Admittedly... I'm not sure everyone has the same definition of predatory publishing in the modern era, and that might be behind some of the disconnect. 3) My point is that it is an ongoing controversy surrounding MDPI. If you would say that MDPI articles given a notice of concern should not be added to the page until arbitration, then I would agree. But this leaves the publisher to be its own judge and jury, and that is incorrect process. In the Controversies section, the result of the "Who's Afraid of Peer Review" sting operation is listed despite the MDPI journal at the time rejecting the paper. Not all controversy entries assume MDPI is at fault, but they are nonetheless controversies surrounding MDPI. Crawdaunt (talk) 11:38, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Edit: I'd add that MDPI has issued a public comment on the Research Evaluation article, so this is a further argument that they themselves view it as a controversy they are embroiled in. Crawdaunt (talk) 11:43, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

1) Are you implying that MDPI refuses to retract articles? If yes - do you have any evidence beyond the one incident already in the article from 5 years ago? How do you explain the retractions that were mentioned above? 2) Are you aware that Clarivate does not index publishers? 3) There are lots of "ongoing controversies". You could for example argue that this is an ongoing controversy in whether or not dark energy exists (see [8] for popular-level writeup). It doesn't mean it should be included into our article on dark energy - the study is disputed, after all. It is also concerning that you've said that if it's an MDPI article with the expression of concern then it should not be added to the page, but an OUP article with the same is OK, since that looks like clear double standards. Unless another editor says not to do it (I know several are watching the page), I will remove this section. Banedon (talk) 15:34, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

1) No. You said: "Crawdaunt if we measure "controversy" by whether an article is retracted, then there has actually been analysis of whether "the rate of controversy per article published [by MDPI] is very different [from other publishers]"". I have explained repeatedly why article retraction is not a good metric to judge controversy. No more to say on this. 2) Please avoid semantics. I acknowledge the IF as a point of legitimacy. I have repeatedly attempted to explain how the IF can be abused, in an attempt to respond to your earlier quoted statement: "No matter how MDPI achieves a speedy publication process, it is clear that the research community has not rejected their approach so far." MDPI itself commented on the Research Evaluation article in question, and presented internal data that show they are amongst the highest self-citers of the publishers they included in their analysis (Fig 1 of: https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/2979). 3) You have grossly misunderstood my question. I made no such assertion. To phrase it another way: I asked if an MDPI article is currently undergoing a notice of concern, does that prevent it from being added to the page? Crawdaunt (talk) 20:20, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

I think we're at an impasse and will not be making progress, so let's ping the other people who have either participated on this page or have edited the article recently and see what they think: David Eppstein Headbomb Randykitty Bjerrebæk. Not pinging Kenji1987 since they've already said above they're against it. The dispute is over this edit, with me thinking it shouldn't be in the article as long as this expression of concern remains, and Crawdaunt apparently thinking it should be included anyway. Banedon (talk) 02:38, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

My position is unchanged from last time. If there's an expression of concern, we don't rely on it, regardless of why there's an expression of concern. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:42, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Although I supported including this source originally, I think we can wait until the expression of concern is resolved before including it, per Wikipedia:There is no deadline. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:05, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree we are at an impasse. User:Banedon I would appreciate an answer to my question whether an expression of concern on an MDPI article would prevent it from being added to the controversy section? I ask it in good faith to know whether it is standard practice that an unresolved controversy is inappropriate for the section called "controversies." My position is that this is an ongoing controversy, and I do not think our judgements of which side is justified in their position should factor into the fact that controvesry nevertheless exists, and is centred around MDPI. The controversial article in Research Evaluation has garnered enough attention that the publisher felt it important enough to release a public rebuttal. Surely that is relevant to the controversy section? Crawdaunt (talk) 10:49, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Consensus is clearly against inclusion of this source until the expression of concern is satisfactorily resolved. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:05, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Alright. 3 to 1 is pretty damning. I am nonetheless curious why this consensus is reached? Not all entries in the controversies section imply the publisher is at fault (e.g. Who's Afraid of Peer Review" entry). Is it standard practice to not list ongoing controversies? Crawdaunt (talk) 11:12, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Make that 4 to 1... As long as there is an expression of concern, this is not a reliable source and should not be used anywhere. At this point the controversy is not about MDPI, but about whether or not that article is correct or needs changes, or is hopelessly flawed and should be retracted. Regarding the rest of the controversies section, I think that it should only mention controversies that concern the publisher as a company (such as being placed on/removed from Beall's list). Controversies concerning a single article should, at best, be mentioned in our articles about the journal. Discretion is needed, though. Publishers, editors, and reviewers are only human, so screw ups will happen from time to time with even the best of them. The larger the journal and the more journals a publisher has, the more retractions they will have. Unless there's a clear pattern of abuse or a larger than normal scandal, most of the retracted articles will be trivial and don't deserve even a mention in the article on the journal in question. If we would list every article for which there was a problem in a publisher's article, it would become impossibly large for huge publishers like Springer or Elsevier. --Randykitty (talk) 11:22, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough. I guess Research Evaluation will sort itself out eventually. I am massively outvoted, but still believe that the publisher's public rebuttal means this is not simply about Research Evaluation, and MDPI has engaged in the controversy. On your point about retraction: I really do want to emphasize the specific flaw in using retraction as a metric of controversy being validated. Nature and Science have a policy of not retracting even flawed articles (e.g. Nature's memory of water 1988, or Science's arsenic DNA backbone), and there is reasoned debate on the merit of retraction vs. allowing the literature to sort itself out (which happened in both of those cases). On the other hand flawed articles might remain up, but with an expression of concern. Retraction is correlated with but independent from whether an article is flawed, and also independent from whether it is controversial.Crawdaunt (talk) 11:40, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

In my comment above, for "retraction" read "controversial article". --Randykitty (talk) 11:59, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

References

Article restructure

Banedon: "I would prefer to see some kind of allegation of peer review failure on MDPI's part..."

I think this is a great suggestion that would also focus the article towards objectivity. It seems a bit like the structure of the article itself is currently inviting the debates about appropriate content. If the article doesn't invite the idea that controversies in general are content deserving front-and-centre attention, then the tone overall will shift to a more neutral stance.

To re-organize the article with the current text, I might propose the following restructure?:

• 1 History
• 1.1 Molecular Diversity Preservation International
• 1.2 MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)
• 2 Accusations of predatory publishing behaviour
• 2.1 Who's Afraid of Peer Review?
• 2.3 Inclusion in Beall's list
• 2.4 2014 OASPA evaluation
• 2.5 2018 Resignation of Nutrients editors
• 2.6 Assessments in the Nordic countries
• 2.7 Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal
• 3 MDPI in the media
• 3.1 List of controversial articles
• 3.2 2016 Data breach
• 3.3 Preferential treatment of authors from developed countries
• 3 See also
• 4 References

As a side note… the section on Assessments in the Nordic countries seems a bit long/overly-detailed relative to the rest of the article. Just a comment. Crawdaunt (talk) 19:47, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Not a big fan, Id rather want to have a similar structure as the other major publishers have (though the Wiki of Elsevier is one big controversies article) Kenji1987 (talk) 01:13, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Kenji1987The Wiki of many controversial publishers includes a sprawling list for controversies (e.g. Frontiers Media, Bentham Science Publishers). It's true that other publishing groups don't have such lists. But also their pages are padded out by listing journals (e.g. PLOS, Science (journal)). MDPI has its own page for this. Perhaps the See also could be moved up to below the History section so it is presented before the sprawling discussion of controversies? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Crawdaunt (talk • contribs)

See also sections go at the bottom, see MOS:ORDER. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:48, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Kenji1987, t, Just returned to this. For now why not move "2.1 Controversal Articles" to the bottom of section 2, rather than having it lead the section? It is effectively an expanding list, so moving it to the bottom avoids the potential for undue weight WP:DUE and allows for it to continue in its current function with its current standards for controversial article inclusion. Thoughts? Crawdaunt (talk) 08:29, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I am in favor. This makes more sense. Kenji1987 (talk) 08:40, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Edit made. Crawdaunt (talk) 09:01, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Czech University of South Bohemia stance against MDPI (Jan 1st 2022)

Not making a section, but it might be relevant to the page to watch the unfolding situation at a Czech university: the University of South Bohemia Faculty of Science plans to: 1) stop financial support for publishing in MDPI journals Jan 1st 2022, 2) will officially recommend against publishing in or otherwise devoting time to reviewing for MDPI, and 3) won’t guarantee that publications in MDPI journals will be taken into account for evaluations of employees and departments.

There was a huge Twitter blowup about this (many thousands of retweets), but that original post was eventually deleted by the user ("@CzSam00" who is a prof at University of South Bohemia suddenly finding herself the centre of unexpected attention). Edit: official .pdf release by USB available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20211209092716/https://www.prf.jcu.cz/data/files/498/530/6405mdpi.pdf Crawdaunt (talk) 20:29, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps a pattern in Czechia, as Charles University's vice dean also has a statement warning its researchers against use of MDPI journals (see: https://www.lf2.cuni.cz/clanky/pozor-na-casopisy-vydavatelstvi-mdpi). But this is not as strong a statement as it seems South Bohemia is making. Crawdaunt (talk) 20:37, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I added the statement by the University of South Bohemia - it feels borderline (since it's but one faculty of one university) but different enough from all the other controversies to include anyway. They did after all single out MDPI. The second source, by Charles University's vice dean, I did not add because it seems like they are only 'considering' further action. Banedon (talk) 03:40, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Delete: Who's Afraid of Peer Review?

Just curious why this entry is present at all? Re: MDPI, it wasn’t a controversy - MDPI rejected the fake paper. The title “Who’s Afraid of Peer Review?” in a “Controversies” section might imply to a casual reader that there is something scandalous to report when there isn’t... On the flipside, discussions on this Talk page have made a point to say that a single journal cannot be extrapolated to a pattern. This subsection currently refers to one unnamed MDPI journal, which kind of communicates as if MDPI as a whole rejected the paper, rather than the lone journal.

