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I was recently asked to review for an MDPI open access journal. Is this a reputable publishing company? Their website suggests that they are 15 years old, and only do open-access publishing. The journal has a 3-year impact factor of around 2, which is not unreasonable for my field.

I'm curious to know whether it is worth putting the review on my CV.

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6  
Another way to answer the question is to ask yourself: did you know this journal before you were asked to review? – F'x Nov 26 '12 at 14:09

3 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

The peer review process generally differs between predatory and non predatory journals.

  • Given that they have solicited a review from you is a positive sign.
  • If you don't know the authors and the work before hand, then that is another positive sign.
  • If the article you are reviewing is good, then that would be a third positive sign.
  • Finally, if you make comments in your review and the authors address them in the published version, that would be a final positive sign.

If on the other hand you know the authors and work, it is crappy, and the comments are ignored, that would be a bad sign.

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I'm marking this as the answer, because I think it's more likely to be of interest to subsequent readers of the question, and also answers the specified question rather than the titular one. The link in F'x's answer was very helpful too though. – John Doucette Nov 26 '12 at 17:07
up vote 14 down vote

Based on the amount of spam that I receive from them (mostly calls for papers in special issues), the fact that their automated emails do not feature a “unsubscribe me” link, and the fact that I did not manage to be removed from their lists after several complaints, I would say that they are not a respectable publisher.

I don't know how long they have been around, but most of their journals in my field (chemistry) were very recently created: see there for a full list, which you can sort by journal creation date. Their older journal, Molecules, has a less-than-stellar impact factor of 2.4. Its editorial board, apart from the occasional celebrity or two, is unremarkable.

As a conclusion: I think they surf on the popularity of open access journals, but I don't consider them serious players.

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Some of there titles are indexed in SCI and Scopus, that is something respectable, I guess. – Md. Golam Rashed Nov 26 '12 at 14:15
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@Md.GolamRashed according to wikipedia only 10/89 have impact factors. – Daniel E. Shub Nov 26 '12 at 14:42
That link is quite useful. Thanks! – John Doucette Nov 26 '12 at 17:09
Investigative and logical reasoning of mistakes made by MDPI journals - retractionwatch.wordpress.com/category/by-publisher/mdpi. @F'x, Note that, most big time players have also did same mistakes over the years. What is positive here is MDPI did not hide those mistakes. – Md. Golam Rashed Dec 6 '12 at 20:42
@Daniel E. Shub, What I know is, it takes 3 years to be indexed. Based on the indexing of the previously published journals of MDPI, we have yet to see whether the rest 79 gets indexed in 3 years after launch. – Md. Golam Rashed Dec 6 '12 at 20:47
up vote 4 down vote

In my very personal opinion MDPI is an reputable publisher, but their journals are not first-class. I did a review for them once, and the peer review process was smooth. Also, I knew the field of the reviewed paper very well, so I guess they selected me as a reviewer carefully. But I really can speak only for one of their journals.

On the other hand, I won't publish in their journals since they charge quite a bit for the open access, and there are other options in my field which are free for authors and subscribers. Also I don't like to be spammed with their "newsletters".

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