Guest Editing with MDPI
In December 2023 I was invited to be a guest editor for the academic journal Economies. Initially I was dubious — academics receive a lot of emails that canvas for time and effort, and genuine opportunities almost always come from within a known network. My default assumption is that every conference I’m invited to, and every journal I’m encouraged to send my papers to, can be ignored.
On this occasion, however, I gave it some thought. I had recently relinquished being an Associate Editor at a different journal, and with an upcoming sabbatical I was keen to increase my professional service.
My business school has our own ranking system for peer-reviewed journals, and I noted that Economies held similar status to where I typically publish. So although I had no prior familiarity I thought it would be a valid opportunity to curate some interesting research findings, as well as increase my experience as a referee and editor. Moreover, Economies is owned by MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) which has a controversial business model. I had no strong opinion about them, but was keen to learn more. What better way?
Issue 1: Open access
One of the big criticisms of traditional academic publishing is that publicly funded research ends up sitting behind prohibitive paywalls. Indeed, when you consider how the traditional system works, it sounds perverse:
- Students pay universities to receive tuition
- Universities hire professors to teach students and conduct research
- Professors submit their research to an academic publisher
- The academic publisher charges universities to access their content
The supposed “value” of the publisher (which justifies why universities have to buy the content produced by their own employees) is the utilisation of peer review. But journal editors and peer reviewers are also providing their labour for free. In other words, academics are content creators that donate a university’s intellectual property to a private company, who then charge those same universities to access it.
What a racket!
I think I have published research in all of the major publishing houses — e.g. Springer, Elsevier, Wiley, Sage, Blackwell, Taylor & Francis — and recognise that they serve an important role as coordinating devices to both certify and signal quality research. But a major criticism is their role as gatekeepers of intellectual findings. It has become common for many journals to provide an open access service, where authors can “buy” the rights and ensure that anyone can read their research (but of course this just gets charged back to the institution).
Within this context, you would expect academics to encourage new challengers. MDPI runs almost 400 journals and has an interesting model:
- Entirely open access
- Fast processing times
But you can see the potential problem: the article processing fee might be considered a fast track to being published, and referees may lack the time to provide detailed or meaningful feedback. There may therefore be a concern that the journal serves merely as an enabling mechanism for “publication mills.” While the traditional model may have flaws, there is a general suspicion against emerging entrants that deploy a more ostentatiously commercial strategy.
Issue 2: Special issues
Another concern that has been raised against journals, and MDPI in particular, is the use of a special issue. Here, normal editorial decision making gets partially outsourced to a guest editor who is given the responsibility to solicit manuscripts and has some control over the refereeing process. As before, this has upsides and potential downsides.
The upside is that academics can bring together a series of papers that complement each other and provide a broad contribution to a research area. The Journal of Economic Perspectives is particularly good at assembling coherent symposia, and turning an academic conference into a special issue can be very fruitful. My only prior experience of guest editing a journal was when Innovation published the papers from a conference that I organised in 2008 (see here). I think it is inevitable that the refereeing process is somewhat lighter for special issues than general submissions, and within reason this is appropriate.
The downside, of course, is that guest editors are simply co-opted agents that exacerbate the tendency to wave through low quality work. They become foot soldiers to industrialise the process of extensive but unremarkable output. And this is why many academics are concerned about the prevalence of special issues, with MDPI being particularly active (image source).
Still, I decided to give it a go.
My experience
As ever I began the process with high hopes. The broad theme was the contemporary conduct of monetary policy, and I was keen to bring together work that analysed the extent to which central banks have lost “mission focus”. I wanted to publish research on topics such as green central banking, inequality, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). I reached out to scholars that I respect and admire and encouraged them to send me their work. I retained a veto on publications but allowed the journal editors to select referees and manage their reports.
While I promoted the special issue on social media, I can’t claim much credit. Most submissions came through the system presumably having visited the main website through the publishers own marketing. But in terms of quality and fit I was impressed. I approved every one of them because they deployed appropriate methods to answer a relevant research question, and contributed to our understanding of contemporary central banking. Referee reports tended to be detailed and constructive and authors responses were thorough. I even had my own article rejected by an associate editor. As editor of the special issue I did not have a free reign to do what I wanted, and was impressed by the overall standards.
At the time of writing there are currently 50 (!) special issues listed on the journal’s website. My one — “Monetary Policy and Central Banking: Challenges in the Current Environment” — has 9 published papers and an editorial. I think that constitutes a success.
Ultimately, I favour a healthy and diverse research ecosystem characterised by an array of options, and although the conventional model has flaws, I do not have a better one in mind. I think traditional academic publishers are morally questionable, but play an important role. And a lot of the more disparaging comments about journals like Economies are merely snobbery and status-seeking. So if you think it’s beneath you, bravo. But for the bulk of diligent and hardworking academics, it’s a perfectly valid option within a generally dysfunctional system. Personally, I found it to be a useful experience.
References
Hanson, M. A., Barreiro, P. G., Crosetto, P., & Brockington, D. (2024) The strain on scientific publishing. Quantitative Science Studies, 5(4).