From either perspective, this seems misleading in its current form. Should this section just be deleted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Crawdaunt (talk • contribs)

It seems to be based entirely on a single line in the supplemental spreadsheet, so if there are any WP:DUE concerns, they'd be with that subsection IMO. XOR'easter (talk) 15:38, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Who's Afraid was a basic test, and MDPI passed it. Omitting it makes MDPI look worse than it is. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:54, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

So basically its purpose on the page, in the controversies section, is to act as counter-balance? Crawdaunt (talk) 19:16, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Well let's be honest. There is no room for MDPI articles that were in the news in a positive spotlight here. Lack of balance is already far off. Of the 300,000+ articles MDPI publishes every year, there are hardly 10-20 articles that have had some issues, and they are all mentioned here (I even added one or two examples). Very comparable with other publishers. Thus, if you want to argue that MDPI has some "predatory" practices, also add information proving the opposite. It passed a test, which more established publishers failed, most of its journals are indexed by the relevant databases, it is a member of COPE/DOAJ, and some of its journals are leaders in their respective fields etc. Kenji1987 (talk) 04:42, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

"There is no room for MDPI articles that were in the news in a positive spotlight here." Wrong. All positive coverage requires is that it is independent of MDPI. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:44, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

So if we were to add, lets say, CNN articles reporting on something published in MDPI, that would be allowed here? That what I mean with "were in the news in a positive spotlight". Kenji1987 (talk) 06:28, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

No, unless they were commenting on MDPI themselves. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:54, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

So I wasn't wrong. Besides, would it make little sense to praise an article as a result of MDPI practices, as they are expected to function as any other scientific publisher. So this section will always be biased, that's the way how news works. Kenji1987 (talk) 07:10, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Stepping aside from our guidelines and the Through the Looking Glass world of science commentary, I think it is good that we have this coverage. Only reporting bad news skews coverage and traditional publishers prefer feeding their readership an imbalanced diet of mostly bad news. Mind, I don't want a rule that we report on all such hoaxes, rather this is an area where I apply our sourcing guidelines more leniently, because this kind of information at present tends to be valuable and rare. — Charles Stewart (talk) 06:10, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

There's of course a skew to reporting towards negative results, but that's because the mere statement of "this is an academic publisher indexed by..." already implies that they do their job properly most of the time. It's therefore not noteworthy to say "in general the MDPI journal Life does not publish papers causing mass ridicule." It is however noteworthy to say "In 2011, the MDPI journal Life published a paper claiming to have solved the theory of life, the universe, and everything. This was met with mass ridicule."

I would say that if the intent is to provide counter-balance to the article, then it seems exaggerated to put a single entry in for a single journal meeting the minimum bar of competence rejecting a completely bogus paper. The source (Who's Afraid of Peer Review) doesn't even mention the journal or MDPI in text, and the mentality of 'one journal doesn't reflect the whole' is argued here regularly. I feel like if one wants counter-balance, emphasizing something like MDPI being a member of COPE (by adding an introductory sentence reminding that MDPI is a member of COPE, how one qualifies for COPE, etc...) is a more objective entry than "here's an entire subsection dedicated to how one journal once rejected a paper that made no sense and was generated by an algorithm." Crawdaunt (talk) 07:51, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Chinese Academy of Sciences lists multiple MDPI journals in Warning List of International Journals

Similar to the Norweigian controveries section, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has now listed various MDPI journals in their their new early warning list of international journals (by my count 16/65 journals included were MDPI in 2020 and 6/41 journals in 2021). Crudely translated: "The journal warning is not an evaluation of papers, nor is it a negative warning against every publication by the journal. Early warning journals are chosen to remind scientific researchers to carefully select publication platforms and remind publishing institutions to strengthen journal quality management." Links below, including an English-language discussion remarking on the number of MDPI, IEEE, and Hindawi journals in the list:

See:

• 2020 list: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzI1MzA2MzM1NA==&mid=2659567089&idx=1&sn=f4cad93ba3a425524eb19d25ffb25960&chksm=f2ab5c24c5dcd53275aa36b9167d9788577a6a919e2bc80b1144088ea78b32bae8350535b344&scene=0&xtrack=1#rd
• 2021 list: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzI1MzA2MzM1NA==&mid=2659568109&idx=1&sn=576f0a8198b7f58fb4e4c9d410ebf5e8&chksm=f2ab5038c5dcd92e4b91149cb2348a9c6ea163fd61f6391efc8cdd80f0d7f3b7bdbbaab89db9&scene=178&cur_album_id=1634277489231314948#rd)
• Scholarly Kitchen (English-language discussion by Christos Petrou): https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/04/14/guest-post-an-early-look-at-the-impact-of-the-chinese-academy-of-sciences-journals-warning-list/

This seems like the Chinese parallel to "Level X" of the Norwegian Scientific Index. As this is an recommendation by a major scientific body in China, does this seem appropriate to mention on the MDPI page?

Thoughts? Crawdaunt (talk) 10:34, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Yep, I am in favour. Can you draft up a text? Kenji1987 (talk) 13:16, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I was actually wondering if, in an effort to reduce sprawl, it might be appropriate to create a separate section from Controversies like "MDPI in the International Community" or just create it as a subsection within Controversies. As its own section, I'm imagining a home for say... "MDPI as a member of international bodies like COPE", but also it can host the Norwegian critiques, this Chinese Academy of Science critique, and the section on the Univ South Bohemia (Czech) section; perhaps also that mention from Charles University's Vice dean (Czech) explicitly recommending against publishing in MDPI journals.

Having a separate section that could be expanded in a neutral light that would make more sense to me than a broad Controversies Section (implicit negative connotation) that is host to various controversies; also note in above discussion on "Who's Afraid of Peer Review", the Controversies section hosts non-controversies apparently included solely to help balance the article (?). I feel like much of the debate around what is and isn't appropriate re: WP:DUE is in part because the page's current organization shunts everything to the Controversies section and then each entry is weighed on whether it's appropriate for that section... That's my pitch for making a proper separate section on "MDPI in the International Community." Crawdaunt (talk) 18:11, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I think there is a difference if there is some random Swedish researcher criticizing MDPI in a student journal or whether it is a Chinese governmental body asking its researchers to slow down a bit when it comes to publishing in certain outlets. The link you provided us lists the 6 MDPI journals as low risk - Hindawi's Complexity on the other hand...(I assume you'll also modify the Hindawi wiki???). So please go ahead and add this information along the same lines as University of South Bohemia in the controversies section as a seperate section. It deserves it. Kenji1987 (talk) 00:42, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Not sure what you're referring to with Swedish? Was comparing the Norwegian Scientific Index to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I will look to see what can/should be added to the Hindawi page, but think a bit more research on my part needs to be done to present that fairly. Thanks for drawing attention to it. Sounds good re: separate subsection. I leave the idea of a separate section open to discussion should anyone wish to comment. Will draft something and post it to the page (feel free to edit after). Crawdaunt (talk) 07:32, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Addition: The Scholarly Kitchen post notes 22 of the original 65 (2020) journals were MDPI. I previously incorrectly noted 16. This post also comments that only four of the 65 were Hindawi. I'll have a look at the 2021 list that was just published 2 days ago, but I do think it's a false equivalence to suggest that the two groups' inclusion on the list are comparable. The inclusion of a number of Frontiers Media journals on the new list is also notable as there were none in 2020, but again only 3/41 (and like MDPI their names are easy to spot, biasing my scan). I think the part that merits inclusion in the MDPI controversies section is just how prevalent its journals were in the initial list (22/65!), and indeed MDPI's Chinese Comms Department responded (ref now added: https://mdpi.cn/announcements/284). MDPI still makes up 15% of the list in 2021 (not even all the same journals), so there is a history of controversy specifically and most prominently affecting MDPI regarding this list. I hope this makes the specific motivation for inclusion in the MDPI article clear. Crawdaunt (talk) 08:17, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Great addition! I look forward to your Hindawi and Frontiers additions to their pages as well. Perhaps you could add here that MDPI journals were on the low risk classification. Kenji1987 (talk) 08:29, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks :) In fact, I missed one... There are 7 MDPI journals in the 2021 list (listed them in the most recent edit for posterity). That compares to 6 Hindawi, and 3 Frontiers. I think I will make a note on the Hindawi page. Frontiers seems undue re: WP:UNDUE given they make up only 3/41, and were not part of the initial list. Hindawi's presence is consistent across years and grew, so that does seem warranted. Crawdaunt (talk) 08:48, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Single events

@David Eppstein, the question isn't whether we believe the single events add up to a pattern. The question is whether we have reliable sources that say that there is a pattern of discriminating against researchers in LMICs. Without sources that say this is a pattern, then labeling "One time, at one special issue of one journal, one e-mail message said" as a general problem of "Preferential treatment of authors from developed countries" would violate WP:OR. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:00, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

If our article does not say "MDPI have a pattern of repeating this same behavior" then we do not need sources showing that they have a pattern. In many situations in life, a single incident can be so extreme that it becomes significant even if there is no evidence of it being repeated. This incident, of MDPI corporate directly interfering with editorial decisions in a journal, rises to that level for me. But more broadly, if we used this reasoning to discount every incidence of wrongdoing by every wrongdoer as "it was only that one time" even when the same wrongdoer has done many other wrong things, one time each, then we would have no wrongdoing left in the world. It's bad reasoning to say that because that precise variation of misbehavior was only documented once, it was therefore unimportant. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:05, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me that the section heading indicates that this is a general situation, rather than a one-time event. ==Preferential treatment of authors from developed countries== sounds like a general problem, no? Something like ==Interference in planned 2020 special issue of IJERPH Special Issue== sounds like what we can actually document from these sources.

