I’m a current master’s student looking to apply to PhD programs this winter in biomedical engineering. Lately I’ve was working in a lab directed by a surgeon who was “invited” to submit to Applied Sciences, a “predatory” MDPI journal. I wrote this paper as joint first author and it was submitted to Applied Sciences despite me expressing my concerns.
I have the following questions:
- Is it worth including this paper in my application at all? It would be the only paper I have in the field, though I have 2 papers from my undergraduate work in physics.
- Is it still worth getting a LoR from this PI? Some professors may think that this person is a poor researcher given MDPI’s reputation and their lack of a PhD.
Comments
If you stand by the paper, keep it. I have papers in MDPI and Frontiers journals. I don’t like the journal practices, but there are good papers in there as well as the garbage. I stand by my papers, these are on my CV. Anyone that reads the papers can judge them on their own individual merits.
It is good to avoid predatory journals, but the problem is the bar shifts constantly. Some journals that used to be solid became predatory, a few even transitioned the other way. Your papers do need to speak for themselves at a certain point, and the short cut of journal title gets replaced by the short cut of individual paper citations. Few people would mark you down for having a paper in one of these journals, mostly it would be a slight plus or neutral at worst.
For your PI, if they exclusively publish in predatory journals, that is a red flag and they may have a poor reputation. But a few scattered among quality journals? That’s fine. We get known for our best work, not our worst work. Even if the PI only has an average reputation, it is better to have a great recommendation from an average PI than an average recommendation from a great PI.
Who the hell submits to a journal without consent from the co-authors? This is a massive red flag IMO.
Keep the paper on your CV and get the LOR, if you think they’ll write a good one. Would the pub be better if it were somewhere else? Sure. But at this stage in your career, it’s not remotely damning and can probably only help to demonstrate you have research experience. If you were an late-stage PhD student, a postdoc, or a PI with only publications in predatory journals, that would be a potential red flag.
Masters students will get a lot of leeway when it comes to things like this, so despite me viewing MDPI as a massive red flag in general I’d still give any masters student the benefit of any doubt. I would however hold it against the advisor for sure.
Keep it on your CV and if it ever comes up mention that you have learned since.
It sounds like the PI has some red flags so I understand why you may not want to get a recommendation from them, but in the other hand it can look weird if you don’t have one. I’d only not get one if you think they will give you a bad one. That said, it would probably be good to find someone else who you think carries more weight to give a second letter of reference if you can.