Talk:MDPI

This seems to be a copy of MDPI's home page

Either someone was lazy and just copied & pasted it here -- or the guys who did it did not even bother to rewrite the first person view. 92.224.200.2 (talk) 20:16, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for catching that - I reverted the edit that introduced the copied text. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 20:21, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. What about MDPI's role as an Open Access publisher? It would be nice if someone who knows them better (I heard of them the first time today) could extend the article. 92.224.200.2 (talk) 20:26, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Well that's what Wikipedia is all about! You could always be bold and start editing the article yourself. There's some tips here if you're interested. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 20:30, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

The sentence "A member of the editorial board of Life resigned in response, claiming he had never read it before it was published.[10]" is not relevant in the presented context. A paper is never offered to all the editorial board members to be read before being published. The sentence therefore is non-sense. "A member of the editorial board of Life resigned over the publication of this paper. [10]" would make more sense here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.72.137.93 (talk) 18:43, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Controversies section

The category "Controversies" was recently added to bring the publisher in disrepute. There is no element to balance the biased assumptions that the two referenced papers are "pseudo-science". The article links to non-peer-refereed sources that dismiss the two papers as pseudo-science. However, we must note here that these publications are scientific ones that passed the standard and common peer-review and external editorial control. None of these two papers was retracted and there is no formal comment from the scientific community published about this paper. There is a position statement at http://www.mdpi.com/about/controversial-articles/. The user that added this content only registered a Wikipedia account to add these questionable (if not libelous) statements. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.140.24.118 (talk) 12:29, 27 January 2014‎ (UTC)

Firstly, a IP address accusing a Wikipedia ID of "recently registered" is quite comical, isn't it? Secondly, to address your concern, all your source was from MDPI itself while mine are from third party, reputable magazines and newspapers, I guess the Wikipedia community would not have a hard time figuring which is more "neutral". Oh, and please sign your comment. --Antifrauda (talk) 06:09, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I added the default signature for him. DMacks (talk) 07:09, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

The section has now been revised further. It should be noted that the controversies created by these two papers are not controversies within the scientific community, rather mostly outside (by interest groups, popular science magazines, etc.). These are not scientific issues. The journals in question (Entropy, Life) did not receive any letters to the editors or other correspondence from scientists. We can not let science to be corrupted by personal or corporate agendas. MDPI is leaving room for publishing such hypothetical, "controversial" papers. If the general public can only misuse those papers, that is not the problem of the scientific community. You may also read a recent opinion papers on inconclusive or hypothetical findings (another publisher simply retracted a paper for no obvious reasons): http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1408106/. It is funny to see a general, non-expert public fight a war on the MDPI entry in Wikipedia. Think a little bit before you edit. Especially, if you are not a scientist and not involved in scientific research and if you have no clue about the peer-review and editorial process and how things work in the scientific communication process. A "paper" is not a proof of truth in itself and can not be simply taken as granted. Methodologies are fallible. Scientists are fallible. And of course, sometimes there is corruption or fraud. The difference is that scientists know this, and the general public does not know this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.140.24.118 (talk) 07:20, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

They are controversies within the scientific community as well. It shows problem with the "pay-to-publish" model of some open-access journals. The issue was not about science, but the horrible quality control of these supposedly "peer-reviewed" journals. I suggest you read the following articles by scientists: Retraction Watch Spam: 'We invite you to submit an article to our Open Access journal'--Antifrauda (talk) 09:27, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

MDPI journals' impact factor have been steadily climbing over the past five years. The claim that an OA publisher simply accepts more papers, incl. many junk papers, has been refuted numerous times, and does not go along with the picture of a climbing citation and scientific impact. It seems that your are not well informed and therefore disqualify as an editor for this page. There is nothing to hide about Retractions. MDPI publishes itself a list of all papers that it retracts: http://www.mdpi.com/search?article_type=retraction It is even more complete that the link provided above, and amongst academic publishers this is quite unique. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.140.24.118 (talk) 13:00, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Again, "steadily climbing" does not mean it is high or even acceptable. One can climb from 0 to 0.000001 in ten years, that is also "steadily climbing". You claim that it "has been refuted numerous times", but where are your sources? --Antifrauda (talk) 20:55, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

The claims are properly sourced with credible, independent citations. However, I seriously question why we have a single page for both organizations and not a disambiguation page. CorporateM (Talk) 18:52, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

undue?

pls see Talk:Predatory open access publishing#fringe theory? Fgnievinski (talk) 21:39, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Nobelists?

If this is true, it's notable: Nobel Prize Laureates on the Editorial Boards of MDPI Journals. How could it be fact-checked? Fgnievinski (talk) 03:21, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Contact

MDPI has always provided contact information for all offices on their website at http://www.mdpi.com/about/contact including contact information of staff in Basel and at their management team website at http://www.mdpi.com/about/team. Previously, an editor has removed the “peer-reviewed” statement. However, I see that they have published acknowledgements to their reviewers since 2013: http://www.mdpi.com/search?q=ACKNOWLEDGEMENT&article_type=editorial&year_from=2013&year_to=2015&page_count=100&sort=relevance&subjects=&journals=&article_types=&countries= MDPI has made clear that all their journals are peer-reviewed, and they are a member of OASPA, STM and adhere to the COPE guidelines as per their website: http://www.mdpi.com/about. The publisher has also published acknowledgements to reviewers since 2013, see: http://www.mdpi.com/search?q=REVIEWERS&year_from=1996&year_to=2015&page_count=100&sort=relevance&view=default — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bertie birman (talk • contribs) 04:48, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Jeffrey Beall