I don't think the slippery slope argument is appropriate. Some instances of wrongdoing by some wrongdoers get books written about them. Sometimes they get multiple independent sources writing that a given instance of wrongdoing is part of a larger pattern. This particular instance appears to have earned only a blog post by the involved parties and a blog post by RetractionWatch, which makes me wonder whether it is UNDUE per policy (even if it feels egregious per personal views of individual editors). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:01, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Where do you get this idea that the only thing that could possibly be problematic enough to mention are patterns of repeated behavior? Sometimes single instances of problematic behavior are so problematic that they are worth mentioning. "Preferential treatment of authors from developed countries" is merely an accurate description of what happened in this single instance. It says nothing about being repeated. The idea that that title must somehow imply that the same thing happened repeatedly is something that comes from your fixation on repetition but is not in the actual text. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:39, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

If a single event were worth mentioning in a Wikipedia article, then multiple independent reliable sources would be mentioning it in the real world. That's how WP:DUE works. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Disconnected from everything else, the text "Preferential treatment of authors from developed countries" might sound like it's talking about a general trend, but in this article, it's a subsection heading at the end of a long list of specific incidents, e.g., "2018 Resignation of Nutrients editors". I don't think there's an implication of repetition — certainly not one strong enough to be confusing. XOR'easter (talk) 15:38, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm doubtful that this should be mentioned in the article at all (because a single INDY source generally means an UNDUE problem), but I think that if we keep it, it should have a section heading that clearly marks it as a single event.

"Preferential treatment of authors from developed countries" is probably a criticism that almost all open-access peer-reviewed journals deserve. Even before this event happened, and in all of their journals, MDPI probably deserves that criticism. But that's not because a staffer tried to meddle in this special issue. It's because researchers from poor countries and poor institutions will have a much harder time paying the article processing charges. So if you are glancing through a list of complaints, and you see a section heading that sounds like it involves widespread, systematic discrimination, you will be surprised to get to this section and discover that it is a paragraph basically about a single e-mail message. ==2018 resignation of Nutrients editors== is a good section heading for that event; I suggest that ==2020 resignation of 2020 special issue of IJERPH editors == would be a better section heading for this event. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:33, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I think that a single source from Retraction Watch, a go-to place for coverage of sketchy behavior in academic publishing, is enough to support a single-sentence summary here. I'm open to adjusting the subsection heading; e.g., inserting the specific year would make it better parallel the preceding items. Dropping in an opaque acronym like "IJERPH" seems suboptimal to me, though. XOR'easter (talk) 16:39, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Given the current standard of this Wiki page for inclusion, it does feel like it is significant enough to mention (rivalling an entry in the Controversial Articles section at a minimum). There is the section on "Who's Afraid of Peer Review" which... wasn't even a controversy? And only has a single sentence. I agree with WhatamIdoing that giving it an entire subsection straddles WP:DUE given the single instance as evidence. On the flipside, MDPI "Water" is a journal with a 2000CHF APC (amongst the highest APCs of the MDPI journals), and in MDPI's general description of discounts and waivers MDPI says:

"For journals in fields with low levels of funding, where authors typically do not have funds available, APCs are typically waived and cross-subsidized from fields for which more APC funding is available. For authors from low- and middle-income countries, waivers or discounts may be granted on a case-by-case basis."

— from: https://www.mdpi.com/apc

The fact that Water, a journal with the highest APCs within MDPI, could ever have such a policy for a Special Issue is noteworthy. It also speaks to what what chief editorial oversight means by "case-by-case basis", i.e. that individual journals are apparently free to run in complete opposition to the spirit of waiving charges for LMICs. It's not like MDPI headquarters at all spoke out or punished the chief editors over this (that I'm aware of). That does make them complicit IMO. So that kinda tips the scales for me towards it being appropriate to have a section re: WP:DUE. Crawdaunt (talk) 08:51, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

The corporate response, which is reported in RetractionWatch with two quotations repudiating both the individual action and the general idea, indicates that it wasn't "policy" so much as one message from one staff person, who has since been informed what the actual policy was. (I wonder what it is about the internet that makes us want to see people be publicly "punished" for making mistakes, instead of having their employees treated the way that we would want to be treated ourselves in similar situations?)

If we keep this, it needs a clearer/more specific section heading. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:28, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Genuinely hadn't seen corporate response. I can't find the response or RetractionWatch report... but that sounds to me like enough to say it doesn't deserve its own subsection. Can you include link? Crawdaunt (talk) 20:15, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I see that this is the ref on the main page added. That tweet was made in July 2020. Was there any action taken? Anything more than a tweet? I'm not sure I would qualify a tweet as an official response... Crawdaunt (talk) 22:15, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Who knows? That's the kind of information we would expect to find discussed in the independent secondary sources that would prove that it's DUE, but AFAICT no such sources exist. What we have, at best, is one WP:PRIMARYNEWS source reporting, in a breaking-news fashion, that the editors announced their resignation via blog post yesterday, and that both the corporate office and the then-CEO said something today about the incident not complying with the corporate policies.

Apparently, nobody in the real world has considered this incident to be worth writing about this since then. 100% of the known sources appeared online within the space of about 24 hours last year. In any other subject area, even if there were dozens of independent sources rather than just one, we'd call that a flash in the page and omit it entirely. UNDUE says articles should "represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources". The number of independent reliable sources that have presented information about this incident is: one. The number of sources talking MDPI in general that have chosen to mention this incident is: zero (AFAICT). Therefore I suggest that the correct balance, "in proportion to the prominence in the published, reliable sources" is: omission.

@XOR'easter, I appreciate including the year in the subsection heading, but it still makes it sound like this was a problem affecting all of MDPI's journals, rather than one. What do you think about something like ===Fee waivers in a 2020 special issue===? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:00, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm torn overall re: WP:DUE. One thing I definitely agree on with WhatamIdoing is that the current subsection title is inappropriately general. And I'm convinced a bit by WhatamIdoing's argument that, as I also can't find any subsequent articles (even blogposts) discussing it as the main topic, it doesn't seem like more than a flash point. If it were a controversial article, I think there'd be a simple case to add it to that section. But as it's an editorial issue, I'm not really sure how to include it without violating the spirit of WP:DUE, which probably means it shouldn't be there at all. Crawdaunt (talk) 09:56, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I have no strong feelings about the subsection heading. I thought yesterday about merging it with the previous subsection and calling them "Resignations of editors" or something like that, or of working it into one of the later, longer subsections somehow. This isn't really a WP:DUE concern for me (although someone else might find that a heading puts emphasis on a topic, and I wouldn't dispute that reaction). Really, I'm just not fond of ultra-short subsections, which read choppily to me. XOR'easter (talk) 15:24, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Putting multiple incidents in one subsection could have multiple advantages. I'm still not convinced that this particular incident should be in the article at all, but if it's in the article, it will both read better and eliminate the original problem completely. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:35, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree with WhatamIdoing. Crawdaunt (talk) 08:54, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

So this entry on "preferential treatment of authors from first world countries" has stood in the article for 2 months now, despite both WhatamIdoing and I agreeing the content isn't justified in its current form. I would be in favour of just removing this section outright, but at a minimum I really think this should be moved to the Controversial Articles section as part of that sprawling list. Can anyone just chime in so this can move forward in some direction? XOR'easter, Banedon, Headbomb? Crawdaunt (talk) 06:34, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I merged that subsection with the one previous, as they were thematically related and, to my eye, too short on their own (while neither really fit under "Controversial articles"). XOR'easter (talk) 07:42, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Seems good! Crawdaunt (talk) 07:54, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that, @XOR'easter. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:13, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Adding this book to the page

There is a new book on predatory publishing, and it describesMDPI as one of the publishers "that were included at one stage but then removed as they were able to show their activities were legitimate" as seen here: https://blog.cabells.com/2022/02/09/book-review-predatory-publishing-by-jingfeng-xia-routledge/. I think this can be added to this page, as it is a scientific book on predatory publishing. Any suggestions how? Kenji1987 (talk) 07:00, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

This information is already on the MDPI main page in the Beall's section (MDPI was initially included, and removed from the list in 2015). For posterity for the talk page here, the full quote from the cabell blog link above is:

"In terms of publishers, Xia has decided to use several examples of predatory and non-predatory behaviour based on some publishers that were included in Beall’s List. This is particularly instructive as it highlights both accepted predatory publishers and why they were included in Beall’s List (in this case OMICS), but also publishers that were included at one stage but then removed as they were able to show their activities were legitimate (in this case MDPI)."

Crawdaunt (talk) 18:33, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

It is about an academic book saying that MDPI is having legitimate activities. Didn't we have the discussion before that if there were 3rd party sources saying something positive about MDPI, that we should also include them, to add balance to the article? Kenji1987 (talk) 01:32, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

The book is saying what's already said in the article. MDPI was listed on Beall's list, and then was removed from Beall's list. We don't need multiple references for the same thing, nor do we need multiple sentences repeating what's already said. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:19, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

It says MDPI was removed due to having legitimate activities. The word legitimate activities is not in the text - contrarily current text suggests that they employed harassment in getting out of the list. Kenji1987 (talk) 04:35, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

It's already noted that the appeal was successful. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:42, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

It's nothing new but I don't see any harm in citing the book, so I went ahead and did it. Banedon (talk) 06:06, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Although now that I look at the section it looks rather unbalanced and gives the impression that Beall was pressured into removing MDPI from his list even though he felt they were predatory. Didn't Beall call MDPI borderline once? If so then the impression is wrong, and the section should be rebalanced a little. Banedon (talk) 06:09, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for adding! His official explanation is: "For example, MDPI was on my list. I removed it from the list because they sent a letter to my university (University of Colorado Denver, editorial note). Then I had a committee, and they thought I should remove them, so I removed them." https://www.universitas.cz/en/people/7226-pseudoscience-gets-too-much-credit - I think this should be added. Kenji1987 (talk) 06:42, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree the book can be cited like Banedon did. But Kenji1987, that's his public statement. His personal statements after were that he only removed MDPI because of the harrassment he and his university received. His recent statements confirm he still believes MDPI is a predatory publisher. For instance: https://twitter.com/Jeffrey_Beall/status/1376534052589563912?s=20&t=J6K1c7brs25fPVHIamdrZw. That's a very rosy re-writing of the history to suggest that MDPI got off the list because of a misunderstanding, and not because of documented harrassment of Beall and his university... Crawdaunt (talk) 06:47, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Dear Crawdaunt, I kindly refer to this source https://www.universitas.cz/en/people/7226-pseudoscience-gets-too-much-credit - published less than a year ago. This is a published source. What he writes on Twitter is irrelevant. Kenji1987 (talk) 06:53, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

His university also did not get harassed. See his former supervisor providing a response to her former employee: https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/16837 Kenji1987 (talk) 06:55, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Please see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5493177/, which is cited at the end of the current section, and his direct re-telling of events in a proper indexed journal. Your newspaper source very clearly says Beall removed them at the recommendation of a committee, not his personal opinion. His personal opinion, voiced publicly in 2021, is that MDPI is a predatory publisher.

