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. I served as a special issue editor and the peer review process they require is above board, rigorous, and transparent. Finally, self-citation and intra-MDPI citation rates artificially increase the impact factors of JCR-indexed MDPI-journals that is quite clearly in breach of best practice and integrity in science. It is commonly observed that, after getting its first impact journal, journals increase the number of submissions and, depending on acceptance rate maintenance, perhaps an output content increase also. 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. 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. The journal Sustainability has the largest Editorial Board with 1,145 members, while the journal Metabolites has a mere 62 Editorial Board members. 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'". (2020)and in Scopus (Hedding 2019; Cortegiani et al. This investigation is centred on Clarivate's JCR, perhaps the most prestigious and best recognized database in academia with the widest use at a global level, in order to analyse the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). Take a look at their peer review process and publication timelines 6. 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. Finally, the intense proliferation of predatory journals has given rise to predatory/fake conferences, equally pernicious for academia, and the subject of warnings from COPE (2019), as predatory journals and conferences are two sides of the same coin (Cortegiani et al. Always check the website thoroughly 2. Check the journal's contact information 4. A review of the frequency of special issue publication in the control group was not conducted. 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. 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). It is beyond the scope of this research to answer that question based on the analysis conducted, further research is needed to address this key question. In the case of the journal having been included in JCR, the analysis of non-standard citation practices of the journal (a significant increase or fall in the number of citations, self-citations, and articles and majority of citations form a small group of journals) is of great relevance (Kratochvl et al. The promotion of questionable special issues is one of the identifying characteristics of predatory journals (Alrawadieh 2020). Just in the same year 2007, the OA publisher Frontiers was . (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. Having completed the verification of the formal criteria, Kratochvl et al. In 1996, 47 articles were published in two journals, since when the number of articles and journals have progressively increased and have undergone exponential growth over recent years. This is the Citationsy guide to Frontiers in Oncology citations, reference lists, in-text citations, and bibliographies. The Author(s) 2021. 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 in Bioscience-Landmark. Frontiers Media SA is a publisher of peer-reviewed open access scientific journals currently active in science, technology, and medicine. 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. It should be pointed out that, despite the significant advance in the definition proposed by Grudniewicz et al. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating . The results serve to point out how self-citation rates and intra-MPDI citation rates both followed a rise between 2018 and 2019. It was Elsevier and the allegedly learned International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (ISAC) which allowed Raoult's illegal chloroquine quackery. Some examples of the MDPI-journals with names similar to other journals are Cells, Cancers, Polymers, Remote Sensing, Animals and Genes, which seem remarkably similar to other journals established earlier and edited by Elsevier (Cell, Polymer, Gene, Remote Sensing of Environment), Wiley (Cancer), and Cambridge University Press (Animal). 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. This may suggest a form of post-production misconduct, due to the manipulation of citations, which affects the impact factor of the journal, its visibility and its influence. This is an especially important aspect when the external appearance of the predatory journals, such as the OMICS journals, has reached such a level of sophistication that they totally or partially comply with the formal criteria that serve to differentiate between predatory and legitimate journals. Additionally, WOS (Core Collection) data on Sum of Times Cited, Without Self Citation, and Total Citing Articles by Source Titles (number of results=10) were retrieved from each JCR for each selected journal. 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. The APC in JCR-indexed MDPI-journals (from 1000CHF to 2000 CHF) needs to be contextualized. Frontiers Media SA is a publisher of peer-reviewed open access scientific journals currently active in science, technology, and medicine. 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. WOSPredatory Reports328Frontiers19951SCIE4SSCI223MDPI 422 ! Predatory journals, harmful to academia and science, sow confusion, promote shoddy scholarship and waste resources (Grudniewicz et al. This mega-publisher was initially incorporated on Bealls list and was subsequently excluded on 28th October 2015 as a result of a formal appeal made by MDPI and assessed by four members of Mr Beall's Appeals Board (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/534). As depicted in Figure 5, the impact factors of all journals were reduced when self-citations were removed. 2019; Strong 2019), because they undermine its integrity (Vogel 2017; Abad-Garca 2019), its quality, and its credibility (Bond et al. Recently, Copiello (2019) focussed attention on the analysis of journal self-citations and publisher self-citations published in the MDPI-journal Sustainability. Even though it is also behind a paywall, it may be an additional resource, in order to identify predatory journals. Even so, the identification of predatory journals is still a crucial aspect in the maintenance of quality and scientific integrity. That's interesting- those are some of the ones I associate with having bad reputations. Both the increases in APC and the number of articles and special issues in JCR-indexed MDPI-journals may raise questions about the practices in use and their potential fit to these definitions. 2018). Frontiers is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, with other offices in London, Madrid, Seattle and Brussels. Selective databases, such as Scopus, PubMed, and Journal Citation Reports (JCRs), form an index of journals, a sort of whitelist that is used for the purposes of assessing researchers and taking decisions on grant funding (Cortegiani et al. Although some have proposed alternative terms, such as pseudo-journals (Laine and Winker 2017; Elmore and Weston 2020), fake journals (Demir 2018), deceptive journals (Elmore and Weston 2020), and opportunistic journals (Bond et al. (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 number of special issues was over twice the number of ordinary issues in 92.45% of the MDPI-journals under analysis. JCR-indexed MDPI-journals betray both traits through a steady increase in number of their published articles (sometimes to several hundred in just one regular issue) and special issues. 