Statistical Methodology & Wild Horse Research: Part One: The Journal
Schulman ML, Hayes NK, Wilson TA, Grewar JD. Immunocontraceptive Efficacy of Native Porcine Zona Pellucida (pZP) Treatment of Nevada’s Virginia Range Free-Roaming Horse Population. Vaccines (Basel). 2024 Jan 18;12(1):96. doi: 10.3390/vaccines12010096. PMID: 38250909; PMCID: PMC10820100. (link to article)
Introduction
I wanted to see how the data generated from the above study could be improved because my first read-through left me with many questions. I requested the raw data several times from the second and third authors of the American Wild Horse Campaign study. Initially, they did not bother to reply, so I contacted the principal investigator on the study, Dr Schulman, who was lovely, but did not have the raw data. I finally received a reply and was denied access to the raw data because they were unhappy with my brief critique (see the email response below). To be honest, had it been me, I would have likely refused. Or I would have risen to the challenge and handed it over. In either case, since they are not forthcoming with their data, it might be that they feel they have something to hide. I do not know the qualifications of the second and third authors, since they are not listed. However, if the study is rigorous and scholarly, there should be no concerns about having a biostatistician review the data. As it turns out, I did not need the data; the study speaks for itself in volumes. We begin with the journal and open a whole can of annelids.
Problem #1: THE JOURNAL
The article “Immunocontraceptive Efficacy of Native Porcine Zona Pellucida (pZP) Treatment of Nevada’s Virginia Range Free-Roaming Horse Population” was published in MDPI Vaccines in 2024. The journal MDPI Vaccines is considered to have some definitions of predatory journals. Predatory journals operate as publications which demand author fees from writers but fail to deliver adequate peer review and editorial oversight or quality control. These publications use the open-access model to generate revenue by creating a false appearance of academic legitimacy. The Predatory pay-per-publication model enables predatory journals to deceive authors by charging fees without delivering standard editorial and publishing services that legitimate journals provide. MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) is a prominent open-access publisher that has faced scrutiny over its publishing practices. While it operates numerous journals, including Vaccines, concerns have been raised about the quality and integrity of some of its publications.
Controversies Surrounding MDPI
- Inclusion in Beall’s List: In 2014, MDPI was listed on Jeffrey Beall’s compilation of potential predatory publishers due to concerns about its peer review process and editorial standards. Although it was removed in 2015 after an appeal, debates about its practices persist.
- Editorial Resignations: In 2021, five editorial board members of MDPI’s Vaccines journal resigned after it published a controversial article that misused data to question the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines. The article was later retracted following widespread criticism.
- Rapid Publication and Peer Review Concerns: MDPI’s rapid publication model has raised questions about the rigor of its peer review process. Critics argue that the emphasis on speed may compromise the quality of published research.
- Institutional Reactions: Some academic institutions and national research bodies have cautioned regarding MDPI. For instance, Finland’s Publication Forum downgraded 193 MDPI journals to its lowest rating in 2024, citing quality concerns.
Opinions about MDPI vary within the academic community. Some researchers report positive experiences, noting efficient editorial processes and constructive peer reviews. Others remain sceptical, highlighting aggressive solicitation practices and questioning the academic rigour of specific journals. MDPI operates as a legitimate publisher that maintains a wide range of journals, including Vaccines, but it faces ongoing debates about publication ethics and quality control. Researchers must evaluate specific journals individually while checking their indexing status, seeking peer opinions, or following institutional guidelines before work submission. The peers who review the submitted journals are often fiction writers or scientists with no standing in the scientific community. Resorting to these predatory journals indicates that the study is poorly researched, lacks significant credibility, and may have reduced value to the scientific or mustang communities. The MDPI, in which the American Wild Horse Campaign published, is considered, by many, to be partially predatory. The criteria in the quote below demonstrate that the scientific community does not highly regard MDPI and should not be cited, nor published, if one wishes to be credible.
These predatory journals have minimal credibility, sparse academic or scientific value, and are regarded as subpar by most scientists. To the average person who doesn’t know much about research, it looks prestigious to see an article published in a peer-reviewed journal, but remember, not all journals are equal. They are called predatory because they prey on recent graduates who may have trouble publishing and may not know these journals are disreputable. Sadly, international students get roped into paying a lot of money to ‘publish’ in an American journal without knowing it is the scientific equivalent of the National Enquirer.