"Still others tried different strategies. Some tried annoying university officials with numerous emails and letters, often sent as PDF attachments, with fancy letterhead, informing the university how I was hurting its reputation. They kept sending the emails to the university chancellor and others, hoping to implement the heckler’s veto. They tried to be as annoying as possible to the university so that the officials would get so tired of the emails that they would silence me just to make them stop. The publisher MDPI used this strategy."

— J. Beall, 2015 "What I learned from predatory publishers"

Crawdaunt (talk) 07:00, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't see a reason not to add both sources? Though the source I provided is newer, I don't know if there is a specific wikipedia rule to use the most up-to-date source? But better to add both, as his own committee advised to remove MDPI - this is relevant information currently missing. Kenji1987 (talk) 07:05, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

+ this source does NOT say he considers MDPI to be a predatory publisher. Kenji1987 (talk) 07:08, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

"His university also did not get harassed. See his former supervisor providing a response to her former employee" - I see no evidence in his former employer's account refuting Beall's statement of many letters with the intent to annoy universities into submission. What his former employer says is that she and the university did not pressure him to take down his list. But her article says nothing about MDPI, nor their intense pressure campaign. That campaign is also noted by others, e.g.:

"Like Frontiers, MDPI was once listed by Jeffrey Beall as potential predatory publisher, but was quickly removed from the list when MDPI deployed lawyers (Frontiers instead succeeded to get Beall’s list completely deleted with Beall losing his job at UC Denver)."

— LEONID SCHNEIDER

I submit the Twitter post just to re-emphasize his position (in 2021 no less). Twitter isn't valid evidence for a Wiki page, but it's certainly relevant to the Talk page regarding Beall's position on MDPI and his motivations behind taking it off his list. Even in 2021 he was outright calling them predatory, despite also saying in 2021 that a committee recommended he take them off the list. Crawdaunt (talk) 07:20, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I still don't see a reason why we cannot use both sources? In one source he said he felt pressurized by his university/MDPI to remove MDPI from the list, in another source he says that MDPI is a borderline publishers and his committee advised him to remove the publisher. We should not steer the narrative, but just put these sources out there. Kenji1987 (talk) 07:35, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Propose an edit. I was originally going to respond to Banedon's suggestion of unbalance. You upped the ante before I could.

I see no issue with saying his employer disagrees that she pressured him [ref]. I do see an issue with suggesting the sectionnis somehow misrepresenting his sentiments on MDPI. It already notes a successful appeal, and cites the source with Beall directly calling MDPI out for repeated annoyance to himself and his department. I definitely don't think we should take a side on whether there was or wasn't pressure from Colorado to take down his list. But there is no evidence that the harassing emails didn't occur. And that harassment is well-known, with MDPI and Frontiers being highlighted by Beall as two of the worst offenders. Crawdaunt (talk) 07:51, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I was responding to Banedon when presenting the published evidence. I hope they can pick it up. A sentence such as: "Beall's committee advised Beall to remove MDPI from the list" would already bring balance to the article. Re: "But there is no evidence that the harassing emails didn't occur." - > you understand that this reasoning is a bit problematic? But by all means if published sources talk about harassment, it should be added, and that is exactly what happened. I add another published source which could bring some more balance to the article, when responding to Banedon. Kenji1987 (talk) 07:58, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Just a note: do read the current section. I feel like it's very diplomatically worded. It never even uses the word "predatory" and it just says that Beall remained critical of MDPI even after taking it off the list, and provides his reasons.

I don't see how any of that is untrue, and a mention of "borderline" is definitely still him being critical. Crawdaunt (talk) 08:00, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

"MDPI was included on Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory open access publishing companies in February 2014,[14] and removed in October 2015 following a successful appeal.[24]"

I don't see how emphasizing that a committee was formed that recommended he do this adds anything more than "and removed following a successful appeal." Crawdaunt (talk) 08:03, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

A recommendation by a committee adds more context to this successful appeal. Because now it does not say anything about the process which has lead to this successful appeal. Kenji1987 (talk) 08:06, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Headbomb already agreed earlier that a successful appeal was noted. Banedon wrote: "Although now that I look at the section it looks rather unbalanced and gives the impression that Beall was pressured into removing MDPI from his list even though he felt they were predatory. Didn't Beall call MDPI borderline once? If so then the impression is wrong, and the section should be rebalanced a little. - Banedon"

It is clear that Beall DID take MDPI off his list not by his choosing. He cites pressure specifically outing MDPI in his 2015 article. Even in March 2021 he still calls them predatory. I don't think it's misrepresenting his sentiment. The current section's wording avoids labels altogether and focuses on outlining his critiques.

I don't personally think the committee part is needed. That's my 2 cents. Crawdaunt (talk) 08:14, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Fair enough, but this section is not about Beall's sentiments towards MDPI, it is about what the published sources say. My two cents are that by adding that an independent committee advised to remove MDPI after proving to have legitimate practices. Then later we could add, that Beall stated he felt pressured by MDPI, and that he still considers it to be a borderline publisher. I leave it at that, thank you for your active participation! Kenji1987 (talk) 08:21, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Banedon was curious if the section might be misrepresenting the reasoning behind Beall's removal of MDPI from the list. It isn't. I definitely don't think emphasizing the words "legitimate practices" is appropriate, for the same reason the section doesn't take the opposite tack of "despite Beall believing MDPI to be predatory, a committee advised him to remove MDPI from his list regardless." The fact that Beall took it off despite his criticisms of MDPI already implies it wasn't his decision. It's a well-written section, and the current phrasing is fine. I don't have any more to say. Will wait on another to comment. Crawdaunt (talk) 08:33, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for sources. I made some changes, feel free to make more if you think it's appropriate. Banedon (talk) 04:51, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

"Official Norwegian List" in the lead

Now 5 (out of 350+ or so) journals of MDPI have been rated level X, does this warrant it to be in the lead? If yes, why aren't the 150+ journals with level 1 and 7 or so journals with level 0, and MDPI having a publisher level of 1 by the same index mentioned in the lead? If no, then it should be deleted. In the lead we should know that MDPI has a level 1 at least, or don't mention the Norwegian Index at all in the lead. Kenji1987 (talk) 13:34, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

The way the Norwegian Scientific Index works, each journal is assessed individually, ultimately by committees in the relevant field. (The publisher-level rating only applies to books) Perhaps this doesn't work well when dealing with a predatory publisher like MDPI that churns out journals and special issues. The system was clearly designed for the old publishing world of publishers and journals that behaved quite differently, and where journals were typically established by academics, rather than being motivated purely by profit.

The committee said they added five MDPI journals initially, in consultation with the discipline-specific subcommittees, to assess the response from the academic community, and that more journals may be added later. They also said explicitly that the entire Level X of dubious or possibly predatory journals was created in response to expressions of concern regarding MDPI[9]. They have also said MDPI is continually under review and that they may make further adjustments to the whole system in response to the problems posed by publishers like MDPI (as they did when they created Level X). MDPI is the largest publisher of Level X-journals, with about 40% of the list consisting of MDPI journals. MDPI is the only publisher mentioned specifically in connection with the establishment of the list. Level X shares many similarities with (and is clearly inspired by) Beall's List, but is published by a government agency and has direct funding and other implications. Bjerrebæk (talk) 13:53, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

I dont see any evidence that it only concerns books, and if it did, it is also relevant information. It also begs the question why not mention the 160+ journals that are level 1? Anyhow I dont intend to make this a long discussion, and I look forward to hearing everyone views on this. Kenji1987 (talk) 14:01, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Institutional-level ratings only apply directly to books. This was explained by the committee to MDPI when they complained about it, according to minutes of their meeting of 13 September 2019, so it surprises me that you aren't aware of it. According to the minutes MDPI told the committee that they now planned to publish books. The committee hadn't yet figured out what to do with MDPI as a whole (although they said they were reviewing MDPI) and reinstated MDPI as a level 1 book publisher after they had designated MDPI as a level 0-publisher on the institutional level. The new test case where five MDPI journals are designated as possibly predatory is a significant new development in the way the whole index works. I agree that it would be best if MDPI journals were treated in a more consistent way, by designating all MDPI journals as predatory/non-academic. --Bjerrebæk (talk) 14:12, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

To redirect back to the discussion, what should be in the lead? a) only those 5 journals rated level x by "official norwegian list" (?). b) a) and MDPI being a level 1 publisher c) a) + b) + number of journals having level 1 (academic), 0 (non academic/predatory), X is grey zone, 0 is predatory. d) none of the above. e) different combination, namely.... Kenji1987 (talk) 14:28, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

What happened to this? --JBL (talk) 17:35, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

The page is currently being edited, after the edits are done, Ill add that MDPI is a level 1 publisher in the lead. Kenji1987 (talk) 03:22, 1 October 2021 (UTC) I was wondering whether we should keep level X in the lead, as the Norwegian page state the following: "Keeps level X for now [the MDPI journal]. Will be reconsidered at the decision meeting 14.January 2022." https://kanalregister.hkdir.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalTidsskriftInfo.action?id=475332 - perhaps better to wait until January 2022? Kenji1987 (talk) 03:18, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

And as expected, the Norwegians are dropping MDPI journals from their level x list. Geosciences keeps level 1 (I expect that others follow soon, except the Arts journal, Cogent is also there): https://kanalregister.hkdir.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalTidsskriftInfo.action?id=490794. The question is do we add this in the lead, or where? Kenji1987 (talk) 07:24, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

As the lead refers to MDPI as a whole, I think it would be prudent to confirm systematically what is and is not still included before making any changes. Not sure exactly what has changed? The link to Sustainabiltiy, auto-translated says "Keeps level X for now, as we also will consult other relevant scientific panels.Publications in 2021 can yield publication points." And the link to Geosciences says "Keeps level 1." But above the summary table it reads:

Level X decision: NPU has received a report of concern from the research community regarding the journal's practice. Among other things, the researcher has been offered to be the editor of the journal, despite the fact that the subject background does not fit the journal's profile. NPU has in collaboration with the professional body in geosciences therefore decided that we want input from the research community by placing the journal on the level x list.