In Jeffrey Beall’s post about MDPI, he describes the company as “questionable” and nowhere in the post to be found are the words “predatory” or “dubious”, which is why it is more accurate to apply the wording as per the original source. Adding the comments from OASPA and MDPI’s response provides important information on this issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bertie birman (talk • contribs) 05:02, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

The whole subject of the list is "Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers"--by definition the nature of inclusion is that it is at least suspected of being predatory. Therefore the "questionable" nature is merely the extent or certainty to which it meets the inclusion criteria for that quality. DMacks (talk) 05:16, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Nobelists, again

Everymorning added a section [1] in Beall's article, about the accusation of Nobelists not being aware that they were members of the board in MDPI's journals, and the fact that the original news piece has since been corrected. Joel B. Lewis reverted the addition, saying that "the MDPI stuff seems very tangential in an article about Beall"; rightly so. Which brings us here. I've taken Everymorning's original edit and added more direct quotations to minimize interpretations and added a few more sources; please see the draft below. Let me know if you have any contentions, otherwise it'll go as a subsection of MDPI#Inclusion in Beall's list. Thanks. Fgnievinski (talk) 04:06, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Nobelists

Among the reasons Beall gave for adding MDPI to his list of questionable publishers was that the company "...claims that several Nobel Laureates serve on its editorial boards, but one investigation found that they didn’t realize they were listed." As evidence for this particular accusation, Beall pointed to a news story run by eCampus News. The original reporter later issued a correction and the newspiece was modified and appended with the following notice:

An earlier version of this article stated that Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Mario Capecchi was not aware he was listed as a member of the editorial board for the MDPI journal Biomolecules. At the time, Capecchi’s assistant, Lorene Stitzer, told eCampus News that “he was not aware of the fact that he had been included on the listing.” After being contacted by MDPI, Stitzer now says Capecchi is in fact aware of being an honorary board member. eCampus News regrets the error.

With regard to Beall's accusation about Nobel laureate Mario Capecchi not being aware that he was on the editorial board of the journal Biomolecules, MDPI posted a response stating that "the Editor-in-Chief of Biomolecules obtained a written confirmation from Professor Cappechi that he was indeed aware of his membership"; copies of such correspondence have been posted as well. MDPI's co-founder Dietrich Rordorf has compiled and posted emails claiming to document the acceptance by the following Nobelists as members of the board: Robert F. Curl, Richard R. Ernst, Jerome Karle, Harold Kroto, Yuan-Tseh Lee, Rudolph A. Marcus, Eric S. Maskin, Steven Weinberg, and Kurt Wüthrich.

The uncorrected story has been picked up other media outlets, such as Veja, the leading weekly news magazine in Brazil.

MDPI "meets the sheep criteria" – says the wolves' Sheep Association

"The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association(OASPA) concluded an investigation in April 2014 stating that MDPI meets the OASPA Membership Criteria"

Why is this relevant in the introduction? Are anyone even contesting that they meet the membership criteria of that particular association? (And does anyone really care?) Otherwise it is a classic strawman argument.

The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association consists, at least in part, of questionable publishers themselves, who are not at all involved in open access publishing in the proper sense of the term, but rather in MDPI-style abuse for commercial purposes of the term and publishing practices reminiscent of classic vanity presses (a publisher that demands that its authors pay to publish is a vanity press by definition and it's the very opposite of the core idea of open access). The fact that a predatory/questionable publisher "meets the membership criteria" of the predatory/questionable publishers' own organisation is as relevant as when the wolves in sheep's clothing's Sheep Association determines that a wolf "meets the sheep criteria."

I am quite sure that the "membership criteria" are fairly technical and not that difficult to meet for a cunning predatory publisher like MDPI, and the prominence given to the insistence that MDPI meets those criteria, in itself a trivial point that few if any dispute, is rather strange. Bjerrebæk (talk) 05:47, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

• Things are a bit more complicated than that, I think. If you look at the membership list of OASPA that WP is hosting for them in our article, you'll see that all large and respected OA publishers (BMC, PLOS, Hindawi, etc), as well as large well-established subscription publishers starting to move into OA (Springer, Elsevier, BMJ, etc) are part of this organization. Of course, there's also MDPI, which is on Beall's list of predatory publishers (and Copernicus, which is on Beall's list of fake ranking services), but OASPA did take action against publishers of journals that fell for the Science sting. So they may not be ideal, but they do have some criteria and do try to maintain them. The reason this is mentioned in the lead is because we also have in the lead the statement that MDPI is on Beall's list.

