About
Article Processing Charges (APC) Information
- General Information on MDPI’s Article Processing Charges (APC)
- Journal Specific APCs
- Avoiding Surcharges from Extensive English Editing or Extensive Reformatting on Submitted Articles
- Funding of APCs
- Discounts on APCs
- Accepted Currencies
- Accepted Methods of Payment
- MDPI Invoicing FAQ
General Information on MDPI’s Article Processing Charges (APC)
MDPI publishes all its journals in full open access, meaning 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, professional production of articles in PDF and other formats, and dissemination of published papers in various venues, in addition to other publishing functions. 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.
Here is a breakdown of how our APCs are used. In calculating these values, we have followed recommendations from the Fair Open Access Alliance, an organization that promotes sustainable and transparent scholarly open access publishing. This also makes MDPI fully compliant with the requirements of Plan S, a key funder initiative to promote Open Access.
| Service functions | % of total | Amount (Swiss Francs, CHF) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 CHF | 1000 CHF | 2000 CHF | 1000 CHF | |
| 1. Publishing Operations & Projects | 17% | 34% | 336 | 336 |
| 2. Journal publication | 40% | 79% | 790 | 790 |
| 3. Editorial Fees | 1% | 2% | 22 | 22 |
| 4. Marketing and Communication | 4% | 4% | 80 | 40 |
| 5. General | 6% | 12% | 118 | 118 |
| 6. Discounts & waivers | 19% | 19% | 370 | 185 |
| 7. Surplus | 13% | -50% | 284 | -491 |
| Total publication fee per article (CHF) | 2000 | 1000 | ||
1. Publishing Operations & Projects
MDPI develops and maintains its own electronic submission and peer-review website. We also run several platforms to offer different types of services for scholars.
- Preprints.org: a multidisciplinary preprint platform where authors can publish their articles free of charge.
- Scilit.net: a comprehensive, free database for scientists using a new method to collate data and indexing scientific material.
- Sciforum.org: an event-planning platform that supports open science by offering the opportunity to host and participate in academic conferences.
- Sciprofiles.com: a researcher-profile platform.
2. Journal publication
- Triaging—Filtering of papers upon submission by internal staff and editorial board members.
- Organization of peer-review—MDPI provides a high degree of assistance to Academic Editors so that they can only focus on editorial decisions. We employ in-house editors to invite reviewers, collect review reports, communicate with authors and reviewers, correspond with authors about revision, etc.
- Production—including copy-editing, typesetting, copy-editing XML and PDF conversion, and language editing. MDPI provides English editing by native English speakers for all accepted papers, included in the APC.
- Proofreading—Corresponding with authors to approve the final text and requesting any missing information.
- Other Editorial assistance—Handling any questions and requests for support before submission, during the editorial and peer-review process, or post-publication.
- Journal management & development—The in-house Managing Editors track key performance indicators of each journal, monitor competing journals and the 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 team dedicated to indexing relations who advise on the eligibility of a journal for application to be indexed in over 80 databases. Our team communicate closely with the contact persons at the different databases and receive regular updates on the status of applications. We dedicate time to keep ourselves up to date on any changes in the evaluation criteria or application procedure.
- Long term preservation—MDPI supports long-term preservation of all its articles in CLOCKSS.
3. Editorial Fees
MDPI pays a travel grant or stipend to all Editors-in-Chief and a share of revenue to the societies whose journals it publishes.
4. Marketing and Communication
MDPI allocates 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 series of awards to support researchers.
5. General
- Management & administration includes cost related to salaries of non-editorial staff and other business costs. They include all the fees paid by MDPI for membership in publishing organizations: STM Association, OASPA, SSP, as well as 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 waives 25%–27% of its content every year. We are committed to supporting the transition of all research to full open access, so offer APC waivers or discounts to some authors. In addition, we waive and offer discounts from 15% (of the total APCs in a journal) in our most established journals up to 100% in our new journals or humanities journals. Although we display an APC on the website, in many social sciences and humanities journals we waive between 70% and 100% of papers; we display an APC in order to demonstrate to authors that there is a cost to publication. Even some of our well established indexed journals waive 30% of publishing costs per year.
Members of societies affiliated to an MDPI journal benefit from a discount as well as authors affiliated to 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 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.
Journal Specific APCs
* For papers of type "Interesting Image" in this journal, a reduced rate of 550 CHF applies.
Please note that for papers submitted to these journals after 31 December 2020 the new APC applies.
Avoiding Surcharges from Extensive English Editing or Extensive Reformatting on Submitted Articles
Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions. If you use an alternative service that provides a confirmation certificate, please send a copy to the Editorial Office. Authors from developing countries should consider registration with AuthorAid, a global research community that provides networking, mentoring, resources and training for researchers in developing countries.
Funding of APCs and BPCs
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 see the following page.
Discounts on APCs
Waivers may be granted at the Publisher's discretion and should be discussed with the editorial office when submitting the article. The 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.
Accepted Currencies
We accept payments in Swiss francs (CHF), Euro (EUR), US Dollars (USD), British Pound Sterling (GBP). Japanese Yen (JPY) or Canadian Dollars (CAD). Upon acceptance, the corresponding/submitting author will receive an e-mail with a link where the currency of the invoice can be changed.
Accepted Methods of Payment
MDPI currently supports the following payment methods:
- Wire Transfer in Swiss Francs (CHF)
- Wire Transfer in Euros (EUR)
- Wire Transfer in US Dollars (USD)
- Wire Transfer in Pound Sterling (GBP)
- Wire Transfer in Japanese Yen (JPY)
- Wire Transfer in Canadian Dollars (CAD)
- 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 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.
Authors from Switzerland will have the local Value Added Tax (VAT) added to their invoices.
