The author assumes responsibility for any error that may have arisen throughout the protracted, long-winded and at times somewhat artisanal data-collection process. If our attention is focussed on the intra-MDPI citation rate trends between 2018 and 2019, we see that 46 out of the 53 journals increased their intra-MDPI citation rates. (2017) warned researchers from the biomedical field that APCs lower than 150$ were suspect. Peer review is a system of safeguards which, despite its limitations, fulfils its function reasonably well of ensuring that false research, of low quality, with serious flaws or inaccurate information is not disseminated, thereby avoiding misinformation (Elmore and Weston 2020; Siler 2020). As with the number of published articles, the number of special issues for all journals between 2018 and 2019 increased, in such an exorbitant manner that the number of special issues in the MDPI-journals under analysis was easily higher, in the majority of cases, than the number of ordinary issues of 53 MDPI journals analysed since 98.11% of 53 analysed journals published 12 or fewer issues per year in 2018 (data from JCR 2019 edition). The increase in the number of journals and articles published had no effect on time from submission to first decision. Each of us is different. Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark. (, Shu F., Mongeon P., Haustein S., Siler K., Alperin J. P., Larivire V. (, Xia J., Harmon J. L., Connolly K. G., Donnelly R. M., Anderson M. R., Howard H. A. Furthermore, no less importantly, the analysis showed that a large number of the citations that they receive are from other MDPI-journals. 2020; Siler 2020). It is remarkable that in the aforementioned bibliometric study over the period 200918, the first 30 positions in the citation ranking were occupied by journals from the same publisher (#3 Energies, #8 Water, #23 International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, #24 Remote Sensing and #30 IJGI). Frontiers Media SA is a publisher of peer-reviewed open access scientific journals currently active in science, technology, and medicine. The analysis of journal self-citations is relevant (see Table 2), because the increase in the numerator of the Journal Impact Factor4 boosts it and may be a stratagem to improve the position of a journal in the ranking through coercive citations, online queuing and self-cited editorials (Martin 2016; Wilhite et al. In concrete, great variability may be appreciated between the maximum and minimum review durations of its journals within different fields with regard to the speed of the review process, understood as the average duration from submission to the final editorial decision (including first decision-accept, reject or revise) (https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/materials-science/journals/fast-publication). Frontiers is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, with other offices in London, Madrid, Seattle and Brussels. Our chance investigation started after a message from a stranger took me inside a predatory conference and has uncovered how predatory science has ensnared scientists at every level and made a small fortune for the conference organizers. Incorporation on the WOS and having a Journal Impact Factor provides a veneer of quality to the journal that extends to the authors that publish in it. Search for other works by this author on: Plagiarism and Predatory Journals: A Threat to Scientific Integrity, Publishing in Predatory Tourism and Hospitality Journals: Mapping the Academic Market and Identifying Response Strategies, Supporting a Definition of Predatory Publishing, Predatory Publishers Are Corrupting Open Access, Predatory Journals and the Breakdown of Research Cultures, Dangerous Predatory Publishers Threaten Medical Research, Faculty Applicants Attempt to Inflate Cvs Using Predatory Journals, American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, Predatory Publishing is Everyones Concern, A Large-Scale Analysis of Impact Factor Biased Journals Self-Citations, On the Skeweness of Journal Self-Citations and Publisher Self-Citations: Cues for Discusin from a Case Study, Inclusion of Predatory Journals in Scopus is Inflating Scholars Metrics and Advancing Careers, Predatory Journals and Conferences: Why Fake Counts, Citations and Metrics of Journals Discontinued from Scopus for Publication Concerns: The GhoS(t)copus Project, Checklists to Detect Potential Predatory Biomedical Journals: A Systematic Review. The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs. Besides, an increasingly high rate of citations from other MDPI-journals was observed. 2020). Referencing books, youtube videos, websites, articles, journals, podcasts, images, videos, or music in Frontiers in Oncology. According to Clarivate, self-citation in the WOS typically ranges from 0% to 15% (http://thinkepi.net/notas/crecs_2017/J_9_45_Cahue.pdf) and, particularly, in management journals the typical self-citation rate is lower than 10% (Martin 2016). The problem is that each of these criteria, above all if taken in an isolated way, are questionable and may occur singly or together in non-predatory journals. Further research would be needed to understand how these faster times are achieved. In JCR-indexed MDPI-journals, if the trend of increasing numbers of published articles in all journals continues into 2020 and taking into account the generalized rise in the APC for 2020, MDPI may reasonably expect to see a rise in its income in 2020. It is therefore essential to define the concept not to solely rely on specific criteria. Many of the studies on predatory journals in different scientific fields have been