A very perceptive analysis of MDPI by @danbrockington here: https://danbrockington.com/2020/07/23/mdpi-journals-2015-to-2019/

"[Traditional] journals, in short, do not just police quality. They police fashion and trends. MDPI’s model is to eschew all questions of fashion, scope or significance" #OpenAccess

IMO it could do with better situating MDPI in context alongside Elsevier, Wiley, SpringerNature and other large commercial publishers with >100 journals.

Elsevier journals for instance have had many mass resignations. Elsevier charges a lot more for open access. Most Elsevier journals are also just as opaque with regard to peer review (reports). They are hidden away and we just 'trust' that an adequate process has occurred.

IMO peer review reports and editorial comments and decisions should be published along side published manuscripts so that we can SEE how and why each of the papers were published. We can see if they were reviewed in any depth or not

When reviewers hand in very minimal, non-probing review reports... that's not really the publisher's fault is it! When we see 'low-quality' research in journals, I think some of the problem lies with academia and a lack of transparency, not necessarily the publisher.

I was the handling editor for an MDPI ms recently. From this it is interesting to see that MDPI publishes the reviewer comments, but _not_ the editors comments. The ed in this instance (me!) asked for the most substantial changes. The reviewer comments have also been edited down

I shudder to link to this, because the concise editing down of the reviewer comments (and the non-provision of my ed comments!) makes the whole process look worse/shallower than it was, but this is the MS I am talking about: https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/5/3/62/review_report