Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) expect you reply

The website of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute states (10/25/17) that
MDPI.com is a platform for peer-reviewed, scientific open-access journals operated by MDPI AG, based in Basel, Switzerland. Additional offices are located in Beijing and Wuhan (China) as well as in Barcelona (Spain).
However, the domain mdpi.com is registered to Perfect Privacy, LLC, of Jacksonville, Florida, making it hard to know who is really behind this megapublisher.

MDPI crows that
Our publishing activities are supported by more than 15,700 active scientists and academic editors on our journals' international editorial boards, including several Nobelists. More than 263,500 individual authors have already published with MDPI.
I guess it is better to have active rather than passive scientists working for you.The journals that attract these Nobelists have names such as Actuators, Algorithms, Axioms, Atoms, Animals, and Ads. Those are just a few of the ones that start with A. Alas, there are no entries for K, X, Y, and Z. W is for Water, and U is for Universe (and Urban Science). There is a Toxins and a Toxics, a Pharmaceuticals and a Pharmaceutics. Nevertheless, some MDPI journals may be sincere efforts to publish meaningful work. From 2010-2016, the editor in chief of Laws was Larry Gostin, a preeminent scholar of global public health law, and the journal includes some articles from mainstream law faculty, particularly in the health-law field.

If the emails to me are any indication, MDPI is scrounging for material with the by writing authors of articles appearing in bona fide journals whose titles suggest that they could prepare some related article for one of their journals. Indeed, they are even offering to waive publication charges for the recipients of their personalized spam.
Email
  • From: Risks Editorial Office
    Subject: [Risks] Invitation to Publish a Paper Free of Charge in Risks (ESCI - Web of Science) - expect you reply
    Sent: Oct 24 at 9:30 PM
    Dear Dr. Kaye, We noticed you published the following outstanding manuscript: Beyond uniqueness: the birthday paradox, source attribution and individualization in forensic science testimony. Law Probab. Risk 2013, 12, 3-11.
    On behalf of the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Mogens Steffensen, of Mathematical Sciences, University of Copenhagen (Denmark), we would like to invite you to contribute a research article or review article for publication in our journal Risks. If you could submit an article by the end of 2017, the article processing charges (APCs) will be fully waived. Your submission will be paid high priority during processing. Please visit the Instructions for Authors before submitting a manuscript: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/risks/instructions/. Once your manuscript is ready, please submit it through our online submission system at http://www.mdpi.com/user/manuscripts/upload/.
    *About Risks* ...*Rapid publication*: manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision provided to authors approximately 41 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 9 days (median values for papers published in this journal in 2016).
    In order for us to plan for the whole project, please kindly inform us within 3 weeks as to whether you would be willing to accept our offer. We look forward to hearing from you.
    Kind regards, Daria Shi, Assistant Managing Editor, Email: daria.shi@mdpi.com
    On behalf of Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Mogens Steffensen, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 5, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
    --MDPI Branch Office, Beijing, Risks Editorial Office, Tel. +86 10 6193 4609, Fax +86 10 6193 4609, E-mail: risks@mdpi.com, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/risks/
    MDPI AG, Postfach, CH-4020 Basel, Switzerland, Office: St. Alban-Anlage 66, 4052 Basel, Tel.: +41 61 683 77 34; Fax: +41 61 302 89 18
  • From: Risks Editorial Office [risks@mdpi.com]
    Sent: 11/10/2017 1:46 AM
    Re: Gentle Reminder: [Risks] Invitation to Publish a Paper Free of Charge in Risks (ESCI - Web of Science) - expect you replyDear Dr. Kaye, We invited you to submit a free Paper to the journal Risks in October 2017. In case you missed our previous email, we would like to renew our invitation for you. We noticed you published the following outstanding manuscript: Deadly statistics: quantifying an 'unacceptable risk' in capital punishment. Law Probab. Risk 2017, 16, 7-34. On behalf of the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Mogens Steffensen of Mathematical Sciences, University of Copenhagen (Denmark), we would like to invite you to contribute a research article or review article for publication in our journal Risks. If you could submit an article by the end of 2017, the article processing charges (APCs) will be fully waived. Your submission will be paid high priority ...We look forward to hearing from you.
    Kind regards, Janine Li, Assistant Managing Editor, Email: janine.li@mdpi.comOn behalf of Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Mogens Steffensen, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 5, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
    --MDPI Branch Office, Beijing, Risks Editorial Office,Tel. +86 10 6193 4609, Fax +86 10 6193 4609, E-mail: risks@mdpi.com, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/risks/
    --MDPI AG, Postfach, CH-4020 Basel, Switzerland, Office: St. Alban-Anlage 66, 4052 Basel, Tel.: +41 61 683 77 34; Fax: +41 61 302 89 18
  • From: Risks Editorial Office (risks@mdpi.com)
    Sent: 11/2617, 10:46:19 PM
    Subject: Gentle Reminder: [Risks] Invitation to Publish a Paper Free of Charge in Risks (ESCI - - Web of Science) - expect you reply
    Dear Dr. Kaye, We invited you to submit a free Paper to the journal Risks in October 2017. In case you missed our previous email, we would like to renew our invitation for you. We noticed you published the following outstanding manuscript: Beyond uniqueness: the birthday paradox, source attribution and individualization in forensic science testimony. Law Probab. Risk 2013, 12, 3-11.
    On behalf of the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Mogens Steffensen of Mathematical Sciences, University of Copenhagen (Denmark), we would like to invite you to contribute a research article or review article for publication in our journal Risks. If you could submit an article by the end of 2017, the article processing charges (APCs) will be fully waived. Your submission will be paid high priority during processing. Please visit the Instructions for Authors before submitting a manuscript: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/risks/instructions/. Once your manuscript is ready, please submit it through our online submission system at http://www.mdpi.com/user/manuscripts/upload/.
    *About Risks* ... *Rapid publication*: manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision provided to authors approximately 41 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 9 days (median values for papers published in this journal in 2016).
    In order for us to plan for the whole project, please kindly inform us within 3 weeks as to whether you would be willing to accept our offer. We look forward to hearing from you.
    Kind regards, Daria Shi, Managing Editor, Email: daria.shi@mdpi.com
    On behalf of Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Mogens Steffensen, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 5, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
    -- MDPI Branch Office, Beijing, Risks Editorial Office, Tel. +86 10 6193 4609, Fax +86 10 6193 4609, E-mail: risks@mdpi.com, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/risks/
    -- MDPI AG, Postfach, CH-4020 Basel, Switzerland, Office: St. Alban-Anlage 66, 4052 Basel, Tel.: +41 61 683 77 34; Fax: +41 61 302 89 18

