Complaints about the broken academic publishing system have been around for years and are getting louder. A common theme is that with the rise of open access publishing, commercial publishers have grasped the opportunity to grow their profits from article-processing-charges (APCs). Whereas in the past, journals competed to be the most highly respected outlet, now they compete to publish on the grounds of speed and quantity of publications (see e.g. Timmis et al, 2025). | BishopBlog
Many publishers are getting nervous about infiltration by paper mills, who can torpedo a journal's reputation when they succeed in publishing papers that are obvious nonsense. In a recent Open Letter, a group of sleuths drew attention to an example in Scientific Reports, published by Springer Nature. | BishopBlog
It's always interesting for a blogger to look back to see which posts have garnered most attention. In 2024 there were three standout items, my resignation from the Royal Society, an Open Letter about editorial failings at the journal Scientific Reports, and a guest post by René Aquarius about his experiences as a reviewer for MDPI. For each of these blogposts, it's interesting to consider not just the number of hits, but also the broader impact. Blogging is a great way to let off steam, ...| BishopBlog
There is growing awareness that Special Issues have become a menace in the world of academic publishing, because they provide a convenient way for large volumes of low quality work to be published in journals that profit from a healthy article processing charge. There has been a consequent backlash against Special Issues, with various attempts to rein them in. Here I'll describe the backstory and show how such attempts are being subverted. | BishopBlog
Guest post by | BishopBlog
! THIS BLOG IS OUT OF DATE. For a more recent analysis see this blog ! Dear MDPI, Your journal publications have grown dramatically, and quite extraordinarily. But there are sceptics who suggest th…| Dan Brockington
Edit April 20th, 2021: thanks to Christos Petrou I found a bug in my code. I was considering both “Section” and “Collection” articles as Speical Issue. The whole analysis ha…| Paolo Crosetto
Update Nov 2022: This blog has now been superseded by new data up to 2021 which are available here In this blog I report on growth in MDPI journals from 2015-2020. It updates two previous blogs on …| Dan Brockington
