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MDPI

October 14, 2023

MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) is a publisher of open access scientific journals. Founded by Shu-Kun Lin as a chemical sample archive, it now publishes over 390 peer-reviewed, open access journals.[2][3] MDPI is among the largest publishers in the world in terms of journal article output,[4][5] and is the largest publisher of open access articles.[6]

MDPI
StatusActive
Founded1996
Country of origin
  • Switzerland
Headquarters locationBasel, Switzerland
DistributionWorldwide
Key peopleShu-Kun Lin
Publication typesOpen access scientific journals
No. of employees6,750 (in 2022)[1]
Official websitemdpi.com

Between 2016 and 2020, the number of peer-reviewed papers published by MDPI grew significantly, with year-over-year growth of over 50% in 2017, 2018 and 2019, attracting attention to their very fast article processing times.[4][6][7][8] In a review of 26 open-access "mega-journals" that published over 3,500 papers in 2022, 11 or 42% were from MDPI.[9]

Besides launching its own journals, MDPI has been active in acquiring journals from other publishers, such as Tomography from Grapho Publications in 2021, [10] Nursing Reports [11] and Audiology Research[12] from PagePress Publications in 2020

As of July 2023, MDPI publishes 427 academic journals, including 92 journals indexed within the Science Citation Index Expanded, 7 journals indexed within the Social Sciences Citation Index,[13] 136 journals listed in SciFinder,[14] and 229 in Scopus.[15]

MDPI journals are included in the Directory of Open Access Journals.[16] MDPI is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association,[17] a participating publisher and supporter of the Initiative for Open Citations,[18] and a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).[19]

MDPI's business model is based on establishing entirely open access broad-discipline journals, with fast processing times from submission to publication and article processing charges paid by the author.[6] MDPI's business practices have attracted controversy, with critics suggesting it sacrifices editorial and academic rigor in favor of operational speed and business interests.[4][7][20][21][22] MDPI was included on Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory open access publishing companies in 2014[23][24] but was removed in 2015 following a successful appeal[22][23] while applying pressure on Beall's employer.[25] Some journals published by MDPI have also been noted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Norwegian Scientific Publication Register, two major scientific bodies, for lack of rigour and possible predatory practice.[26][27][28]

History

MDPI traces its roots to Molecular Diversity Preservation International, also abbreviated MDPI, which was founded by Shu-Kun Lin in 1996 as a chemical sample archive, with some scholarly publishing and conference activities. The second organisation, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, was founded in 2010, primarily as a publisher. All of MDPI's journals have been open access and since 2008 published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY).[29]

Molecular Diversity Preservation International

Molecular Diversity Preservation International was founded and registered as a non-profit association (Verein) by Shu-Kun Lin and Benoit R. Turin in Basel in 1996 to enable the deposit and exchange of rare molecular and biomolecular research samples.[30]

The journal Molecules was established in 1996 in collaboration with Springer-Verlag (now Springer Science+Business Media) in order to document the chemical samples of the MDPI collection. Several other journals were established by the MDPI Verein, including Entropy (1999), the International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2000), Sensors (2001), Marine Drugs (2003), and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2004). The publisher MDPI AG (see below) was spun off from MDPI Verein in 2010.[citation needed]

MDPI Verein co-organized several academic conferences, including the International Symposium on Frontiers in Molecular Science. It also runs virtual conferences, such as the Electronic Conference on Synthetic Organic Chemistry, which was started in 1997. In 2010 MDPI launched the platform Sciforum.net to host virtual conferences. In 2014, various virtual conferences were hosted in the areas of synthetic organic chemistry, material sciences, sensors, and sustainability. In 2015, MDPI co-organized two physical conferences with and at the University of Basel, the 4th Internationational Symposium on Sensor Science and the 5th World Sustainability Forum. Since 2015, scholars can organize their own conference for free on the Sciforum platform.[citation needed]

MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

MDPI as a publisher of open-access scientific journals was spun off from the Molecular Diversity Preservation International organization. It was formally registered by Shu-Kun Lin and Dietrich Rordorf in May 2010 with its official headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. Including Switzerland, MDPI has editorial offices in 11 countries, with five offices in China, two offices in both Romania and Serbia, and offices in the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Poland, Japan, Thailand, and Singapore.[2][30][31]

The number of published papers has been growing significantly in the last decade with year over year growth of over 50% in 2017, 2018 and 2019, with 110,000 papers published in 2019.[6] MDPI reported publishing 235,638 papers in 2021 alone.[32] In 2020, MDPI was the largest publisher of open access papers in the world and the 5th largest publisher overall in terms of journal paper output.[6]

MDPI was an early pioneer of the special issue model for academic publishing. The special issues are collections of papers on a specific topic, handled by guest editors (as opposed to members of the journal's editorial board). Many special issue papers are invited, either by the journal staff or by the guest editors. Roughly 88% of MDPI papers are published in special issues.[33] The number of MDPI special issues has grown rapidly, alongside significant year-over-year growth in total papers published: in 2020, MDPI journals hosted a total of 6,756 special issues, compared to 39,587 special issues in 2021.[7][8] However, only 10,504 of these 2021 special issues ultimately resulted in published papers. The number of special issues publishing papers rose to 17,777 in 2022.[7][8]

Evaluation and controversies

Who's Afraid of Peer Review?

In 2013, the MDPI journal Cancers was targeted in the Who's Afraid of Peer Review? sting operation and rejected the fake paper.[34]

Inclusion in Beall's list

MDPI was included on Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory open access publishing companies in February 2014.[24] Beall's concern was that "MDPI's warehouse journals contain hundreds of lightly-reviewed articles that are mainly written and published for promotion and tenure purposes rather than to communicate science."[24] Beall also claimed that MDPI used email spam to solicit manuscripts[35] and that the company listed researchers, including Nobel laureates, on their editorial boards without their knowledge.[24] MDPI responded to Beall's claims, seeking to debunk them.[36] Chemist Peter Murray-Rust criticized the inclusion of MDPI in Beall's list, stating that his criticism of the publisher "lacks evidence" and is "irresponsible".[37]

MDPI made a successful appeal to the Beall's list appeals board in October 2015, and was removed from the list.[22][38][39] Even after its removal, Beall remained critical of MDPI; in December 2015 he wrote: "it is clear that MDPI sees peer review as merely a perfunctory step that publishers have to endure before publishing papers and accepting money from the authors," and "it's clear that MDPI's peer review is managed by clueless clerical staff in China."[40][41]

Beall's list was shut down in 2017.[42] Beall later wrote that he had been pressured to shut down the list by his employer University of Colorado Denver and various publishers, specifically mentioning MDPI as a publisher that had "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."[25]

