Hi,
I had a question about citing articles from potentially predatory journals such as MDPI. I had an article from an MDPI journal whose results I got some ideas from, and the article itself seemed to be legitimate (as in cited by other authors numerous times, and not just to debunk the claims). Would it still look bad for me to cite such an article?
Topical and special issues are not uncommon and can be a valuable addition to the scientific literature. I know about numerous cases where selected participants of a conference were asked to contribute to a special issue in a particular journal on the topic of the conference. This is not unlike conference proceedings, but usually with a higher quality level, because the contributors were carefully selected. It also happens that the editors of a well-established journal invite contributions on a special topic. There is nothing basically wrong with special issues per se.
Now it appears that publishing special issues is part of the business strategy of a number of publishers such as MDPI, Hindawi and Frontiers. Judging from the number of unsolicited invitations I get, often hardly related to my domain of expertise, it appears that these publishers leave out the “carefully selected” part. Why would they do such a thing? I think that the answer is very simple: special issues allow them to delegate a large amount of work to the guest editor. Instead of having to solicit articles themselves and handle their peer review, the guest editor will take care of all this work, resulting in a non-negligible number of papers, which, in the gold OA model, means that more income for the publisher.
Why would researchers agree to participate in such a scheme? There are probably a number of different reason. Some feel flattered to have been asked, as it seems to confirm their importance in the field. Some may be genuinely interested in providing a topical review of their domain. Others accept because a controversy in their field opposes them to some powerful rival, whose influence they hope to circumvent.
In the end, some of these special issues may turn out to be very good, if the guest editor does a serious job. So where is the problem? Mainly, quantity rarely goes with quality. The business plan of MDPI and others appears to consist in contacting large numbers of potential guest editors and providing huge computer-generated lists of potential contributors, a process I am inclined to call Monte Carlo publishing. The law of large numbers implies that such a broadly scoped process is bound to produce a few very good issues, but at the price of also producing a large number of mediocre ones. As a collateral damage, the reputation of well-meaning researchers who published in these issues gets hurt.
While this Monte Carlo strategy seems to generate a substantial short-term income, I wonder whether it will work out in the long run. Many colleagues are, like me, annoyed by the large amount of spam invitations in our emails, and certainly would never submit their research to publishers relying on such a strategy. There have been other controversies, like this one where Frontiers was accused by a number of their board numbers to favour quantity over quality: http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2015/05/open-access-publisher-sacks-31-editors-amid-fierce-row-over-independence
If as a researcher you want to preserve your good reputation, it is important that you examine carefully with which publisher you get involved, be it as an author, an editor or a reviewer.
O. M. As a general rule, what you cite in your references list are articles, not journals. If you genuinely think that a publication related to your own work is worth to be cited, then include that reference, regardless in which journal it was reported. The omission of an essential reference is considered as unethical (assuming that you do it intentionally).
You may also consider the opposite case: it’s NOT an obligation to cite papers published in Science, Nature, etc. But if you consider that the Benveniste’s lunatic papers are OK, or that the As-based life hypothesis is legitimate, go ahead, cite these references.
I second the point that this is very unethical. Just think about it. Let’s say it is your paper that ended up there, for whatever reason. You may not be happy about the esteemed reputation of the journal later on, but you did your job, you did good quality work, and that is where it ended up (again, for whatever reason).
Would you not find it intellectually dishonest of researchers if refuse to cite your good quality work, _simply_ due to an “ad acta” (akin to “ad hominem”) dismissal?
Gibbs (of Gibb’s free energy) published in a very obscure journal and even the publisher had no idea what his 300 page tome was about. I kind of wonder how he would have faired in the climate of these times.
On closer look, an MDPI “special issue” is a completely virtual one. The papers are published when they are received so that they get a running volume and page number, and are just earmarked to belong to a “special issue”. Thus, e.g. the special issue referred to by Dr. Lorenzo Iorio, above, had its first papers published in an earlier volume than the last ones, as the publication of this “special issue” run over half a year. Thus page numberf of papers in a “special issue” ae not consecutive. The “special issue” is actually virtual, created by labeling a set of running published papers as belonging to an “issue” in addition to their running volume.
