XIN Xiaoping Published 8 Articles on Her MDPI Special Issue
Previously, the 5GH team found XIN Xiaoping with Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning (IARRP), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences published 3 articles on her Elsevier special issue, violating the policy from the publisher. [1]
However, there seem to be more problematic special issues by XIN. The 5GH team recently found another special issue (Modeling and Monitoring of Grassland Ecosystem Productivity, Carbon Assimilation and Allocation) on MDPI journal Agronomy. The special issue was guest-edited by XIN and other 3 editors, and published 17 articles. Among them, 8 articles were co-authored by XIN.
LI Xianglin with Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, another guest editor of the special issue published 5 articles on the special issue, and SUN Xiao with Nanjing Agricultural University, the 3rd guest editor, published 1 article on the special issue. In total, 14 of 17 articles on the special issue were co-authored by the guest editors.
The 5GH team finds no specific information about MDPI's policy toward the publications from guest editors. But this large number raises concerns that XIN took advantage of her role as guest editor to promote the publications from her group and her institution.
XIN is also the guest editor of special issue "Utilization and Management of Grassland Ecosystems". The other 3 guest editors for this special issue come from a same institution as XIN, IARRP of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and they have close academic relationship to XIN, too.
This special issue has published 5 articles, 2 of which came from XIN's group. And the special issue is recruiting submission recently.
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