Now you have added a large quote from a German linguist to the article. I don't think that is justified, for several reasons. 1/ This is an opinion piece, not a peer-reviewed article. 2/ While Haspelmath is a respected linguist, he is not, to the best of my knowledge, an expert on academic publishing (like Beall is, for example). (Ironically, he published his plea for non-profit publishing in a Frontiers journal. This is the outfit that used the freely donated time and effort -and author fees- of literally thousands of scientists to set up a stable of journals, railing against the "traditional publishers". Then, no sooner did they have success and were becoming profitable, they sold out to NPG...). 3/ I think Haspelmath's quote is WP:UNDUE, because he is not specifically talking about MDPI, but just mentions them in-passing as an example. In short, I think that MDPI is a borderline case of a predatory publisher. I think they clearly fall on the wrong side of the borderline, but they certainly aren't as bad as SCIRP or OMICS. Our article reflects that, with extensive coverage of the inclusion of MDPI on Beall's list and coverage of controversial articles published by them (as an aside, I think that the quote from Beall in that section should also go). --Randykitty (talk) 08:50, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

MDPI interviewed

It has attracted some attention on twitter and blogsphere: [2]. Fgnievinski (talk) 01:38, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Beall's list

While there is no question that the controversy around the inclusion of MDPI on Beall's list needs to be covered here, I am less sure that we need to add that controversy to all articles on every journal that they publish (as was recently done with Entropy (journal). Any opinions? --Randykitty (talk) 18:56, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Is there any evidence that Entropy (journal) is notable? None of the references constitute third-party coverage of the journal. To actually answer your question, though: no, it seems not to the point unless the journal is specifically mentioned in that context in some source. (We certainly don't put links to the Elsevier journal-buying scandal in the article Journal of Combinatorial Theory.) --JBL (talk) 19:19, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that the controversy is to be mentioned on every journal (assuming, echoing Joe B. Lewis) that the journal is notable. However should the negative report which tends to affect many open-source journals be mentioned, we ought to reflect denial if any, for balance. Further, it seems to me that over time, with the stellar success of Plos-One open source is becoming very accepted in my discipline, applied mathematics. Finally, many good journals have had very humble origins, and we should perhaps use impact factor as an measure/ guide for both notability and respectability. Limit-theorem (talk) 21:58, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

I edit in the GMO field and Entropy published an absolutely ridiculous article about health effects of glyphosate that was rejected at WT:MEDRS - discussion here: Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)/Archive_7#Review_of_Monsanto.27s_Roundup_herbicide and if you to see how bad it is, the article is here. She also published a paper in Entropy claiming that acetaminophen is causing autism - see discussion at Science Based Medicine here, which also discusses a followup paper she published elsewhere on the Horrors of Glyphosate. Yes, the predatory thing belongs at Entropy. Jytdog (talk) 00:00, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

• Comment Two remarks: @Joel B. Lewis:: yes, Entropy is notable. It is indexed in selective databases as required by WP:NJournals. @Jytdog:, thing is, the reference is about MDPI but does not even mention Entropy. Are there any good references about those two (indeed rather silly) articles you mention? If so, it might be better to discuss the cases of those articles in the Entropy article, rather than the listing of MDPI by Beall. (What did those articles in that journal anyway? Although it has an extremely broad scope, this seems to be beyond "entropy" or "information science"...) --Randykitty (talk) 09:20, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't know how problematic other MDPI journals are, so cannot comment on the breadth of the issue. I had added content to the Entropy article its scope that included discussion of "special issues" that provided context for the special issue where Seneff had seven articles... but it was later deleted in this dif and this one, the latter by you. I don't edit content about journals much so didn't fuss over it and that dif was not my best editing anyway. Jytdog (talk) 14:13, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

The problem with those edits was the sourcing. It's not sufficient to find a reference that someone is a linguist and then say something about his opinion about vaccinations, insinuating that he's talking about things he has no clue about. While I actually completely agree with that, we cannot write it, unless we have a more reliable source than our opinions... --Randykitty (talk) 17:07, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Consensus?

About "While there is no question that the controversy around the inclusion of MDPI on Beall's list needs to be covered here, I am less sure that we need to add that controversy to all articles on every journal that they publish"? This issue is creeping up in a few journals (Algorithms and Int. J. Environ. Res. Publ. Health.); I think we should be consistent across Category:MDPI academic journals. Fgnievinski (talk) 05:13, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

I think that we absolutely should briefly mention the controversy on every article published by a publisher on Beall's list. To do otherwise risks giving Wikipedia's imprimatur to questionable journals and leading astray younger researchers who don't know better and look to Wikipedia for answers. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:51, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm OK with that, provided it's not one-sided; in Entropy it converged to the following statement: Fgnievinski (talk) 19:57, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

MDPI is considered a predatory open access publishing company publishing journals of dubious quality by Jeffrey Beall and is not considered a predatory publisher by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association.

Some such balanced statement seems like the right solution to me, although I'm a little dubious about the specific wording. The OASPA source you link does not actually say that MDPI is not predatory; what they say is that it satisfies the OASPA Membership Criteria. It definitely supports the integrity of MDPI but with a slightly different actual meaning. (Also, I would use "but" instead of "and" to more clearly set off the disagreement between Beall and OASPA. How about this version? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:18, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

"Integrity" was too strong a word, so I tried to use OASPA's own words as much as possible; also trimmed repeating "OA" in the pro and con statements, and included a link to MDPI#Inclusion in Beall's list. Assuming that's OK, it should be copied over to the other journals. Fgnievinski (talk) 21:42, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Other than the bare-url reference (fixed now) it looks ok to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:27, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