2020). 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. The first relevant fact of their analysis is that some journals use very similar names to other journals with established reputations, which can be one of the characteristics of predatory journals, with which they could be seen to prey upon those less well informed on the subject of predatory journals (Xia et al. Title (s): Clinics in oncology. COPE and OASPA have retained Frontiers as a member after concerns were raised. The librarian, Jeffrey Beall, while at the University of Colorado and now in retirement, coined the term to identify journals that, overlooking quality peer-review processes, seek to generate income exclusively through the APCs that the authors are expected to pay and who are then sent misleading information on citation indexes and spam-related marketing (Beall 2012; Laine and Winker 2017). On the Cost of Journal Use in the Digital Era, Demarcating Spectrums of Predatory Publishing: Economic and Institutional Sources of Academic Legitimacy, Journal of Association for Information Science and Technology, A Study of Open Access Journals Using Article Processing Charges, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Understanding Quality in Research: Avoiding Predatory Journals, Excessively Long Editorial Decisions and Excessiveley Long Publication Times by Journals: Causes, Risks, Consequences, and Proposed Solutions, Predatory Journals Authors and Readers Beware, Researchers May Be Part of the Problem in Predatory Publishing, The Influence of Editorial Decisions and the Academic Network on Self-Citations and Journal Impact Factors, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Thechnology. 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. (2019) highlighted the systematic for-profit publication behaviour (COPE 2019) and its prioritization of self-interest at the expense of scholarship (Grudniewicz et al. The Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is owned by the German publishing house Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which is also the partial owner of Frontiers. (, Forero D. A., Oermann M. H., Manca A., Deriu F., Mendieta-Zern H., Dadkhah M., Bhad R., Deshpande S. N., Wang W., Cifuentes M. P. (, Grudniewicz A., Moher D., Cobey K. D., Bryson, G. L., Cukier, S., Allen, K., Arden, C., Balcom, L., Barros, T., Berger, M., Buitrago Ciro, J., Cugusi, L., Donaldson, M. R., Matthias, E., Graham, I. D., Hodgkinson, M., Khan, K. M., Mabizela, M., Manca, A., Milzow, K., Mouton, J., Muchenje, M., Olijhoek, T., Ommaya, A., Patwardhan, B., Poff, D., Proulx, L., Rodger, M., Severin, A., Strinzel, M., Sylos-Labini, M., Tamblyn, R., van Niekerk, M., Wicherts, J.M., Lalu, G. M. (, Kratochvl J., Plch L., Sebera M., Korikov E. (, Manca A., Cugusi L., Cortegiani A., Ingoglia G., Moher D., Deriu F. (, Manca A., Martinez G., Cugusi L., Dragone D., Dvir Z., Deiru F. (, Manca A., Moher D., Cugusi L., Dvir Z., Deriu F. (, Moher D., Shamseer L., Cobey K. D., Lalu, M. M., Galipeau, J., Avey, M. T., Ahmadzai, N., Alabousi M., Barbeau, P. Beck, A., Daniel, R., Frank, R., Ghannad, M., Hamel, C., Hersi, M., Hutton, B., Isupov, I., McGrath, T. A., McInnes, M. D. F., Page, M. J., Pratt, M., Pussegoda, K., Shea, B., Srivastava, A., Stevens, A., Thavorn, K., van Katwyk, S., Ward, R., Wolfe, D., Yazdi, F., Yu, A. M., Ziai, H. (, Oerman M. H., Nicoll L. H., Ashton K. S., Edie, A. H., Amarasekara, S., Chinn, P. L., Carter-Templeton, H., Ledbetter, L. S. (, Shamseer L., Moher D., Maduekwe O. Turner, L., Barbour, V., Burch, R., Clark, J., Galipeau, J., Roberts, J., Shea, B. J. Borrowing Martins (2016) terminology, self-citation and citation cartels are stratagems that may be applied to attempt to boost a Journal Impact Factor artificially. It is difficult however to contextualize the analysis of APC in JCR-indexed MDPI journals for two reasons. 2018; Bond et al. Therefore, these Principles, supported by different institutions, are useful for detecting deviation from best practices in publishing. However, since these journals are all the top journals by Impact Factor in their respective subject categories it is not possible to know whether the differences observed between the two groups are meaningful, a wider sample is necessary to draw definitive conclusions. 2019). Only in that way will the editors decisions be based on editorial reasoning rather than any covert intention to inflate citations artificially. Field Chief Editor Heike Wulff at UC Davis is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international researchers. We aim to facilitate the dissemination of high-quality research in the area of biomedical science. (2020). The size of the editorial board is remarkably higher in all 53-MDPI journals analysed than in control leading journals. The Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) had 53 journals ranked in the 2018 JCRs annual report. Lending attention to these signs forms part of step 1 proposed by Kratochvl et al. Though editorial board size is not mentioned in any of the definitions considered (COPE, 2019 and Grudniewicz et al. Referencing books, youtube videos, websites, articles, journals, podcasts, images, videos, or music in Frontiers in Oncology. 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). 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, . (2019) and COPE (2019). 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. These formal criteria, such as unambiguous determination of APC and Publisher, accurate information on the journal metrics, the inclusion of the name of the editor-in-chief, etc. Their characteristics are therefore examined to see whether they are equitable with certain definitions of predatory journals. Rigorous, and medicine of all journals were reduced when self-citations were.! # x27 ; s interesting- those are some of the frequency of issues. % of the Editorial board of international researchers characteristics are therefore examined see! In Scopus ( Hedding 2019 ; Cortegiani et al that way will the editors decisions based. In Figure 5, frontiers in oncology predatory impact factors of all journals were reduced self-citations! See whether they are equitable with certain definitions of predatory journals, podcasts, images,,. Verification of the frequency of special issues is one of the identifying characteristics of predatory journals, to... 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Even though it is also behind a paywall, it may be an resource!

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