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I was asked to review for an MDPI journal and realized while requesting to extend the deadline for my review that the editor at MDPI intended to send review requests to several reviewers, to gather enough reviews to make a decision on the basis of the first 2-3 he received. This means that the journal might have requested a review that they would not have needed. I am wondering if this is how MDPI normally conducts reviews as it would be disrespectful of the work of reviewers.

It appears that others might have had similar experiences (see here and here).

Can you tell me if you had similar experiences so that we can better understand how MDPI normally conducts its reviews, and if it is respectful of the work of reviewers?

Snijderfrey
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outis
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    Are you asking a question about MDPI, or about the general idea of inviting multiple reviewers but making a decision based on only the first several received? – Allure Sep 02 '21 at 14:53
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    It may be better to separate the issue of "Is it common at MDPI (but not really elsewhere) to request more reports than needed" and "is this practise unethical". – Arno Sep 02 '21 at 14:54
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    Journals may well proceed without receiving all requested reviews - how long are they supposed to wait if somebody does not reply? – Jon Custer Sep 02 '21 at 14:55
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    If it's the latter question per @Arno, then it's answered here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/79495/is-it-ethical-for-a-journal-to-cancel-an-accepted-review-request-when-they-have The description in that question also sounds very much like MDPI. Still, it would imply they are cancelling because the deadline has passed, not because they have received enough reviews to make a decision. – Allure Sep 02 '21 at 14:59
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    What would be unethical about it, as long as it is known to reviewers? – Buffy Sep 02 '21 at 15:14
  • https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4879/reopening-this-question-on-mdpi – Anonymous Physicist Sep 02 '21 at 15:20
  • My experience with MDPI has been that their review process is inconsistent. It may vary from journal to journal. It is a marginal publisher, similar to Elsevier. – Anonymous Physicist Sep 02 '21 at 15:22
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    There seems to be a trend confusing the word unethical with annoying, aggravating, unfortunate, could-be-better, etc. – A rural reader Sep 02 '21 at 15:22
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    @A rural reader I've taken to edit out the word "ethical" in such questions, replacing it by "(im)proper", "(in)appropriate", "(un)fair, "(dis)respectful" etc. – henning Sep 02 '21 at 17:14
  • @henning. No need for euphemism here. We can certainly talk of problematic ethics (or "professional ethics" if you prefer) when it comes to publishers making profits from the work of reviewers and wasting their time on top of it. – outis Sep 02 '21 at 18:59
  • @Buffy. Interesting question, which I think show that we're talking about professional ethics here. Please see my comment to your answer below. – outis Sep 02 '21 at 19:09
  • @AnonymousPhysicist Thanks. I've read this post and it is not directly related to my question. I get your point about inconsistent procedures. This would be a simple answer to the question. – outis Sep 02 '21 at 19:19
  • @Allure Thank you, I didn't know of this question and it is similar to mine. I'm asking specifically about instances where an editor let you start working on a review and then tells you that your work is not needed anymore. – outis Sep 02 '21 at 19:19
  • @outis "It depends on the journal" or "It depends on the editor" is not an answer to the question. It is a reason to close the question. – Anonymous Physicist Sep 02 '21 at 19:23
  • @outis this isn't specific to your question, but as another commenter said, the term is used in an overly very broad sense on this site in general. – henning Sep 02 '21 at 20:24
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    The question was closed but I can't find the answer to the question it was associated with. Wouldn't it be better to associate it with the question suggested by @Allure? : https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/79495/is-it-ethical-for-a-journal-to-cancel-an-accepted-review-request-when-they-have – outis Sep 02 '21 at 21:17
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    I'm voting to reopen because this question has a different focus than the alleged duplicate, and OP's question is not answered there – lighthouse keeper Sep 03 '21 at 06:18
  • Clarification question: When did you ask for the deadline extension? Before or after agreeing to review the paper? – lighthouse keeper Sep 10 '21 at 07:42
  • No, I have not made this experience. However, my experience is that they are very strict with their review deadlines (in order to boost the statistics). –  Sep 10 '21 at 07:42
  • This question is still unclear to me, and might possibly have been answered in the other of the linked questions. I'd vote to close, but my one vote might be enough to close it. – Allure Sep 10 '21 at 10:49
  • See also: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/12380/19607 – Kimball Sep 10 '21 at 14:43
  • @lighthousekeeper : before – outis Sep 11 '21 at 12:41
  • @Allure can you tell me what is unclear? It is similar to the question linked by Kimball (academia.stackexchange.com/q/12380/19607) but asked about MDPI in particular. It also assumes that asking for reviews to more reviewers than necessary is professionally unethical, which appears to have confused or annoyed people. – outis Sep 14 '21 at 13:12
  • @outis because the question is effectively two questions in one (c.f. Arno's comment), and it is unclear which one you are asking. – Allure Sep 14 '21 at 21:37
  • @Allure I see what you mean. You may have read the last paragraph of my question too literally. I think many comments and all responses to my question show that a common reading of my question is to assume that I am not asking but affirming that the practice I describe is unethical. – outis Sep 16 '21 at 00:13
  • @outis if you are affirming that the practice you describe is unethical, then it ceases to be a question and therefore is not within the scope of StackExchange. – Allure Sep 16 '21 at 02:45
  • I'm going to vote to close as a duplicate. If you are asking specifically about MDPI, then it's still a duplicate, but of the other question (about whether MDPI is predatory). – Allure Sep 16 '21 at 02:55
  • @Allure Yes, the question is not whether the practice I describe is unethical or not but whether other people have witnessed it as well. Moreover, I did not ask whether MDPI as a whole is predatory or not. I would say that a journal using an unethical review system is not necessarily "predatory" (I understand by this term OA journals that do not actually conduct reviews). One might wonder whether MDPI as a whole has a parasitic business model but this would be a different (i.e. broader) issue than the one I raised. – outis Sep 17 '21 at 03:34