— https://kanalregister.hkdir.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalTidsskriftInfo.action?id=490794

So if I understand correctly, Geosciences was Level 1, placed on Level X for consultation, and returned to Level 1? As the page is still updating it seems, given the conflicting statements in the additional information part and the "Level placements and the higher education sector's publication points" part, this seems premature. How many MDPI journals are currently in Level X / Level 0? Crawdaunt (talk) 10:19, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I see now on the official MDPI page that it is five at Level X and nine at Level 0. https://kanalregister.hkdir.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalForlagInfo.action?id=26778. Maybe this disagrees with current edits to the website for Geosciences (maybe? Geosciences still has its listing of Level X in the table). But as this appears ongoing and subject to change, would say hold off for now. Once the main MDPI page updates, we might see a reduction in total journals at Level X or Level 0, or we could even see a net increase! Better to wait for dust to settle? Crawdaunt (talk) 10:31, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Now there is only one level X journal left: https://kanalregister.hkdir.no/publiseringskanaler/NivaX - Geosciences stays level 1. Axioms and Processes are level 0 starting from 2022. Arts has always been 0, and remains 0 (it's an arts journal...), and Sustainability is level 1 for 2021, and still under investigation for 2022 (look at the comments, all but one scholar are against the level X denomination - does make you think about it, doesn't it?). I honestly don't see myself having the responsibility to update the article as I was never in favor of adding this into the lead of the article, though sufficiently to say that the lead of MDPI is now out of date - and it is still messy full of citations of Norwegian student newspapers, no one ever heard of. Kenji1987 (talk) 06:55, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Again, the main MDPI page (which is the summary of MDPI provided by kanalregister) is not updated (https://kanalregister.hkdir.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalForlagInfo.action?id=26778). None of the info you've just mentioned is there. I can see that it is on the individual journal pages. But the standard of this Wiki article page seems to be "wait for the dust to settle, then update." That was my first experience on this Talk page, after lengthy and irrelevant discussion by myself on presumed merits of the edit (genuine thanks Banedon for the lesson). Emphasized by how Axioms and Processes are listed as Level 1 on the MDPI main page, but Level 0 on their individual pages for 2022, for all we know new journals have been added to Level 0, Level X, Level 1, or even Level 2!

Kenji1987 maybe you can propose an edit to the header section here? It's not really clear what you expect is going to be the end product of this thread. I do want you to note that what you are quoting as evidence of non-controversy is... really the meat of how controversial MDPI is in the Norwiegian list. For instance, take BioMed Central (https://kanalregister.hkdir.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalForlagInfo.action?id=16994): BMC is similarly an OA mega publisher with an extensive journal library. But it has nowhere near the level of controversy as MDPI in Kanalregister. Only two active BMC journals are Level 0, one is inactive, and then "Immunome Research" is an OMICS Intl journal wrongly included in the BMC page. If your intent is to argue that the Norwiegian list is useful in evaluating journal reputation, then the fact that so many journals keep flip-flopping only emphasizes that many MDPI journals are not well-viewed by the Norway scientific board. If your intent is to argue that this page should just ignore the Norwiegian criticisms in the header, then make that argument instead. But it's not convincing to de-emphasize Norwiegian controversy by noting how controversial MDPI journals continue to be amongst the board members. Again, maybe propose an edit suggestion so it's clear what exactly you're looking for on this? Based on all you've said, I don't really know what your actual proposal for the page is. Crawdaunt (talk) 18:16, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Please take a look at https://kanalregister.hkdir.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalForlagInfo.action?id=26778 - none of the journals is level X now. The best way is to remove the Norwegian Index thing from the lead, add it to the Nordic country section, and update it regularly, as for example the journals with impact factors are updated. Don't forget that less than 5% of all MDPI journals is rated level 0 - and for most of these journals is because they are still too newKenji1987 (talk) 01:30, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

While I disagree that ~5% is evidence of non-controversy (for comparison: BMC <1%), I'm not even sure that's relevant... I might be more willing to agree with the argument "this is already summarized later in the article, the header should be shortened." But don't conflate current status on the Norwiegian list with worthiness of MDPI's unique criticism by a major scientific body in 2021 being in the header.

As far as the current content: the Wiki article references a time ("2021"), and so remains a valid statement. I guess the justification for inclusion in the header is to note more prominently that it's not just one guy (i.e. Beall), but even major scientific bodies that have been highly critical of MDPI? The current length of the Norwiegian sentences does seem a tad superfluous/redundant. If the spirit of this inclusion is to emphasize that criticism of MDPI goes beyond just Beall, one could argue that a better edit might be something like:

"MDPI journals have also been criticized by major scientific bodies: MDPI journals made up ~34% of a 2020 Chinese Academy of Sciences journal warning list, and the Norwiegian Scientific Publication Register specifically noted MDPI journals when creating its 'Level X' journal classifcation in 2021, a classification for journals being assessed for controversial practices.[refs]"

Or something much shorter:

"MDPI has since been criticized by major scientific bodies (e.g. Chinese Academy of Sciences, Norwiegian Scientific Register) for contentious editorial practices."

Can someone else chime in here? Headbomb? Banedon? Crawdaunt (talk) 06:22, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I think you can better mention Chinese Academy of Sciences and Norwegian Scientific Register directly, instead of using "e.g.". Using percentages seems very much an example of own research, unless the source directly gives out these percentages. I just question whether it should be in the lead. Why only mention the 5% of the journals that didnt make it to level 1, and not mention the 95% of the journals that do? Kenji1987 (talk) 06:48, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I think I prefer the first version since it's more complete (but there's a typo in 'Norwiegian'). Banedon (talk) 05:02, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Alright, will put something into the article in line with the first one, avoiding percentage.

Re: why only mention the 5% that don't: the basic expectation of an academic publisher is rigorous quality. 95% sounds good if you're a student takimng a test. It's pretty poor as a professional academic publisher. That's 1/20 journals that are thought of as predatory. Scientific publishing has a zero-tolerance policy on poorly-curated information. Just to provide an honest answer to an honest question. Crawdaunt (talk) 19:02, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

All major publishers have levels 0 in this index - there are many reasons why journals are level 0, such as being too new, it does not always equate with being predatory. Anyway I rephrased your sentence. Mdpi as publisher has not been crticised, certainly not by the chinese academy of sciences. So I modified the sentence. Please checkKenji1987 (talk) 09:04, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Good edit. Thanks! Crawdaunt (talk) 09:43, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

MDPI editors caught in ring of Russian paper mill selling co-authorships across four MDPI journals

So a preprint was posted Dec 2021 on arxiv.org, and revised Mar 2022 exposing a Russian paper mill. This paper mill seems to have been publishing legitimate papers, where coauthorship was put up for sale on a Russian website for up to $5000. This issue affected many publishers including Oxford University Press, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley-Blackwell (see Science Magazine new writeup from April 6th: https://www.science.org/content/article/russian-website-peddles-authorships-linked-reputable-journals). MDPI is not mentioned in this science.org article.

However, I was reading the original preprint and was surprised to see that in fact, MDPI is featured quite prominently in the preprint. There is an entire figure (Fig. 4) dedicated to a circle of MDPI editors (including guest editors and academic editors) who were coordinating with the Russian paper mill to sell authorships in Special Issues in Energies, Mathematics, Sustainability, and J. of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research. Preprint link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.13322

As this is still a preprint, and MDPI is not specifically mentioned in the science.org news article, I don't see a way to include this currently in the MDPI Controversies section re: WP:RS. But I wanted to bring this to the attention of the page to watch for in the future, as the preprint seems to have undergone one round of revision and therefore may be published soon. Best. Crawdaunt (talk) 18:20, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

I think this is too speculative to include. Even the author is not confident. To quote from the preprint, "One might suggest that these coauthors dishonestly purchased a coauthorship slot, but I suppose that the relationship is of a different nature." I'd say this needs to be at least peer reviewed and preferably followed up on by other studies to add to the article. Banedon (talk) 02:14, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. The preprint itself, until peer-reviewed, is not a WP:RS. I agree the writing style of the preprint author is a bit indirect. Note in the very next line it says: "One could suggest that it is a coincidence, but some of the offers on the 123mi.ru website mentioned straightforwardly that one coauthorship slot of the paper was reserved for the editor of the journal or editor of the journal from this particular country. This coauthorship pattern in MDPI journals served as a good predictor of other dishonest papers."

The whole analysis is anonymized, but the list of 400something papers is provided, and I could check and confirm the MDPI (and other journal) papers that are part of the dataset. I'm not about to cross-validate everything myself... but the data are in fact transparent and I would trust the paper has legitimate reason to out MDPI specifically once it is published in a peer-reviewed and reputable journal. Just figured I would raise awareness here so folks aren't surprised, particularly since the preprint was picked up by the Science.org News department. Crawdaunt (talk) 07:09, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

It is a pre-print, and you know you cannot cite those in the Wiki page. Kenji1987 (talk) 04:12, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Again, just bringing this up to make sure editors here are aware. Not proposing an entry until/unless it is properly published. Crawdaunt (talk) 05:22, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Section discussing APCs

Re: Karlaz1's recent edit to move the APC section to the History section (and saw his edit on Elsevier page)... it got me thinking why is there even such a long discussion of the APCs for MDPI period? They're presented in this weird "they've increased over the years, albeit from a low base" style that makes the reader think "is that... bad? good?" It's very strange to be listing the minutia of a company's pricing on a Wiki page... and it's not like any Wiki page on a publisher (academic or non-academic) should list the prices of publishing with that company, right? It'd be weird if say... there was a subsection on Penguin Group discussing the terms of most entry level publishing contracts for new authors.

