MDPI
MDPI is a publisher of open-access scientific journals. It publishes over 390 peer-reviewed, open-access journals. MDPI is among the largest publishers in the world in terms of journal article output, and was the largest publisher of open access articles in 2020.
It was founded by Shu-Kun Lin as a chemical sample archive. Between 2016 and 2020, the number of peer-reviewed papers published by MDPI grew significantly, with year-over-year growth of over 50% in 2017, 2018 and 2019, attracting attention to their very fast article processing times. In a review of 26 open-access "mega-journals" that published over 3,500 papers in 2022, 11 of the journals were from MDPI. Besides launching its own journals, MDPI has acquired journals from other publishers, such as Tomography from Grapho Publications in 2021, and Nursing Reports and Audiology Research from PagePress Publications in 2020.
As of January 2024, MDPI publishes 433 academic journals, including 92 journals indexed within the Science Citation Index Expanded, 7 journals indexed within the Social Sciences Citation Index, 138 journals listed in SciFinder, and 270 in Scopus. Its journals are included in the DOAJ. MDPI also publishes open access books indexed in DOAB, OAPEN and BCI. It is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, the Committee on Publication Ethics, the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers, and a participating publisher and supporter of the Initiative for Open Citations.
MDPI's business model is based on establishing entirely open access broad-discipline journals, with fast processing times from submission to publication and article processing charges paid by the author, their institutions or funders. MDPI's business practices have attracted controversy, with critics suggesting it sacrifices editorial and academic rigor in favor of operational speed and business interests. MDPI was included on Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory open access publishing companies in 2014; it was removed in 2015 following a successful appeal, while applying pressure on Beall's employer. Some journals published by MDPI have also been noted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Norwegian Scientific Index for lack of rigor and possible predatory practices, as of 2025, CAS no longer lists any MDPI journals on its Early Warning List. In 2024, Finland's Publication Forum, which classifies publication channels for academic research, downgraded 193 MDPI journals to its lowest, level 0 rating.
History
MDPI traces its roots to Molecular Diversity Preservation International, also abbreviated MDPI, which was founded by Shu-Kun Lin in 1996 as a chemical sample archive, with some scholarly publishing and conference activities. The second organisation, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, was founded in 2010, primarily as a publisher. All of MDPI's journals have been open access and since 2008 published under a Creative Commons Attribution License.Molecular Diversity Preservation International
Molecular Diversity Preservation International was founded and registered as a non-profit association by Shu-Kun Lin and Benoit R. Turin in Basel in 1996 to enable the deposit and exchange of rare molecular and biomolecular research samples.The journal Molecules was established in 1996 in collaboration with Springer-Verlag in order to document the chemical samples of the MDPI collection. Several other journals were established by the MDPI Verein, including Entropy, the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Sensors, Marine Drugs, and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The publisher MDPI AG was spun off from MDPI Verein in 2010.
MDPI Verein co-organized several academic conferences, including the International Symposium on Frontiers in Molecular Science. It also runs virtual conferences, such as the Electronic Conference on Synthetic Organic Chemistry, which was started in 1997. In 2010 MDPI launched the platform Sciforum.net to host virtual conferences. In 2014, various virtual conferences were hosted in the areas of synthetic organic chemistry, material sciences, sensors, and sustainability. In 2015, MDPI co-organized two physical conferences with and at the University of Basel, the 4th Internationational Symposium on Sensor Science and the 5th World Sustainability Forum. Since 2015, scholars can organize their own conference for free on the Sciforum platform.
MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)
MDPI as a publisher of open-access scientific journals was spun off from the Molecular Diversity Preservation International organization. It was formally registered by Shu-Kun Lin and Dietrich Rordorf in May 2010 with its official headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. Including Switzerland, MDPI has editorial offices in 11 countries, with five offices in China, two offices in both Romania and Serbia, and offices in the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Poland, Japan, Thailand, and Singapore.The number of published papers has been growing significantly in the last decade with year over year growth of over 50% in 2017, 2018 and 2019, with 110,000 papers published in 2019. MDPI reported publishing 235,638 papers in 2021 alone. In 2020, MDPI was the largest publisher of open access papers in the world and the 5th largest publisher overall in terms of journal paper output.
MDPI was an early pioneer of the special issue model for academic publishing. The special issues are collections of papers on a specific topic, handled by guest editors. Many special issue papers are invited, either by the journal staff or by the guest editors. Roughly 88% of MDPI papers are published in special issues. The number of MDPI special issues has grown rapidly, alongside significant year-over-year growth in total papers published: in 2020, MDPI journals hosted a total of 6,756 special issues, compared to 39,587 special issues in 2021. However, only 10,504 of these 2021 special issues ultimately resulted in published papers. The number of special issues publishing papers rose to 17,777 in 2022.
Challenges
MDPI has had a number of challenges from the scientific community relating to its paper selection and review processes and the quality of its publications.Who's Afraid of Peer Review?
In 2013, the MDPI journal Cancers rejected a fake paper submitted to it in the "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?" sting operation.Inclusion in Beall's list
MDPI was included on Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory open access publishing companies in February 2014. Beall's concern was that "MDPI's warehouse journals contain hundreds of lightly-reviewed articles that are mainly written and published for promotion and tenure purposes rather than to communicate science." Beall also claimed that MDPI used email spam to solicit manuscripts and that the company listed Nobel laureates on its journals' editorial boards without their knowledge. MDPI responded to Beall's claims, seeking to debunk them. Chemist Peter Murray-Rust criticized the inclusion of MDPI in Beall's list, stating that his criticism of the publisher "lacks evidence" and is "irresponsible".MDPI made a successful appeal to the Beall's list appeals board in October 2015, and was removed from the list. Even after its removal, Beall remained critical of MDPI; in December 2015 he wrote: "it is clear that MDPI sees peer review as merely a perfunctory step that publishers have to endure before publishing papers and accepting money from the authors," and "it's clear that MDPI's peer review is managed by clueless clerical staff in China."
Beall's list was shut down in 2017. Beall later wrote that he had been pressured to shut down the list by his employer University of Colorado Denver and various publishers, specifically mentioning MDPI as a publisher that had "tried to be as annoying as possible to the university so that the officials would get so tired of the emails that they would silence me just to make them stop." Although his supervisor insisted that the university supported Beall, the university did open a research misconduct review of Beall's listing of another open access publisher, Frontiers Media. The investigation closed without findings.
2014 OASPA evaluation
Following Beall's criticism of MDPI, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association conducted an investigation in April 2014. This investigation was based on the controversy surrounding two papers, one in Life, the other in Nutrients; the listing of Nobel Prize winners on the website; the roles of editorial board members and of Shu-Kun Lin within the company; and the functions of the different office locations. OASPA concluded that MDPI satisfactorily meets the OASPA Membership Criteria.2016 data breach
In August 2016, MDPI was breached, leaving exposed 17.5 GB of data, including 845,000 e-mail addresses and e-mail exchanges between authors, editors and reviewers. According to MDPI, the unprotected instance at which the data was breached has since been protected.Resignations of editors
In August 2018, 10 senior editors of the journal Nutrients resigned, alleging that MDPI forced the replacement of the editor-in-chief because of his high editorial standards and for resisting pressure to "accept manuscripts of mediocre quality and importance."In June 2020, the would-be guest editors of a special issue in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Health resigned after being informed by an MDPI representative that a quota of publication-fee exemptions allocated to the special issue could only be given to scholars from developed countries.
In 2021, five members of the editorial board of the journal Vaccines resigned after Vaccines published a controversial article that misused data to reach the incorrect conclusion that vaccines against COVID-19 had no clear benefit.