Thread by @ekulczycki

I see that many researchers circulate a new website (predatoryreports.org) that published a list of all MDPI predatory journals. As a guy who has studied #predatoryjournals for over eight years, I’ve found such lists to be a bad idea. I’ll tell you why 👇

Firstly, scholarly communication has an important geopolitical dimension. Researchers in many countries are forced to publish in MDPI journals because national science policies recognize them.

So, for many researchers, it might be a good idea (i.e. in line with the institutional or national policy) to have papers in MDPI journals because they are „countable”. In this way, they "secure" their workplace.

Secondly, papers in the so-called predatory journals are often cited even by the so-called prestigious journals (=WoS indexed). Here is our (@zehrataskin , @franciszekkraw2 , @mholowiecki ) scientometric study showing this phenomenon: link.springer.com/article/10.100…
#Scientometrics

Thirdly, the sentiment analysis of the citation of these papers shows that they are cited in the same way as other articles. Moreover, they are cited because they are the only data sources about various (semi)peripheral countries and national systems.

Here you can find our study (@zehrataskin , @franciszekkraw2 ) that addresses the question, „Are papers published in predatory journals worthless?” and provided the results of content-based citation analysis: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/do…

Fourthly, considering these arguments, we prefer to refer to such journals as „mislocated centers of scholarly communication” instead of #predatoryjournals.

Such centers (e.g., „Sustainability” journal) are perceived in the peripheries as legitimized by the center (because it has an Impact Factor) but are in fact, invisible or illegitimate in the very center.

In other words: too often, what is called a predatory journal is (co)created by central institutions to marginalize (already marginalized) groups of scientists from semi-peripheral countries. Here you can find our paper explaining this phenomenon: tandfonline.com/doi/epub/10.10…

Lastly, researchers publish in MDPI (and other journals accused of being predatory) because they play the #EvaluationGame. In means that they try to meet their institutions' expectations at the lowest possible cost. More about it in my upcoming book: cambridge.org/pl/academic/su…

To sum up: let's talk about poor-quality journals without condemning scholars publishing in them. Otherwise, it will be another way of marginalizing scientists from the (semi)periphery.