Other publishers don't have similar sections (e.g. Frontiers Media, Wiley (publisher)), and in BioMed Central there is just two sentences on APCs: "In 2002, the company introduced article processing charges,[2] and these have since been the primary source of revenue. In 2007 Yale University Libraries stopped subsidizing BioMed Central article processing charges for Yale researchers.[3]"

Thoughts? Crawdaunt (talk) 17:34, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

I removed it, was reverted, and nobody else seemed to care, basically. [10]. Ping Walter Tau (talk · contribs). Banedon (talk) 01:44, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I'd second removing it Crawdaunt (talk) 05:19, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Couple other users that should weigh in Ping Karlaz1 (talk · contribs) Ping Randykitty (talk · contribs) Crawdaunt (talk) 06:07, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi, Thank you for opening the discussion about this issue. It is relevant. Yes, I agree that information about APCs should be united in articles about publishers. Because it was already here I put it into Elsevier (but was reverted by Randykitty (talk · contribs)). After consideration, it seems to me that this information is really unnecessary in articles about publishers. Nevertheless, we can move it into the APC article. It can be valuable for readers interested in APC to have some comparison there. Maybe, now just move to the Talk Page of the APC article (with comment that it could be added to the article with adding more information about APCs of other publishers)?Karlaz1 (talk) 14:55, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

• As a rule, we don't mention prices of anything on WP (not a catalogue), unless there's a notable issue supported by independent reliable sources. Just having a source for a price, even if reliable and independent, fails "notable issue". Also, discussion of APCs may be UNDUE on a publisher's article, but perfectly fine in the APC article (which can be cross-referenced in thee text of the publisher's article, or at a minimum under "see also". --Randykitty (talk) 15:41, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

If I'm counting correctly, that's already 4 in favour of removing it (me, Banedon, Karlaz1, Randykitty). I think whether it's appropriate in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_processing_charge article, and how it might be included, should be discussed over there. For now I'm going to remove this section, but feel free to undo if there is any debate left to be had. Cheers -- Crawdaunt (talk) 16:45, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

>> Dear colleagues: I do not know, what your backgrounds are, but as a faculty delegate at a University library committee I have to deal with both subscription and publication charges. There is a good article on wiki about subscription https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serials_crisis AND an article about Open Access continuation of Serials Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_processing_charge . MPDI is a prototypical example of an OA publisher, that came as a low-cost alternative to Elsevier, but within a few years, started rising its prices to the level (yet still below) of Elsevier's OA publication charges. At the same time, some of MDPI journals lowered their peer review standards (this is mentioned in the wiki article). I and my colleagues feel, that it is important to give a warning to less experienced authors about the MDPI practices. The truth is, that in many (regrettably, I cannot say "in all fields" as of today) fields, there are no-charge OA journals (i.e. Platinum Open Access), which are indexed in Scopus and/or WoS. Publishers , like MDPI and OMICS, undermine the efforts of Platinum Open Access Publishers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Walter Tau (talk • contribs) 20:39, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

That discussion can be perfectly legitimate, but perhaps more appropriate in the article on APCs? Though be careful of WP:DUE if calling out a single publisher, and WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS so edits are strictly objective and relevant to the exact topic of the page rather than a grander over-arching point. --Crawdaunt (talk) 12:53, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

I acknowledge the asymmetry of MDPI v Frontiers Media. This asymmetry stems for the fact, that MDPI is a larger publisher than Frontiers Media, and, thus, more infor/studies about/of MDPI is/are available.

It seems, that following arrangement may be the most appropriate: we will mention the APC increase in the articles for all OA publishers, that are doing it (I have access to the necessary infor for many, but not all publishers), and we will provide links from the articles about each publisher to the article about APC. My suggestion is to keep the APC increase infor for MDPI, add similar data to the articles about other publishers, and IN ALL CASES provide links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_processing_charge Walter Tau (talk) 16:16, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

• No, absolutely not. APCs should only be mentioned if there are independent sources discussing a certain publisher's APCs. Apart from that (probably rare) case, price information needs to stay out. --Randykitty (talk) 21:32, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Agree with Randykitty. I really don't think it's appropriate to enter any APC info on a publisher's Wiki page. This is a standard across Wikipedia to avoid essentially providing a catalogue of pricing as if Wiki's become pricing advertisement space (see WP:PROMOTION). And the idea that charging APCs is somehow a controversy in and of itself is not really justified IMO (otherwise literally all major and even minor publishers are 'controversial', and their Wikis would need to be updated with pricing). Again, any info on APCs is probably best left to the APC page IMO, and were you to bring up MDPI as an example, it would need to be phrased very carefully to avoid undue bias re: WP:DUE. Just beware:

"You might think that [Wikipedia] is a great place to set the record straight and right great wrongs, but that's not the case. We can record the righting of great wrongs, but we can't ride the crest of the wave because we can only report what is verifiable from reliable and secondary sources, giving appropriate weight to the balance of informed opinion: even if you're sure something is true, it must be verifiable before you can add it. ... Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought or original research. Wikipedia doesn't lead; we follow. Let reliable sources make the novel connections and statements. What we do is find neutral ways of presenting them.

--WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS

So while it's noble to believe all science should be Diamond OA, charging for articles is by no means controversial in and of itself in the current publishing climate (IMO). But a discussion on the push for Diamond OA in the APC article would be a reasonable and worthwhile entry if phrased neutrally. Indeed, there's no mention of this on that page yet. Happy to work with you Walter Tau on that page to write an entry in a neutral way. I would take further convo to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_processing_charge page though. Consensus here is already 4 in favour of keeping APCs off this page. -Crawdaunt (talk) 21:44, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing out the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_processing_charge page. I was unaware of its existence. I am starting to add infor/links about Diamond OA there. Walter Tau (talk) 20:06, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

1 million articles published

@Banedon and @Randykitty, just curious on both your takes. Independent of whether the claim could be included with the MDPI link (and maybe a tag included?), also feels like WP:PROMOTION. It's an MDPI talking point that they hit 1 million articles, meant to celebrate some sort of business accomplishment. Is this type of content added to other publisher pages? Should WP really have a running tally of article milestones for all publishers? Seems WP:SOAP to me... -- Crawdaunt (talk) 19:09, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

• I agree 100%. But see also List of MDPI academic journals (with discussion here). --Randykitty (talk) 22:15, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
• I personally think it's an interesting factoid. On the other hand, it's not something I feel strongly about, so I don't mind if it stays out of the article (although I'd say the argument that it is PROMOTION is more convincing to me than "it needs a non-primary source". Banedon (talk) 23:51, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks both for replies. Will check on that list of MDPI articles @Randykitty as it seems like a curious inclusion... But yeah was genuinely asking the question of whether such 'milestones' are included in other publisher pages. Journal pages I could... maybe?... see. But if I saw "Springer Nature is a publisher with over 1 million articles" I would find it quite bizarre (again re: WP:PROMOTION). And if that such milestones are on other publisher pages... I'd be in favour of removing them. -- Crawdaunt (talk) 23:15, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

• I didn't say a "non-primary source" was needed, but that an independent source was needed. Publishers, like any other type of company, have been know to exaggerate their accomplissements from time to time... :-) BTW, I removed a similar statement from the Springer article. --Randykitty (talk) 12:36, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

  This is an academic paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-022-04586-1?fbclid=IwAR27PRCZg10a6OE_qZpUvRdIlbEg6gV3dZPb-_ZiZNEXnopSD2wXKx8JWjk#article-info stating that MDPI is the third largest academic publisher in the world. This is an independent source. Kenji1987 (talk) 07:17, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Recent edit to intro section

Just to ensure Talk Page access for discussion, opening this section to discuss changes I made on Dec 30th 2022. Primary reason was to update with a more recent take (from the same author, Christos Petrou of Scholarly Kitchen, as the main source cited for the previous discussion). New take from Petrou cites how the very fast processing time of MDPI compared to other publishers (2x faster than any other publisher in his analysis) has attracted criticism re: editorial rigor in favor of operational speed, which is the main update from his post in 2020. I also cited a second analysis article that says much the same as independent confirmation - although this 2nd analysis written by Crossetto was also assessed by Petrou.

I will also note this 2nd article is a wordpress link, and so was auto-flagged for consideration as a WP:RS. Before confirming this edit, I tried to ensure its appropriateness/relevance in the following ways:

1. It is only cited as an independent confirmation to the new information from Scholarly Kitchen by Christos Petrou, who was previously approved on this page as a WP:RS. 2. Using Google Chrome (private browsing mode to prevent cookies/history), this article by Crosetto is in the middle of the 1st page of hits to the search "MDPI" and is only two below Petrou's 2020 Scholarly Kitchen article, indicating its significant impact/reach.

I hope these two points emphasize why I have judged this wordpress.com link as being a reliable source of relevance to the page. --Crawdaunt (talk) 14:08, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

I added this study: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-022-04586-1?fbclid=IwAR27PRCZg10a6OE_qZpUvRdIlbEg6gV3dZPb-_ZiZNEXnopSD2wXKx8JWjk#article-info perhaps it can also be added in other parts of the article. Thanks. Kenji1987 (talk) 07:05, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I undid my contribution, perhaps someone else can add this study - it states that MDPI is the third largest academic publisher in the world in terms of SCI/SSCI articles. This shows a scientific study claiming it, and hence more weight, but I no longer want to edit the MDPI page. Kenji1987 (talk) 07:16, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

In my recent edit, I de-emphasized the bragging point of "5th largest" as the word 'largest' to me is a bit strange. It's used to note article output here, but the word largest could just as easily be used to describe say... 'impact' (total citations received), or organization (total employees). Even in that article, the abstract just says "one of the largest", which I imagine is phrased that way for similar reasons. The authors certainly only want the up-front emphasis to be that MDPI is 'one of the largest." They only quote MDPI's own claim of '3rd largest' anyways, they don't actually put it forth.