2014 OASPA evaluation

Following Beall's criticism of MDPI, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) conducted an investigation in April 2014. This investigation was based on the controversy surrounding two papers, one in Life,[43] the other in Nutrients;[44] the listing of Nobel Prize winners on the website; the roles of editorial board members and of Shu-Ki Lin within the company; and the functions of the different office locations. OASPA concluded that MDPI satisfactorily meets the OASPA Membership Criteria.[45]

2016 data breach

In August 2016, MDPI was breached, leaving exposed 17.5 GB of data, including 845,000 e-mail addresses and e-mail exchanges between authors, editors and reviewers.[46] According to MDPI, the unprotected instance at which the data was breached has since been protected.[47]

Resignations of editors

In August 2018, 10 senior editors (including the editor-in-chief) of the journal Nutrients resigned, alleging that MDPI forced the replacement of the editor-in-chief because of his high editorial standards and for resisting pressure to "accept manuscripts of mediocre quality and importance."[21]

In June 2020, the would-be guest editors of a special issue in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Health resigned after being informed by an MDPI representative that a quota of publication-fee exemptions allocated to the special issue could only be given to scholars from developed countries.[48][49]

In 2021, five members of the editorial board of the journal Vaccines resigned after Vaccines published a controversial article that misused data to reach the incorrect conclusion that vaccines against COVID-19 had no clear benefit.[50][51]

Withdrawals of support by faculties and universities

In December 2021, the Faculty of Science of the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice announced that it will stop financial support for publishing in MDPI journals, officially recommended against publishing in or reviewing for MDPI, and warned that publications in MDPI journals might not be taken into account for evaluations of employees and departments.[52] In January 2023, Zhejiang Gongshang University (浙江工商大学) in Hangzhou, China, announced it would no longer include articles published in Hindawi, MDPI, and Frontiers journals when evaluating researcher performance.[53][54]

Inclusion in Early Warning List of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

In December 2020, the Chinese Academy of Sciences published a list of journals that may suffer from issues of scientific quality and other risk characteristics.[28] There were 22 MDPI group journals in the 65 journals given in its initial list. MDPI responded to the list promising to communicate with the academy and improve its journals' parameters to remove the affected journals from the list as soon as possible.[55] The list was updated in December 2021 and reduced to only 41 journals, of which seven MDPI journals were included.[56]

Perception of Hungarian researchers

A survey published in 2022 asked Hungarian researchers for their perception of MDPI journals. Those Hungarian researchers generally felt MDPI journals were sufficiently prestigious to be worth publishing in, being indexed in major databases and having reasonable Journal Impact Factor. However, most researchers felt the primary driving force to publish with MDPI journals was their fast article turnaround time;[5] MDPI article turnaround times take approximately 35–37 days to publish the final article after its initial submission, including revisions.[4][7]

Assessments in the Nordic countries

MDPI has been criticized by scientific bodies in Norway, Finland, and Denmark that rank academic journals for their quality and relevance. In the Finnish and Danish lists, the majority of MDPI journals do not meet the criteria of the body to be ranked in the list.[2][57] The Norwegian Scientific Index has been less critical, giving the vast majority of individual MDPI journals designations as "level 1", denoting a publisher as academic; although some journals are ranked "level 0" denoting non-academic status, including one of MDPI's flagship journals, Sustainability.[58][59][60] In 2021, following a survey sent to Norwegian scientists,[61] the Norwegian Scientific Index also created a special rank called "level X", which was used to denote journals undergoing evaluation as possible predatory journals, specifically citing concerns over MDPI journals for the new rank's creation.[27]

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.[2][62] They cite the poor reputation of MDPI among Nordic scientific bodies,[2] how there are many academics that boycott MDPI journals outright,[2] or accuse MDPI journals of having a peer review process that is not up to academic standards.[63][64][65] Among their descriptions, they call MDPI a Chinese organization with a "small artificial office in Switzerland",[2] and "a money-making machine" that plays on the desire of academics to embellish their CV[64][65] (see publish-or-perish).

Allegation of anomalous citation patterns

In July 2021, Maria Ángeles Oviedo-García published a paper in OUP journal Research Evaluation claiming that MDPI journals had anomalously high self-citation rates compared to leading journals in the same fields. The alleged high self-citation rate is not to other articles in the same journal, but rather to other MDPI journals.[66] Oviedo-García argued that this is indicative of predatory journals. MDPI released a response to Oviedo-García's paper on their website eight days later. MDPI highlighted a number of issues with the article and its framing, arguing in particular that leading journals should not be directly compared to non-leading journals; MDPI also argued that, when compared to other publishers, MDPI does not have anomalously high self-citations.[67] Research Evaluation published an expression of concern for Oviedo-García's paper in September 2021,[68] which eventually led to a correction published in April 2023. Changes made to the article added caveats and toned down inflammatory language, however the core conclusions remained the same.[69]

A 2023 study utilizing a different method reached a broadly similar conclusion that MDPI journals had more self-citations than journals by other publishers. The study also found that MDPI journals received more citations from a smaller network of journals, relative to journals by other publishers.[33]

Concerns over papers connected to a research paper mill

In December 2021, it was reported how the research paper mill International Publisher Ltd. had sold authorships to hundreds of publications published across most major publishers;[70] a controversy attracting international attention that affected many major publishing groups.[71][72][73][74] The report highlighted a ring of MDPI guest editors that provided a network for the sale of authorship for articles published across multiple MDPI journals (Sustainability, Mathematics, Energies, and the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Commerce Research).[72][73][75][76] Also in December 2021, Dr. Brian Perron highlighted how International Publisher Ltd. had published articles in the International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJet), and MDPI including articles from Energies.[77][78] In response, iJet retracted thirty articles, and thanked Perron and his team for their concerning findings.[79] In response, Damaris Critchlow from MDPI stated that MDPI was investigating the papers in question and developing strategies to combat paper mills.[78] Perron later expressed appreciation with how iJet had handled its response, but frustration with MDPI for not taking his allegations of fraud seriously, citing how one Energies article still did not even have an expression of concern added six months later.[80][81]

2023 Clarivate delistings

In February 2023, Clarivate discontinued coverage of two MDPI journals, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and the Journal of Risk and Financial Management in the Web of Science, for publishing content not related to their scope.[82][83] As a result, both were removed from the Clarivate Web of Science database, losing their impact factors. Also, citations from these journals no longer affect the impact factors of other journals.[82][83][84]

Controversial articles

In December 2011, the MDPI journal Life published Erik D. Andrulis' theoretical paper, Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life, aiming at presenting a framework to explain life.[43] It attracted coverage by the popular science and technology magazines Ars Technica and Popular Science, which characterized it as "crazy"[85] and "hilarious".[86] A member of the editorial board of Life resigned in response.[86][87]

