(24 Dec 2024) A committee of scholars in Finland has decided to downgrade 271 journals from Frontiers and MDPI in their quality rating system, in a move that may discourage researchers from submitting manuscripts to the outlets.
Finland’s Publication Forum (JUFO) “is a rating and classification system to support the quality assessment of research output,” which factors into government funding for universities, according to its website. “The objective is to encourage Finnish scholars and researchers to publish their research outcomes in high-level domestic and foreign forums.”
From the announcement: “One of the most important changes in scientific publishing in Finland is the sharp increase in the number of articles published especially in MDPI and Frontiers open access journals operating with APC fees. The scientific community’s key concern is, whether the costs of open access publishing increases unreasonably, and whether the increase happens at the expense of a thorough quality assessment.”
Retraction Watch has more details here.
