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.
Both publishers criticized the move, first reported in Times Higher Education, as lacking transparency and seeming to target fully open-access publishers.
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.”
JUFO rates journals on a scale from 1 to 3, with higher ratings corresponding to more points for funding. Publications in titles rated “level 0” count the same as popular articles or scientific articles that haven’t been peer-reviewed.
Earlier this year, as we reported, JUFO downgraded 60 journals, most of them from MDPI, from level 1 to level 0 after soliciting feedback from researchers about their experiences with the quality of publications in scientific journals.
JFUO later decided it would downgrade MDPI and Frontiers journals to level 0 in 2025, calling the publications “grey area journals” which “make use of the APC (Article Processing Charge) operating model and aim to increase the number of publications with the minimum time spend for editorial work and quality assessment.” The announcement continued:
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.
On December 16, JUFO released a list of 271 journals that will be downgraded to level 0 next year, 193 from MDPI and 78 from Frontiers. Based on suggestions from discipline-specific panels of experts, JUFO kept 16 MDPI and 22 Frontiers journals at level 1, the announcement stated.
“We are deeply concerned by JUFO’s recent decision and find it challenging to understand the objectivity of the applied criteria,” Giulia Stefenelli, scientific communications lead for MDPI, said in a statement to Retraction Watch. “The simultaneous downgrade of 271 journals suggests a generalized evaluation process rather than a fair assessment of each journal’s merit.”
In October, the sudden death of a young MDPI employee raised questions about the workplace culture at the company.
In a statement to Retraction Watch, Shirley Dent, head of public relations for Frontiers, said all of the publisher’s downgraded journals meet JUFO’s criteria for level 1 ranking. “Targeting” publishers with author-funded open-access models “is both unfair and arbitrary – the assessment ranking of journals should simply be based on the quality and value of services provided,” Dent said.
Dent also said JUFO’s statement on their decision “does not provide any evidence” but points to “hearsay, anecdote and discredited lists.” Frontiers did not receive any “substantial feedback” about issues to address, “which is the core criterion of any evaluation process.”
“The decision can only be interpreted as an attack on a publishing model, rather than as an assessment of journal quality,” she said, in comments echoing those by Frontiers’ Fred Fenter in the LSE Impact Blog.
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