In 2013, another MDPI journal, Entropy, published a review paper claiming glyphosate may be the most important factor in the development of obesity, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and infertility.[88] The paper itself does not contain any primary research results.[88] It was criticized as pseudo-science by the popular science magazine Discover.[89] With regard to the same controversial study, Jeffrey Beall has rhetorically asked, "When publishers like MDPI disseminate research by science activists like Stephanie Seneff and her co-authors, I think it’s fair to question the credibility of all the research that MDPI publishes. Will MDPI publish anything for money?".[90]

A study published in the MDPI journal Nutrients in 2011 went through a series of corrections first in August 2011, then in April 2012, and then again in February 2014.[91] The article claimed that obesity rates in Australia increased in the same timeframe that sugary soft drink consumption declined by 10%. The article was used by soft drink industry lobbyists to argue that sugary drinks were not significantly contributing to obesity rates.[92] However the article itself debunked its own claim, with one figure showing that soft drink consumption had increased by 30% during the time period where the authors claimed a 10% reduction in consumption. Nutrients issued a correction claiming that the previously described 10% drop in consumption referred to an increase in the use of artificial sweeteners, and reflected overall sugar consumption rather than soft drink consumption. The correction said that "some words were missing." This correction has been derided by some as "nonsense" and untrue, suggesting that the correction does not address the core issue of whether sugar consumption increased in Australia over the time period investigated. The journal Nutrients and the senior author of the article maintain that the thrice-corrected article is now accurate, and that corrections that were made were immaterial to the conclusions of the study.[92]

In 2016, MDPI journal Behavioral Sciences published a review paper that claimed that watching pornography is a cause of erectile dysfunction.[93] After critics raised concerns, an independent review by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) recommended that the article be retracted, based on issues including an unusual editorial process in which the listed journal editor declared that he "was not involved in the final decision regarding correction/retraction/authorship," an inaccurate and incomplete conflict of interest declaration that failed to disclose author connections with anti-pornography activist groups, failure to obtain informed consent from the study subjects, and failure to protect the identities of those subjects. Instead of retracting the paper, MDPI removed the editor's name from the paper and issued an amended conflict of interest statement which, according to Retraction Watch, did not fully address the conflicts of interest identified by COPE, nor the other issues identified by them. When contacted by Retraction Watch, MDPI's response was "The argument is already done. Both sides got large audience. Time to stop and made peace."[94]

The journal Magnetochemistry accepted a paper in 2019 by a controversial scientist Susan Pockett which stated that "scientists are suppressing evidence that microwave radiation from smartphones and other devices cause harm to people". The paper was later that year retracted due to lack of a scientific contribution and being an opinion article. The journal initially invited Susan Pockett to submit a paper according to the author's own account.[95]

In 2019, MDPI journal Psych published an editorial on race and intelligence by Richard Lynn, who had previously had his emeritus status revoked due to his promotion of discredited sexist and racist views, such as scientific racism.[96][97][98][99] MDPI later issued an expression of concern and changed the status of the article from editorial to opinion,[100] three months after publication. According to science journalist Angela Saini, Psych had also published other similar work defending scientific racism.[99][96]

In 2021, the MDPI journal Vaccines published an article by pseudoscience advocate Harald Walach and colleagues claiming a "lack of clear benefit" for COVID-19 vaccines.[101][50] The article was heavily criticized for misusing data and as a result reaching a false conclusion.[51] Katie Ewer, one of the journal's editors, called the publication of the article "grossly irresponsible" and resigned from the editorial board as a protest against its publication.[51] Subsequently, four other members of the editorial board also resigned. Shortly afterwards, the journal published an "expression of concern" regarding the article and opened an investigation into the review process.[102][51] The paper had received three reviewer reports (which the journal later made public)[103] which were however not very detailed and had apparently been written by reviewers who did not have topic expertise.[51] Vaccines eventually decided to retract the article.[104][105]

Proliferation of special issues

Paolo Crosetto, research director at INRAE-GAEL, first noted the proliferation of MDPI special issues in his blog in April 2021, giving them, along side a fast turnaround time, credit for MDPI's success.[106] He reported that in 2013, MDPI published 388 special issues, or about 5 per journals, while in 2021, the number grew to nearly 40,000, or about 500 per journal.[106]

Special issues usually are proposed by scientists to journals, who then makes a decision about whether or not the special issue is suitable for the journal. Crosseto noted that in contrast, "at MDPI, it is the publisher who sends out invitations for Special Issue, and it is unclear which role, if any, the editorial board of the normal issues has in the process."[106]

In July 2021, Oviedo-García analysed the number of special issues published by MDPI journals in 2019 and 2020. In 2019, the numbers varied greatly, from 14 in the journal Vaccines, to 500 in the journal International Journal of Molecular Sciences, with the average number of special issues in each journal being 113.[66] The number of special issues was more than double the number of regular issues in over 90% of MDPI journals.[66] In 2020, the numbers were even higher, reaching "as surprisingly high as 788 special issues in Sustainability, 830 in Applied Sciences, and 846 in Materials."[66] Nearly 95% of all MDPI journals published more than one special issue per week.[66]

According to Jack Grove in Inside Higher Ed, International Journal of Molecular Sciences will host 3,514 "special issues with a closing date in 2023", and Sustainability 3,512, averaging over more than nine special issues per day.[107] This number of special issues leads to "concerns about how peer review can be conducted effectively at this scale" as well as questions about the thematic relevance to the journal.[107]

See also

References

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External links

 
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  • Official website, Molecular Diversity Preservation International
  • Official website, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute

October 14, 2023
mdpi, multidisciplinary, digital, publishing, institute, publisher, open, access, scientific, journals, founded, chemical, sample, archive, publishes, over, peer, reviewed, open, access, journals, among, largest, publishers, world, terms, journal, article, out. MDPI Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute is a publisher of open access scientific journals Founded by Shu Kun Lin as a chemical sample archive it now publishes over 390 peer reviewed open access journals 2 3 MDPI is among the largest publishers in the world in terms of journal article output 4 5 and is the largest publisher of open access articles 6 MDPIStatusActiveFounded1996Country of originSwitzerlandHeadquarters locationBasel SwitzerlandDistributionWorldwideKey peopleShu Kun LinPublication typesOpen access scientific journalsNo of employees6 750 in 2022 1 Official websitemdpi wbr comBetween 2016 and 2020 the number of peer reviewed papers published by MDPI grew significantly with year over year growth of over 50 in 2017 2018 and 2019 attracting attention to their very fast article processing times 4 6 7 8 In a review of 26 open access mega journals that published over 3 500 papers in 2022 11 or 42 were from MDPI 9 Besides launching its own journals MDPI has been active in acquiring journals from other publishers such as Tomography from Grapho Publications in 2021 10 Nursing Reports 11 and Audiology Research 12 from PagePress Publications in 2020As of July 2023 MDPI publishes 427 academic journals including 92 journals indexed within the Science Citation Index Expanded 7 journals indexed within the Social Sciences Citation Index 13 136 journals listed in SciFinder 14 and 229 in Scopus 15 MDPI journals are included in the Directory of Open Access Journals 16 MDPI is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association 17 a participating publisher and supporter of the Initiative for Open Citations 18 and a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics COPE 19 MDPI s business model is based on establishing entirely open access broad discipline journals with fast processing times from submission to publication and article processing charges paid by the author 6 MDPI s business practices have attracted controversy with critics suggesting it sacrifices editorial and academic rigor in favor of operational speed and business interests 4 7 20 21 22 MDPI was included on Jeffrey Beall s list of predatory open access publishing companies in 2014 23 24 but was removed in 2015 following a successful appeal 22 23 while applying pressure on Beall s employer 25 Some journals published by MDPI have also been noted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Norwegian Scientific Publication Register two major scientific bodies for lack of rigour and possible predatory practice 26 27 28 Contents 1 History 1 1 Molecular Diversity Preservation International 1 2 MDPI Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2 Evaluation and controversies 2 1 Who s Afraid of Peer Review 2 2 Inclusion in Beall s list 2 3 2014 OASPA evaluation 2 4 2016 data breach 2 5 Resignations of editors 2 6 Withdrawals of support by faculties and universities 2 7 Inclusion in Early Warning List of the Chinese Academy of Sciences 2 8 Perception of Hungarian researchers 2 9 Assessments in the Nordic countries 2 10 Allegation of anomalous citation patterns 2 11 Concerns over papers connected to a research paper mill 2 12 2023 Clarivate delistings 2 13 Controversial articles 3 Proliferation of special issues 4 See also 5 References 6 External linksHistoryMDPI traces its roots to Molecular Diversity Preservation International also abbreviated MDPI which was founded by Shu Kun Lin in 1996 as a chemical sample archive with some scholarly publishing and conference activities The second organisation Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute was founded in 2010 primarily as a publisher All of MDPI s journals have been open access and since 2008 published under a Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 29 Molecular Diversity Preservation International Molecular Diversity Preservation International was founded and registered as a non profit association Verein by Shu Kun Lin and Benoit R Turin in Basel in 1996 to enable the deposit and exchange of rare molecular and biomolecular research samples 30 The journal Molecules was established in 1996 in collaboration with Springer Verlag now Springer Science Business Media in order to document the chemical samples of the MDPI collection Several other journals were established by the MDPI Verein including Entropy 1999 the International Journal of Molecular Sciences 2000 Sensors 2001 Marine Drugs 2003 and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 2004 The publisher MDPI AG see below was spun off from MDPI Verein in 2010 citation needed MDPI Verein co organized several academic conferences including the International Symposium on Frontiers in Molecular Science It also runs virtual conferences such as the Electronic Conference on Synthetic Organic Chemistry which was started in 1997 In 2010 MDPI launched the platform Sciforum net to host virtual conferences In 2014 various virtual conferences were hosted in the areas of synthetic organic chemistry material sciences sensors and sustainability In 2015 MDPI co organized two physical conferences with and at the University of Basel the 4th Internationational Symposium on Sensor Science and the 5th World Sustainability Forum Since 2015 scholars can organize their own conference for free on the Sciforum platform citation needed MDPI Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute MDPI as a publisher of open access scientific journals was spun off from the Molecular Diversity Preservation International organization It was formally registered by Shu Kun Lin and Dietrich Rordorf in May 2010 with its official headquarters in Basel Switzerland Including Switzerland MDPI has editorial offices in 11 countries with five offices in China two offices in both Romania and Serbia and offices in the United Kingdom Canada Spain Poland Japan Thailand and Singapore 2 30 31 The number of published papers has been growing significantly in the last decade with year over year growth of over 50 in 2017 2018 and 2019 with 110 000 papers published in 2019 6 MDPI reported publishing 235 638 papers in 2021 alone 32 In 2020 MDPI was the largest publisher of open access papers in the world and the 5th largest publisher overall in terms of journal paper output 6 MDPI was an early pioneer of the special issue model for academic publishing The special issues are collections of papers on a specific topic handled by guest editors as opposed to members of the journal s editorial board Many special issue papers are invited either by the journal staff or by the guest editors Roughly 88 of MDPI papers are published in special issues 33 The number of MDPI special issues has grown rapidly alongside significant year over year growth in total papers published in 2020 MDPI journals hosted a total of 6 756 special issues compared to 39 587 special issues in 2021 7 8 However only 10 504 of these 2021 special issues ultimately resulted in published papers The number of special issues publishing papers rose to 17 777 in 2022 7 8 Evaluation and controversiesWho s Afraid of Peer Review In 2013 the MDPI journal Cancers was targeted in the Who s Afraid of Peer Review sting operation and rejected the fake paper 34 Inclusion in Beall s list MDPI was included on Jeffrey Beall s list of predatory open access publishing companies in February 2014 24 Beall s concern was that MDPI s warehouse journals contain hundreds of lightly reviewed articles that are mainly written and published for promotion and tenure purposes rather than to communicate science 24 Beall also claimed