MDPI "Open Access" Journals

[kaemper@ub.uni-stuttgart.de]

http://www.mdpi.org/journals.htm

The access policy of this website has recently become less clear than it
used to be, and I think that some of these journals do not deserve their
self-declaration and DOAJ approval as "open access journals"  anymore.

>From their founding until the end of 2004, these were truly open
access, they were free of charge and explicitely declared to be 
following the guidelines of the BOAI, the Bethesda statement, and 
the Berlin declaration on open access. They still publish open access 
articles now, and from 2005 on these are explicitely tagged as 
"open access", but now these are interspersed with other articles that 
are kept behind toll gateways. E.g., the table of contents of volume 10, 
2005 of "Molecules" (ISSN 1420-3049) carries a note:

- To subscribe to the full version, including those papers not marked as
Open Access , contact the publisher (e-mail publisher@mdpi.org)  by e-mail
(put "Molecules full version subscription" as the subject title and your
name and address in the text in your e-mail).

- To subscribe to the open access area of the online version, send an 
e-mail to subscribers@mdpi.org (put "Molecules free subscription" as 
the subject title and your name and address in the text in your e-mail).

According to my tests, the previous years' issues including 2004 are still
all open access and probably will continue to be so.  A "free
subscription" to the open access area of 2005 is not necessary for access,
it only serves as a current awareness service and a "time stamp" for
publication.

Still, this means that three of the MDPI journals,

- Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049)
- International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067)
- Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220)

(those covered by Science Citation Index Expanded) no longer fulfill the
criteria for inclusion of the Directory of Open Access Journals, which
state that "Journals that use a funding model that charges users or their
institutions are _not_ included." Similarly, journals with embargos before
articles are made open access, are also not included.  Clearly for a
journal (in contrast to an article) to be designated as "open access
journal", all of its articles must be open access. E.g., BMC's Genome
Biology is not included because only its primary research articles are
open access, while a subscription is required for the rest.  Therefore the
above mentioned titles should be deleted from the DOAJ.

Strangely enough, I could not find any price information for the Online
Version (only). One of our users got the info that he would have to pay
150 EUR for "Molecules", not expensive, but clearly not free of charge.  
It may be that the prices on

	http://www.mdpi.org/subs.htm 

are meant to cover online access including a printed edition, but 150 
EUR is charged only for personal (author) subscriptions. Apparently 
institutions are expected to buy *two* copies, one for author's (what 
author?) personal use, one for the "institute library". Of course this 
is totally impractical and won't find acceptance at university libraries 
(it's not even clear whether they are covered here also). Furthermore, 
no price is given for "Sensors", where the ToC states "Sensors is a free 
online journal" and does not mention a necessity to subscribe to a "full 
version" for articles not tagged as open access, but I found several 
such articles and you are asked for username and passwort when trying 
to access them.

I also could'nt find any explanation about what determines if articles 
are open access or not. It is also not clear whether articles not 
published open access will become so after some embargo period. 
For all three journals, back issues until and including 2004 are 
accessible free of charge. 

Online access for the other journals mentioned on the MDPI website is 
currently free of charge.

This is all very confusing and I hope, Dr. Shu Kun-Lin (MDPI) whom I 
have put in cc, will take the time to clarify these questions and 
concerns.

Best regards,
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library