I'll wait for further comments for a week or so before starting deploying it in all journal articles. Fgnievinski (talk) 02:34, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

this is not OK me: "which has been accused of being a predatory publisher by Jeffrey Beall[1] but whose status as a genuine publisher has been investigated and vouched for by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association." Neutral, like "MDPI is considered a predatory open access publishing company by Jeffrey Beall[1]; the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association subsequently found that it met their membership criteria.[2]" Jytdog (talk) 03:49, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm not going to fuss over the word "but", although I'll insist on a wikilink to MDPI#Inclusion in Beall's list instead of, or in addition to, predatory publisher. How about this version: "MDPI is considered a predatory publisher by Jeffrey Beall; subsequent investigation by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association found that MDPI continued to meet its membership criteria. The main problem with this version, though, is that it doesn't do justice to explaining what OASPA membership entails -- see [3]. Ideas? Fgnievinski (talk) 05:00, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Since you did it again after my previous comment about it: please see {{link rot}}. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:53, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: Sorry about that, here it is fixed now: "MDPI is considered a predatory publisher by Jeffrey Beall; subsequent investigation by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association endorsed MDPI according to its membership criteria. As there's no section OASPA#Membership criteria or OASPA#Code of Conduct, I've linked to OASPA#Members -- I guess that's better than leaving the "criteria" up in the air. I also re-read OASPA's conclusion more closely ("we feel satisfied that MDPI continue to meet the OASPA Membership Criteria"), and reconsidered what you said before ("It definitely supports the integrity of MDPI ... [the need to] more clearly set off the disagreement between Beall and OASPA"), based on which I've carefully inserted the word "endorsed"; I hope that's not undue weight. Fgnievinski (talk) 17:48, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Deployed

I've deployed the text above in all MDPI journals. fgnievinski (talk) 02:14, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

References

References

Edits regarding recent Beall post

Hello, regarding MDPI page, I am trying to include an important updated information on the issue of their questionable actions that was recently released in a reliable source (Beall's blog), but Joel B. Lewis keep removing it. Isn't this info relevant to the topic? Should it be included in different words? Please advise — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.22.217.71 (talk) 22:21, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry for not writing a note earlier. The lead of an article should summarize its contents. Consequently, not every single post Beall has written about MDPI belongs in the lead section, and certainly not if it is about something that does not appear in the body. I suggest that you add your paragraph at an appropriate place somewhere in the body of the article. (Though to be honest, "someone wrote me an e-mail and here it is" is not a very compelling critical analysis -- Beall's work on this topic runs the gamut from excellent to ridiculous, and this particular post seems to me not at the best end.) --JBL (talk) 22:46, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I will include the info, which seems very relevant (as it exposes how these kind of publishers work) in the Section: Inclusion in Beall's list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.22.217.71 (talk) 22:58, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

• As I told you on my talk page, your text is very tendentious and not neutrally worded and encyclopedic. Before it becomes acceptable anywhere in the article, you will have to re-write it. --Randykitty (talk) 08:39, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

46.140.24.118's edits

The IP address 46.140.24.118, which belongs to MDPI, now wants to add an ad hominem attack on Beall, sourced to e.g. a Youtube video, in an apparent attempt to deflect from his criticism. Whether Beall is "an opponent of the open access movement" is irrelevant in the introduction of the article on MDPI (i.e. completely off topic), because Beall's criticism of MDPI, cited in the article, is a criticism of specific predatory publishing practices, and not at all a general critique of "the open access movement" (which I myself am a supporter of, for the record). It is also a dishonest and WP:POV attempt to claim that there is an "open access movement" that a disreputable and predatory publisher like MDPI is part of, and that all criticism of predatory publishing is automatically an attack on "the open access movement" regardless of its actual merits. Beall's general views on publishing practices and other topics, that are not specifically related to MDPI, belong in his biography, not here. Bjerrebæk (talk) 13:41, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Response to User Bjerrebæk from MDPI

To User Bjerrebæk: You have reversed edits made by MDPI on the company’s wikipedia page and have a history of adding only negative information about MDPI. What is your conflict of interest and how come you only edit about us and not other open access publishers?

As for Mr. Beall's opposition to open access, this is absolutely relevant to his criticism of MDPI and an important fact for readers to understand as long as the lead states that MDPI is "considered a predatory publisher", please *read* the following two articles: http://www.aaup.org/article/what-open-access-movement-doesn’t-want-you-know http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525

Also, you are referring to comments on a Wordpress blog by an anonymous "Guest Editor" and imply this is a reliable source. Please read here what our Guest Editors say - all of which are named (i.e.. can be contacted to verify their experience): http://www.mdpi.com/editors/testimonials If you want to claim that we send spam e-mails, then please provide evidence, not just anonymous comments on the blog of a person who is strongly opposed to open access. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.140.24.118 (talk) 09:31, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Adjustments following removal of MDPI from Beall's list

Updates made to the lead of the page, as MDPI was removed from Jeffrey Beall's list of "predatory publishers" following a successful appeal. Also updated information about journal coverage in ESCI (http://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/766) 46.140.24.118 (talk) 13:20, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Bravo!

