Research the editorial board 5. The total number of special issues in 2019 varied by journal, ranging from 14 in Vaccines to 500 in International Journal of Molecular Sciences (the average number of special issues per journal was 113 in 2019). The potential criteria for the identification of a predatory journal and a list of suspicious items are lengthy: journal names may be very similar to prestigious journals; the web page may contain spelling errors and questionable grammatical constructions and/or low quality images; the language on the journal webpage may resemble a hard sell that targets academic authors; the journal may include articles outside its stated scope or may have a very broad scope; submission can be by email instead of a manuscript management system; the editor-in-chief might also act as the editor-in-chief of another journal with a widely different scope, predominance of editorial board members from developing countries; time-lines for publication and fast-track peer-review processes might appear unrealistic; APCs can be low; impact-factor metrics may be unknown; spam emails may invite academics to submit papers; despite the open-access approach, transfer of copyright may be required; and, finally, non-professional or non-journal affiliated contact information may be given for the editorial office (Manca et al. bhttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/computer-science/journals/fast-publication. 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. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and . Just in the same year 2007, the OA publisher Frontiers was . Universities, professional associations, ). Stay away from Frontiers. The use of JCR has been extended, both for the evaluation of academics and institutions of all types, legitimizing the journals that are indexed, which evaluate the publications included in scholarly records when taking decisions on promotion, tenure, grants, etc. Comparable data from other publishing houses, which they rarely publish as aggregate figures, would be of interest, without which any comparison is impossible. The alarming increase in the number of predatory journals (from 1,800 to 8,000 over the period 20104) and the exponential growth (from 53,000 to 420,000 between 2010 and 2014) of the articles that they publish (Shen and Bjork 2015) have rendered futile any effort to keep white and blacklists updated. sharon r pine. fhttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-mechanical-engineering. A guide has been developed to assist discernment between legitimate and predatory conferences: among which Think.Check.Attend. More specifically, it was remarkable that the number of articles published in some journals skyrocketed in 2019 (a growth of 100% or more between 2018 and 2019 in 23 journals) and some more than doubled or even tripled their production: JMSE (202.5%), Metabolites (228.57%), Electronics (229.66%), Foods (231.48%), Mathematics (239.13%), Antioxidants (240%), Pathogens (253.68%), Processes (254.28%), Cancers (280.25%), JCM (287.77%), Animals (391.2%), Biomolecules (391.7%), Plants (463.24%), Microorganisms (486.36%), Cells (498.97), and Medicina (554.91%). 2020). 2020). The impact score (IS) 2021 of Frontiers in Oncology is 5.36, which is computed in 2022 as per its definition.Frontiers in Oncology IS is decreased by a factor of 0.3 and approximate percentage change is -5.3% when compared to preceding year 2020, which shows a falling trend. The overwhelming majority of editors hold another full-time position, as do almost all reviewers. As Siler (2020) stated since APC-based OA publishing involves remunerating publishers based on how many articles they publish, this can underpin perverse incentives to accept as many articles as possible to maximize revenue, so predatory journals operate in such a manner, eschewing legitimate peer review or other types of quality control (p. 1386) and prompting an excessive publication of articles, often of inferior quality (Siler 2020). This is the Citationsy guide to Frontiers in Oncology citations, reference lists, in-text citations, and bibliographies. 2019). Frontiers in Oncology publishes rigorously peer-reviewed research across the entire field of cancer research. Despite the fact that impact-factor manipulation may result in criminal liability according to Fong et al. A predatory journal will exploit this model to its own benefit with an inexistent or practically inexistent peer-review process (Beall 2015; Frandsen 2017; Demir 2018), which permits the rapid publication of academic papers without due guarantees, with an associated risk to the quality of the published science. 1) Frontiers in Oncology IF:5.7382 2) Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology IF:6.0814 3) Frontiers in Genetics IF:4.7722 4) Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences IF:6.1134 5) Frontiers in Immunology IF:8.7864 Frontiers 14/29=0.3148% 2/3=0.6666% [ This is an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, America's leading higher . However, as previously shown, some MDPI journals name are very similar to other publishers journals breaching the required condition of not been easily confused with another journal. 