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Biocore

Biocore is on Beall's list of predatory journals, and it not hard to see why. Its web pages explain that: ⊘ "Biocore motto is to give the human era with better future. This can be achieved with our renowned editors, authors and reviewers with their exchanged views and knowledge." ⊘ "Biocore has been involved the knowledge on Science & technology to the access way of every individual." ⊘ "With the Open Access evolution, we are making the genuine and trustworthy contributions to the scientific environment without stopping the access to the readers for reading or even downloading the published papers/articles." ⊘ "[A]ll the eminent personalities can search our database." ⊘ "With the Editorial Board Members of 600, the number is increasing with the volume ... ." And if you are interested in travel (to Dubai at least), "Biocore is going to conduct Scientific Conferences in near future for grouping all the eminent personalities ...
Read more

Is Frontiers Media a Predatory Publisher?

Frontiers Media (frontiersin.org) is an open access publisher in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded by serious neuroscientists. I looked around to learn what people were saying about it after receiving a request to review a manuscript for Frontiers in Genetics . The associate editor who wrote me as well most of the large board of "chief editors" seem to be serious and published researchers, but I do not know what to make of the journal's claim to have 5,689 editors. Zooming in on the field of "ELSI in Science and Genetics" yielded a list of 131 "associate editors." Frontiers notes the number of articles these editors have written; 27 had no publications of their own (or if they did, Frontiers neglected to mention them). Naturally, Frontiers claims that all of its 59 journals covering more than 460 specialties conduct transparent and rigorous peer review. It also states that "We publish all papers that are scientifically correct ." (Emphasis in we...
Read more

Knowledge Enterprises, Inc. (KEI Journals)

Beall saw it as " a publisher to avoid ". The emails do have a personal touch (if you happen to be "Dr. Dr. Kaye DH"). The true names behind the domain are hidden, as DomainsByProxy registered the domain name. LinkedIn (7/2/18) has the following entry for Katerina Bielka, M.D., whose name is on most of the spam: anaesthesiology and intensive care, pain management, Ukraine, Medical Practice, Bogomolets National Medical University, Clinic "Boris", Kiyv city hospital #17. Update (5/3/18): Medical Research Archives' "confidential" spam now drops any mention of KEI, but the domain for its email, medicalresearcharchives.com, is registered by GoDaddy.com to KEI Journals NA, 340 S Lemon Ave #7750, Walnut California 91789 US, +1.7632441130, f@zel.li. The address, which also appears in the strange confidentiality notice, is useful to many businesses who want to make it appear that they have a physical presence in California. See How Scitech Central Fak...
Read more