(since this post appeared 10 days ago it has been updated a few times which is why I am re-posting it)
Key messages
“Everybody is writing, nobody is reading, everybody is writing for nobody.”
- Academics are spending hundreds of hours a year, getting their work published, in peer-reviewed journals, providing free labor to commercial publishing companies.
- The pressure to ‘produce’ and grow is huge, both in academia and in the publishing industry; this undermines quality and the university’s ability to serve the public good and, indeed, public trust in science.
- Open access journal Sustainability publishes over 4000 contributions in its current Volume 10 – where most contributors will have to pay 1400 US Dollars* to have their work published. Its publisher MDPI has close to 200 journals working in a similar vein.’
- Sustainability has 561 associate-editors from mostly public universities all working for free for the journal.
- Of all industries, the publishing industry has the highest profit margin according to a recent article in the New Scientist.
- A transition in science is needed to restore quality, trust and a culture of co-learning, peer-to-peer feedback and dialogue, and to unlock the the power of science in creating more sustainable world.
* Sustainability just announced that the fee for having an article published in 2019 has been raised to 1700 US dollars…
Let me apologise first, for this post has turned into a bit of a rant but I had to get if off my chest. Here we go:
The open-access journal Sustainability (IF 2,025) just published Volume 10, issue 11 which contains 508 papers of which – with some, often, negotiated exceptions – the authors, provided their labor free (that is, usually sponsored by public money to cover their salaries) will have paid its publisher MDPI 1400 Swiss Francs (about 1400 US Dollar) per paper. I looked into this after being invited by the journal to edit a special issue a few weeks ago. Below I share what I found out.
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Dear Prof Wals,
We invite you to join us as Guest Editor for the open access journal Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050), to establish a Special Issue. Our suggested topic is ‘Higher Education and Education for Sustainable Development’. You have been invited based on your strong publication record in this area, and we hope to work with you to establish a collection of papers that will be of interest to scholars in the field.
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I have published in Sustainability (Impact Factor: 2,025) before and am currently also involved in co-editing a Special Issue for the same publisher, MDPI, but for another one of their journals called Water (Impact Factor: 2,069), so my initial response was positive. The invitation seemed serious and the journal seems reputable. It was not one of those almost daily invitations from a bogus journal that usually starts with: “Greetings!! We read your paper on social learning and believe you could make and excellent contribution to our forthcoming issue in Preventative Cardiological Medicine” (usually a journal on a topic I know nothing about) and ends with something like: “I hope you have good days ahead”. No, this one was serious and caught my interest.
I responded by saying that I found the proposed topic a bit outdated – there is a lot available and being done in the area of Higher Education for Sustainable Development (in fact there is an entire journal on the subject that’s been around for more than 20 years) but that I would like to focus on the role of higher education in sustainability transitions. The assistant-editor responded immediately that that would be fine and she sent me the template to fill out. I drafted a text for a Call for Papers with input from two colleagues and asked her if the text was fine. Instead of getting a reply I received a link to the Special Issue Announcement (will be removed shortly by MDPI at our request).
“Wow, that went really fast,” I thought. Then, just days later, I received an invitation from another colleague working in more or less the same field:
“We write to invite submissions of papers to a Special Issue of the Sustainability Journal focusing on “Innovation, Higher Education and Sustainable Futures” which we are editing. We think that the work you are doing in this area would make an excellent contribution to this journal.”
I was very surprised: basically, our SI would be competing with that of my colleagues which is on more on less the same topic! Why did the editors not check for overlap or connect us? I then decided to have a look at the journal’s special issue website and was shocked to find that at the moment “Sustainability” has planned about 200 (!) Special Issues for the year 2019 have a look here….
Let’s think about this. Sustainability publishes 12 issues per Volume and integrates these ‘special issues’ in one of those issues. On average each issue will have 10 articles normally, I figured naively, based on old times when publishers would actually print journals, but then I started thinking: how can they cram in all these special issue articles in the 12 issues of a volume? This became clear yesterday when I received an advertisement from MDPI announcing its ‘release’ of Sustainability’s Volume 10, Issue 11 titled: Historic Rural Landscapes: Sustainable Planning Strategies and Action Criteria. The Italian Experience in the Global and European Context.
In the email the table of contents was embedded and I started scrolling down to read some of the titles. Then something odd seemed to be happening, there was no end to the list of papers; I kept on scrolling and scrolling… How many papers are in one volume I wondered… well 508! Feel free to check this here.
So, I then checked Issue 10: 468 articles…, Issue 9: 401 articles, and noted that with every new issue the number of published papers tends to go up. On average the journal has published just over 380 articles per issue this year which will result in about 4560 articles. Now for some of the editorial papers and for some other papers, authors will get their open access fee waived. Let us assume that about 10% of all papers will have the fee of 1400 US Dollar waived. The total revenue for 2018 for this MDPI journal would be 1400 x 4100 = 5.740.000 US Dollar.
