Taxacom: MDPI diversity et al

[Peter Uetz]

Mike said, "Don't attack the publisher or the author, it is not their fault.?

Well, it?s clearly everybody?s fault who participates in bad publishing practices.

? Authors shouldn?t submit shoddy papers.
? Reviewers and editors shouldn?t be too lenient and accept inacceptable papers.
? Publishers shouldn?t be too greedy and dodge quality for profit.
? And readers shouldn?t cite sloppy papers or pay for crappy journals. In extreme cases we should name names and point out obvious flaws, e.g. in comments (if available) or via PubPeer, if not criticizing them in follow-up papers.

? BTW, taxonomic databases should be explicit and comment on such issues as well, so users can find flaws more easily :)
     (and you should submit such problems to them so they can provide a more objective representation of the literature)


As several of you said, it?s difficult to generalize across numerous journals of one publisher but MDPI does have one bad habit: they seem to send out reviewer requests almost randomly. Just 3 days ago I got a request from the MDPI journal ?Nutrients? to review a paper on the "Influence of sonication pretreatment on antiradical and anti-ACE activity of protein hydrolysates from fermented pork loins? ? seriously?


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Peter Uetz
Center for Biological Data Science
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, VA 23284
USA

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