A new consortium offer from the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), the “MDPI Gold Open Access Publish Agreement 2025-2026”, has been submitted. Participation would offer us financial benefits:
- The TUHH currently receives a 10% discount on APCs for MDPI journals. The TUB is responsible for central invoice processing.
- By joining the consortium, this discount would rise to 30% (option 1) or be replaced by a flat fee calculated annually from the publication volume at a reduced fixed price per contribution (option 2).
In contrast, doubts have repeatedly been raised in recent years about the scientific quality of the peer review process and about the business models of large open access publishers with many special issues,1 including MDPI.
Background: sentiments concerning the publisher MDPI
The perception of MDPI journals varies depending on the discipline and institution. On the one hand, researchers at the various universities express sometimes harsh criticism,2 while on the other hand many value MDPI as an efficient publisher.3 Although the strongly profit-oriented business practices and the way individual aspects of good scientific practice (journal quality, transparency of metrics, etc.) have repeatedly raised doubts about the seriousness of MDPI, relevant studies4 come to the conclusion that, despite justified criticism, we are not talking about a so-called “predatory publisher” or about “predatory journals”.
As a result of these discussions, the MDPI publication figures at many institutions (including the TUHH) have been in sharp decline for around two years.
Additionally, we are aware of both critical and supportive voices from direct contacts with TUHH researchers. Last year, despite the declining numbers, a total of 20 Gold Open Access articles were successfully submitted by TUHH researchers to various MPDI journals.
The survey: general data and results
For this reason we asked our professors, senior engineers and research assistants for their perspectives. From December 5 to 11, 2024, we conducted an anonymous online survey on the perception of MDPI as a publisher, in which a total of 93 members of the academic staff took part.
The participants in the survey include
- 24 professors
- 20 senior engineers and
- 44 research associates.
We received the most responses from the study schools E (Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics) and M (Mechanical Engineering) with 28 completed questionnaires each. Twelve people each from the study schools W (Management Sciences and Technology) and V (Process Engineering and Chemistry) completed the survey, seven from the study school B (Civil Engineering).5
As expected, the assessment of MDPI was controversial. Almost all 79 respondents were already familiar with MDPI as a provider, with only one person stating that they had not yet heard of MDPI (13 responses missing).
35 people have already published with MDPI in the past, 43 have not. The central question for us, whether MDPI would be considered as a publication service provider in the future, was answered by a majority of 44 people with “No” – compared to 22 people for whom MDPI remains a reliable publisher. We were unable to identify any significant correlations between study school affiliation, status group and evaluation of MDPI.
The many explanatory comments on the view of MDPI are particularly helpful for us: 59 people elaborated the reasoning behind their assessment of the publisher, and two other colleagues wrote us separate e-mails in this regard. We would like to reproduce a few selected assessments:
Voices in favor
- “Fast review process and the reviews are published with my article; You can never be 100% sure about the review process, but the transparency helps.”
- “It offers a plethora of journals of varying quality and in my research area the many high value publications have been published at MDPI.”
- “It is expensive but visibility is relatively high.”
Voices against
- “Despite previous publication in MDPI, I would not do it again. The review process was a bit shady and the quality of many other papers published in MDPI really leaves a lot to be desired. Which has strengthened my doubts.”
- “MDPI (rightly) has at least a questionable reputation in the scientific community. I would definitely like to avoid having an MDPI publication on my publication list because I have the feeling that it would do me more harm than good.” (translated)
- “No quality in review process. It feels like they are after the money (publication fees).”
- “Predatory.”
Balanced voices
- “Not enough clear evidence for it being predatory. As a light grayish area it would be the next best option, if proper ‘white’ journals are out of question.”
- ““It depends on the journal in question and its reputation. These sometimes differ massively in their review quality.” (translated)
- “I never thought about whether I would or wouldn’t publish in MDPI by now.”
- “You reap what you sow. On average, publications from MDPI may be less complex, but there is also a lot of nonsense from the other publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, etc.) MDPI is unbeatably fast. When you consider that feedback from other publishers sometimes takes over 12 months (not because there are so many iterations, but because there is no feedback) and we are constantly forced to publish quickly in order to submit the next application as soon as possible, MDPI simply takes advantage of the system we have created.”
Conclusion: No extended cooperation with MDPI
As many colleagues at the TUHH are happy to publish with MDPI, we are not going to to exclude this publisher from our publication funding (depending on our funding criteria) in principle, as other institutions do.6 However, in view of the predominantly critical overall picture, we will not participate in the “MDPI Gold Open Access Publish Agreement 2025-2026”.
Thank you very much for your support!
- Cf. the statement of All European Academies (ALLEA): https://allea.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/ALLEA-Statement-on-Curbing-Predatory-Practices-in-OA-Publishing.pdf ↩︎
- Cf. the statement of Metin Tolan, president of Göttingen University, 2023: https://news.uni-goettingen.de/blog/2023/11/03/1739/ ↩︎
- Cf. the survey of Kassel University, 2023: https://blog.ub.uni-kassel.de/blog/2023/05/08/integer-oder-raubverlag-ergebnisse-einer-umfrage-zu-mdpi-an-der-uni-kassel/ ↩︎
- Cf. the EQUAP² study as an example: https://zenodo.org/records/7612114 as well as the assessment by Paolo Crosetto, Research Director of the French agronomic institute INRAE-GAEL: https://paolocrosetto.wordpress. com/2021/04/12/is-mdpi-a-predatory-publisher ↩︎
- The results are unweighted and given in absolute figures. As some questionnaires were not completed in full, different populations result for the individual items. ↩︎
- As is the case, for example, at the SUB Göttingen (https://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/en/publishing-open-access/publication-funds/publication-funds-for-journals/) or at the Hannover Medical School (https://www.mhh.de/en/library/how-to-use-the-library/write-and-publish/publishing-open-access/publication-fund). ↩︎