Article Processing Charge (APC)

MDPI publishes all its journals as fully open access, allowing for the unlimited use and reuse of articles, in addition to giving credit to the authors. All our articles are published under a Creative Commons (CC BY) license.

Authors pay a one-time Article Processing Charge (APC) to cover the costs of peer review administration and management, the professional production of articles in PDF and other formats, the dissemination of published papers in various venues, and other publishing functions. Please note that the option to process an advance payment remains in place, but this does not guarantee acceptance of manuscripts. There are no charges for rejected articles, no submission charges, and no surcharges based on the length of an article, figures, or supplementary data. Some items (Editorials, Corrections, Addendums, Retractions, Comments, etc.) are published free of charge.

Submitted papers should be well-prepared, with good English and clear figures. Authors should resolve issues prior to publication, e.g., in response to reviewer feedback, or risk delays and even rejection. MDPI Author Services offers professional English and Figure Editing.

1. Publishing Operations & Projects

MDPI develops and maintains its own electronic submission and peer review website. We also operate several platforms to offer different services for scholars, as detailed on our MDPI Products Page.

2. Journal Publication

• Triaging: Triaging involves the filtering of papers upon submission by internal staff and Editorial Board Members.
• Organization of peer-review: MDPI provides a high level of assistance to Academic Editors so that they can focus on editorial decisions. We employ in-house editors to invite reviewers, collect review reports, communicate with authors and reviewers, correspond with authors about revisions, and more.
• Production: Production includes copy-editing, typesetting, XML and PDF conversion, and minor language editing.
• Language and Figures: The APC includes minor English editing only and no figure editing. Authors may choose to pay for MDPI Author Services’ premium manuscript preparation services.
• Proofreading: During proofreading, authors approve the final text and can request any missing information.
• Other editorial assistance: This includes the handling of any questions and requests for support before submission, during the editorial and peer review process, or post-publication.
• Journal management & development: In-house Managing Editors track key performance indicators of each journal and monitor competing journals and trends in the field. They also provide reports and hold discussions with the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board.
• Indexing & archiving: MDPI has a dedicated team that works to continuously expand the post-publication coverage of all our journals within the main academic databases, scope-specific databases, and country-specific journal ranking lists.
• Digital preservation: All MDPI journals are digitally preserved cover-to-cover, by the Swiss National Library and CLOCKSS, ensuring long-term archival of all of our publications.

3. Editorial Compensation

MDPI provides a travel grant or stipend to all Editors-in-Chief. For journals published on behalf of societies, individual financial arrangements apply.

4. Marketing and Communication

MDPI allocates a part of its income to the promotion of journals and articles through sponsorships of conferences, scholarly society events, and other promotional activities, as well as a range of awards to support researchers.

5. General

• Management and administration include costs related to the salaries of non-editorial staff and other business costs. They also include all fees paid by MDPI for membership of publishing organizations, such as the STM Association, OASPA, and the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP), as well as additional publishing services such as Publons. Most membership fees are based on the level of income or size of the publisher.
• Taxes.
• MDPI supports the activities of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation, including coordinating the World Sustainability Forum and World Sustainability Awards.
• MDPI is a debt-free company and is not repaying loans or investments.

6. Discounts and Waivers

MDPI is committed to supporting the transition of all research to being fully open access; therefore, we regularly offer APC waivers or discounts. On average, we waive approximately 25%–27% of our APCs every year. Across our journals, we offer waivers and discounts for a proportion of APCs, ranging from 15% in our most established journals up to 100% in our new or humanities journals . In several of our social sciences and humanities journals, we waive between 70% and 100% of APCs (an APC is still displayed on these journal's websites in order to demonstrate to authors that there is a cost to publication). Even some of our well-established journals waive 30% of publishing costs each year.

Additionally, members of societies that are affiliated with an MDPI journal benefit from a discount, as do authors who are affiliated with institutions participating in our Institutional Open Access Program.

For journals in fields with low levels of funding, where authors typically do not have funds available, APCs are typically waived and cross-subsidized from fields for which more APC funding is available. For authors from low- and middle-income countries, waivers or discounts may be granted on a case-by-case basis. Applications that are submitted before article submission are assessed by the Managing Editor based on the quality of the research article and the authors’ ability to pay.

The APC by journal is given in the table below.

Authors from Switzerland will have the local Value-Added Tax (VAT) added to their invoices. Residents of Japan will have the Japanese Consumption Tax (JCT) added to their invoices at the rate set by the Japanese government. Authors located in Taiwan will have the 5% Taiwan Value-Added Tax (VAT) added to their invoices when the invoice is issued to an individual (B2C). For invoices issued to Taiwan institutions or companies (B2B), no VAT applies.

The article processing charge (APC) includes only minor English editing for accepted papers. Authors are responsible for ensuring good English and clear figures before publication. Unclear language or figures may risk delays and even rejection.

If the language or figures require improvement for clarity, MDPI Author Services offers professional English and Figure Editing services. For expert language and figure editing that elevates the clarity and impact of your work, visit Author Services.

Many funding agencies and institutions explicitly allow the use of research grants for the payment of APCs and BPCs for publishing open access articles and books. For more information on APC and BPC funding, please see the following page.

Waivers may be granted at the Publisher's discretion and should be discussed with the Editorial Office when submitting an article. Editorial decision-making is decoupled from the authors' ability to pay the processing charges; however, authors should consider in advance whether they have sufficient funds to cover the full APC/BPC.

MDPI also offers discount vouchers to selected reviewers. Please note that reviewer vouchers can only be combined with IOAP and affiliated society discounts.

Authors affiliated with participating universities receive a discount on the APC for any paper published in an MDPI journal. Note that only one discount through an IOAP scheme is permitted per paper and that the discount can be combined with other available discounts (e.g., reviewer vouchers).

We accept payments in Swiss francs (CHF), euros (EUR), US dollars (USD), British pounds sterling (GBP), Japanese yen (JPY), or Canadian dollars (CAD). Upon acceptance, the corresponding/submitting author will receive an e-mail with a link through which the currency of the invoice can be changed.

MDPI currently supports the following payment methods:

• Wire Transfer
• Payment with Credit Card
• Online Payment by PayPal
• Cheques Payable to MDPI

For more detailed information on how to pay an invoice, please see our Invoicing FAQs and Payment Instructions.

APCs are payable within 5 to 10 business days.

Invoices are emailed shortly after acceptance to the payment contact provided by the authors. Only official invoices issued by MDPI (@mdpi.com) are valid. We do not authorize any third party to collect the APCs. MDPI is the sole service provider and cannot be held liable for actions by third parties.

For wire transfers, we ask the customer to pay the fees for both the sender and the recipient bank, so that MDPI receives the full invoiced amount. If you wish to pay by cheque, please add 12 CHF for processing fees.