completed in reference to the journals listed on Bealls list, since discontinued (Shen and Bjork 2015; Frandsen 2017; Demir 2018; Alrawadieh 2020; Downes 2020). The Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is owned by the German publishing house Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which is also the partial owner of Frontiers. The Editor Ethics 2.0 Code (https://editorethics.uncc.edu/editor-ethics-2-0-code/) sets out an explicit ban on this malpractice in the fields of Industrial/Organizational Psychology and Management. We aim to facilitate the dissemination of high-quality research in the area of biomedical science. Copiello (2019) also analysed the citations and self-citations of articles published in the journal Sustainability in 2015 and found that the journal had a higher self-citation level than expected. However, this solution could only work in the medium to long term. Bond B. 2020). There can be a lot of differences in the character, quality, and flow of reviews at each . Why Beall's blacklist of predatory journals died. 2017a, b)an alarmingly high number of them in the opinion of Manca et al. The increase in the number of published articles between 2018 and 2019 ranged from 554.91% in Medicina to 18.3% in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJGI). Frontiers Media SA is a publisher of peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journals currently active in science, technology, and medicine.It was founded in 2007 by Kamila and Henry Markram, and has since expanded to other academic fields. Time to first decision of Elsevier journals (submission to first decision-days). It was founded in 2007 by Kamila and Henry Markram. Both publishers, Hindawi and Frontiers, were founded by a husband-and-wife team. Intra-MDPI citation rate 2018 and 2019 (top 10 citing journals). Predatory journals usually offer rapid peer-review processes, but without experts reviewing the quality of research and accuracy of the information (Oerman et al. The people assessing you can be divided into two broad categories: those who think Frontiers is predatory, and those who don't. In the former case, they are likely to consider you a victim. Predatory journals are a global threat to science (Harvey and Weinstein 2017; Grudniewicz et al. Economics and Business Management Faculty, Business Management and Marketing Department, University of Seville, Avda. In fact, high impact factors may merely be due to citation cartels instead of true and legitimate scientific interest (Ioannidis and Thombs 2019). Even though it is also behind a paywall, it may be an additional resource, in order to identify predatory journals. As a control group for comparison with JCR-indexed MDPI-journals, the top ranked journal by Impact Factor in each relevant subject category were selected (all under the joint name of non-MDPI-journals in this study) (Table 1). The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) released the Principles of Transparency and Best Practices in Scholarly Publishing (last version published 15 January 2018) together with the Directory of Open-Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open-Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). The following analysis addressed the peer-review process. The increase in APCs was qualified as hyperinflation by Khoo (2019) and was not exclusive to MDPI, as in his study, which covered 319 journals of the four-largest APC-funded open-access publishersHindawi, Frontiers, MDPI, and BioMed Central Ltd. (BMC)between 2012 and 2018, he found overall APC rises in all of them ranging between 17% and 220% and, likewise, observed a rise in the number of articles per journal. Frontiers in Pharmacology is a leading journal in its field, publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research across disciplines, including basic and clinical pharmacology, medicinal chemistry, pharmacy and toxicology. Logically, this step requires expert knowledge in each scientific field that prevents a global analysis of the 53 journals under analysis. However, significant differences have been found between large publishers (publishing more than 100 journals) that charge an average fee of 796$ and the publishers of a single journal that charge an average fee of 83$ (Shen and Bjork, 2015). Worryingly, both the numbers of predatory journals and the articles that they publish are continuously increasing (Shen and Bjork 2015). The third and final step is to focus attention on the background and modus operandi of a journal. In 2019, almost all 53 MDPI-journals under analysis had intra-MDPI citation rates well above 20% (all except Universe11.87% and Catalysts18.73%), reaching values as high as 56.94% in Electronics, 51.07% in the IJGI, 47.56% in Remote Sensing, and 46.55% in Sustainability (Table 3). Predatory Journals Are Infiltrating Citation Databases, Potential Predatory and Legitimate Biomedical Journals: Can You Tell the Difference? He is the person who analyzed and observed a growing number of the exploitative academic journals charging author fees without the proper quality and the published papers. Grey lines represent all journals in each category ranked by their 2017 Impact Factor and CiteScore percentiles, with Frontiers in Oncology shown as a red dot. Frontiers in Oncology publishes rigorously peer-reviewed research across the entire field of cancer research. JCR-indexed MDPI-journals (edition 2018, released 2019) were selected for the analysis (53 out of 218). As such the question arises whether or not this speed is achieved with a thorough peer review in line with editorial and publishing best practices or if the rigor and quality of the peer review