As someone who has just had an article published by an MDPI journal ( http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/4/3/75 ) and who had to go through a rigorous review process, and also as someone who has been in direct email contact with Jeffrey Beall to learn of MDPI's removal from his list, I applaud the effort to remove the Beall reference from the intro to the MDPI article, from whence it cast an unfair shadow over the entire contents. (See the user: dsimic talk page for more background.) Synchronist (talk) 05:16, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

• For more about the "rigorous peer-review" at MDPI journals, see here. --Randykitty (talk) 09:14, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

MDPI is not a classical predator as most of its staff maintain intimate ties with paid-up members of the academic community --- if not always the most morally upstanding ones, like chemistry-hod's at leading UK universities. I could name names, but I won't! So its "best" journals are best compared to those minor Springer or Elsevier entities that will never live down the low-q stuff they published in their start-up phase. MDPI's worst journals, and we might think of ENTROPY here, are just a straight-up garbage cans for crackpot nonsense.137.205.183.31 (talk) 15:00, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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Recent edits

Dear Wikipedians,

The recent edits by Bjerrebæk to MDPI's introduction section misrepresent the facts. After leaving a comment on Bjerrebæk Talk page last week, I did not receive a response.

1. As an employee of the company, I regularly talk to our authors, editors, reviewers, and librarians - I can assure you that the controversy surrounding Mr. Beall's temporary inclusion of MDPI on his list is not what MDPI is known for. The following sentence is misleading and without reference: "MDPI is especially known for the controversy surrounding its inclusion on Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory open access publishing companies".

2. MDPI was removed from Mr. Beall's list in October 2015, well before Mr. Beall took down his list in 2017. Why would MDPI pressure Mr. Beall to take down his list after MDPI was removed from the list? I can confirm that the company did write a letter to the university late 2015 to point out the incorrect information about MDPI on the blog of Mr. Beall. However, we did not contact the UC Denver repeatedly or "pressure" the university to get Mr. Beall's list taken down. The comments made by Mr. Beall in /Biochemia Medica/ can be moved to the section "Inclusion in Beall's list", as this is where this subject is discussed.

3. The information on MDPI's office locations is incomplete. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.202.7.117 (talk) 07:17, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree that the lead was biased. Thank you for your edits. --Ita140188 (talk) 07:25, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

You work for, or on behalf of, a journal. You should be extremely aware of conflict of interest. Read WP:PAID and WP:COI and please do not directly edit this article again. Jytdog (talk) 07:30, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Apologies, I should have first posted onto the talk page and wait for the editors to make the changes - will not happen again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.202.7.117 (talk) 07:40, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

To be fair, the COI was mentioned in the edit summary, and I think the edit was legit. --Ita140188 (talk) 09:52, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

I said the behavior was half-correct. It also violated the letter and spirit of PAID and COI which made it corrupt. Unintentionally so, but so. And appropriately apologized for. Would you like to spend more time defending corruption that even the one who did it has now acknowledged and apologized for, or would you like to discuss content? Jytdog (talk) 18:04, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Corruption in this context seems like an overstatement. Anyway, about the content, I think the user is right, even though he/she has an interest in the subject. Saying in the lead that MDPI is mainly known for being added to Beall's list is obviously not true, and the cited references do not support this statement.--Ita140188 (talk) 01:31, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

If you think it is OK for an employee of company X to come to Wikipedia and directly remove negative content from the article about company X then you are way, way out of touch with the mainstream editing community consensus. should not directly edit is as about as close to "must not" as the community gets, and it only does "must not" for things like OUTING.

And the refs do support it; i am unaware of any independent sources that discuss MDPI and do not mention this. . Jytdog (talk) 03:05, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree that what has been done is not correct, but I think the real problem in Wikipedia are anonymous editors that have an interest in a subject without disclosing it. At least in this case the user disclosed its conflict of interest and did not remove any of the criticism in the body of the article. Treating all these cases in the same way would be another reason for people to hide their COI and make our job even more difficult. Regarding the article, I think it would be better to mention the controversy in the lead in a more neutral way, instead of saying that it is the main thing the company is known for. --Ita140188 (talk) 06:37, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Copied from my talk page: Ita140188 made the same complaints about bias there as they have here, and asked me "Do you think MDPI is known mainly because of the fact it was once included in Beall's list?" Then, when I answered, they pointed me here instead of actually responding to my answer. So, to keep the discussion centralized, here is my response:

I think it is mainly known as a publisher of dubious repute. Whether you want to interpret that as because of Beall's list or via other sources such as [4] or [5] or [6] is up to you, but removing it and making them out to be spotless and pure exemplars of academic publishing would be dishonest. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:44, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Dear all, I declared the COI in the edits but should have just added comments to the Talk page and let the editors assess and decide. I am now familiar with the PAID and COI rules. I would like to add to the conversation and bring forward some points, for your consideration:

1. MDPI has over 220 universities and societies participating in its open access program (http://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap). I personally have been in contact with many of the librarians as part of the program. How could the program find such broad support if MDPI was deemed "predatory” or known for “controversy”?

2. MDPI is participating in Knowledge Unlatched (KU) crowd-funding initiative and we from the nine journals we put forward, all nine were accepted for funding by KU, see: http://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1023

Why would KU accept MDPI's journals if we were not concern about quality?

3. Many of MDPI's journals are ranked in Q2/Q1 in JCR, with the majority of journal IFs increasing compared to the previous year, see: http://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1021

If we were not adhering to quality standards, how could these (relatively young) journals be in this position?

