[ABE-L] Fwd: Revistas predatórias

[Francisco Cribari]

FONTE: https://twitter.com/PaoloCrosetto/status/1638526088908353537

TRANSCREVO PARTES:

"Web of Science just removed the MDPI flagship journal IJERPH from their
lists. This means IJERPH has no more an Impact Factor.

Why is this big? What are the implications?

First, the facts. WoS announced several de-listings with the aim of keeping
the publishing sector clean.

IJERPH loses its IF alongside ~50 other journals.

This impacts nearly all publishers, from Elsevier to Hindawi.

So: lots of journals lose their IF, among those 2 MDPI journals, including
their biggest journal, IJERPH.

IJERPH published 17085 articles in 2022. This is 13 times as many as 2016,
when it published 1318.

Average turnaround time from submission to acceptance, including revisions,
is 41.5 days, 36% down from  62 in 2016.

Rejection rate is 45%, down from 57% in 2016.

The journal is (was?) still growing exponentially, with 4k+ articles
already published in 2023.

IJERPH also has 3099 (!) open special issues for 2023, more than 8 per day,
up from 754 SIs closed in 2023.

These are *enormous* numbers, making IJERPH one of the largest open-access
mega-journals in the world.

So now you know why this is BIG news.

The second largest journal in the world just lost its impact factor.

But why does this matter?

First, it matters for MDPI.

Mega journals aren't usually chosen for their editorial rigor (>50% accept
in ~1 month with revisions) but because they give you a reputation badge
that says "high IF".

That's gone. It usually spells doom for the journal.

Second, you might think that IJERPH is special in some respect to have been
de-listed.

But you'd be wrong.

Most mega-journals share a similar model: decent IF, explosive growth, low
& decreasing rejection rates, fast & decreasing turnaround.

Most MDPI journals are the same:

This plot focuses on MDPI special issues, but a similar plot could be made
for others. Publishers got away with:

- exponential growth in papers
- lighting fast peer review times
- low and decreasing rejection rates

All this under the cover of an IF.

That cover is gone.

So while a handful of journals got de-listed, most other journals follow
very, very similar patterns. If the flagship sinks, then it might be a sign
that the whole business model is shaking.

But why does it matter for scientists?

Colleagues constrained by the publish and perish mode were feeding these
mega-journals. The system asks me to publish lots of papers with high IF,
and these journals happen to conveniently provide me just that -- for a few
thousand bucks.

On a side note, I hate to say that I told you so, but I told you so.

Two years ago I ran an analysis of MDPI that predicted that MDPIs
trajectory would worsen over time, bringing the whole castle down.

You can fool some people sometimes, but you cannot fool all the people all
the time.

And when you open 56k special issues in a year, there cannot possibly be
that many good (or even decent) papers out there.

At WoS they started noticing, and went for the biggest fish first.

This decision might be reversed, it is being challenged. This is not the
end of the story.

But all pyramid schemes unravel eventually, all bubbles burst.

It's the beginning of the end."
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