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1/10: I am sharing a recent peer review experience with @mdpiOpenAccess that I think is unethical. To summarise, @Sus_MDPI journal edited my review of an article without my permission by removing a statement I wrote suggesting that the article would be more appropriate elsewhere.
2/10: So when I submitted the report I said that the paper would be better placed in a more geoscience/geology journal and that if the authors wanted to stay with @mdpiOpenAccess they should consider "Geosciences". I was basically suggesting an article transfer.
3/10: Although I am sure that it will be denied, I feel that the comment was edited out because @sus_mdpi feared loosing an article worth ~$2000 in APC to a 'competitor' because of my comment.
4/10: I signed this review report with my name and institution because it was on a topic that I am interested in, and I welcomed further discussion with the authors if they wanted. So now there is a review that my name is on that was modified without my permission.
5/10: As academics I think we often think carefully about what we put our names/reputations behind. And I realise that this is perhaps a minor issue in the whole picture but I still think it is wrong.
6/10: I wrote to the editorial office and said I was frustrated about this and don't consider it ethical.
7/10: Their response and suggested solution to this was to keep the edited version of my review report but simply remove my name. I think they missed the point here.
8/10: I recognise that sometimes a review report might need to be not passed on by the editor if it is inappropriate/offensive etc. but this type of modification/manipulation of the process is not a good direction.
9/10: As we look for alternatives to the current broken publication model I think we need to be very wary of professional editorial processes which are driven by finances rather than science.
10/10 I have previously stood by MDPI even with some pretty questionable things because I genuinely believe that they are challenging a broken system. However, this recent experience has made me realise that perhaps their publication model is not the solution.