that MDPI used email spam to solicit manuscripts 35 and that the company listed researchers including Nobel laureates on their editorial boards without their knowledge 24 MDPI responded to Beall s claims seeking to debunk them 36 Chemist Peter Murray Rust criticized the inclusion of MDPI in Beall s list stating that his criticism of the publisher lacks evidence and is irresponsible 37 MDPI made a successful appeal to the Beall s list appeals board in October 2015 and was removed from the list 22 38 39 Even after its removal Beall remained critical of MDPI in December 2015 he wrote it is clear that MDPI sees peer review as merely a perfunctory step that publishers have to endure before publishing papers and accepting money from the authors and it s clear that MDPI s peer review is managed by clueless clerical staff in China 40 41 Beall s list was shut down in 2017 42 Beall later wrote that he had been pressured to shut down the list by his employer University of Colorado Denver and various publishers specifically mentioning MDPI as a publisher that had 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 25 2014 OASPA evaluation Following Beall s criticism of MDPI the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association OASPA conducted an investigation in April 2014 This investigation was based on the controversy surrounding two papers one in Life 43 the other in Nutrients 44 the listing of Nobel Prize winners on the website the roles of editorial board members and of Shu Ki Lin within the company and the functions of the different office locations OASPA concluded that MDPI satisfactorily meets the OASPA Membership Criteria 45 2016 data breach In August 2016 MDPI was breached leaving exposed 17 5 GB of data including 845 000 e mail addresses and e mail exchanges between authors editors and reviewers 46 According to MDPI the unprotected instance at which the data was breached has since been protected 47 Resignations of editors In August 2018 10 senior editors including the editor in chief of the journal Nutrients resigned alleging that MDPI forced the replacement of the editor in chief because of his high editorial standards and for resisting pressure to accept manuscripts of mediocre quality and importance 21 In June 2020 the would be guest editors of a special issue in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Health resigned after being informed by an MDPI representative that a quota of publication fee exemptions allocated to the special issue could only be given to scholars from developed countries 48 49 In 2021 five members of the editorial board of the journal Vaccines resigned after Vaccines published a controversial article that misused data to reach the incorrect conclusion that vaccines against COVID 19 had no clear benefit 50 51 Withdrawals of support by faculties and universities In December 2021 the Faculty of Science of the University of South Bohemia in Ceske Budejovice announced that it will stop financial support for publishing in MDPI journals officially recommended against publishing in or reviewing for MDPI and warned that publications in MDPI journals might not be taken into account for evaluations of employees and departments 52 In January 2023 Zhejiang Gongshang University 浙江工商大学 in Hangzhou China announced it would no longer include articles published in Hindawi MDPI and Frontiers journals when evaluating researcher performance 53 54 Inclusion in Early Warning List of the Chinese Academy of Sciences In December 2020 the Chinese Academy of Sciences published a list of journals that may suffer from issues of scientific quality and other risk characteristics 28 There were 22 MDPI group journals in the 65 journals given in its initial list MDPI responded to the list promising to communicate with the academy and improve its journals parameters to remove the affected journals from the list as soon as possible 55 The list was updated in December 2021 and reduced to only 41 journals of which seven MDPI journals were included 56 Perception of Hungarian researchers A survey published in 2022 asked Hungarian researchers for their perception of MDPI journals Those Hungarian researchers generally felt MDPI journals were sufficiently prestigious to be worth publishing in being indexed in major databases and having reasonable Journal Impact Factor However most researchers felt the primary driving force to publish with MDPI journals was their fast article turnaround time 5 MDPI article turnaround times take approximately 35 37 days to publish the final article after its initial submission including revisions 4 7 Assessments in the Nordic countries MDPI has been criticized by scientific bodies in Norway Finland and Denmark that rank academic journals for their quality and relevance In the Finnish and Danish lists the majority of MDPI journals do not meet the criteria of the body to be ranked in the list 2 57 The Norwegian Scientific Index has been less critical giving the vast majority of individual MDPI journals designations as level 1 denoting a publisher as academic although some journals are ranked level 0 denoting non academic status including one of MDPI s flagship journals Sustainability 58 59 60 In 2021 following a survey sent to Norwegian scientists 61 the Norwegian Scientific Index also created a special rank called level X which was used to denote journals undergoing evaluation as possible predatory journals specifically citing concerns over MDPI journals for the new rank s creation 27 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 2 62 They cite the poor reputation of MDPI among Nordic scientific bodies 2 how there are many academics that boycott MDPI journals outright 2 or accuse MDPI journals of having a peer review process that is not up to academic standards 63 64 65 Among their descriptions they call MDPI a Chinese organization with a small artificial office in Switzerland 2 and a money making machine that plays on the desire of academics to embellish their CV 64 65 see publish or perish Allegation of anomalous citation patterns In July 2021 Maria Angeles Oviedo Garcia published a paper in OUP journal Research Evaluation claiming that MDPI journals had anomalously high self citation rates compared to leading journals in the same fields The alleged high self citation rate is not to other articles in the same journal but rather to other MDPI journals 66 Oviedo Garcia argued that this is indicative of predatory journals MDPI released a response to Oviedo Garcia s paper on their website eight days later MDPI highlighted a number of issues with the article and its framing arguing in particular that leading journals should not be directly compared to non leading journals MDPI also argued that when compared to other publishers MDPI does not have anomalously high self citations 67 Research Evaluation published an expression of concern for Oviedo Garcia s paper in September 2021 68 which eventually led to a correction published in April 2023 Changes made to the article added caveats and toned down inflammatory language however the core conclusions remained the same 69 A 2023 study utilizing a different method reached a broadly similar conclusion that MDPI journals had more self citations than journals by other publishers The study also found that MDPI journals received more citations from a smaller network of journals relative to journals by other publishers 33 Concerns over papers connected to a research paper mill In December 2021 it was reported how the research paper mill International Publisher Ltd had sold authorships to hundreds of publications published across most major publishers 70 a controversy attracting international attention that affected many major publishing groups 71 72 73 74 The report highlighted a ring of MDPI guest editors that provided a network