Incidentally, one notices at the same time that Dr. Iorio has over the last years publshed in journals and books of several publishers that apper in this and related blogs as predatory or vanity presses, in addition to the two MDPI journals:
Frontiers
http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/11/05/i-get-complaints-about-frontiers/
from which Nature Publishing Group has recently diatanced it although many sites still refer to their earlier paertnership plans which never were realized.
http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2015/05/open-access-publisher-sacks-31-editors-amid-fierce-row-over-independence
NOVA Science
http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/05/26/watch-out-for-publishers-with-nova-in-their-name/#more-5317
http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/04/08/a-list-of-print-on-demand-publishers-self-publishingvanity-presses-and-other-non-traditional-publishers-for-librarians-and-authors/
World Scientific/Singapore
http://fakeconferences.blogspot.fr/2014/03/spam-from-bogus-fake-junk-world.html
Definitly he is not a troll of MDPI, as someone suspected above:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_Iorio
http://digilander.libero.it/lorri/homepage_of_lorenzo_iorio.htm
This is no comment on the quality of his research which is entirely different from mine and which I am thus unqualizied to assess.
I didn’t mean to say that I wasn’t going to cite – of course I would cite it. I was just making sure that, since similar (as in replicated, not copied) data can be found in other papers, I should cite the papers from the better journals instead. I guess it’s somewhat parallel to a situation citing solubility data from a high school chemistry book versus a peer reviewed journal.
I guess I will go ahead and cite the paper without worries.
I have received the same request (three times now!) regarding a topic on a single paper I published 2 years ago. My first hint that something was amiss was that it was my first paper in a new field for me, and the second was that I was the first author, not the senior nor corresponding author. It seemed like pseudo-spam so I ignored it until this third email when I decided to do some investigation and found this site!
No, I do not. Is it possibly someone using the University’s name without permission?
Do you mean Public Science Framework? If so, then I would recommend ignoring them and finding a better venue for your work. Public Science Framework is included on my list.
With such an outstanding productivity (that’s almost a paper each week) did El Naschie even had time to read them all? Even less so to make sure that all statements in them are correct!?! It sounds more like article manufacturing than scientific research.
Can you send a link to the journal?
Yes, I believe there is a journal with this title that is hijacked.
I was just contacted by Rosie Samuel via LinkedIn. I am wise to these stupid scams, as I was contacted by another ‘woman’ asking for my article for ‘her’ journal. As the English was questionable despite the name, and the sender appeared to ‘know’ I was writing articles (I am not), I responded saying ‘and which article is that’? and of course no response. The weirdo English is one of the best giveaways for me. Even the typo from a native English speaker isn’t like a ‘typo’ from a scammer. Apologies to ESL colleagues who are doing their best; I did not come up with the idea of scams written in broken unintelligible English by internationals.
The DOAJ and OASPA consist, at least in part, of questionable publishers themselves, who are not at all involved in open access publishing in the proper sense of the term, but rather in MDPI-style abuse for commercial purposes of the term and publishing practices reminiscent of classic vanity presses (a publisher that demands that its authors pay to publish is a vanity press by definition and it’s the very opposite of the core idea of open access). The fact that a predatory/questionable publisher “meets the membership criteria” of the predatory/questionable publishers’ own organisation is as relevant as when the wolves in sheep’s clothing’s Sheep Association determines that a wolf “meets the sheep criteria.”
I see. To get rid of the mafia, kill all the drug addicts. It is true that there will be less drug addicts.
I simply cannot agree with your way of thinking.
Update: I emailed IMEN and most of the “confirmed speakers” listed in the email. I haven’t heard back from the Institute, but several of the speakers said they had indeed agreed to speak at the conference.
Hello Dr. how will you assess this journal? Journal of natural sciences research. http://iiste.org/Journals/index.php/JNSR
“Journal of Chest” sounds like a poorly translated foreign video game quest item. Like “Staff of Punish” or “Shield of Protect”
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