Could add the ref to the sentence re: "one of the largest" as additional support? Crawdaunt (talk) 08:11, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

To be honest how that article came to that conclusion is not very relevant, its a third party independent source. And it clearly states MDPI is the third largest academic publisher in terms of number of sci/ssci articles published. Kenji1987 (talk) 08:43, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Its based on this table: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-022-04586-1/tables/1 doesnt source to MDPI but to Clavirate, exactly what you wanted Kenji1987 (talk) 08:44, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't want anything in particular, other than to avoid WP:PROMOTION-type language. The study, in the abstract (i.e. the part with the key points the authors want to emphasize) says: "By 2021, in terms of the number of papers published, MDPI has become one of the largest academic publishers worldwide." And later they say "Parallel, based on the number of SCI/SSCI articles annually published, by 2021, MDPI positioned itself as the third largest academic publisher in the world."

Note how they say "MDPI positioned itself as..." rather than saying "MDPI is...". It might sound like semantics, but the authors clearly don't want to, themselves, directly endorse any sort of rank number. I agree that pointing out any 'rank' other than an undisputed 1st is an issue with WP:PROMOTION. I don't see Wikipedia as a place to keep constantly-updating tallies of 3rd party rank metrics... The current text "one of the largest" is in agreement with the phrasing used by the authors in your study, and is more neutral IMO. happy for others to chime in. -- Crawdaunt (talk) 10:39, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

The article literally writes: "however, in 2021, with more than 210,000 SCI/SSCI articles, MDPI was ranked third among the largest academic publishers, right behind Elsevier and Springer Nature. ". This is important as they obtained this rank in just a few years time. Kenji1987 (talk) 11:01, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

To me the point is moot (per reasons above). Again, claiming "3rd largest" is almost meaningless promotional language. Which is the largest publisher then? Elsevier (600k pubs in 2021) or Springer Nature (319k pubs in 2021)? Except Springer Nature employs ~10k people, while Elsevier employs ~8.7k. And then which gets more citations, MDPI or Wiley? What if you factor in self-citations?

Throwing out vague terms like "3rd largest" isn't useful, and only serves to boost self-serving importance. It's totally appropriate on a Wiki page list of say... "Largest publishers by SCI/SSCI total article output," but it serves no purpose to the MDPI page other than to claim some arbitrary superiority. The fact that MDPI is the largest publisher of OA articles is worth noting as it establishes it as the largest in a given arena, but the fact that MDPI is publishing tons of articles isn't more noteworthy beyond making it "one of the largest."

Would you really update the Wiki of every publisher on that list with the phrase "In 2021, Springer Nature was the 2nd largest publisher per SCI/SSCI articles they published." "In 2021, IEEE was the 7th largest publisher per SCI/SSCI articles they published." "In 2021, PLOS was the 14th largest publisher per SCI/SSCI articles they published." If not, why should MDPI's page be updated with this running tally?

~~Just to further explain my reasoning here. Will wait for others to comment if they feel this is worth debating. -- Crawdaunt (talk) 11:25, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

I believe, that it is important to show, that MDPI has been a success, even when looking only at the number (and its time derivative) of articles they publish. The reason for comparing MDPI with THE OTHER publishers, because THE OTHER are much older. The new kid, MDPI, is displacing the Old Farts, that created Serials Crisis in the first place, and tried to sabbotage the OA movement afterwards. At the same time, we need to make it clear, that MDPI (often, not always) sacrifices the editorial/review rigor in the race for speedy publishing. Instead of reverting my edits, I ask other editors to rephrase the sentences with the Statistical Infor and References, that I provided. Walter Tau (talk) 22:18, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

• I'm with Crawdaunt here, this doesn't belong in the article and we're not going to do this for Elsevier etc, either. As for "sabotage the OA movement": while there are many good arguments in favor of OA, things are not all positive either and the "Old Farts" had/have some good arguments against OA (which, after all, also brought us the phenomenon of "predatory journals"). --Randykitty (talk) 22:54, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

I think calling MDPI "one of the largest publishers in the world" already establishes it as a major player in publishing.

Your edit with all its stats might fit better at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MDPI_academic_journals ?

I'd still recommend dropping sci-lit as this is owned by MDPI. -- Crawdaunt (talk) 07:39, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Blacklisted as a publisher

Is this worth mentioning? I think that this is the first time that the entire catalogue of a publishing house has been blacklisted.

"On January 3rd, Zhejiang Gonggong University (浙江工商大学), a public university in Hangzhou, announced that all the journals of the three largest Open Access (OA) publishing houses were blacklisted, including Hindawi (acquired by Wiley in early 2021), MDPI founded by a Chinese businessman Lin Shukun, and Frontiers, which has become very popular in recent years. The university issued a notice stating that articles published by Hindawi, MDPI and Frontiers will not be included in research performance statistics."

Source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/NO5By3PtF0XPwNxyKl8j1A Jonathan O'Donnell (talk) 23:34, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

I think this is worth mentioning, probably combined with the "Withdrawal of support by the Faculty of Science of the University of South Bohemia" section that's currently in the article. However, I'm COI'd with respect to MDPI now, so I won't make the edit for now. Banedon (talk) 01:07, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

This seems like it would fit with the section/note on the same decision by the Czech university's faculty of science. Looking up the university, it seems like the English name spelling Gongshang? The university itself is also globally ranked (1000-1200 by Times Higher Education), so this seems noteworthy. Will also look to add this to other affected publisher's pages (Frontiers, Hindawi).

Cheers, Crawdaunt (talk) 07:18, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Do we have reliable independent sourcing for any of this, or just primary sources and blog posts? I imagine that this is all true, and it appears to reflect badly on MDPI, but neither of those things provides a valid excuse for lowering our standards for sourcing. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:40, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Added an additional source reference (Chinese) alongside the link from Jonathan. Think both is good as the 1st link provides english translation (and of course, this is english Wiki). Crawdaunt (talk) 12:48, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

This link appears to be broken. Banedon (talk) 23:28, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Replaced ref :) Crawdaunt (talk) 23:55, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Predatory Reports

On Predatory Reports there is a list of all MDPI predatory journals. But I don't know whether this site is reliable enough. --Julius Senegal (talk) 14:37, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

It's not listed in the Predatory Publishing article and doesn't have its own page either. I would be skeptical of including it. Banedon (talk) 01:59, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

No info on the website about who actually runs it, and checking their Twitter that they link to, has very few followers. Seems very much like a personal blog/site, not an established organization. -- Crawdaunt (talk) 23:02, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

It's legit and a good blog, with solid analysis, but it's basically too new to have made an impact on anything, and because it's anonymous... very hard to prove legitimacy at this point. I would rely on it. But that doesn't mean Wikipedia can. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:51, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

To make matters even worse - they hijacked the name of a legit predatory journal list: Cabell's International Predatory Reports. This would classify this list as a hijacked predatory predatory journal list. Kenji1987 (talk) 20:32, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

This blog is NOT legit. It plagiarised most of its content from other sources (including Wikipedia), it hijacked the name of an existing legitimate list (Cabell's International), and its anonymous (hence anyone can do it). Kenji1987 (talk) 07:43, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, it is a touchy topic. If you use your real name, then you'll be harrassed and might experience death threats. If you don't use your real name, then you aren't taken seriously. However, I found the analysis superficial. Three articles are cited in the decision. This one reads like it is plagiarized from somewhere (it uses first person at one point), quotes ChatGPT (really?), and criticizes a bunch of things that aren't related to predatory publishing (like "exponential growth" and "fast publication time"). Is the author suggesting that long publication times are a good thing? If so, it's easy for MDPI and other publishers to increase publication time - just sit on the manuscript and do nothing. This source alleges there is a self-citation problem, but it's the same paper discussed above with questionable methodology, and it doesn't note that the paper is currently under an expression of concern. This source is the only one that actually indicates a problem, but the article also doesn't mention how it is one reviewer out of what is likely millions (because MDPI is publishing >250k articles/year). Peer review failures occur at every publisher. An analysis of failure rates at MDPI vs. other publishers could mean something, but in a vacuum I'd have guessed that one failure in a million per year is a really good rate. I am skeptical, especially since it doesn't look like an independently-notable source, possibly for good reason. Banedon (talk) 08:00, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Hungarian researchers, gathering consensus

@Zefr:@Karlaz1: Re: recent edits: I have to agree and acknowledge Scientometrics as a primary source, and so information within is perfectly citable per Wikipedia standards (which do not even demand such a bar, but rather that info comes from a noteworthy and credible source). As in my edit summary, I do note that the senior author of that Hungarian impressions study may have an apparent COI, having published three times with MDPI in the 2 years prior to publishing an article espousing how MDPI is reputable.

However at face value, using the opinions summarized in the abstract, all the results say is that MDPI is seen as reputable/prestigious enough, and the abstract makes special note that the fast processing times are the most attractive prospect. I made edits to text by Karlaz to better reflect that, and avoid highly subjective words like "good;" though I acknowledge such a phrase is used later in the article.

I added two existing references from the page regarding publishing turaround times: the page has long-considered Scholarly Kitchen as a reputable source. The page treats these info sources more akin to news, not blog spam (Scholarly Kitchen is a scientific forum with lead editors and many writers). The second source (Crosetto) adds an independent analysis arriving at the same conclusion, reinforcing the validity of the information. It is also one of the top search results on the web for the search "MDPI", and is an article with high notoriety. I do, however, note that the added info is tangential; but it occurred to me that while the page says the publishing times are fast in multiple places, and the Scientometrics study emphasizes this point, nowhere are actual turaround times listed, despite these being publicly available in every article, and collated and analyzed by two high-profile articles. -- Crawdaunt (talk) 09:01, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

As a survey of just 629 authors and case study for central and eastern European countries (CEE), the Scientometrics report is more of a preliminary confirmation that Hungarian researchers - under pressure to publish, as described in the first four paragraphs of the Discussion - used MDPI as a conduit to CV-building for institutional rewards. I found this article more related to author behavior than about the business of MDPI - the focus of the article. The conclusion discusses various perspectives of publishing pressure that suggest this is a preliminary report to be expanded in the future - we should wait for a more comprehensive assessment of CEE publishing via MDPI.