for the sale of authorship for articles published across multiple MDPI journals Sustainability Mathematics Energies and the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Commerce Research 72 73 75 76 Also in December 2021 Dr Brian Perron highlighted how International Publisher Ltd had published articles in the International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning iJet and MDPI including articles from Energies 77 78 In response iJet retracted thirty articles and thanked Perron and his team for their concerning findings 79 In response Damaris Critchlow from MDPI stated that MDPI was investigating the papers in question and developing strategies to combat paper mills 78 Perron later expressed appreciation with how iJet had handled its response but frustration with MDPI for not taking his allegations of fraud seriously citing how one Energies article still did not even have an expression of concern added six months later 80 81 2023 Clarivate delistings In February 2023 Clarivate discontinued coverage of two MDPI journals the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and the Journal of Risk and Financial Management in the Web of Science for publishing content not related to their scope 82 83 As a result both were removed from the Clarivate Web of Science database losing their impact factors Also citations from these journals no longer affect the impact factors of other journals 82 83 84 Controversial articles In December 2011 the MDPI journal Life published Erik D Andrulis theoretical paper Theory of the Origin Evolution and Nature of Life aiming at presenting a framework to explain life 43 It attracted coverage by the popular science and technology magazines Ars Technica and Popular Science which characterized it as crazy 85 and hilarious 86 A member of the editorial board of Life resigned in response 86 87 In 2013 another MDPI journal Entropy published a review paper claiming glyphosate may be the most important factor in the development of obesity depression attention deficit hyperactivity disorder autism Alzheimer s disease Parkinson s disease multiple sclerosis cancer and infertility 88 The paper itself does not contain any primary research results 88 It was criticized as pseudo science by the popular science magazine Discover 89 With regard to the same controversial study Jeffrey Beall has rhetorically asked When publishers like MDPI disseminate research by science activists like Stephanie Seneff and her co authors I think it s fair to question the credibility of all the research that MDPI publishes Will MDPI publish anything for money 90 A study published in the MDPI journal Nutrients in 2011 went through a series of corrections first in August 2011 then in April 2012 and then again in February 2014 91 The article claimed that obesity rates in Australia increased in the same timeframe that sugary soft drink consumption declined by 10 The article was used by soft drink industry lobbyists to argue that sugary drinks were not significantly contributing to obesity rates 92 However the article itself debunked its own claim with one figure showing that soft drink consumption had increased by 30 during the time period where the authors claimed a 10 reduction in consumption Nutrients issued a correction claiming that the previously described 10 drop in consumption referred to an increase in the use of artificial sweeteners and reflected overall sugar consumption rather than soft drink consumption The correction said that some words were missing This correction has been derided by some as nonsense and untrue suggesting that the correction does not address the core issue of whether sugar consumption increased in Australia over the time period investigated The journal Nutrients and the senior author of the article maintain that the thrice corrected article is now accurate and that corrections that were made were immaterial to the conclusions of the study 92 In 2016 MDPI journal Behavioral Sciences published a review paper that claimed that watching pornography is a cause of erectile dysfunction 93 After critics raised concerns an independent review by the Committee on Publication Ethics COPE recommended that the article be retracted based on issues including an unusual editorial process in which the listed journal editor declared that he was not involved in the final decision regarding correction retraction authorship an inaccurate and incomplete conflict of interest declaration that failed to disclose author connections with anti pornography activist groups failure to obtain informed consent from the study subjects and failure to protect the identities of those subjects Instead of retracting the paper MDPI removed the editor s name from the paper and issued an amended conflict of interest statement which according to Retraction Watch did not fully address the conflicts of interest identified by COPE nor the other issues identified by them When contacted by Retraction Watch MDPI s response was The argument is already done Both sides got large audience Time to stop and made peace 94 The journal Magnetochemistry accepted a paper in 2019 by a controversial scientist Susan Pockett which stated that scientists are suppressing evidence that microwave radiation from smartphones and other devices cause harm to people The paper was later that year retracted due to lack of a scientific contribution and being an opinion article The journal initially invited Susan Pockett to submit a paper according to the author s own account 95 In 2019 MDPI journal Psych published an editorial on race and intelligence by Richard Lynn who had previously had his emeritus status revoked due to his promotion of discredited sexist and racist views such as scientific racism 96 97 98 99 MDPI later issued an expression of concern and changed the status of the article from editorial to opinion 100 three months after publication According to science journalist Angela Saini Psych had also published other similar work defending scientific racism 99 96 In 2021 the MDPI journal Vaccines published an article by pseudoscience advocate Harald Walach and colleagues claiming a lack of clear benefit for COVID 19 vaccines 101 50 The article was heavily criticized for misusing data and as a result reaching a false conclusion 51 Katie Ewer one of the journal s editors called the publication of the article grossly irresponsible and resigned from the editorial board as a protest against its publication 51 Subsequently four other members of the editorial board also resigned Shortly afterwards the journal published an expression of concern regarding the article and opened an investigation into the review process 102 51 The paper had received three reviewer reports which the journal later made public 103 which were however not very detailed and had apparently been written by reviewers who did not have topic expertise 51 Vaccines eventually decided to retract the article 104 105 Proliferation of special issuesPaolo Crosetto research director at INRAE GAEL first noted the proliferation of MDPI special issues in his blog in April 2021 giving them along side a fast turnaround time credit for MDPI s success 106 He reported that in 2013 MDPI published 388 special issues or about 5 per journals while in 2021 the number grew to nearly 40 000 or about 500 per journal 106 Special issues usually are proposed by scientists to journals who then makes a decision about whether or not the special issue is suitable for the journal Crosseto noted that in contrast at MDPI it is the publisher who sends out invitations for Special Issue and it is unclear which role if any the editorial board of the normal issues has in the process 106 In July 2021 Oviedo Garcia analysed the number of special issues published by MDPI journals in 2019 and 2020 In 2019 the