A study published in the highly esteemed Oxford Academic Press evaluated MDPI Journals and concluded in 2021 that MDPI journals have several characteristics of predatory journals. The quote below is directly from the article, and to summarise, Science suffers from predatory journals because they choose financial gain over quality standards, leading to misinformation and damaging credibility. The journals MDPI’s Vaccines and others listed in PubMed or Scopus demonstrate predatory characteristics through their fast publication speed, practice of inflating citations, and unreliable peer review processes. Researchers must avoid all activities related to predatory journals, including publication, citation, review work, and editorial board membership. Institutions must revise their evaluation policies to prevent predatory publishing, while selective databases must enhance their criteria to block journal inclusion.
Here is the quote:
Oviedo-García (2021) stated that in the meanwhile, it is important to curtail support for predatory journals, so that authors neither seek to publish with them nor cite them, nor act as reviewers for them, nor serve on their Editorial Boards, because ‘predatory publishing is detrimental for scholars, institutions, science credibility and, potentially, [in the case of certain journals] for patient’s safety’ (Cortegiani et al. 2020) [italics added].
It is important that academia and scholars become aware both of the risks of falling into the networks of predatory journals and, in addition, academics should be capable of properly identifying these journals, without presupposing that their inclusion in a prestigious database is a sort of quality hallmark that guarantees the integrity of their authorship, and both their peer-review and their editing processes (Severin and Low 2019; Cortegiani et al. 2020).
One form of avoiding the proliferation of predatory journals based on the gold open-access model, which can favour quantity over quality, would be to promote a platinum/diamond open-access model, in which neither the authors nor the readers pay for access to the articles and the costs of the publication process are met by associations or institutions (e.g. Universities, professional associations, …). A platinum/diamond open-access model might be close to an ideal academic publishing model—according to the terminology of Siler (2020)—since it prioritizes professional rather than market logics and then eliminates the drive to publish as many articles as possible to maximize revenue. However, this solution could only work in the medium to long term.
In the meanwhile, it is important to curtail support for predatory journals, so that authors neither seek to publish with them nor cite them, nor act as reviewers for them, nor serve on their Editorial Boards, because ‘predatory publishing is detrimental for scholars, institutions, science credibility and, potentially, [in the case of certain journals] for patient’s safety’ (Cortegiani et al. 2020) [italics added].
As a consequence of the new context generated by the proliferation of predatory journals, it becomes necessary to review the evaluation policies (Beall 2016). Thus, universities, funding institutions, or any institution that evaluates scientific activity can disincentivize the submission of manuscripts to predatory journals and the acceptance of roles on their editorial committees, ignoring these milestones in the evaluation process of a curriculum vitae (Forero et al. 2018; Bond et al. 2019). These actions will send out a clear message to researchers to refuse to publish in and to support predatory journals.
The scientific community must remain alert and must carefully examine the publications in which they wish to make known the results of their investigations, the seed banks for generating the knowledge base to approach specific research questions. Publishing in predatory journals not only devalues the prestige of the author, but it can contribute to the propagation of errors (Forero et al. 2018) with all the consequences that may entail, not only at a scientific but at a social level.
In summary: 1 researchers should neither send papers for their publication, nor cite them, nor act as reviewers for them, nor form part of their editorial committees; 2 research institutions should inform researchers of the reality of predatory journals and their iniquitous consequences at an individual and general level; and, 3 evaluation agencies and committees should ignore the registers that refer to predatory journals. Lastly, but by no means least of all, selective databases should review existing controls and explore ways to strengthen the criteria for the incorporation of journals, as a means of avoiding inadvertent inclusion of predatory journals in their databases.
These steps are particularly urgent for databases that already include MDPI-journals (WOS, PubMed and Scopus), since the defining features of predatory journals are that they systematize ‘for profit publication’ (COPE 2019) and ‘prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship’ (Grudniewicz et al. 2019). JCR-indexed MDPI-journals betray both traits through a steady increase in number of their published articles (sometimes to several hundred in just one regular issue) and special issues. Besides, JCR-indexed MDPI-journals mimicking names and publicly claimed rapid publication is in direct breach of the COPE/DOAJ/OASPA/WAME Principles for Transparency and Best Practices in Scholarly Publishing. Furthermore, the low variability of timeframes for peer review regardless of the scope of the journal, the size of its editorial board and the volume of published articles all raise questions over the levels of quality assurance required from a legitimate journal/publisher. Finally, self-citation and intra-MDPI citation rates artificially increase the impact factors of JCR-indexed MDPI-journals that is quite clearly in breach of best practice and integrity in science (p. 318-319).
Oviedo-García, M. Á. (2021). Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the multidisciplinary digital publishing institute (MDPI). Research Evaluation, 30(3). https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvab020
To be continued…
Dr. Meredith Hudes-Lowder