Because Scholarly Kitchen and Crosetto are blogs, not WP:RS sources, we shouldn't use them. Overall, focusing a section on Hungarian author publishing motivations is WP:UNDUE, and doesn't add to our understanding of MDPI predatory publishing practices. Zefr (talk) 20:24, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I fully agree with that assessment. Trust me, I do. But being objective, if something is published in a sufficiently reputable peer-reviewed journal, it can count as a credible primary source. Otherwise you, as Wikipedia editor, are acting as arbiter of what is or is not valid information. I find myself ill-suited to rule out a survey's results just because it's a case study of only a few hundred Hungarian scientists. Instead, I made edits to more objectively reflect what the survey can say or can't, which was intended to improve what cna be said about understanding MDPI publishing practices; whether they are 'predatory' or not is an opinion, not an objective fact, and I'd avoid that term here... it's not helpful to the conversation.

We have entries on here regarding the perspectives of the Chinese Academy of Science, the Nordic Kanal Register, and other critical reception info. Keep in mind this isn't a page on a scientific topic - it's a page on a science publisher. Not all references and sources of info need to be primary research articles... covering MDPI is much like covering say... the New York Times. You can cite books, opinion pieces, perspectives, etc... you just need to maintain balance and WP:DUE.

I also agree with @Karlaz1:'s sentiment of repurposing the section as "Controversies and Evaluations," because there have been previous debates on this page about the spirit of Wikipedia and WP:DUE/WP:UNDUE concerns. That's why, best I can tell, the "controversies section" started out with a one-line statement saying "once, an MDPI rightly rejected the "Who's afraid of peer review" sting." - Not a controversy, nor particularly 'impressive' for a journal to meet the bare minimum of academic quality. Best I can tell, it's only there for WP:DUE concerns to start off the controversies section by saying "MDPI, not all bad." That's why re-titling the section to reflect that it's more of a 'assessments' section fits to me, as is done for say... Hindawi (publisher).

-- Crawdaunt (talk) 20:44, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Separately, blogs can be WP:RS (though you're right that it is generally discouraged). They fit under the banner of WP:SPS, specifically the clause:

"Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. Exercise caution when using such sources..."

As above (see Recent edit to intro section OP), the posts by Scholarly Kitchen are deemed expert sources akin to say... a newspaper doing its own investigation and publishing the findings in a column. The Crosetto blog article is a high-notoriety article that is among the first hits searching "MDPI" and its conclusions reinforce and provide external validation to the Scholarly Kitchen analysis. Both of these analyses simply collate the article 1st received and acceptance dates that are public information on all MDPI papers anyways. I hope this demonstrates for you that sufficient caution has been exercised in this page using both the Scholarly Kitchen and Crosetto articles. -- Crawdaunt (talk) 20:55, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

@Zefr:@Crawdaunt: Hi, thanks, Crawdaunt. I didn´t know that about the author of the article. Also, I agree that the word "good" is subjective and the new formulation is better. @Zefr I understand your comment: this is not a sign that "MDPI" is good. Nevertheless, I see the reason for the inclusion of Hungarian researchers mainly because: 1) It is the first big survey of perception of MDPI in academia; we haven't much data just: a) sting operations, b) quality of published articles evaluated ex-post (controversial articles), and c) perception; 2) broader perception of MDPI in the research community and the reason why it is the biggest OA publisher (due to the fast processing time, which can leads to rumors about the quality of peer review). Moreover, it mentions MDPI as a part of a bigger problem: pressure on the fast publishing and science evaluation, which pushes researchers to publish or perish.Karlaz1 (talk) 14:42, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Just for your curiousity @Karlaz1: a survey in 2021 by Dan Brockington (1000+ responses) on author perceptions of MDPI: https://danbrockington.com/2021/04/18/mdpi-experience-survey-results/

Just to note this isn't the 'first big survey' so to speak. Only published in a journal? Maybe... but that largely reflects that survey results of author perceptions of a single publisher typically don't get treated like primary research... Again, just for your interest if you weren't aware of this survey previously. -- Crawdaunt (talk) 17:05, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing the research, I didn't know about it (and yes, I thought something published in a journal). Karlaz1 (talk) 11:32, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I do note that the senior author of that Hungarian impressions study may have an apparent COI, having published three times with MDPI in the 2 years prior to publishing an article espousing how MDPI is reputable. I'm not convinced this qualifies as COI. People who believe MDPI is disreputable are not likely to publish there in the first place. Conversely, people who believe MDPI is reputable are more likely to publish there, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Besides, it would be very hard to tell if MDPI's peer review process is robust without firsthand experience (given a large selection bias in all other accounts of the peer review process, not to mention the peer review process is shrouded in confidentiality). Heck, it'd be hard to tell if MDPI's peer review process is robust even with firsthand experience, given small sample size effects. Banedon (talk) 02:06, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Tried to phrase cautiously as "may have" to avoid suggesting outright. Worth considering openly though, even if only to dismiss. -- Crawdaunt (talk) 22:48, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Just to bring this back on track: does anyone other than Zefr oppose the inclusion of this article in the controversies/evaluations section? @Banedon: @Headbomb:?

-- Crawdaunt (talk) 08:18, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

No strong opinion here, but to me this seems on par with the Chinese University ban in terms of noteworthiness. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:28, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I favor keeping because I don't see any reason not to, but I don't feel strongly about it either. Banedon (talk) 08:30, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks both. Will take that as a 4:1 in favour (or at least 3:1 in favour and 1 that sees it as being on-par with current article content in terms of noteworthiness). Will re-add to page.

-- Crawdaunt (talk) 05:04, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Reduce Nordic researcher critiques section size

I'm sure this has been discussed previously, but just re-opening... this is 2 and a half long paragraphs, when even the section on MDPI in Beall's list (a much more famous/controversial list) is shorter.

Not to say the content isn't good, but at least the length is clearly WP:UNDUE.

Would keep 1) the intro re: how is MDPI included in the list. Then 2) creation of Level X, but less detail on specific journals etc..., 3) current Level 0 and Level X journal examples, but not a complete list.

Then reduce and combine 2nd/3rd paragraphs, removing mentions of individual scientist opinions. For instance:

The head of the National Publication Committee of Norway and a number of Norwegian scholars have been highly critical of MDPI, with some lobbying to remove MDPI from the Norwegian Scientific Index entirely [insert refs]. They cite how the reputation of MDPI is poor in Danish and Finnish lists similar to the Norwegian Scientific Index [insert refs], that there are many academics that boycott MDPI journals outright [insert refs], or accuse MDPI journals of having a peer review process that is not up to academic standards [insert refs]. Among their descriptions, they call MDPI a Chinese organization with a small artificial headquarters in Switzerland [insert refs], and "a money-making machine" that plays on the desire of academics to embellish their CV [insert refs].

With edits proposed above, I could probably reduce length by half while preserving all key content.

Can I ask if anyone objects, or wants to voice support for these proposed changes?

Cheers -- Crawdaunt (talk) 05:59, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Considering the importance of esteemed scholars on predatory publishing such as Olav Bjarte Fosso and Jonas Kristiansen Nøland you might want to think twice shortening this part.... silliness aside, I think this whole part can be shortened into three sentences. Norwegian list giving MDPI a level 1, most of its journals level 1, and a few level 0 (including their flagship Sustainability). And that's it, op-eds in Norwegian in college magazines are not peer-reviewed and aforementioned scholars are no authorities on the subject.wiki Kenji1987 (talk) 06:33, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Your disdain of Norwegian scholars is irrelevant here. They are reputable and reliable sources, who's views and opinions have been endorsed by other reputable and reliable sources (i.e. the National Publication Committee of Norway). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:52, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Particularly @Kenji1987, can we avoid re-hashing the archived debate about the section's bona fides and instead focus on legibility? @Headbomb, agreed. Do you think my proposed change(s) would be appropriate? Crawdaunt (talk) 07:18, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, I still dont see why op-eds are reliable sources. But sure your edits Crawdaunt are much better. The Norwegian section has been way too long for a long time now. Kenji1987 (talk) 07:21, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I need to think about it a bit. I agree that 3 paragraphs is a bit much, but I haven't looked into the nitty gritty enough to have an opinion (yet) on what should be condensed, what should be emphasized, etc. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 07:22, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Seems good. Checking 2nd/3rd paragraphs, IMO individual researchers aren't especially noteworthy when their credibility as relevant to the topic relies on endorsement by e.g. the National Publication Committee of Norway. Not to say they aren't expert, but there are 5 researchers whose individual takes are listed in careful detail so as to be precise about who said what. Removing names entirely avoids a lot of white noise information and allows the content to be condensed quite a bit. Key point (IMO) is their views are endorsed by the Norwegian Publication Committee, not precisely who said what.

Cheers -- Crawdaunt (talk) 07:39, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

In favor of removing the names. Kenji1987 (talk) 07:44, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

It does seem condense-able, e.g. "The head and two members of the National Publication Committee of Norway stated that they shared Fosso's and Nøland's concerns over MDPI and described it as a "borderline publisher" that "deftly makes sure not to fall in the 'predatory publisher' category" and that "superficially meets the criteria" for level 1 status." -- this could just be rewritten as "This is echoed by the head and two members of the National Publication Committee of Norway". However, the section won't be easy to edit so props to Crawdaunt for making the attempt. Banedon (talk) 08:17, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the part is too long. Maybe we can also consider shortening the first paragraph? The register is constantly updated so maybe we should mention only the last evaluation (as in Taylor and Francis), and possibly some information from the past?

To rest of the statements: do we know what is the current situation in the Danish and Finnish lists? As we cite current situation in the Norwegian list, maybe we can consider citing the current situation also there if we will find a reliable source. I also checked the citations and the first (57) is closed (and primary source) and the second link can´t open (2). So do you know anybody if these lists are open? Karlaz1 (talk) 15:38, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks to all for support. I will attempt to make edits this weekend to condense information. Obviously feel free to put back anything I've cut if you think it important.

I guess to avoid too many chefs spoiling the pot as I make these edits, I might propose to use the Talk page for the vice versa scenario. Restoring content = restoring something already approved to be on page, but further removing content is something we should chat on?

Cheers -- Crawdaunt (talk) 11:52, 18 March 2023 (UTC)