Now, figure this, MDPI publishes more than two-hundred journals varying from the Journal of Acoustics to the Journal of World Electric Vehicles, all using more or less the same business model. Here is a list of MDPI-s journals And let us not forget the other big publishers like Taylor & Francis/Routledge, Elsevier, Springer, etc. who use the same or a similar model.
Now, to be fair, I must say that scrolling down the ToC of Vol. 10 (11), I saw many intriguing titles and some very inspiring and high-quality authors: there is some good work out there and indeed it is open access – that’s what the 1400 US pays for after all… But all the journal needs to do is to invite lots of Special Issue editors (when telling this story to colleagues at an international conference, it seemed that everybody there had been asked recently to do a SI…), have a good manuscript management system with a big reviewer database and have a good website where papers can be easily downloaded, plus they need mechanisms to make sure that the impact factor of the journal goes up (that’s another blog post…). They don’t need to print anything anymore, neither do they need to do any graphic design work as nowadays people submitting need to do that themselves in accordance the journal’s instructions.
The job of the assisting editor is really one of acquisition editor: soliciting special issues and making academics responsible for gathering content, reviewing content, editing content, citing content, all for free! I would not be surprised if journals and editors receive bonuses based on growth in revenue. The whole industry is driven by targets, growth and expansion. This leads to a lot of pressure on everybody involved which undermines scientific quality. See below an example of this: “An Aberdeen University researcher resigned from a prestigious international journal after claiming she was put under pressure to do “mediocre” work.” Aberdeen researcher washes her hands off of overbearing publisher(excerpt below)
To return to the journal Sustainability… since the first version of this post appeared there has been a lot of activity on twitter with lots of comments, including the one below.
Sadly our ‘business’ of academia has been contaminated by the same modus operandi: an increase in the production of papers and number of citations and the growth of one’s ‘h-factor’ (see an older post about this here), is driving much of what we do today. Quantity over quality. Who has time to review, to read with intend and concentration, to organise a seminar or a debate? All activities for which no brownie points can be earned but essential for scientific quality.
Academics trying to stay on top of their game or trying to climb the tenure track ladder, are frantically trying to get their work published, all working for free for the private sector, paid for by, often, public money, then having to pay the journal to make the publicly funded research accessible for ‘free’ to the public. This leads to absurd performances: I know of colleagues, some with whom I have co-authored papers, who average one scientific peer-reviewed article per week, per week…
As suggested already, all this also has implications for the quality of the work of course: as people only get rewarded for their production (published papers) and not for their contributions to assuring quality (e.g. reviewing and critical reading), the quality of the review process goes down rapidly as both the people working for the publishing industry and the academic industry need to achieve their targets and show growth to remain competitive and to climb the rankings.
There is a huge unsettling paradox in contemporary academia where everybody is writing while nobody seems to be reading, really, which means that everybody is writing for nobody. This also makes me wonder: what does it mean to be cited? In the meantime, all that time we spend behind a screen making letters flow from our brains, through our hands to a computer screen, is sponsored mostly by public money, which we then move to the publishing industry, where the top management and the shareholders are all anticipating the next quarterly earnings report, good salaries and bonuses, and good returns on investments.
HERE is a trivia question for you: what is the most profitable business in the world? You might think oil, or maybe banking. You would be wrong. The answer is academic publishing. Its profit margins are vast, reportedly in the region of 40 per cent. (Source: The New Scientist)
Needless to say, this is a system that will run itself into the ground eventually. Science for impact factors in journals will need to transition towards science for impact in society. This will require that the world of higher education and academia becomes more autonomous and independent from globalising neo-liberal forces that undermine academic quality and integrity. Fortunately there are counter-movements in science seeking to disrupt this tragically resilient system such as the science-in-transition movement, the global alliance for community-engaged research and the living knowledge network (send me more examples if know of nay, I will add them here). Furthermore, mainstream universities are beginning to recognise the problem and are beginning to emphasise the importance of healthy working environments, societal impact, citizen science and knowledge co-creation. More on this in another blog post.
p.s. you may also find the Beall’s list of predatory journals and publishers an interesting resource to help you check whether a journal or publisher you are considering is legitimate (also read the cautionary note stating that this is a rather dynamic and fluid world where a list like this one needs constant updating)
Transformative learning 
Reblogged this on Beginning to End Hunger.
Thanks for this very interesting, useful and important post.
There’s one point I’d like to mention: I think the subject area of “sustainability” is hugely under-catered for — meaning, there are very few journals. There’s Sustainability Science, now Nature Sustainability … and then that’s about it, in the sense that most other journals start to have some kind of disciplinary perspective. This shortage of outlets probably contributes to the success of Sustainability.