numbers varied greatly from 14 in the journal Vaccines to 500 in the journal International Journal of Molecular Sciences with the average number of special issues in each journal being 113 66 The number of special issues was more than double the number of regular issues in over 90 of MDPI journals 66 In 2020 the numbers were even higher reaching as surprisingly high as 788 special issues in Sustainability 830 in Applied Sciences and 846 in Materials 66 Nearly 95 of all MDPI journals published more than one special issue per week 66 According to Jack Grove in Inside Higher Ed International Journal of Molecular Sciences will host 3 514 special issues with a closing date in 2023 and Sustainability 3 512 averaging over more than nine special issues per day 107 This number of special issues leads to concerns about how peer review can be conducted effectively at this scale as well as questions about the thematic relevance to the journal 107 See alsoList of MDPI journalsReferences History of MDPI MDPI 2022 Retrieved 26 July 2023 a b c d e f g Fosso Olav Bjarte Noland Jonas Kristiansen 6 January 2020 Forskere blir ledet til etiske overtramp Researchers are led into ethical transgressions Universitetsavisa MDPI Journals A Z www mdpi com Retrieved 25 February 2022 a b c d Petrou Christos 8 November 2022 Guest Post Publishing Fast and Slow A Review of Publishing Speed in the Last Decade The Scholarly Kitchen Retrieved 30 December 2022 a b Csomos Gyorgy Farkas Jeno Zsolt 14 November 2022 Understanding the increasing market share of the academic publisher Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute in the publication output of Central and Eastern European countries a case study of Hungary Scientometrics 128 803 824 doi 10 1007 s11192 022 04586 1 ISSN 1588 2861 S2CID 253535738 a b c d e Guest Post MDPI s Remarkable Growth The Scholarly Kitchen 10 August 2020 Retrieved 1 March 2021 a b c d e Crosetto Paolo 12 April 2021 Is MDPI a predatory publisher Paolo Crosetto s Blog Retrieved 30 December 2022 a b c Quality questions as publisher s growth challenges big players Times Higher Education THE 15 March 2023 Retrieved 18 March 2023 Ioannidis John P A Pezzullo Angelo Maria Boccia Stefania 20 March 2023 The Rapid Growth of Mega Journals Threats and Opportunities JAMA 329 15 1253 1254 doi 10 1001 jama 2023 3212 PMID 36939740 S2CID 257630165 Publisher s note Continued publication of tomography by MDPI 2021 Tomography 7 1 65 F Vazquez doi 10 3390 tomography7010006 Publisher s note Continued publication of nursing reports by mdpi 2020 Nurs Rep 10 1 1 F Vazquez doi 10 3390 nursrep10010001 Publisher s Note Continued Publication of Audiology Research by MDPI 2020 Audiol Res 10 2 49 S K Lin U Vicario F Vazquez doi 10 3390 audiolres10020008 Web of Science Master Journal List Web of Science Group a Clarivate company Retrieved 25 July 2023 SciFinderⁿ Login Scopus preview Scopus Sources DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals doaj org Retrieved 31 March 2020 OASPA Members Retrieved 1 September 2019 Initiative for Open Citations Retrieved 1 September 2019 COPE MDPI Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 190 Member Journals Retrieved 1 September 2019 There is no black and white definition of predatory publishing Impact of Social Sciences 13 May 2020 Retrieved 5 March 2021 a b de Vrieze Jop 2018 Open access journal editors resign after alleged pressure to publish mediocre papers Science doi 10 1126 science aav3129 S2CID 158215919 Archived from the original on 24 December 2018 a b c Pal Shalmali 1 January 2017 Predatory Publishing The Dark Side of the Open Access Movement ASH Clinical News a b Gillis Alex 12 January 2017 Beware Academics are getting reeled in by scam journals University Affairs a b c d Beall Jeffrey 18 February 2014 Chinese Publisher MDPI Added to List of Questionable Publishers Scholarly Open Access Archived from the original on 6 March 2014 a b Beall Jeffrey 2017 What I learned from predatory publishers Biochemia Medica 27 2 273 279 doi 10 11613 BM 2017 029 PMC 5493177 PMID 28694718 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 Plasserer tretten vitenskapelige tidsskrift pa grasone niva Universitetsavisa Retrieved 7 September 2021 a b Vi innforer niva X for tvilsomme tidsskrifter We are introducing level X for dubious journals Khrono 27 May 2021 Retrieved 27 May 2021 a b CoS partition table team Chinese Academy of Sciences 31 December 2020 国际期刊预警名单 试行 正式发布 International Journal Early Warning List officially released Trial mp weixin qq Retrieved 1 January 2022 MDPI Open Access Information and Policy 2019 Retrieved 1 September 2019 a b History of MDPI Retrieved 17 March 2014 MDPI About www mdpi com Retrieved 7 March 2022 MDPI History www mdpi com Retrieved 9 March 2022 a b Mark A Hanson Pablo Gomez Barreiro Paolo Crosetto Dan Brockington September 2023 The strain on scientific publishing a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link See the Data and Documents of Bohannon John 2013 Who s Afraid of Peer Review Science 342 6154 60 65 Bibcode 2013Sci 342 60B doi 10 1126 science 342 6154 60 PMID 24092725 Beall Jeffery 11 June 2015 Guest Editing a Special Issue with MDPI Evidences of Questionable Actions by the Publisher Scholarly Open Access Archived from the original on 16 June 2015 Update Response to Mr Jeffrey Beall s Repeated Attacks on MDPI www mdpi com Retrieved 16 March 2023 Beall s criticism of MDPI lacks evidence and is irresponsible petermr s blog Retrieved 16 March 2023 Update Response to Mr Jeffrey Beall s Repeated Attacks on MDPI www mdpi com Retrieved 19 February 2022 Xia Jingfeng 2021 Predatory Publishing Routledge ISBN 9780367465322 Beall Jeffrey 17 December 2015 Instead of a Peer Review Reviewer Sends Warning to Authors Scholarly Open Access Archived from the original on 13 March 2016 Beall Twitter statement calling MDPI predatory in 2021 jeffrey beall 29 March 2021 Retrieved 18 February 2021 Who will keep predatory science journals at bay now that Jeffrey Beall s blog is gone 20 January 2017 a b Andrulis Erik D 2011 Theory of the Origin Evolution and Nature of Life Life 2 1 1 105 Bibcode 2011Life 2 1A doi 10 3390 life2010001 PMC 4187144 PMID 25382118 Barclay Alan W Brand Miller Jennie 2011 The Australian Paradox A Substantial Decline in Sugars Intake over the Same Timeframe that Overweight and Obesity Have Increased Nutrients 3 4 491 504 doi 10 3390 nu3040491 PMC 3257688 PMID 22254107 Redhead Claire 11 April 2014 Conclusions from OASPA Membership Committee Investigation into MDPI OASPA www ITSecurityNews info 26 March 2018 MDPI 845 012 breached accounts IT Security News cybersecurity infosecurity news Retrieved 12 August 2018 Have I Been Pwned Pwned websites Press release haveibeenpwned com What the F How we failed to publish a journal special issue on failures Water Sanitation and Health WASH Blog wash leeds ac uk Retrieved 17 June 2020 Marcus Adam 16 June 2020 Failure fails as publisher privileges the privileged Retraction Watch Retrieved 17 June 2020 a b Walach Harald Klement Rainer J Aukema Wouter 2021 The Safety of COVID 19 Vaccinations We Should Rethink the Policy Vaccines 9 7 693 doi 10 3390 vaccines9070693 PMC 8294615 PMID 34202529 Retracted a b c d e Wadman Meredith 1 July 2021 Scientists quit journal board protesting grossly irresponsible study claiming COVID 19 vaccines kill Science doi 10 1126 science abk2629 S2CID 243092907 Retrieved 2 July 2021 Regulation of the management of FSc USB concerning publishing in journals published by MDPI PDF 8 December 2021 Archived from the original PDF on 9 December 2021 ForeignFriends MDPI Frontiers amp Hindawi are blacklisted by a university Weixin Official Accounts Platform Retrieved 27 January 2023 弗雷赛斯 freescience 8 January 2023 霸气 这所高校直接将Frontiers MDPI Hindawi三个出版社的所有期刊都纳入黑名单 t cj sina cn Retrieved 27 