2019), data show analysed journals have a completely different pattern in this matter when compared with leading journals in the category. It is usually thought that predatory journals charge low APCs (COPE 2019)on average 178$ according to the results of Shen and Bjork (2015), while Shamseer et al. Worryingly, both the numbers of predatory journals and the articles that they publish are continuously increasing (Shen and Bjork 2015). Regarding journal names, aforementioned Principles state they shall be unique and not be one that is easily confused with other journal or might mislead potential authors and readers about the journals origin or association with other journals. The first attempt at identifying predatory journals was Bealls list, although it eventually disappeared in January 2017. All journals published by a predatory publisher are potentially predatory unless stated otherwise. 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). 2019), as their behaviour indicated that they prioritize self-interest, forsaking the best editorial and publication practices. Once accepted, time to posting the final word document online on a reputable journals Web site i.e. 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). A review of content output in the leading journals was not conducted. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. 2019). In 2019, 137 from among its 218 journals were indexed in Web of Science (WOS) (in Science Citation Index Expanded, Emerging Sources Citation Index, and Social Sciences Citation Index) (MDPI 2020). Further research is needed to compare the JCR-indexed MPDI journals to similar journals in their respective fields in order to understand whether the level of self-citation is significantly different for MDPI published journals. Cukier et al. In total 15 out of these 16 journals more than doubled the number of published papers from 2018 to 2019 had received their first Journal Impact Factor in JCR in 2017 or 2018. Original list Go to update This is an archived version of the Beall's list - a list of potential predatory publishers created by a librarian Jeffrey Beall. Led by Field Chief Editor Prof Giuseppe Giaccone (Cornell University, USA, and Amgen), and Assistant Field Chief Editor Prof Sharon . Frontiers in Oncology is a broad-scope, multidisciplinary journal covering all areas of cancer research to advance our knowledge of cancer epidemiology to improve diagnosis, therapeutics and management strategies. 2020). The physicist Ahmed Hindawi and his wife, the mathematician Nagwa Abdel-Mottaleb, started their publishing house in their home country Egypt in 1997; 10 years later they converted Hindawi to open access. It is difficult however to contextualize the analysis of APC in JCR-indexed MDPI journals for two reasons. In October 2014 I was approached by a colleague of mine, Frederic Kaplan, from EPFL, for a favour. BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. At the same time, oversight of peer review is challenging, because it is rarely publicly observable (Siler 2020). Moreover, the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series, and Publishers downgraded MDPI to 0 in 2019 and later upgraded it to 1 again. Due to the breadth of MDPI journals assessed in this paper it was not possible to conduct in-depth work to compare each journal. Data on each selected journal were gathered from the following sections of the MDPI-journal web pages: Home, Editorial Board, Special Issues, APC, and Journal Statistics. B., Brown S. D., Stewart D. W., Roane D. S., Harirforoosh S. (, Cortegiani A., Manca A., Lalu M., Moher D. (, Cortegiani A., Ippolito M., Ingoglia G., Manca A., Cugusi L., Severin A., Strinzel M., Panzarella V., Campisi G., Manoj L., Gregoretti C., Einav S., Moher D., Giarratano A. The promotion of questionable special issues is one of the identifying characteristics of predatory journals (Alrawadieh 2020). Logically, this step requires expert knowledge in each scientific field that prevents a global analysis of the 53 journals under analysis. JCR-indexed MDPI-journals (edition 2018, released 2019) were selected for the analysis (53 out of 218). (2019) state that predatory journals prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and that their behaviour includes deviation from best editorial and publication practices. The Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is owned by the German publishing house Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which is also the partial owner of Frontiers. FBL is dedicated to publishing advances in all aspects of cellular and molecular biology of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells, including studies related to biochemistry, biophysics, physiology, pathology, biotechnology, bioinformatics, and other related fields. Time to first decision of Elsevier journals (submission to first decision-days). The Author(s) 2021. 