Some ethical alternatives exist, such as Ecology & Society — but again, this is already quite specific in its focus, and not really “sustainability” as a whole. It would be nice to see a journal like Ecology & Society in the field of sustainability …
Just some thoughts! Thanks again for the thoughtful post!
MDPI is listed on Beall list of predatory since a long time. Based on China has a fake adress in Switzerland, and charges the papers in Swiss Francs (CHF), quite strange. Just check the hour they write to authors or the type of papers they send to you to review, that they have nothing related with your expertise. It is only a way to validate it, no matter how. Other apparently respected publishers have similar agressive practices, but MDPI are particular “out-of-law”, out of ethics.
I don’t think MDPI is a black and white case of being a predatory publisher. I have published once with MDPI and I can confirm that they do peer review – BUT, the peer review isn’t particularly thorough, possibly because they ask reviewers to get papers back to them in 10 days. I have declined invitations to review because I can’t review a paper that fast. So they do peer review – acceptance is not guaranteed, but it’s light peer review and I don’t think I would submit to an MDPI journal again.
Even if you’re OK with light peer review, their pricing strategy is pretty outrageous (but then again, they’re a commercial publisher, so they’re just trying to be Elsevier but with CC BY licenses). The strategy is literally build a journal with free and ultra-low cost APCs, then ramp up the price as the journal becomes embedded in the field. They’re not even coy about it – they will happily tell you this is their strategy:
I suspect the solution is to have far fewer scientists. Say 5% of the current number, with 20x more budget each (not to be sent on hiring 20x more grad students and postdocs). Then there might be time for them to read and learn from each other’s output. But since scientists are human, and enjoy things like “comfortable offices” and “having assistants” and “promotions”, this isn’t going to happen.
Dear Professor Wals,
Thanks for your very interesting post. I would like to provide MDPI’s perspective below.
Like several other MDPI journals, Sustainability is indeed growing rapidly and has been widely adopted by the scientific community. As you may know, MDPI was one of the first open access publishers and one of the few publishers that only publish open access journals. You may read MDPI’s history here: https://www.mdpi.com/about/history and our mission statement at https://www.mdpi.com/about/mission_and_values.
We aim to avoid delays and ensure that the latest research is available openly, timely so that the community can build new research (this is why we are open access and have relatively short deadlines for reviewers). We aim for manuscripts to be evaluated fairly, and not delayed because of competing interests. We also aim for manuscripts to be peer-reviewed primarily on correctness, scientific soundness, and quality rather than perceived significance or number of potential citations. However, we do not interfere with the editorial decisions of our academic editors, who ultimately decide which quality standards they want to apply to their journals.
Our model is not to sell highly priced subscriptions to libraries or manipulate the impact factor of a journal by rejecting many good articles on the basis that they will not bring enough citations (articles which will be delayed but cascaded to other journals in any case). This is unfair to researchers and science (the availability of new knowledge is delayed) and unfair to public funding (subscriptions are much costlier than open access; many valuable articles are not published and other researchers repeat the same experiments again and again).
We believe in a fair publishing system that welcomes the publication of all the articles that report properly executed experiments with sound scientific approaches and valuable conclusions, rather than only those that tell nice, attractive stories.
MDPI publishes more articles every year simply because we receive an increasing number of submissions (87,300 in 2017; 154,100 to date in 2018). We do not decrease our standards and our rejection rate has increased every year (59% in 2017, 60% in 2018).
As you will see in the links above, our APCs are fair:
https://treemaps.intact-project.org/apcdata/openapc/#publisher/
and our margins are very narrow compared to subscription/paywall publishers:
https://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science-publishing-1.12676
APCs of several journals will increase in 2019 due to costs increases. Indeed, submissions to MDPI journals have increased by 85% compared to last year, and therefore the costs associated with handling higher number of manuscripts also increase (editorial administrative support, journal management, higher numbers of rejected articles for which work is needed and reviewer rewards are provided, waivers and discounts for affiliated societies, universities, or reviewers…): https://www.mdpi.com/about/apc
To finish, I would like to highlight that the increase in the number of scholarly articles published is a global trend, apparently unrelated to open access or paywalls. Over the last ten years the publishing output every year has almost doubled, from 1.8 million articles published in 2007 to 3.35 million articles published in 2017 (these numbers do not include preprints and proceedings). Open access articles represent only a fraction (0.9 million articles in 2017) of those 3.35 million articles.
This increase in scholarly publications is inevitable and follows the trend of increased availability of information on the internet. As your post points out, researchers will need tools to assist them in aggregating and digesting this mass of information.
