Understanding the increasing market share of the academic publisher “Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute” in the publication output of Central and Eastern European countries: a case study of Hungary

Abstract

As the open access movement has gained widespread popularity in the scientific community, academic publishers have gradually adapted to the new environment. The pioneer open access journals have turned themselves into megajournals, and the subscription-based publishers have established open access branches and have turned subscription-based journals into hybrid ones. Maybe the most dramatic outcome of the open access boom is the market entry of such fast-growing open access publishers as Frontiers and Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). By 2021, in terms of the number of papers published, MDPI has become one of the largest academic publishers worldwide. However, the publisher’s market shares across countries and regions show an uneven pattern. Whereas in such scientific powers as the United States and China, MDPI has remained a relatively small-scale player, it has gained a high market share in Europe, particularly in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. In 2021, 28 percent of the SCI/SSCI papers authored/co-authored by researchers from CEE countries were published in MDPI journals, a share that was as high as the combined share of papers published by Elsevier and Springer Nature, the two largest academic publishers in the world. This paper seeks to find an explanation for the extensively growing share of MDPI in the publication outputs of CEE countries by choosing Hungary as a case study. To do this, by employing data analysis, some unique features of MDPI will be revealed. Then, we will present the results of a questionnaire survey conducted among Hungary-based researchers regarding MDPI and the factors that motivated them to publish in MDPI journals. Our results show that researchers generally consider MDPI journals’ sufficiently prestigious, emphasizing the importance of the inclusion of MDPI journals in Scopus and Web of Science databases and their high ranks and impacts. However, most researchers posit that the quick turnaround time that MDPI journals offer is the top driver of publishing in such journals.

The need to develop tailored tools for improving the quality of thematic bibliometric analyses: Evidence from papers published in Sustainability and Scientometrics

“…However, MDPI is also a publisher valued by authors, especially for its high bibliometric indexes, and for its very fast review and publication times, with an average of approximately 40 days from manuscript submission to publication date (Csomós & Farkas, 2022;Repiso et al, 2021). These reasons are probably behind the increase in the market share of this publisher, which in some countries, such as Romania or Poland, is above 30% (Csomós & Farkas, 2022). In Spain, MDPI was the publisher with the highest number of works published in 40 out of its 70 universities in 2021 (Delgado López-Cózar & Martín-Martín, 2022).…”

The Impact of a National Crisis on Research Collaborations: A Scientometric Analysis of Ukrainian Authors 2019–2022

“…While MDPI has remained a minor player in scientific superpowers like the United States and China, it has significantly increased its market share in Europe, notably in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) nations. In 2021, scholars from CEE nations (including Ukraine) published 28% of their SCI/SSCI articles in MDPI journals; this percentage was higher than the combined percentage of papers published by the two largest academic publishers in the world, Elsevier and Springer Nature [21]. A majority of journals published by MDPI are listed in the Scopus bibliographic database, which is used for the evaluation of researchers in many countries, including Ukraine [22,23].…”

Detectando patrones anómalos de publicación científica en España (I): Las evidencias empíricas

“…Lo que les pido no es nada fuera de lugar. Llevamos mucho tiempo haciendo predicciones, por ejemplo, usando modelos extratermodinámicos (Hammett, Taft, Kamlet, Abboud, Elguero...) [11] que son a la química cuántica lo que el Calendario Zaragozano es al superordenador Cirrus de la AEMET (Figura 7). rápido, diríamos que súbito: en 2015 solo había una revista MDPI entre las 25 revistas que más artículos publicaban de autores españoles; será en 2019 cuando se produzca la eclosión con 9 revistas.…”

“…Lo que les pido no es nada fuera de lugar. Llevamos mucho tiempo haciendo predicciones, por ejemplo, usando modelos extratermodinámicos (Hammett, Taft, Kamlet, Abboud, Elguero...) [11] que son a la química cuántica lo que el Calendario Zaragozano es al superordenador Cirrus de la AEMET (Figura 7). nanciados por persona con 100.000 € en el ámbito de la biomedicina, con 40.000 € en química orgánica y con 20.000 € en química teórica.…”

“…Lo que les pido no es nada fuera de lugar. Llevamos mucho tiempo haciendo predicciones, por ejemplo, usando modelos extratermodinámicos (Hammett, Taft, Kamlet, Abboud, Elguero...) [11] que son a la química cuántica lo que el Calendario Zaragozano es al superordenador Cirrus de la AEMET (Figura 7). tículos de revisión, en cambio, son trabajos que pretenden, a partir de una revisión bibliográfica de los estudios publicados en un período de tiempo dado, fijar el estado de la cuestión sobre un tema resumiendo los descubrimientos, innovaciones e ideas vertidos en la literatura científica.…”