Fortsetzung von Teil 1 (Studie Kassel, Laborjournal, THE, QSS) und Teil 2 (Delisting, Stealth Correction, Schmitz/ZB MED)

Die Frage ist nun – über wieviel Geld reden wir überhaupt? Dazu gibt es nur Schätzungen. Sie liegen für MDPI in der Grössenordnung  von über einer halben Milliarde Euro und damit die grösste je für OA bezahlte Summe mit roundabout 640 Millionen Euro.

Ein zweite Schätzung geht zu 1 Milliarde – zusammen mit dem zweiten nicht minder dubiosen Frontiers Verlag.

MDPI and Frontiers are not the ideal destination for every paper of every author, but at one point, they combined for about 500,000 papers (annualized), while growing at a rapid pace. This translates into nearly $1,000,000,000 annual revenue, powered by papers in Guest Edited collections.

Schauen wir uns also den ZB MED Vertrag etwas genauer an  – er steht online auf Zenodo – da er in fast allen Punkten zu Ungunsten von ZB MED und dem deutschen Steuerzahler ausgeht. In der automatisierte LLM Analyse

Finanzielle Bedingungen: Vorauszahlungen (Flat Fee) sind bis zum 28. Februar fällig, ohne Regelung für Rückerstattungen. Rabatte gelten nur unter bestimmten Bedingungen (z. B. wenn der korrespondierende Autor zur Institution gehört).

Haftung & Kündigung: „Wesentlicher Vertragsbruch“ ist nicht genau definiert. Keine Regelung für eine außergerichtliche Streitbeilegung.

Datenschutz: Vertrag nennt DSGVO und SDPA, aber keine klaren Vorgaben zur Datenverarbeitung oder zum Umgang mit Datenschutzverletzungen.

Gerichtsstand & Recht: Schweizer Recht und Basel als Gerichtsstand – ungünstig für ZB MED.

Archivierung & Open Access: MDPI entscheidet über den Archivierungsmechanismus – unklar, ob ZB MED Einfluss darauf hat und warum ZB MED das nicht selbst übernimmt.

Vertragsverlängerung: Verlängerungsverhandlungen müssen spätestens zwei Monate vor Vertragsende beginnen – zu wenig Zeit für interne Abstimmungen.

Warum nur wirft der Staat so viel Geld für eine private Firma aus, wo doch die Archivierung von Artikeln mit Forschungsergebnissen eine zentrale Aufgabe des Staates war?

There are very few instances where an entire scientific field has completely collapsed but there are cases where once-prominent fields were either abandoned, replaced, or significantly redefined due to paradigm shifts. It would have taken me 2 weeks to compile this list while chatGPT could do that in seconds (and denies to have used Wikipedia). Here are some examples:

1. Phlogiston Theory (18th Century) – Replaced by Modern Chemistry

• What it was: A widely accepted theory that explained combustion and rusting as the release of an invisible substance called “phlogiston.”
• Why it collapsed: Antoine Lavoisier’s discovery of oxygen in the late 18th century showed that combustion was actually a reaction with oxygen, not the loss of phlogiston. This led to the rise of modern chemistry and the fall of phlogiston theory.

2. Geocentrism (Ptolemaic Model) – Replaced by Heliocentrism

• What it was: The belief that Earth was the center of the universe, with the Sun and planets orbiting it.
• Why it collapsed: Observations by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler provided overwhelming evidence for a heliocentric solar system, where planets orbit the Sun.

3. Vitalism – Replaced by Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

• What it was: The idea that living organisms were fundamentally different from non-living things because they contained a “vital force” beyond physical and chemical processes.
• Why it collapsed: Discoveries in biochemistry and molecular biology, such as the synthesis of urea (Wöhler, 1828) and the discovery of DNA’s structure, showed that life can be explained through chemistry and physics alone.

4. Catastrophism (Pre-Darwinian Geology) – Replaced by Uniformitarianism

• What it was: The belief that Earth’s geological features were shaped primarily by sudden, short-lived catastrophic events (like Noah’s flood).
• Why it collapsed: Charles Lyell’s uniformitarianism argued that slow, gradual processes (like erosion and sedimentation) shaped the Earth over millions of years. This view became the foundation for modern geology.

5. Alchemy – Replaced by Modern Chemistry

• What it was: A mix of mystical, philosophical, and proto-scientific ideas aimed at transforming base metals into gold and discovering the “elixir of life.”
• Why it collapsed: The development of systematic chemical experimentation and the discovery of elements through atomic theory rendered alchemy obsolete.

6. Ether Theory – Replaced by Relativity and Quantum Mechanics

• What it was: The idea that light waves needed a medium called “luminiferous ether” to propagate through space.
• Why it collapsed: The Michelson-Morley experiment (1887) failed to detect ether, and Einstein’s theory of relativity (1905) showed that light does not need a medium to travel.

7. Spontaneous Generation – Replaced by Germ Theory

• What it was: The belief that living organisms could arise spontaneously from non-living matter (e.g., maggots appearing from rotting meat).
• Why it collapsed: Louis Pasteur’s experiments in the 19th century proved that life comes from pre-existing life, leading to the acceptance of germ theory.

While complete collapses of scientific fields are rare, history shows that many dominant ideas have been overturned or refined as new evidence and methods emerge.