The 10th Anniversary of Universe

The adventure of the journal Universe began about ten years ago, when I received an invitation from Dr. Fabrizio Falanga to direct a new peer-reviewed journal being launched by the MDPI publishing house. Honored by the invitation, I was immediately impressed by the layout of the then-developing web page and by the quality of the researchers, not yet numerous at the time, who were already listed on the nascent editorial board.

At the time, the topics covered were mainly general relativity, cosmology and modified models of gravity, a field in which there already existed several excellent journals of the highest profile: going to compete with them in their hunting ground, so to speak, seemed like a reckless challenge. Nonetheless, the venture got off to a good start, as the journal began receiving quality articles from leading researchers worldwide.

Furthermore, the response to the invitations I had begun sending to various scholars was quite positive, with a large number of them agreeing to join the emerging editorial board. Among them were the Nobel laureates George F. Smoot and Roger Penrose.

Meanwhile, I was also very favorably impressed by the proactivity, competence, and attentiveness of the editorial staff, as well as by the fact that bureaucracy was kept to a minimum and that it was easy and straightforward to make editorial decisions on whether or not to accept submitted articles.

Just a year after its launch, Universe was indexed by the ADS-Astrophysics Data System and the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI)—Web of Science (WoS, Clarivate Analytics) in 2016, followed by Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)—WoS and Scopus (Elsevier) in 2019. The first impact factor came in 2021, quite early for a journal launched just a few years earlier.

As the years passed, Universe significantly expanded its scope to include various aspects of space sciences, theoretical physics, and fundamental physics, even publishing several articles by the Nobel laureates George F. Smoot [1,2,3,4] and Gerard ’t Hooft [5,6].

Furthermore, Universe undertook the meritorious task of supporting young researchers, establishing Travel Awards (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/universe/awards/3216, accessed on 3 December 2025), and important conferences. In the same spirit of service to science, despite being an open access journal requiring the payment of a fee, it has begun to provide generous forms of support for all those researchers who, for one reason or another, cannot afford to pay it.

At the end of its first ten years of life, Universe has not only survived in an extremely competitive publishing landscape already saturated with so many excellent journals, a result that is not at all a foregone conclusion, but has consolidated itself by becoming a point of reference for either established researchers and young scientists who, in ever greater numbers, decide to publish their research results in it. A result that would not have been possible without the efforts of the editorial staff, the distinguished board members, the referees, the authors, and the readers.

Thanks to all of them, the future for the next ten years looks bright! Over the next few years, Universe plans to strengthen its position and expand in all areas of gravitational physics, astronomy and astrophysics, space science, and fundamental physics, with a particular focus on the latest developments in the increasingly widespread use of AI, astrostatistics, and astroinformatics. Furthermore, we will strive to increase the number of tutorials on cutting-edge topics to help train interested researchers on topics new to them and those to which they wish to contribute. Another interesting feature of Universe is that it offers, among other things, the ability for cutting-edge researchers to publish opinion pieces that convey thought-provoking views and reflections on topics of their choice.

Stay tuned!