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. The following analysis addressed the peer-review process. Furthermore, no less importantly, the analysis showed that a large number of the citations that they receive are from other MDPI-journals. Note: When a journal is ranked in more than one category in JCR, 1 its highest rank is depicted in column Q; 2 the leading journal for comparison is the one with the highest impact factor (2018) in the categories where the MDPI-journal is ranked. A review of APCs for the leading journal control group was not conducted. As Manca et al. (2020) indicated that in Step 2, the analysis of the content of the journal has to be approached, in order to check that the journal content is focused mainly on its professional quality rather than on bad grammar or spelling (p. 11), in order to judge both the scientific quality of the published articles and the editorial work of the journal. I am just asking about the criteria by which Beall's List - of Potential Predatory Journals has been putforward. Both, self-citation and intra-MDPI citation rates directly affects the numerator in the journal impact-factor calculation, raising the journal impact value. In particular, the 400 or so conferences that MDPI sponsored in 2019 (MDPI 2020) should all be carefully scrutinized. Approved by publishing and review experts on SciSpace, this template is built as per for Frontiers in Oncology formatting guidelines as mentioned in Frontiers Media author instructions. Unfortunately, there is no information available on the time from submission to the final decision for the 53 journals under analysis, only minimum and maximum times from submission to first decision, as shown in Figure 4. 2018; Bond et al. Though editorial board size is not mentioned in any of the definitions considered (COPE, 2019 and Grudniewicz et al. Frontiers in Oncology. Why Beall's blacklist of predatory journals died. They are, in all, a threat to society as a whole, because whenever the articles that they publish are indexed in selective databases, which is the case of PubMed, the items achieve global exposure and are interpreted by readers, including patients, as trustworthy (Manca et al. Frontiers Media is a publisher of open access, scientific journals currently active in science, technology, and medicine. These journals are analysed, not only to contrast the formal criteria for the identification of predatory journals, but taking a step further, their background is also analysed with regard to self-citations and the source of those self-citations in 2018 and 2019. The current version was created on 19 Jul 2020 and has been used by 149 authors to write and format their manuscripts to this journal. I am just wondering why journals like MDPI and Frontier who deadly fight to cash . Citation analysis used for citation manipulation is a form of misconduct and does not fit best editorial practices (a feature of predatory journals mentioned in Grudniewicz et al. Further research would be needed to understand how these faster times are achieved. These results showed that the MDPI journals under analysis fitted some features of the definition of predatory journals (Grudniewicz et al. The Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) had 53 journals ranked in the 2018 JCRs annual report. We therefore underline that JCR cannot be used as a whitelist of journals that comply with the criteria of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing (Kratochvl, Plch and Korikov 2019), but rather as a tool with which to verify whether the background of a journal is adjusted to the best editorial publication practices. Further complicating definitions of predatory publishing, are the existence of what could be called grey journals and publishers, occupying quasi-legitimate niches between whitelists and blacklists. (2020), the effect of self-citation and citation cartels may be halted by the use of JIF-without self-cites metric, a simple action that reduces the penalty faced by journals that decide not to manipulate so, in sum, ethical editors are not penalized and manipulative editors are not advantaged (Wilhite et al. 2018) with all the consequences that may entail, not only at a scientific but at a social level. After Frontiers was listed as a potential predatory publisher, Nature News has reported on the scientists' protests about this addition to the "controversial 'Beall's List'". According to the MDPI Annual Report 2019 (MDPI 2020), these 218 journals are supported by 67,207 editors (an increase of 55.78% over 2018) with a median time from submission to publication of 39days (as it was in 2018) and APCs ranging from 300 to 2,000 CHF (1 Swiss Franc is approximately equal to 0.92 Euros) with a median of 1.525 CHF. In 2019, 24 journals out of 53 had self-citation rates as high as 15%, which is the upper end of the normal range set by Clarivate (Table 2). Is the Citationsy guide to Frontiers in Oncology citations, reference lists, in-text citations, and.. Disappeared in January 2017 ( MDPI ) had 53 journals ranked in the journal impact.... The OA publisher Frontiers was journals assessed in this paper it was not conducted intra-MDPI citation rates directly the. Publication practices 2019 ), data show analysed journals have a completely different pattern in this paper it not! 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