January 2023 MDPI China Marketing Department 7 January 2021 关于中科院发布 国际期刊预警名单 试行 的声明 Announcement on the Chinese Academy of Sciences release of the Warning List of International Journals Trial MDPI Retrieved 1 January 2022 CoS partition table team Chinese Academy of Sciences 31 December 2021 国际期刊预警名单 试行 正式发布 International Journal Early Warning List officially released Trial mp weixin qq Retrieved 1 January 2022 The BFI lists Ministry of Higher Education and Science Retrieved 2 May 2020 MDPI Norwegian Scientific Index Archived from the original on 27 November 2019 Retrieved 21 July 2019 Forlag info Kanalregisteret kanalregister hkdir no Retrieved 1 June 2022 Stryker et av verdens storste fra listen over godkjente tidsskrifter Khrono Retrieved 22 May 2022 Borresen Anne Kristine Roeggen Vidar Sivertsen Gunnar 16 January 2020 Innlegg Forlag sluker forfatterbetaling www dn no Retrieved 2 March 2021 Borresen Anne Kristine Roeggen Vidar Sivertsen Gunnar 16 January 2020 Forlag sluker forfatterbetaling Dagens Naeringsliv Ellingsen Simen Andreas Adnoy 21 October 2019 Faren med kommersiell Open Access The danger of commercial open access Universitetsavisa a b Noland Jonas Kristiansen Fosso Olav Bjarte 25 May 2021 Profittjegere vanner ut norsk forskning Profit hunters dilute Norwegian research Khrono Retrieved 25 May 2021 a b Darlig og farlig forskning Bad and dangerous research VG Retrieved 9 July 2021 a b c d e Angeles Oviedo Garcia Maria 11 August 2021 Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute MDPI Research Evaluation 30 3 405 419a doi 10 1093 reseval rvab030 Giulia Stefenelli 19 August 2021 Comment on Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute MDPI from Oviedo Garcia Expression of concern Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute MDPI Research Evaluation 1 September 2021 Article that assessed MDPI journals as predatory retracted and replaced Retraction Watch 8 May 2023 Economist Investigates Hijacked Journals in Scholarship Freie Universitat Berlin campus leben 2 May 2022 Retrieved 15 March 2023 Russian site peddles paper authorship in reputable journals for up to 5000 a pop www science org Retrieved 15 March 2023 a b Publication and Collaboration Anomalies in Academic Papers Originating From a Russian Based Paper Mill Peer Review Congress Retrieved 15 March 2023 a b Academic fraud factories are booming warns plagiarism sleuth Times Higher Education THE 19 January 2022 Retrieved 15 March 2023 Else Holly 18 January 2023 Multimillion dollar trade in paper authorships alarms publishers Nature 613 7945 617 618 Bibcode 2023Natur 613 617E doi 10 1038 d41586 023 00062 9 PMID 36653614 S2CID 255970642 Abalkina Anna 20 March 2022 Publication and collaboration anomalies in academic papers originating from a paper mill evidence from a Russia based paper mill arXiv 2112 13322 cs DL Abalkina Anna ENAI Monthly Webinars 10 February 2023 The rising threat of Paper Mills European Network for Academic Integrity Retrieved 17 March 2023 Ghostwriting and Academic Fraud CapeRay 21 January 2022 Retrieved 15 March 2023 a b Perron Brian E Hiltz Perron Oliver T Victor Bryan G 20 December 2021 Revealed The inner workings of a paper mill Retraction Watch Retrieved 15 March 2023 Recently Retracted Articles International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning Retrieved 17 March 2023 Perron Brian E Our deepest apology Journal retracts 30 likely paper mill articles after investigation published by Retraction Watch Retraction Watch Retrieved 15 March 2021 Milojevic Marko Urbanski Mariusz Terzic Ivica Prasolov Valeriy 2020 Impact of Non Financial Factors on the Effectiveness of Audits in Energy Companies Energies 13 23 6212 doi 10 3390 en13236212 ISSN 1996 1073 a b Clarivate Discontinues IJERPH and JRFM Coverage in Web of Science MDPI Retrieved 23 March 2023 a b Fast growing open access journals stripped of coveted impact factors www science org Retrieved 29 March 2023 Petrou Christos 30 March 2023 Guest Post Of Special Issues and Journal Purges The Scholarly Kitchen Retrieved 30 March 2023 Timmer John How the craziest f ing theory of everything got published and promoted Ars Technica Retrieved 17 January 2014 a b Nosowitz Dan Hilarious Theory of Everything Paper Provokes Kerfuffle Popular Science Retrieved 17 January 2014 Zimmer Carl Life turned upside down Discover Magazine Retrieved 17 January 2014 a b Samsel Anthony Stephanie Seneff 2013 Glyphosate s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome Pathways to Modern Diseases Entropy 15 4 1416 Bibcode 2013Entrp 15 1416S doi 10 3390 e15041416 Kloor Keith When Media Uncritically Cover Pseudoscience Discover Magazine Retrieved 17 January 2014 Beall Jeffrey Anti Roundup Glyphosate Researchers Use Easy OA Journals to Spread their Views Scholarly Open Access Archived from the original on 12 January 2015 Retrieved 8 January 2015 Barclay Alan W Brand Miller Jennie 20 April 2011 The Australian Paradox A Substantial Decline in Sugars Intake over the Same Timeframe that Overweight and Obesity Have Increased Nutrients 3 4 491 504 doi 10 3390 nu3040491 ISSN 2072 6643 PMC 3257688 PMID 22254107 a b Wendy Carlisle 13 February 2014 Sugar research paper contained inadvertent errors Professor Jennie Brand Miller defends findings ABC News Retrieved 25 November 2021 Park Brian Y Wilson Gary Berger Jonathan Christman Matthew Reina Bryn Bishop Frank Klam Warren Doan Andrew P 2016 Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions A Review with Clinical Reports Behavioral Sciences 6 3 17 doi 10 3390 bs6030017 PMC 5039517 PMID 27527226 Marcus Adam 13 June 2018 Journal corrects but will not retract controversial paper on internet porn Retraction Watch Archived from the original on 14 June 2018 Retrieved 13 June 2018 No scientific contribution Journal pulls paper alleging radiation coverup Retraction Watch 9 September 2019 a b Oransky Ivan 8 August 2019 Prof who lost emeritus status for views on race and intelligence has paper flagged Retraction Watch Retrieved 10 January 2020 Status withdrawn from controversial academic BBC News 14 April 2018 Retrieved 11 May 2020 Lynn Richard 24 April 2019 Reflections on Sixty Eight Years of Research on Race and Intelligence Psych 1 1 123 131 doi 10 3390 psych1010009 a b Psych Editorial Office 2019 Expression of Concern Lynn R Reflections on Sixty Eight Years of Research on Race and Intelligence Psych 1 1 429 430 doi 10 3390 psych1010033 Standifer Cid 13 October 2022 Racial Pseudoscience on the Faculty A professor s research flew under the radar for years What finally got him fired The Chronicle of Higher Education Ansede Manuel Urra Susana 22 July 2021 Harald Walach the researcher contributing misinformation about the Covid 19 pandemic EL PAIS Office Vaccines Editorial 2021 Expression of Concern Walach et al The Safety of COVID 19 Vaccinations We Should Rethink the Policy Vaccines 2021 9 693 Vaccines 9 7 705 doi 10 3390 vaccines9070705 PMC 8294614 PMID 34203423 Vaccines review report 24 June 2021 Retrieved 22 December 2021 Vaccines Editorial Office 2021 Retraction Walach et al The Safety of COVID 19 Vaccinations We Should Rethink the Policy Vaccines 9 7 729 doi 10 3390 vaccines9070729 PMC 8262594 PMID 34232371 Cara Ed 2 July 2017 Journal Retracts Terrible Study That Claimed Widespread Covid 19 Vaccine Deaths Gizmodo Retrieved 5 July 2021 a b c Crosetto Paolo 12 April 2021 Is MDPI a predatory publisher Paolo Crosetto s Blog a b Grove Jack 15 March 2023 3 514 Special Issues a Year Inside Higher Ed External links nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Media from MDPI journals Official website Molecular Diversity Preservation International Official website Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title MDPI amp oldid 1179278659, wikipedia, wiki, 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