Hindawi (publisher)

Hindawi was a publisher of peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journals active in scientific, technical, and medical (STM) literature. It was founded in 1997 in Cairo, Egypt, and purchased in 2021 for $298 million by John Wiley & Sons, a large US-based publishing company.

By 2022, Hindawi was publishing over 250 journals, including 64 journals indexed within the Science Citation Index Expanded, and 1 journal indexed within the Social Sciences Citation Index,[3] with a total of 64 journals ranked with an impact factor. Since 2007, all of Hindawi's journals have been open access and published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY).[4]

The quality of peer review at a number of Hindawi journals has been criticized. In 2010, Hindawi was classified as a possible predatory publisher by Jeffrey Beall, but was removed from the list following a successful appeal.[5] Over the next years, the number of articles in Hindawi journals grew exponentially, the majority being published in special issues.

History

The Hindawi Publishing Corporation was founded in 1997 in Cairo by Ahmad Hindawi and his wife Nagwa Abdel-Mottaleb.[10][11][12] The company's first journal was the International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences, which it acquired from a prior publisher. By 2006 Hindawi Publishing owned 48 journals and had about 220 employees. It published journals in the physical and life sciences and medical research.[12] In February 2007, Hindawi moved to a complete open access model on all of its journals.[13][14] By 2007, Hindawi was publishing around 100 journals, 21 of which were ISI-listed, and claimed to be second largest publisher in PubMed Central, a biomedical and life sciences open access journal repository. The company advertised a 40% article acceptance rate. Article publication fees averaged $800, varying by journal and page count, being significantly less than prices charged by major open access competitors including BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science.[15]

Two corporations acted under the name of Hindawi: Hindawi Limited, based in London,[16] and Hindawi Publishing Corporation (HPC),[17] based in Cairo. The original publishing company, Hindawi Publishing Corporation, was founded in Cairo in 1997 by Ahmed Hindawi and Nagwa Abdelmottaleb [18] but later acted merely as a publishing services provider to Hindawi Ltd.[1] Hindawi Ltd was founded in London in 2013 by Ahmed Hindawi and had acquired all the assets and intellectual property of Hindawi Publishing Corporation by 2017.[19]

In January, 2021, John Wiley & Sons acquired Hindawi Limited for an enterprise value of $298 million.[20]

In the fall of 2022, Hindawi announced the retraction of more than 500 articles in 16 of its scientific journals because of cheating involving some of its editors and peer reviewers.[21] By the end of 2023, the number of retractions in Hindawi journals had increased to over 7,000 and Wiley announced that it would discontinue the Hindawi brand and operate the journals under a new approach.[8] The Wiley CEO who initiated the Hindawi acquisition stepped down in the wake of the bad news.[9]

In May 2023, Hindawi closed four journals.[22] Wiley shuttered another 19 former Hindawi journals the following year.[23]

parent	Wiley
status	Inactive
founded	1997
founder	Ahmed Hindawi
country	Egypt
headquarters	London‡R1R‡
distribution	Worldwide
publications	Scientific journals
numemployees	42 (in 2019)‡R2R‡
url	https://www.hindawi.com

Hindawi (publisher)

History

Assessment of Hindawi journals

Assessments and responses to controversial articles

Business model

See also

External links

References