“Not confirmed yet but all MDPI, Frontiers & Hindawi journals planned to be erased (level 0) from Finnish academic assessment by end of 2024. Should be clear that if you’re a researcher here, a high time to stop submitting/reviewing for those journals.“
Here some things that sprung to mind when we read this.
1) It would be useful when (and if) this comes to pass that the reasons why are given. Most people will assume that it is because they are being classified as predatory journals but is that the reason? It could be that the decision makers feel that:
- The APCs are too high.
- There are too many special issues.
- Are they considered predatory journals?
- The journals are not considered predatory, but they do not feel that the journals procedures are robust enough?
- Are the journals being exploited by paper mills and the Finland authorities are worried about the reputation of those journals.
You might be aware that Wiley recently acknowledged an issue with Hindawi journals (which it had bought) as they were being targeted by paper mills. We tweeted on this. You can see the Wiley statement here.
- They could have carried out some detailed analysis on acceptance rates (for example) and decided that it does not meet what they would expect from publishers they are funding.
- They may just been err’ing on the side of caution and have doubts about these publishers and are taking the view that “the world ain’t short of scientific journals, so why not just exclude them”.
- They may feel that the publishers are more focused on the financial returns, rather than maintaining the quality and integrity of the scientific archive.
Whatever the reason, it would be useful to know…
