Our History

Preparation for founding a worldwide center for the collection of rare chemical samples began. In order to promote this project, a journal entitled Molecules was planned, and ISSN 1420-3049 was obtained after an application...

Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI) was officially founded and registered in the commercial register in Basel, Switzerland, in June 1996 by Dr. Shu-Kun Lin and Dr. Benoit R. Turin. The stated goal of the entity was the...

MDPI took over the publishing of Molecules from Springer Verlag and started to publish it as an open access journal. Molecules published 74 papers in 1997. The Molbank section of...

A legal dispute with Springer Verlag regarding the ownership of the title "Molecules" was resolved outside of court. MDPI has continued to publish Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049) until this day, while...

Dr. Shu-Kun Lin took over as Editor-in-Chief of Molecules, replacing Dr. Pombo-Villar whose senior management duties with Novartis no longer allowed him to dedicate appropriate attention to the journal. Dr. Derek McPhee was...

IJMS officially started publishing, with Prof. Dr. Jerzy Leszczynski as the founding Editor-in-Chief and two Nobel Laureates on the Editorial Board...

Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220) was launched. The idea of launching this title was formed earlier when Dr. Shu-Kun Lin met Prof. Dr. Ursula E. Spichiger-Keller on a train leaving the French-speaking part of Switzerland—Ursula was...

The MDPI office moved from Sängergasse 25, 4054 Basel, to Matthäusstrasse 11, 4052 Basel. Dr. Shu-Kun Lin opened an editorial office in Qingdao, China, in collaboration with the Ocean University of China. The International Symposium on Frontiers in...

The journal Marine Drugs (ISSN 1660-3397) was launched in the Qingdao Editorial Office. The International Symposium on Sensor Science (I3S 2003) was held for the first time in Paris, France, organized mainly by Dr. Francis...

The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN 1660-4601) was launched. Many papers in the earlier volumes of this journal had been presented at the International Symposium on Recent Advances...

MDPI started to use a two-tier publication system, whereby certain papers were published in a subscriber-only area for those submissions where authors did not wish to contribute financially to the publication costs...

Using the experience of IJMS, several other previously externally edited journals were taken back in-house, including Entropy, Marine Drugs and Sensors. The...

The editorial office in Basel was expanded by hiring and training two full-time editorial staff members. Mr. Matthias Burkhalter joined as an Assistant Editor of Sensors in February 2007. Another staff member was hired as an...

The domain www.mdpi.com was purchased to host the future publication system for the MDPI journals. Sensors and Molecules rapidly expanded through several topical special issues, guest-edited by...

Twelve new journals started publication, effectively doubling the MDPI journal portfolio: Cancers, Diversity, Future Internet...

MDPI AG (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) was founded in May 2010 as an operating company for the journals by Dr. Shu-Kun Lin and Dietrich Rordorf. Dietrich Rordorf was appointed CEO. The publication system of the journals, including...

A new submission and manuscript handling system (SuSy)—internally developed by Mr. Thomas Schurter—was launched for all MDPI journals. The promotion activities of MDPI were intensified: flyers of the journals and...

iPhone and Android app versions of the MDPI platform were made available via the iTunes and Google Play stores. Total staffing of the two Editorial Offices reached 100 in June 2012. In total, 23 new journals started publication during 2012. Four...

A new office was opened in Wuhan, China in March 2013. Jely He served as the Managing Director for the operations in China. The Basel headquarters moved from Kandererstrasse 25, 4052 Basel, Switzerland to a larger office at Klybeckstrasse 64, 4057...

The number of published articles exceeded 40,000 papers by November 2014, and the number of publications exceeded 12,300. Four journals received their first impact factors: Symmetry,...

Delia Mihaila was appointed CEO. The number of published articles surpassed 60,000 papers in December, and compared to 2014, the volume of publications grew 40% in 2015. Thirteen journals were launched in 2015. MDPI journals were recognized as...

MDPI celebrated its 20th anniversary. Dr. Franck Vazquez was appointed CEO in May 2016. The total number of articles published surpassed 86,500 at the end of 2016, with 23,500 alone published in 2016...

The total number of articles published reached 122,470 at the end of 2017. With 35,950 peer-reviewed articles published in 2017 (a 52.5% increase compared to 2016), MDPI became the leading purely open access publisher in terms of the number of...

The total number of articles published reached 193,780 at the end of 2018. With 64,687 peer-reviewed articles published in 2018 (a 79.7% increase compared to 2017), MDPI became the seventh largest publisher in terms of the number of articles...

Delia Mihaila was appointed CEO in May 2019. The total number of articles published reached 300,000 at the end of 2019. With 106,152 peer-reviewed articles published in 2019 (representing a 64% increase compared to 2018), MDPI became the fifth...

At the end of 2020, the total number of articles published reached 470,000, with 160,313 peer-reviewed articles published in this year alone. Nine journals were accepted for coverage in the Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science):...

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the original foundation of MDPI (see 1996 entry above). The total number of articles published by MDPI has surpassed 715,000, with 235,638 peer-reviewed articles published...

The number of peer-reviewed articles published from January to December 2022 was 295,046. In December, we reached the milestone of one million articles published in total. 32 journals published their...

In the period from 1 January to 31 December 2023, 279,544 peer-reviewed articles were published. Twenty-one journals released their first issues until December 2023: Aerobiology, Air,...

The number of peer-reviewed articles published from 1 January to 31 December 2024 was 237,833. We dedicated a webpage, Championing Women's Healthcare and Access to Healthcare Information, for...

Between 1 January and 30 September 2025, there were 193,623 peer-reviewed articles published in MDPI journals. As of September, MDPI’s workforce grew to 8,547 employees. In June, we proudly celebrated a major milestone: over 100,000 preprints have...