Is Education Sciences a Predatory Journal? (MDPI)

No — not by the standard indicators used to identify predatory publishing, though a few things are worth knowing before you submit or cite it. Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102) is a peer-reviewed, fully open-access journal published by MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute). It is indexed in Scopus and in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) within Web of Science, it is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and it received its first Clarivate Journal Impact Factor (3.0) in the June 2023 Journal Citation Reports. None of the markers used to define a predatory journal — absent or fabricated peer review, deceptive editorial-board or indexing claims, non-transparent fees — apply to it on the current record. The question gets asked mainly because MDPI, its publisher, has a genuinely contested reputation in parts of academia, and that reputation gets applied by association to individual MDPI titles including this one. This page separates what’s documented about Education Sciences specifically from the broader, real debate about MDPI’s publishing model.

What Education Sciences Is

Education Sciences is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal covering research across all areas of education — pedagogy, curriculum, educational psychology, higher education, teacher education, and education policy, among others. It is published by MDPI, a Basel-founded (1996) open-access publisher of several hundred journals across science, technology, and social sciences. Like other MDPI titles and most gold open-access journals, Education Sciences is funded by article processing charges (APCs) paid by authors or their institutions on acceptance rather than by reader subscriptions — see CASRAI’s open access and article processing charge entries for how that funding model works generally.

Is Education Sciences Peer-Reviewed?

Yes. Submissions go through editorial screening followed by external peer review before an acceptance decision, the same basic structure described in CASRAI’s peer review guide. MDPI, as a publisher, is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), both of which involve ongoing conduct and process review, not a one-time badge. That publisher-level membership is a genuine, checkable signal — it is not the same thing as a claim of prestige or a guarantee that every published article is strong, but it does mean the journal operates inside a recognized ethics and process framework rather than outside one.

Is Education Sciences Indexed in Recognized Databases?

Yes, and this is one of the more decisive checks for ruling out predatory status, because predatory operations typically cannot sustain indexing in databases that independently vet editorial and peer-review quality before granting and maintaining coverage (see CASRAI’s How to Know If an Article Is Peer Reviewed guide for the full verification method). As of this writing, Education Sciences is:

Indexed in Scopus.
Indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) within Clarivate’s Web of Science Core Collection, and received its first Journal Impact Factor (3.0) in the June 2023 Journal Citation Reports — meaning it has since moved beyond ESCI-only coverage into the indexed, JIF-bearing tier of Web of Science.
Listed in DOAJ, the Directory of Open Access Journals — see CASRAI’s DOAJ entry for what DOAJ vetting involves. DOAJ applies its own editorial-standards review before listing a title and can and does remove journals that later fail to meet its criteria, so current DOAJ membership is itself a live signal, not a permanent credential.
Additionally indexed in subject-specific databases including Educational Research Abstracts and PsycInfo, per third-party journal-metrics aggregators.

Verify current indexing status yourself before relying on it for a specific submission decision — indexing coverage changes over time (see the MDPI/Web of Science section below for a real example of that), and the authoritative source is always the indexer’s own database (Scopus, Clarivate’s Master Journal List, DOAJ’s own search) rather than a journal’s self-description or a third-party aggregator site.

MDPI’s Reputation: What’s Documented and What’s Disputed

Because Education Sciences is an MDPI journal, the honest answer to “is it predatory” has to address MDPI itself, and MDPI’s record is genuinely mixed rather than clean or damning — it does not fit neatly into either a “definitely fine” or “definitely predatory” bucket, and a fair page should say so plainly.

MDPI is not on Beall’s list. Jeffrey Beall added MDPI to his list of potentially predatory publishers in February 2014, then formally removed it on 28 October 2015 after an appeal, when Beall’s own appeals process and a separate OASPA membership review both concluded MDPI met OASPA’s membership criteria. MDPI has not been re-added since. Citing the 2014 listing without noting the 2015 removal — something that still circulates informally — is out of date and misleading.
Some MDPI journals have been dropped from Web of Science coverage. In March 2023, Clarivate discontinued Web of Science coverage of two MDPI titles — International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and Journal of Risk and Financial Management — citing its “Content Relevance” evaluation criterion, as part of a broader review that also delisted journals from other publishers, including more than a dozen Hindawi titles. MDPI publicly acknowledged and appealed the decision. This was a content/quality-classification action by an indexer, not a predatory-publisher finding, and it did not affect Education Sciences, which retains its Web of Science and Scopus coverage.
Norwegian research-assessment concerns. Around 2021, a number of MDPI journals were affected by Norway’s national Publication Indicator moving some titles to a non-counting classification, reflecting concerns from Norwegian research-evaluation bodies about MDPI’s heavy use of special issues to drive rapid volume growth — a structural concern about growth strategy and review capacity, distinct from a finding of fabricated review or deceptive practice.
Peer-review speed and special issues are a genuine, ongoing debate. Some researchers and institutions have raised concerns that MDPI’s turnaround times are unusually fast for the volume it publishes, and that heavy reliance on guest-edited special issues can create review-quality inconsistency across a large journal’s output. These are legitimate, actively discussed concerns in scholarly-communication circles — they are not, on their own, evidence that a given MDPI journal, including Education Sciences, is running fake or absent peer review; they are a reason to look at review quality on a paper-by-paper or issue-by-issue basis rather than to write off the publisher wholesale in either direction.