The article in Poynder's blog was written before MDPI was removed from Mr. Beall's list in October 2015. The removal was a consequence of MDPI demonstrating that it did not violate any of the criteria set forth by Mr. Beall for so-called "predatory publishers". Why would we pressure Mr. Beall to take down his list after MDPI was removed? As mentioned already further above: I can confirm that we did write a letter to the university soon after Mr. Beall added MDPI to his list to point out incorrect information in the blog of Mr. Beall. However, MDPI staff did not contact the UC Denver repeatedly or "pressure" the university to get Mr. Beall's list taken down.

I would ask you to assess these points and to consider moving the information on Mr. Beall into the section "Inclusion in Beall's list", as this is where this subject is discussed. Also, the office information in the introduction section is incomplete (see: http://www.mdpi.com/about/contact).ErskineCer (talk) 07:11, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not MDPI's website. It is not relevant that Wikipedia doesn't provide complete contact information - that is what your website is for. Please read WP:PROMO. Please also stop asking rhetorical questions. Their answers have nothing to do with how we determine content. Please be aware that we prefer to base WP content on independent sources. Presenting links to the MDPI's website is not going to be productive (again, this is not an extension of MDPI's website, again as we remind people in the PROMO policy, which is part of the NOT policy. That policy exists because many people mistake Wikipedia for many different things.) Jytdog (talk) 13:10, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Dear Jytdog, the objective of sharing the links is to provide additional information, not for addition to Wikipedia. I just hope the additional information will aid editors in assessing if MDPI is indeed "especially known for the controversy surrounding its inclusion on Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory open access publishing companies". This claim is very harsh and I strongly believe it to be factually incorrect. Of course, I understand that you need to treat my comments with suspicion, due to the COI. However, I will trust the process and ask that there is a fair and objective assessment.

Some links then to external sources (again, these are just for your information as the links I added earlier were not to external sources):

Many institutions that signed-up to our open access program added information on their website, just a few examples: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/library/services/researchsupport/openaccess/oamemberships/, http://www.ub.unibas.ch/ub-hauptbibliothek/dienstleistungen/publizieren/publikationsrabatte/, http://www.library.ethz.ch/en/ms/Open-Access-at-ETH-Zurich/Publishing-in-open-access-journals/Publishing-in-open-access-journals-Funding

The KU 2017 select list can be downloaded here: http://knowledgeunlatched.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/KU_Select_2017_Titles_In_Pledging.xlsx. The MDPI journals are in the Excel file under the "Journals" tab . More information at: http://knowledgeunlatched.org/ku-select-2017/

JCR information requires access to Web of Science. However, CiteScore data is available here: https://www.scopus.com/sources?sortField=metric&metricName=&sortDirection=ASC&offset=&displayAll=true&sortPerformedState=f&origin=sourceSearch&sortDirectionMOne=&sortDirectionMTwo=&sortDirectionMThree=&metricDisplayIndex=1&scint=1&menu=search&tablin=&searchWithinResultsDefault=t&searchString=&searchOA=&typeFilter=d_j_p_k&subscriptionFilter=s_u&filterActTriggered=f&tabName=searchSources&searchTerms=MDPI&searchTermsSubmit=&searchType=publisherErskineCer (talk) 14:08, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Please review the guidance for conflicted editors at WP:PAYTALK and do not abuse your editing privileges by providing links "for our information" that are not useable in the article. This page is only for discussing improvements to the article. Jytdog (talk) 17:06, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

I understand from your (ErskineCer's) response that MDPI wants to be seen as a legitimate publisher and that it is very aggressive in pushing that point of view. However, given that some complaints about its behavior are as recent as 2015 e.g., I think Sallust's description of Cato is apropos. I would be more impressed by a publisher that accepted that its past behavior was problematic, did not try to hide it, and stated clear steps that it would perform to change its ways, than by a publisher that tries to pretend that it all never happened. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:38, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Of course we improved our processes -- also as a result of feedback & criticism from the scholarly community. There is a reason why Mr. Beall removed MDPI from his list in late 2015. As it stands, the information in the introduction section is factually incorrect.ErskineCer (talk) 22:29, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

In 2017, Beall wrote [7]: "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." This does not sound like exemplary behavior for a publisher. So, have you stopped haranguing people about your poor reputation, or is that still an accurate description of your misbehavior? If you have stopped, why are you still doing it here? Or if you have not stopped, why should we believe that you have reformed all your other problematic behaviors, leaving only this one unreformed? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:09, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Dear David, my comments on the Talk page are made to point out misinformation and suggest improvements to the article -- I made the COI clear and other editors may review & decide. My objective is definitely not to "harangue" people.ErskineCer (talk) 07:50, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