3 Answers3

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I had my own experiences with MDPI both as a reviewer an as a special issue editor. I'd say they don't do anything I'd call "unethical", but they definitely follow a kind of business-like approach to the whole process, trying to observe the rulebook and the deadlines.

As a reviewer, you get an invitation along with other reviewers. If you respond too late, the link simply expires. I am not sure what happens if several people respond quickly, but probably it rarely happens in practice: it often takes longer than planned to get enough reviewers, and if there is no response within a reasonable time, another candidate will be invited.

As an editor, you can leave the work to inviting reviwers to the MDPI staff or do it yourself. In either case, they notify you when all the promised reviews are received (or the deadline has passed), and you can see them all in the editor interface. So I really doubt that any review that was actually written won't be shown there.

I'd say that MDPI has an extensive ever-growing list of "special issues", which are edited by guest editors (like me). It's an editor's job to decide what to do upon receiving reviews, so the authors' experience depend a lot on editor's attitude. For example, seeing a poorly written review, an editor might ask for another review or simply look at the final verdict (accept / reject) without much attention to review content.

From a purely user interface perspective, the editor doesn't really have any incentive to prefer some reviews and ignore others. There is a box with a short summary of all reviews (like "Reviewer 1: acccept; Reviewer 2: major revision; Reviewer 3: reject"), so I doubt any reviews are lost at this stage.

Naturally, if the deadline has passed and we only have two reviews out of three requested, the editor might decide to make a decision without waiting the for the third review (especially if two people have already proposed rejection, there is little merit in delaying the decision), or to invite another reviewer rather than waiting for a reply.

rg_software
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I don't find anything unethical in the practice as long as no deception occurs. If it is a policy of the journal or otherwise communicated to reviewers then they have no obligation to opt-in to the review, or even to working with the journal in question.

I doubt that any reviewer has a guarantee that their view of a paper will have any particular influence on an editor. An editor needs evidence about the quality of a paper and reviewers supply their views. But those views can be ignored, and often are when reviewers differ.

You might be upset if an editor seems to waste your time and effort by not taking your view into account, but there is no contract to do so.

Long term, it might not be in a journal's best interest to send out more requests than needed, especially when it angers reviewers, but that isn't an ethical issue. They are trying to avoid the problem of late reviews delaying publication of good papers.

But if you feel your time and effort is being wasted, don't participate.

I've answered only the topline question as applied to ignoring reviews and make no statement about whether the publisher is ethical in general or not.

