1) It's about population growth rates, NOT species extinctions
2) it's only about vertebrates
3) it's average decline rates _irrespective_ of population size

I admire the intention of LPI but the index itself is terrible and widely misunderstood. Something is not always better than nothing.

Tl;Dr the LPI averages décline rates in vertebrate population time-series but doesn't account for population size. It also weights the time-series by taxa richness - which gives most weight to time-series with the least amount of data.

scholar.google.com/citations?us...

Sounds like interesting work! I couldn't find in the article how the 'dust' was sampled? Is there a pre-print already?

From my part, this was the brainchild of my PhD, after thinking about diversity metrics and multifunctionality metrics *a lot* and finally coming to the conclusion that they are intimately related. Jarretrobi independently thought along the same lines.

Der Diskurs ist so vergiftet wie bei keinem anderen Konflikt bevor. Mensch hat die Wahl zwischen Antisemit oder Genozid-befürworter. Wohin soll das führen?

Plos One tried to make a new phone publishing model work. MPDI saw the flaw and decided to make big bugs of it... 🤷

And the journals are popular / esteemed because?

Of course IFs were deviced as proxy for 'quality' however that is defined (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance). I don't say they are a good proxy (but I do think we give them more credit than we admit). It's a different discussion though.

2/2 that's an argument for preprints (which I am a great fan of) not for predatory publishers that also publish good papers. The backlash against MDPI is against the publisher l, not all articles published by it.

No it doesn't and it turns the argument on its head. I argued that I don't trust MDPI to provide any wetting of the articles they publish (in my field) that I trust. Doesn't mean I blindly trust other publishers but say BES journals I trust more 🤷. And if we just go by the article 1/2

And why would the librarians spend money to subscribe to journals with higher IFs? For whom did the librarians licence the journals?

But again, this is not a defence of the IF, it was just to say that journals have signaling power. And if we don't believe that, the alternatives are pre-prints.

I know&I'm a big fan of preprints. I do think we need mechanisms of peer-endorsments and quality checks but I am not convinced journals are the best way to go. BUT if we go with journals, we need at least to reject the predatory ones...

What I don't get is, following the 'read the paper' argument, what service does MDPI provide over (bio)arxive or any other pre-print server? It's completely free for anyone, authors and readers.

Fair if it's an easy to check experimental result. If it's a review on a niche topic (of which there are many in MDPI) it's difficult to assess the quality if I am not an expert myself. If it's a reputable journal in the field I trust it was wetted, for MDPI I don't.

For libraries to select what journals to subscribe to, so we scientists can read them...

If any, then the role of journals is to provide a proxy to screen the Literatur. The IF was invented for that (with all its flaws). It is literally impossible to read all relevant papers and 'judge by ourselves'.

The argument against MDPI is also against the publisher, not all papers.

Quality standards - such that I am reluctant to cite MDPI papers. And I think in both cases they abuse underprivileged communities and ECRs more than they serve them.