Finland is downgrading almost 300 Frontiers and MDPI journals to its lowest rating – a de facto blacklisting move that might soon be replicated in other countries, according to an expert.
Announcing its downgrading of 271 open access journals from January, Finland’s Publication Forum said the decision was the result of a policy set in September that sought to downgrade so-called “grey journals” – which, it says, “make use of the APC (article processing charge) operating model” and “aim to increase the number of publications with the minimum time spend for editorial work and quality assessment”.
At its meeting, the Publishing Forum, known as Jufo in Finnish, which uses discipline-specific expert panels to rate the quality of journals, noted how “one of the most important changes in scientific publishing in Finland is the sharp increase in the number of articles published, especially in MDPI and Frontiers open access journals operating with APC fees”.
“The scientific community’s key concern is whether the costs of open access publishing increase unreasonably, and whether the increase happens at the expense of a thorough quality assessment,” it added.
Among the 271 journals to be downgraded is Frontiers in Cell Development and Biology, which gained attention earlier this year when it published a paper featuring garbled artificial intelligence-created text and a striking picture of rat with a penis twice the size of its body – which was also generated using AI.
The paper, with the rat image widely circulated on social media, was condemned by science integrity expert Elisabeth Bik as a “sad example of how scientific journals, editors and peer reviewers can be naive – or possibly even in the loop – in terms of accepting and publishing AI-generated crap”.
The decision to downgrade the Frontiers and MDPI journals to zero is the most drastic action taken by a national body against an academic publisher over quality concerns. In June, the Finnish classification body announced it was downgrading 60 journals to its lowest rating, while Norway removed MDPI’s Sustainability from its register of approved journals last year, with Jufo taking similar action.
In March 2023, Clarivate’s Web of Science delisted two journals published by MDPI – including the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, which had published about 17,000 articles in 2022 – as it erased dozens of journals from its influential index.
However, the move by Finland’s Publication Forum might be seen as more controversial because it states that a “publisher’s operating model can be considered in evaluations” – a departure from its previous policy that “each journal is evaluated independently”.
It notes, for instance, that “problems with individual journals, such as MDPI Sustainability, may be due to the operating model of the publisher by which the publisher seeks to increase the volume and rate of publication”.
The ratings are potentially significant in terms of research funding as the Jufo classifications will affect the weighting of publications in the funding model of Finnish universities between 2025 and 2028, with papers published in level zero outlets given less weight than higher-rated ones.
The move comes amid growing concern over quality at Frontiers and MDPI, both headquartered in Switzerland, following rapid expansion in recent years. One MDPI publication, the Journal of Clinical Medicine, published 44 papers in 2017 but 4,367 in 2021, according to analysis by the Grenoble-based economist Paolo Crosetto published last year, which also found that some journals were opening so-called “special issues” at a rate of nine a day.
Mark Hanson, a researcher at the University of Exeter who has researched the rise of MDPI and other open access publishers, said it was “quite possible” that other countries might follow Finland’s lead, with concerns raised about publication practices in Poland, Spain and Italy.
“Scientific bodies in China are thinking about publishing destinations and what guidance they should provide to researchers to maintain a global reputation for research quality,” he added.
However, a spokesperson for Frontiers condemned the move by Finland’s classification body, saying the “decision can only be interpreted as an attack on a publishing model, rather than as an assessment of journal quality”.
“After many years of successful collaboration with the ministry, founded on a common vision of the needed transition to open science, we find ourselves frustrated and bewildered by Jufo’s hasty decision to broadly classify Frontiers as a ‘grey publisher’,” she said, adding: “We communicated in good faith with Jufo, and our concerns about the original decision remain unanswered."
Jufo’s current stance, Frontiers added, was “based on a vague categorisation of ‘operating model’ that overrides individual journal assessment – all downgraded Frontiers journals meet Jufo’s level one criteria when evaluated – and thus gives unjustified preference to those publishers”.
Criticising Jufo’s “biased approach”, Frontiers said it had “received no substantial feedback from Jufo about any Frontiers journal that we can specifically address, which is the core criterion of any evaluation process. Instead, the response points to hearsay, anecdote and discredited lists.
“We will maintain our dialogue with Jufo concerning this decision and ask all concerned researchers to do so as well.”
MDPI was approached for comment.