process is compromised in order to achieve these speeds. (2020), e.g. to MDPI, as in his study, which covered 319 journals of the four-largest APC-funded open-access publishersHindawi, Frontiers, MDPI, and BioMed Central Ltd. (BMC)between 2012 and 2018, . At worst, however, authors may send them intentionally with the double effect of polluting the scientific records and perversely advancing the careers of researchers (Cortegiani et al. Take a look at their peer review process and publication timelines 6. Comparable data from other publishing houses, which they rarely publish as aggregate figures, would be of interest, without which any comparison is impossible. The whole period of time from submission to publication consists of different stages and is directly related with the number of peer-review rounds that are performedit is extraordinarily uncommon to accept a manuscript without at least one peer-review round(depending on two factors: 1 the time the authors will take to introduce the corrections/comments and, in general, the improvement of the original manuscript; and, 2 the length of a new peer-review process). 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. JCR-indexed MDPI-journals (2018)/leading journal in the category. A contextual framework is therefore required to assess MDPI-journal self-citations. It would be of interest to enlarge the time span for the analysis of these journals and to observe their behavioural patterns with regard to their citation practices. The drop in the impact factor ranged between 38.96% in the case of Sustainability to 0.68% in Medicina with an average reduction of 14.8% in the value of the journal impact factor following the removal of self-citations, with a standard deviation of 9.31 (Figure 5). 2020). Poor Peer Review Practices. Its average APC amounts to 1,138USD (OMICS 2020). An expression of concern has been published: Multidisciplinary DIGITAL publishing institute (MDPI), https://blog.cabells.com/2020/06/08/announcement/, https://blog.cabells.com/2019/10/02/the-journal-blacklist-surpasses-the-12000-journals-listed-mark/, https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/534, https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalForlagInfo.action?id=26778andbibsys=false, http://thinkepi.net/notas/crecs_2017/J_9_45_Cahue.pdf, https://www.nature.com/nature-research/about/journal-metrics, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/materials-science/journals/fast-publication, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/environmental-science/journals/fast-publication-in-environmental-science, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/computer-science/journals/fast-publication, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/mathematics/journals/fast-publication, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-control-and-signal-processing, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-mechanical-engineering, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-process-and-industrial-engineering, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/physics-and-astronomy/journals/fast-publication-in-physics, https://www.elsevier.com/life-sciences/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/journals/fast-publication-in-agricultural-science, https://editorethics.uncc.edu/editor-ethics-2-0-code/, https://help.incites.clarivate.com/incitesLiveJCR/JCRGroup/titleSuppressions.html, https://support.clarivate.com/ScientificandAcademicResearch/s/article/Journal-Citation-Reports-Explanation-of-Missing-Dropped-or-Suppressed-Journals?language=en_US, https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/OmKriterier.action, https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/VedtakNiva2, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/us-judge-rules-deceptive-publisher-should-pay-501-million-damages, https://publicationethics.org/files/cope_dd_a4_pred_publishing_nov19_screenaw.pdf, https://www.omicsonline.org/article-processing-charges.php, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/, Receive exclusive offers and updates from Oxford Academic, Expression of concern: Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), Correction to: Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)/, ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJGI)/, International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)/, Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (JMSE)/, 13.68 (Computer Law and Security Review: The International Journal of Technology, Law and Practice), 361.83 (Computer Standards and Interfaces), 24.15 (International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture), 198.1 (Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing), 41.58 (Case Studies in Thermal Engineering), 324.45 (International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping), 26.39 (International Journal of Engineering Science), 104.51 (Journal of Chemical Health and Safety), 142.17 (Journal of Computational Physics), 8.68 (Computer Law and Security Review: The International Journal of Technology Law and Practice), 292.39 (Computer Standards and Interfaces), 196.56 (Applied Mathematics and Computation), 123.48 (International Journal of Mineral Processing), 18.97 (International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture), 118.16 (International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics), 29.96 (Case Studies in Thermal Engineering), 271.53 (International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping), 23.03 (International Journal of Engineering Science), 64.12 (Computers and Chemical Engineering). 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