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MDPI Open Access Information and Policy

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. This means:
  • everyone has free and unlimited access to the full-text of all articles published in MDPI journals;
  • everyone is free to re-use the published material if proper accreditation/citation of the original publication is given;
  • open access publication is supported by the authors' institutes or research funding agencies by payment of a comparatively low Article Processing Charge (APC) for accepted articles.

External Open Access Resources

MDPI is a RoMEO green publisher — RoMEO is a database of Publishers' copyright and self-archiving policies hosted by the University of Nottingham

Those who are new to the concept of open access might find the following websites or 'Open Access 101' video informative:

Wikipedia article on 'Open Access'
Peter Suber's 'Open Access Overview'
Information Platform Open Access [in English, in German]
SHERPA's 'Authors and Open Access'

Open Access Explained!

Meaning of Open Access

In accordance with major definitions of open access in scientific literature (namely the Budapest, Berlin, and Bethesda declarations), MDPI defines open access by the following conditions:

  • peer-reviewed literature is freely available without subscription or price barriers,
  • literature is immediately released in open access format (no embargo period), and
  • published material can be re-used without obtaining permission as long as a correct citation to the original publication is given.

Until 2008, most articles published by MDPI contained the note: "© year by MDPI (http://www.mdpi.org). Reproduction is permitted for noncommercial purposes". During 2008, MDPI journals started to publish articles under the Creative Commons Attribution License and are now using the latest version of the CC BY license, which grants authors the most extensive rights. All articles published by MDPI before and during 2008 should now be considered as having been released under the post-2008 Creative Commons Attribution License.

This means that all articles published in MDPI journals, including data, graphics, and supplements, can be linked from external sources, scanned by search engines, re-used by text mining applications or websites, blogs, etc. free of charge under the sole condition of proper accreditation of the source and original publisher. MDPI believes that open access publishing fosters the exchange of research results amongst scientists from different disciplines, thus facilitating interdisciplinary research. Open access publishing also provides access to research results to researchers worldwide, including those from developing countries, and to an interested general public. Although MDPI publishes all of its journals under the open access model, we believe that open access is an enriching part of the scholarly communication process that can and should co-exist with other forms of communication and publication, such as society-based publishing and conferencing activities.

Important Note: some articles (especially Reviews) may contain figures, tables or text taken from other publications, for which MDPI does not hold the copyright or the right to re-license the published material. Please note that you should inquire with the original copyright holder (usually the original publisher or authors), whether or not this material can be re-used.

Advantages of Open Access for Authors

The High Availability and Visibility of our open access articles is guaranteed through the free and unlimited accessibility of the publication over the Internet. Everyone can freely access and download the full text of all articles published with MDPI: readers of open access journals, i.e., mostly other researchers, do not need to pay any subscription or pay-per-view charges to read articles published by MDPI. Open access publications are also more likely to be included in search engines and indexing databases.

The Higher Citation Impact of open access articles results from their high publicity and availability. Open access publications are demonstrably more frequently cited [1,2].

Lower Publishing Costs: Open access publishers cover their costs for editorial handling and editing of a paper by charging authors' institutes or research funding agencies. The cost of handling and producing an article is covered through the one-time payment of an article processing charge (APC) for each accepted article. The APCs of open access publishers are only a fraction of the average income per paper earned by traditional, subscription-based publishers. MDPI's article processing charge (APC) is the same, irrespective of article length, because we wish to encourage publication of long papers with complete results and full experimental or computational details [3].

Faster Publication in MDPI's open access journals is achieved by online-only availability. Accepted articles are typically published online more rapidly in MDPI journals than those of traditional, subscription-based and printed journals are [4].

Links and Notes

  • Open access citation impact advantage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access#Authors_and_researchers. For example, a standard research paper "Shutalev, A.D.; Kishko, E.A.; Sivova, N.V.; Kuznetsov, A.Y. Molecules 1998, 3, 100-106" has been cited 51 times, the highest number among all the papers published so far by the same author.
  • Lin, S.-K. Editorial: Non-Open Access and Its Adverse Impact on Molecules. Molecules 2007, 12, 1436-1437 (PDF format 16 K, HTML format).
  • Recently a research paper of 30 pages has been published: Molecules 2008, 13(5), 1081-1110.
  • Some well written papers have been peer reviewed and published in less than two weeks from manuscript submission, see e.g.: Molecules 2006, 11(4), 212-218.
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