I do agree with David Eppstein that MDPI is mainly known as a "publisher of dubious repute" (with the Beall's list controversy being a major part of that), and I think the sentence is supported by the sources. However, I (as the original author of that sentence) don't insist on the wording "MDPI is especially known for the controversy..." It could be changed to e.g. "MDPI was the focus of a controversy..." or something like that, which wouldn't change the meaning that much. I do believe the controversy should be mentioned in the lead section, because it has been extensively discussed/covered in third party sources, and for many people, it's the reason they have heard about MDPI in the first place. Also, the Beall's list controversy currently has a relatively lengthy section in the body of the article, and per WP:LEAD, the lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic. It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies. --Bjerrebæk (talk) 22:42, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Bjerrebæk, as it stands, the lead is inconsistent with the information given in the article on Jeffrey Beall, where "pressure from the University of Colorado" is mentioned as the reason for his decision to remove the content on www.scholarlyoa.com, and not the "harassment" from MDPI. As mentioned further above, we did write a letter in 2014 to the UC Denver to point out the misleading information in Mr. Beall's blog. The removal from the list in 2015 was due to the fact that MDPI did not breach any of the criteria set forth by Jeffrey Beall for so-called "predatory publishers" (https://web.archive.org/web/20170105195017/https://scholarlyoa.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/criteria-2015.pdf). If this controversy is to be discussed objectively in the lead, then the reason for removal, together with the fact that Jeffrey Beall's blog itself is considered controversial, should be mentioned there as well (https://www.nature.com/news/controversial-website-that-lists-predatory-publishers-shuts-down-1.21328). By the same token (as you quoted WP:LEAD), it would make sense for the lead of the article on Jeffrey Beall to mention the controversy surrounding his blog, with reference to "Nature News". — Preceding unsigned comment added by ErskineCer (talk • contribs) 15:26, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

ErskineCer please do see WP:PAYTALK. We all get it that you are paid to come here and lobby for MDPI. We are volunteers. Coming here and hammering us with the same arguments is a) going to get you precisely no where; and b) get you indefinitely blocked from WP per WP:NOTHERE. What drives WP content are independent reliable sources. Period. NOT your lobbying. So:

• please bring independent reliable sources that show that MDPI is not known for being controversial with respect to Bealls list and the bad quality articles that it published, or
• please bring independent reliable sources that show that MDPI is known for something else, or
• please WP:DROPTHESTICK.

- Jytdog (talk) 15:58, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

This article is about MDPI, not about what should be included in Beall's article (WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS). --Bjerrebæk (talk) 16:13, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Dear Jytdog,

for other sources, Publons recently made a specific comment about MDPI: "Our filters show this open access publisher is a vetted and valued partner of ours, that allows both signed and published reviews." See: https://publons.com/blog/bealls-list-gone-but-not-lost/

Our journals ranking and review counts on Publons can be viewed here: https://publons.com/journal/?order_by=reviews

You may, as alternative, also refer to journal rankings at: https://www.qoam.eu/journals

As JCR is not available openly, you may refer to CiteScore and select "MDPI Open Access Publishing" in the field "Publishers" to view the CiteScore of MDPI's journals: https://journalmetrics.scopus.com/

Here a small sample of sources where universities that announced their participation in our open access program:

https://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/oaw/2016/08/29/ut-austin-joins-mdpi/

http://blogs.sun.ac.za/sunscholar/2017/01/31/stellenbosch-university-joins-mdpi-multidisciplinary-digital-publishing-institute-institutional-membership-programme/

http://www.ub.tu-berlin.de/en/news/news/detail/1039/

http://blog.bibliothek.kit.edu/kit_bib_news/index.php/2014/02/24/kit-bibliothek-ab-marz-2014-mitglied-bei-open-access-verlag-mdpi/

To improving the article, I would propose the issue about Beall's list be discussed in the section "Inclusion in Beall's list" rather than in the lead. If you believe strongly that the topic should be covered in the lead, the sentence "Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory open access publishing companies" should read "Jeffrey Beall's controversial list of predatory open access publishing companies", referring to the following sources that make clear his list is seen as controversial:

https://www.nature.com/news/controversial-website-that-lists-predatory-publishers-shuts-down-1.21328

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/mystery-controversial-list-predatory-publishers-disappears

http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/617/574ErskineCer (talk) 15:37, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

• Beall's list is extremely controversial... At least according to predatory publishers and their ilk. The great majority of respectable sources treat Beall's list as... respectable. Read the sources and you'll see that OMICS and such fight Beall's list hand and tooth, that's the only reason that Nature and others call it "controversial".. As for Publons, of course they say nice things about their clients, that doesn't mean squat. And, of course, a librarian that just signed a contract with a publisher will never say: "I just spent a pile of library money to sign a contract with this shady low-quality publisher"... --Randykitty (talk) 17:42, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

I think this view is wrong: Beall's list is genuinely controversial, and plenty of legitimate academics interested in open access think that it's problematic in various ways. These legitimate concerns are muddied by commercial interests, but it doesn't mean the concerns aren't real. That Beall has taken some really off-the-wall positions in his writing about open access doesn't help, either. --JBL (talk) 18:58, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Beall's list isn't considered particularly controversial by most respectable sources. While some people have stated their belief that such a list should ideally be maintained by an organization or committee or something, it doesn't really make Beall's list "controversial" and the reality is that few people or organizations are actually interested in assuming that responsibility. Additionally, on a few occasions Beall has made some minor comments, clearly in a personal capacity, that seemed critical about open access in general, but these comments weren't part of Beall's list or his definition of predatory publishing, and there is no evidence they are related. --Bjerrebæk (talk) 03:00, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Randykitty, there are indeed "publishers" out there with very poor practices -- unfortunately, their actions have a (disproportionately) negative influence on the reputation of open access in general. I count OMICS to that group. In the past, they made repeated attempts to contact the Editors-in-Chief of our journals to inquire if they could "collaborate". Their messages contained sentences like "[we] assure you that this proposal would milk enormous mutual benefits in future"(!). They muddy the waters and the mud rubs off on others. However, you will find that OMICS - and other "publishers" like them - are not members of the leading publishing associations and their content is not accepted by established indexing databases (no OMICS journal is covered in Web of Science/JCR, Scopus, DOAJ etc.). ErskineCer (talk) 07:46, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Regarding recent edits to second lead paragraph referencing Beall's list, the re-editing of this paragraph is being misrepresentative of the degree to which MDPI is held to his accord. My recent edits are misrepresentation of facts, as Beall is well known to be an outspoken critic of OA and he himself stated in the Biomedica paper that he has been pressured by the UC Denver to remove his list: “In January 2017, facing intense pressure from my employer, the University of Colorado Denver, and fearing for my job, I shut down the blog and removed all its content from the blog platform” as found at http://www.biochemia-medica.com/2017/27/273. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tconnn (talk • contribs) 14:10, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