Put together: MDPI is a mainstream, indexed, COPE/OASPA-member open-access publisher with a documented history of specific, real controversies — mostly about growth strategy, special-issue practices, and individual-title indexing decisions — rather than a documented history of predatory conduct as that term is formally defined. Treating every MDPI journal as automatically suspect, and treating every MDPI journal as automatically above scrutiny, are both oversimplifications of a genuinely contested record. CASRAI covers the publisher-level question directly in Is MDPI Peer Reviewed?

Why the Question Gets Asked About This Specific Journal

A few features of Education Sciences specifically feed the question, beyond the general MDPI association:

The name is generic. “Education Sciences” reads as a broad, almost genericky title rather than a recognizable flagship journal name, which is also true of some real predatory operations that pick deliberately vague, authoritative-sounding titles. A generic-sounding name is not itself a reliable signal either way — it has to be checked against actual indexing and editorial-process facts, which is what this page does.
APC-funded, author-pays model. A fee charged on acceptance is also the mechanism predatory journals abuse. The fee itself doesn’t distinguish the two cases; what matters is whether genuine peer review, indexing, and editorial infrastructure sit behind the fee — which, per the sections above, is documented and verifiable for Education Sciences.
Special-issue-driven growth. Like many MDPI journals, Education Sciences publishes a substantial share of its content through guest-edited special issues. That’s a real, discussed pattern (see the Norwegian-indicator point above) worth being aware of when evaluating a specific issue or invitation, but it is a growth-and-editorial-structure question, not evidence of absent review.

None of these amount to the defining markers of a predatory journal — see CASRAI’s predatory journal entry and guide to identifying predatory journals and publishers for the actual checklist (fabricated or unverifiable editorial boards, false indexing claims, no real peer review, non-transparent fees, aggressive unsolicited-submission spam). Education Sciences does not exhibit these.

How to Verify This Yourself

Rather than taking any single source’s word for a journal’s standing, check the primary sources directly: search the journal in Scopus’s Sources list, in Clarivate’s Master Journal List (mjl.clarivate.com), and in DOAJ’s own journal search, and compare what the journal’s own website discloses about its peer-review process and editorial board against those independent listings. CASRAI’s How to Know If an Article Is Peer Reviewed guide walks through this method in full, and CASRAI covers the same question for several other frequently searched publishers and journals: Is MDPI Peer Reviewed?, Is PLOS ONE a Predatory Journal?, and Is BMC Peer Reviewed?

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Education Sciences a legitimate journal?

Yes, on the current record. It uses genuine editorial peer review, is indexed in Scopus and Web of Science (ESCI, with a Journal Impact Factor since 2023), is listed in DOAJ, and its publisher MDPI is a member of COPE and OASPA. None of the formal markers of a predatory journal apply to it.

Is Education Sciences indexed in Scopus and Web of Science?

Yes to both. It is indexed in Scopus and in the Emerging Sources Citation Index within Web of Science, and it received its first Clarivate Journal Impact Factor (3.0) in the June 2023 Journal Citation Reports.

Why is MDPI sometimes called predatory if it isn’t on Beall’s list?

MDPI was on Beall’s list briefly in 2014 and was formally removed in 2015 after an appeals review. The reputation persists partly because that early listing is still cited without the removal, and partly because of separate, real controversies since then — Clarivate dropping two specific MDPI journals from Web of Science in 2023, and Norwegian research-assessment concerns around special-issue-driven growth in 2021 — which are legitimate but distinct issues from a predatory-publisher finding.

Does charging an article processing charge make Education Sciences predatory?

No. An APC-funded, author-pays model is the standard business model for gold open-access publishing generally, used by MDPI, PLOS, BMC, and most large OA publishers. It only indicates predatory practice when there is little or no genuine peer review behind the fee, or when indexing/editorial-board claims are misrepresented — neither is documented for Education Sciences.

Should I be cautious about anything before submitting to or citing Education Sciences?

It’s reasonable to check the specific special issue or editorial handling involved, given the documented, publisher-wide pattern of special-issue-driven volume growth and the associated debate about review-capacity consistency across MDPI’s output. That’s a due-diligence step at the issue level, not a reason to treat the journal itself as predatory — its indexing and COPE/OASPA standing are verifiable and current.