Humanities: Open Access or Predator?

[Lanette Cadle]

I could title this an ethos dilemma for a special issue about ethos. I received a phone call from a colleague yesterday who was also solicited for this special issue on Histories of Ethos: World Perspectives on Rhetoric." The concern was that this was not a "real" journal after all--it commonly charges authors, although they say they have a "grant" for this special issue and the authors will not be charged. The concern was that this is really vanity publishing after all and that access to this "open access" journal is actually quite limited for readers. Does anyone know anything about this journal and can say whether or not it is legit? 

• Here is the home page for Humanities: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities
• Here is the about page for Humanities: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/about
• Here is the CFP for the special issue: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/histories_ethos

This is a long-standing project initialed by a trusted longtime senior faculty member in my department. He has been a good mentor and friend. This project was originally intended to be a encyclopedia-like print volume with a minor press and has settled into this-- a special issue for Humanities. So, have the special editors been scammed? Please help me out here. I am caught between loyalty and the need to be scrupulous about where I publish.

Lanette 

[Gainer, Kim]

Lanette, 

I’ve been noodling around, and here’s what I’ve got:

Positives

1. Regarding whether readers can easily access the articles, I had no difficulty opening any Humanities articles.

2. Editors of special issue:

James S. Baumlin has numerous relevant publications in recognized venues, the sort that get swept up in JStor. (But I cannot find anything for Craig Meyer—perhaps he is Baumlin’s student, just starting out?)

Possible red flags:

Inclusion on the (now-discontinued) Beall’s list of predatory open access journals/publishers:

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI:

MDPI was included on Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory open access publishing companies in 2014^[3][4] and was removed in 2015.^[5] Beall's list was shut down in 2017; Beall later wrote that he had been pressured to shut down the list due to pressure on his institution from various publishers, specifically mentioning MDPI.^[6]

Looking at the Humanities and MDPI sites:

The description on the home page of a fast turn-around time may be characteristic of a predatory publisher: “Rapid publication: manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision provided to authors approximately 30 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 7.8 days (median values for papers published in this journal in 2017).”

Information in links to articles confirms the fast turn-around, e.g., “Received: 20 April 2018 / Revised: 15 May 2018 / Accepted: 16 May 2018 / Published: 21 May 2018.”

According to the umbrella organization, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), “Peer-review is usually via one reviewer, although sometimes two: In most journals the process is single blind peer-review...Some journals operate double blind peer-review” (http://www.mdpi.com/editors). Does reliance on only one reviewer, sometimes two, account for the fast pace of publication? (Elsewhere on that page, however, this sentence appears: “At least two reports per manuscript are collected for each manuscript—three if the first two differ substantially.”)

MDPI began as the publisher of Molecules in the 1990s but now publishes over 190 open-access journals. It “always welcomes suggestions for new journals in any research area” (http://www.mdpi.com/editors). How high is the bar for launching a journal?

The Humanities articles are published standalone on a rolling basis but linked under special issue headings: “Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website.” How high is the bar for publication?

Articles for numerous Humanities special issues are being solicited. Including the two with May 31, 2018, deadlines, seventeen special issues are listed as open for submission up through August 31, 2019 (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues). How selective is the process for approving special issues?

Presumably the May 31, 2018, deadline for the ethos special issue was posted some time ago, but it sounds as if you and your colleague were contacted only recently. Is that correct? If so, is it problematic that an article is being solicited when the deadline is only a week away? Do you or your colleague have a relationship with either of the special issue editors so that they were aware that you have been working on ethos-related material?

Has the promise of grant for this specific special issue been put in writing? Does it look ironclad? The page on fees states that “The article processing charges (APCs) of 350 CHF (Swiss Francs) per published paper are fully funded by institutions through the Knowledge Unlatched initiative, resulting in no direct charge to authors. See the table below for the list of institutions that contribute funds towards this initiative” I’d make certain that you don’t have to be affiliated with one of the institutions to benefit for a grant (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/apc).

Note that this information shows up on the home page: “Recognition of Reviewers: reviewers who provide timely, thorough peer-review reports receive vouchers entitling them to a discount on the APC of their next publication in any MDPI journal, in appreciation of the work done” (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities). So it seems APC are not necessarily paid, else why the enticement of a voucher. Yet this statement appeared on that same page just a few lines earlier: “free for readers, with article processing charges (APC)funded by institutions through Knowledge Unlatched, resulting in no direct charge to authors.” I’d say the APC issue is ambiguous and you should certainly seek clarity if you decide to submit anything to this special issue.

Best,

Kim

Sent from my iPad

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[Gainer, Kim]

Lanette,

I should mention that there was more than the one paragraph on Beall and MDPI in the Wikipedia entry on MDPI (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI).

Best,

Kim

Sent from my iPad

[Lanette Cadle]

Some of your concerns I can address directly, but the MDPI concerns are very real and I think you are right that I should be nervous about payment, even for an ARC.

I know Jim and Craig very well. Jim is a professor at Missouri State and yes, he is known for his work on ethos. This project is a longstanding one that was a book project once upon a time. Jim updated the project to this form October 2017 and the call went live then. Craig Meyer is an assistant professor at Texas A&M Kingsville and I know him from when he was Jim's M.A. student in comp/rhet student back in 2006. So, this was not a sudden project and the timeline was extended from March to May to give more time.

How high is the bar for publication? Even if it is a high as it should be due to the editors, the taint is there. This being a solicited article doesn't help. Although I know both Jim and Craig are very tough editors, the MDPI connection combined with the piece being solicited...well, it won't look good. I should have remembered MDPI. :-(

Lanette

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