Best wishes,
Franck
—
Franck Vazquez, Ph.D
Chief Executive Officer, MDPI
St. Alban-Anlage 66, 4052 Basel, Switzerland
http://www.mdpi.com
—
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Franck_Vazquez
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7967-3798
Pingback: Frank Vasquez, CEO of MDPI, Responds to “Publish AND perish” Post | Transformative learning
Dear Colleagues
Adding to Franck Vazquez good observations, I would like to bring the fact that papers consideration by peers and citation related often to authors affiliation than the real content of the paper. A recent Study showed how the name of the author and his affiliation will attract readers rather than what the paper holds. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21958/do-the-authors-name-and-or-affiliation-affect-the-visibility-of-a-paper
MDPI is democratizing the publication scene and had helped developing countries contribute more to peer-reviewed science. My rejected papers in some Elsevier Journals, have been accepted in open access journal and became highly cited. Until now the rate of AFrica scicne in global publication has been around 1 % . Most science in Africa has been written by non-African because they had the resources and the right affiliation to be recognized as good scientists. Then when it comes to building a base for the global goods, the knowledge needed by developing countries are on the hands of the north with sometimes language barriers that prevent their easy access. Donors in developed countries give their money to their scientists and want to get information in countries outside their countries. These scientists use developing countries colleagues as tourist guides and data collectors with little recognition in the conceptualization and production of knowledge. This is a big ethical issue. Great papers in Nature rely on intellectual properties right from communities, local scientists that are at best acknowledged in few words at the end of the paper.
It happened to me to be a co-author and ask for the colleagues from the north to download and share the paper with me. Institutions in the south cannot afford to pay the rent of journals that overpass their annual budget. In that case I ask to myself what does predation means; is it to open the journal for free access and help publish paper regardless to affiliation and author’s origin, or is to universally collect information and privatize their dissemination. If I had the choice, I would simply choose MDPI with the condition that they give a preferential rate for countries with low economies. Those countries are not short of abilities to publish, they are short of opportunities.
I have more to say on that but tjis is just a snapshop of nature of the tension in publication that this blog and subsequent comment inspired me.
Cheikh Mbow
Executive Director
START International
1440 G Street NW
Washington, DC 20005, USA
http://www.start.org
Thanks for this great post. Have a look at the initiative Peer Community In. This is a non-profit, free and transparent peer review system for preprints. Very cool to solve some of the issues you highlight here. https://peercommunityin.org/
Thanks Lea! I’ll have a look right away.
and I also wonder how it is possible that some prof can contribute in a tons of papers in a year ( you know that there are examples with about one hundred in just one year). It sounds a Marathon… More papers, more value … and it attracts younger/beginner researchers to add the name of those prof. …
Dear Professor Wals,
Thanks for your excellent review.
Will you also review Elsevier case and its profits?
An example:
https://www.molbiolcell.org/doi/10.1091/mbc.E19-03-0147
Prof Arjen Hoekstra bravely writes that “Publishing in Elsevier journals: 40% of the “article processing charges” we researchers pay goes as profit to Elsevier shareholders”
Ref: https://mobile.twitter.com/ayhoekstra/status/1193221848596668417
Dear Professor Wals,
Thanks for your excellent review.
Will you also review Elsevier case and its profits?
An example:
https://www.molbiolcell.org/doi/10.1091/mbc.E19-03-0147
Prof Arjen Hoekstra bravely writes that “Publishing in Elsevier journals: 40% of the “article processing charges” we researchers pay goes as profit to Elsevier shareholders”
Ref: https://mobile.twitter.com/ayhoekstra/status/1193221848596668417
Sad part is that crazy some Academicians are in Rat race of publishing in such outlets. It is evident from growing number of publications. I also would like to pay some journals in Elsevier as well charge many hundreds $ in the name of submission fees which i think is again creating a glass ceiling and discrimination( who can afford versus who can’t). If it has to be a game of pure science not business driven by APC, Submission fees , open access fees etc etc..
Dear Professor Wals,
Many thanks for your interesting comments – I think we are aware of many of the problems but it is good to keep reminding people. As an EiC of a well-respected, high IF and long-standing Elsevier journal, I remember being told at an Editors Conference a decade ago that 40% of papers don’t get cited, 40% get 1-2 citations and the IF for most journals (even the most prestigious) is created by the remaining 20% in the 2-year IF period (I presume the current figures haven’t changed much). Yes, publishing is often more for the benefit of the author than the reader and we are drowning in poor and mediocre papers (especially from the predatory journals) but while we have incentive schemes in various countries that reward the number rather than the quality of papers then we are going to get ‘salami publishing’. Fortunately in the UK, the national Research Excellence Framework for many years had ignored the number of papers published by asking only for those few with the highest global importance.
Regards, stay safe, Mike Elliott (Prof., UK)