Buffy
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    Have you ever published with or reviewed for MDPI? – Anonymous Physicist Sep 02 '21 at 18:40
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    by ignoring the content of my question, you missed the point. My question is not about editors ignoring the opinion of some reviewers (I'm happy they do this!) but about editors letting you start a review and then telling you they won't need it. Do scholars in your discipline normally submit manuscripts to multiple journal at the same time? It would be unethical to do it in mine, and for good reasons (more requests for reviews). We will get (or already have) similar problems if editors start to ask 10+ reviewers for every manuscript. – outis Sep 02 '21 at 18:55
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    I don't understand how multiple submissions is relevant here. And no, I know of no discipline in which that is acceptable. Would you rather they let you continue and then ignore what you send them? Or would you rather be told early that you can drop it? I'll assume that when they asked you at the start that they weren't planning to ask you to drop it later. No deception was specifically mentioned. Are you looking for answers here or trying to get confirmation of a hoped-for result? – Buffy Sep 02 '21 at 19:23
  • Maybe a better way to phrase it would be: would you rather they make a decision without your input and don't tell you leaving you still working on the review, or let you know that the decision has been made already (or that they have sufficient feedback on the paper)? – Buffy Sep 02 '21 at 19:31
  • Sorry but I think we're talking over each other's heads. My question concerns a situation where an editor is obviously asking for more reviews than necessary. That's what I find unethical (unfair or whatever). I also think it will remain unethical even if the editor tells reviewers that he/she might be wasting their time. – outis Sep 02 '21 at 20:03
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    No, sorry, you are interpreting your own irritation as an ethical lapse on the part of someone else. It may not be optimal for the journal, but it does you no harm. You are a player here, not a victim. You have agency. I'm starting to think your "question" is a disused rant. That isn't the purpose of this site. And yes, for the record, I've studied ethics. – Buffy Sep 02 '21 at 20:07
  • And, again, sorry to be harsh, but if you've already formed an opinion and come here only willing to listen to confirmation of that, then you are, not to coin a phrase, wasting out time. If your own bias makes you refuse to listen to an alternate view, then you're not in the right place. People here genuinely try to be helpful. FWIW, I would have answered the same if MDPI had not been mentioned at all. Also, I disagree with the reason for closing this. I'd had preferred you get alternate answers. – Buffy Sep 02 '21 at 20:32
  • No problem. You are right in that the reason I asked was to see if there would be more examples suggesting that my hypothesis is correct. If I had been given the chance to see whether there are more examples or not, I might have concluded that it's not. But nobody can convince me of that by exposing their hypothesis concerning my mental state. From what I see, we simply disagree: you think it's fair for an editor to ask for multiple reviewers and form an opinion with the first few reviews that come in, I think it isn't. – outis Sep 02 '21 at 21:15
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In the comments, you give an important clarification: You asked for a deadline extension before agreeing to review the paper. Hence, in this case, there are no fairness- or ethics-related implications, because you did not spend any actual work on reviewing the paper.

It's fair for a journal to invite more reviewers than they need, because rejections to such invitations are very common. If they get more positive responses than expected, they can just dis-invite the unneeded reviewers without doing any damage (unnecessary work done). The same happened to me recently upon a review invitation from a top journal in my area.

A related, but different case would be if they actually had more reviewers review the paper than needed, and moved on to a decision before all reviews are in and before the agreed deadline has passed. This would indeed be disrespectful of the reviewers' work and could be seen as somewhat unethical. But I don't see any evidence that MDPI does this.

lighthouse keeper
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  • The situation I described is the one you mention in your third paragraph. – outis Sep 16 '21 at 00:00
  • @outis Now I'm confused. In the comments, you said that you asked for the deadline extension before accepting the review request. Does this mean that you started the review before you accepted the review request? – lighthouse keeper Sep 16 '21 at 07:07
  • Here's the sequence of events. I went to the review form, filled it and added a note saying I would need a 1 month extension (there was no way of asking this extension on the form). I received an email thanking me for accepting to review the paper that made no mention of my note. I then immediately emailed the assistant editor telling him about my request. Responded that it was ok but that if enough review reports were collected before I sent mine, they would let me know." – outis Sep 17 '21 at 03:47
  • @outis Thanks for clarifying! Now I understand how the process looked liked from your side. The situation is still not fully clear to me, because I don't understand if the response from MDPI is a special response to your request for a later deadline, or describes a general practice of soliciting more reviews than required. If it's the former, one could argue that it's still fair, because they communicated it to you, and you are free to withdraw from the review. In any case, the fact that they initially ignored your request leaves a sour aftertaste. – lighthouse keeper Sep 17 '21 at 09:46
  • Thanks for asking. Yes, unfair might not be the right word after all. I would rather say that the question the editor asked (in essence: “may I ask you to work for me for free and perhaps also in vain?”) is indicative of low ethical standards, to put it mildly. I would expect other to have had similar experiences, hence my question. – outis Sep 18 '21 at 10:37