Major discrepancies, poorly organized research design and incredibly low quality of the data prompted me to recommend rejecting the manuscript from publication, without considering future revisions. I agreed to provided my honest feedback on it. After a brief look it appeared to be not suitable for publication in any of the peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Later on, the editor also invited me to review someone's else manuscript.

Briefly, I have been repeatedly asked to submit an article to EC Pulmonology and Respiratory Medicine. What I certainly do not recommend to do is submitting to any journals published by E-Cronicon, which I had quite a bad experience with. Thus there is a balance to be struck and for both authors and referees to keep the practices of journals and publishers under constant review. PLoS ONE, for research that needs to be documented as sound and useful but not necessarily ground-breaking, including negative findings. I agree however with the MDPI publisher that there is a need for good quality outlets, in the mould of e.g. It is essential that MDPI do not 'kill the golden goose', given the need for good quality open-access outlets following the decision by European funding agencies that that much publically-funded research will need open-access publication after 2020. The key ongoing issues are neatly summarised in the link provided above by Derek Pyne. Good experience thus far as a referee with MDPI International Journal of Molecular Sciences - several reviewed manuscripts published only after incorporation of referee's suggestions and one irremediably substandard submission roundly rejected - as a referee, it is important to keep an eye on how a journal uses one's reviews and what it publishes. That means I would not think of them to handle my own manuscripts as well, as they deserve a more rigorous review. I gave MDPI 4 times the benefit of the doubt as reviewer (in three different journals) and was 4 times disappointed, including potential plagiarism that the editors refused to consider. In any case, in my discipline there are sufficient journals in the 'mid range' that will eagerly consider good early career and precarious backgrounds papers that have a normal peer review process and where you don't have to pay to play. All gives the impression that MDPI sees the author as their 'paying client' and the peer review as a nuisiance standing between them and their APC fee. There is a reason why you want to take several weeks or months before you submit revisions, there are books to be read and robustness tests to be done. When I try to encourage revision in reviews, you get a 'revised manuscript' two days later which you are then pushed to accept. My experiences echo all what I read above, and more worrisome, my experiences used exactly the same email text despite being in a completely different field and a completely different 'managing editor'. After several negative experiences, I no longer accept to do reviews for them.

Publisher plus reviews