MDPI, Frontiers & Hindawi are blacklisted

MDPI, Frontiers & Hindawi are blacklisted by a university (qq.com)

On January 3rd, Zhejiang Gonggong University (浙江工商大学), a public university in Hangzhou, announced that all the journals of the three largest Open Access (OA) publishing houses were blacklisted, including Hindawi (acquired by Wiley in early 2021), MDPI founded by a Chinese businessman Lin Shukun, and Frontiers, which has become very popular in recent years. The university issued a notice stating that articles published by Hindawi, MDPI and Frontiers will not be included in research performance statistics. 

The original notice is posted below:

各学院、老师：

根据校学术委员会集体投票结果，从2023年起，出版社为Hindawi、MDPI与Frontiers的系列期刊文章均不纳入科研绩效统计。

社会科学部、科学技术部

2023年1月3日

The notice can be translated as:

Faculties and Teachers:

According to the collective vote of the Academic Committee of the University, from 2023, articles in journals published by publishers Hindawi, MDPI, and Frontiers will not be included in the research performance statistics/evaluations.

Ministry of Social Sciences, Ministry of Science and Technology

January 3, 2023

As we all know, Hindawi, MDPI and Frontier are Open Access journals, meaning that all readers can download them for free, but the authors have to pay a fee, which is not cheap. In recent years, many of the journals by these publishers have been included in the warning list by the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, even though some of their journals are included in Q1 and Q2 regions by Clarivate Analytics.

These publishers charge heavy Article Processing Charges (APC) from the authors to get their papers accepted quickly. However, because of their speed, the journals by these publishers are very popular among scholars with sufficient funds. Many early-career researchers and Ph.D. students publish papers in their journals while the APC is paid by their "wealthy" supervisors. Guest Editors of their many Special Issues are from Chinese universities which help them solicit publications for their journals. If you came across a very young guy in your friends' circle inviting you to submit a paper in his 'Special Issue,' it is probable that the journal he is partnering with belongs to one of these publishers.

One can hear a lot of news about these journals online and from colleagues. In August 2018, 10 senior editors (including the editor-in-chief) of the MDPI 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." MDPI was included on Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory open-access publishing companies in February 2014. In October 2015, Frontiers was added to his list of "Potential, possible, or probable" predatory open-access publishers. In 2010, a subset of Hindawi journals was included in a list of suspected predatory open-access publishers by Beall. Beall's list was shut down in 2017 under pressure from his employer.

In China, journals are usually blacklisted, but it is the first time a Chinese university has attempted to blacklist entire publishers. It is not known whether other universities would follow up or not. However, the reputation of the three publishers has been put at stake.

It should be noted that one can't judge the quality of a research paper based on the quality of the journal in which it has been published. Many high-quality papers have appeared on the pages of the journals by these publishers. Many doctoral students have published their essential works in journals by these publishers without knowing the long-term consequences. Finally, when you contribute to the journals of these three publishing houses, you need to think and act carefully. Ultimately, you would be judged by your performance! And your performance depends less on what you think and more on how your future employers think. So be smart. Time is money, but wasting money to get your papers accepted in the shortest possible time may not help you in the long term. 

Source of primary information: MDPI, Frontiers & Hindawi are blacklisted by a university (qq.com)

霸气！一高校将Frontiers、MDPI、Hindawi三大OA出版社旗下所有期刊纳入黑名单！(qq.com)