A journal from MDPI is ranked 114 out 272 in its category according to Web of Science Journal Citation Reports. Can it still be a predatory journal? Can a predatory journal obtain an impact factor at all ?
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3Whether MDPI is predatory is an open queston. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI , https://paolocrosetto.wordpress.com/2021/04/12/is-mdpi-a-predatory-publisher/ – Ethan Bolker May 20 '21 at 17:31
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Wow, this is a dissertation of it's own :) Thanks for posting. – BrainResearcher May 20 '21 at 17:39
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2"Predatory" refers to publishing practices. "Impact factor" refers to the quality (really, citeability) of published work. While there is a correlation, journals exist in all four combinations of predatory/non-predatory and high/low impact factor. – user2229219 May 20 '21 at 18:37
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2MDPI is a very mixed bag. There are MDPI journals with good authors publishing in them regularly. Check the editorial board and sample the publications. – Captain Emacs May 20 '21 at 20:06
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@user2229219 can you name a predatory journal with a high impact factor? – Allure May 20 '21 at 21:19
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3Does this answer your question? Does Impact Factor reflect the quality of a journal? – Anonymous Physicist May 21 '21 at 03:02
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Also a duplicate of https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/83764/how-do-i-identify-predatory-and-low-quality-journals-with-bealls-list-gone-ho – Anonymous Physicist May 21 '21 at 03:02
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The final part of your question might not be a duplicate. – Anonymous Physicist May 21 '21 at 03:04
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@Allure Of course "predatory" is a subjective term but I have seen colleagues call MDPI's Sustainability journal predatory because of its practices including its ridiculous number of concurrent special issues. Its impact factor is 2.576 (2019) according to Wikipedia, which is not bad. – user2229219 May 21 '21 at 09:48
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Yes it can.* That's because the two things are orthogonal. The asterisk is because you need to define "predatory", and different people often have different definitions. Still, most definitions are orthogonal to what an impact factor looks at.
The impact factor is calculated by a company called Clarivate. It depends on the number of citations articles published in the journal have received in the past two years, divided by the number of citable articles published. In other words, it depends only on the number of citations received. That means all other considerations that routinely show up when discussing predatory journals, such as the APCs they charge or who they have on the editorial board, are irrelevant.
So yes, it is possible. Caveat: if you believe that the distinguishing hallmark of predatory journals is accepting articles quickly with little or no peer review or quality control, then having an impact factor practically proves the journal isn't predatory. Journals with no quality control are not likely to be indexed by Clarivate in the first place.
Allure
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This was also my line of thought: the papers published in the journals without proper peer-review are unlikely to be cited. Thus, such journals should not have high impact factor, if they even got one. Probably, such journals use some tricks like special issues to boost IF, but still whatever is the trick, one can pay the journal to publish this paper but there is no way make people to cite this paper. – BrainResearcher May 22 '21 at 20:02
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@BrainResearcher you cannot get an impact factor in the first place without proper peer review - one of the things Clarivate looks at before indexing a journal in the first place is if the journal is receiving citations from the other journals already in their database. See https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/solutions/editorial/. – Allure May 22 '21 at 21:59
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By the way I am not convinced that using "special issues" to boost IF is some kind of "trick". From my point of view it's perfectly legitimate. – Allure May 22 '21 at 22:00