Information regarding dubious business practices of the publisher MDPI

The University Library was informed from internal and external side about doubts regarding the credibility of the publisher MDPI. The publisher is designed extremely towards growth and rapid publication processes. The intensively published Special Issues are considered critically as well. In contrast, in other cases the publication processes were recommended by authors.
MDPI offers a very extensive portfolio throughout many subjects. There are journals acknowledged by the respective community and frequently used and cited. However, there are obviously also journals of low standards.
A comprehensive part of the MDPI-journals is registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ.org). The DOAJ is generally been considered as whitelist for quality-assessed Open Access-journals. It is globally used for the formal assessment of funding of articles as well as for searching for Open Access-journals. About 10% of the journals listed by the DOAJ were awarded the DOAJ Seal for complying with particularly high Open Access-standards.
The index shows by a table the records of journals, which have been added or to be removed.

The TU9-Libraries have conducted a survey dealing with the perception of quality assurance processes at the most known Open Access-publishers. The final report of this study was published as EQUAP^2 Final Report. With regard to MDPI, the critical aspects mentioned were confirmed, whereas the publisher in general was not judged as “predatory”.

For this reason, we would like to recommend to carefully check the MDPI-journal selected prior to submission and, in the case of Open Access-funding, to settle the financing of the co-payment with the responsible of your cost center before.
The University Library assumes exclusively the charges mentioned in the criteria for funding up to 2.000 € gross at maximum. All co-authors should have consented to the selection of the publisher.

In case of inquiries, we are looking forward to answer them.