User:Tconnn. When you make contentious claims about living people anywhere in Wikipedia, you must provide a source (a reliable source as we define that, not "some blog"). Please provide a reliable source that Beall is an "outspoken critic of OA" generally, as you say there, or strike it. Take this very seriously as I will see that you are indefinitely blocked if you do not comply with the requirements of BLP and the discretionary sanctions. It is clear you are passionate about OA but exactly because of passions like that, and because WP is open and people come here with passion, we are very strict about this. Jytdog (talk) 16:35, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Very simple: http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514 ... there is a reason why the UC Denver asked him to stop. 62.202.7.117 (talk) 16:43, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

That is about the open access movement, not open access per se. And he is definitely a critic of the OA movement. That is not what the content says. Jytdog (talk) 16:47, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

User Tconn made valid edits by adding that Beall is a critic of the open access publishing movement. As to the take-down of the Beall's list: the article portrays that MDPI played a major role, but Beall himself stated in the Biochemia article he was pressured by his employer, the UC Denver, to remove the list. What is your argument to persistently reverse these edits?62.202.7.117 (talk) 17:14, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Journal edits

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Hello all. This edit was the end result of five edits [8]. Looking back, this inadvertently gave one of MDPI's "160 journals" UNDUE prominence in the article. I didn't realize this until I was reverted here: [9]. The rationale for reversion makes sense to me. My motivation for placing this in the article was the creation of a redirect by Headbomb to the MDPI page with this journal's title [10].

My intention was to be helpful by adding a section title to the redirect [11] and by creating a section in the article - as shown by my first diff in the paragraph [12]. I figured if the redirect was going to this page then there should be some information. The publisher's reputation didn't occur to me at the time. I haven't worked in the Academic Journals area for awhile. Anyway, all's well that ends well. Thanks. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 21:42, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

I stumbled upon MDPI via WP:JCW/TAR, which (because of a bot bug) listed Cells as a variant of Cell. I then noticed this was the case for several journals Genes as a variant of Gene, which basically shows that MDPI systematically pluralizes established journals to sneak in unnoticed if people don't pay extra close attention. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:57, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I figured out what was happening with "Cell (journal)" and MDPI's "Cells" by looking at your edits surrounding these. Definitely a good call on your part. I just wasn't thinking about the controversy surrounding MDPI. And, I didn't realize this was happening with other journals. Also, I didn't realize the nefarious nature behind MDPI's actions how nefarious MDPI was acting by naming its journals to closely mimic the names of reputable journals. Headbomb should get the Sherlock Holmes award (if there was one) for excellent sleuthing. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 22:07, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

The first MDPI journal /Molecules/, which was launched in collaboration with Springer, set somewhat of a reference point for future titles such as /Nutrients/, /Sensors/, /Viruses/, /Materials/, etc. which are all single words (in the plural form). I think the intelligence of scholars is underestimated here: /Cells/ is easily distinguishable from /Cell/. Not only in terms the the editorial boards, the publishing model, the format of the journal, the Impact Factor, the volume of content published etc. But also from looking into JCR, you will find a number of journals that share similar titles, but which are clearly distinguishable for scholars:

GENETICA (Springer), https://link.springer.com/journal/10709

GENETICS (Genetics Society of America), http://www.genetics.org

CITY (T&F), http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ccit20/current

CITIES (Elsevier), https://www.journals.elsevier.com/cities

Journal of Cultural Economics (Springer), http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10824

Journal of Cultural Economy (T&F), http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjce20/current

VIROLOGY (Elsevier), https://www.journals.elsevier.com/virology

VIROLOGIE (John Libbey), http://www.jle.com/en/revues/vir/revue.phtmlErskineCer (talk) 12:36, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Two different topics on this page

Hello Wikipedians,

This page includes two separate topics that share the acronym MDPI: Molecular Diversity Preservation International and Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.

I see later in the article that they are linked, but at the outset this is very confusing. Perhaps the introduction should explain the connection.

-Chipotle (talk) 20:10, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

• I just saw this too. No, these should be split in two different articles. I'll do it now. --Lquilter (talk) 13:06, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
• On second thought, seeing that the organizations are closely related, I think it's better to keep them together, but just clarify the lede. I've done that. Should the original organization continue, and the two develop more of a separate identity, then it would be appropriate to separate them. But right now, it seems that there is sufficient continuity and connections between the two that they constitute one topic. --Lquilter (talk) 13:23, 3 November 2017 (UTC)