This month, MDPI published its two-millionth article. That number would have been hard to imagine in 1996, when the company's first journal, Molecules, launched with a single volume of 74 papers. The 2 million article milestone lands three months after MDPI marked its 30-year anniversary, in May 2026.
It took 25 years to reach the first million articles, in December 2022, and under four years to add the second million, in August 2026.
Three Decades of Pioneering Open Access
MDPI was among the first publishers to commit fully to open access. It adopted the CC BY license in 2008, launched Preprints.org in 2016, and became the world’s leading fully OA publisher by output in 2017. Along the way, it built the infrastructure to run that commitment reliably and at scale, from its first online manuscript system to the in-house platforms that now benefit the entire journal portfolio.
Over half of the world's published research is now open access. Open Access means free, immediate, reusable knowledge under CC BY: no barrier between a discovery and the researcher, clinician, or policymaker who is going to build on it. In 2025 alone, MDPI journals recorded 1.9 billion article views and downloads.
A Growing Portfolio
MDPI’s portfolio of fully OA titles has grown mainly through organic journal launches, and the portfolio’s citation impact has grown alongside: 330 MDPI journals carry a Journal Impact Factor as of summer 2026, and 71% of ranked journals sit in the top half (Q1 or Q2) of their categories.
None of this happens without the more than 70,000 editorial board members whose work stands behind the two million articles now published: making editorial decisions, providing input regarding journal policies, overseeing Special Issues, and helping to promote the journals among their peers.
Publishing with Purpose
MDPI joined the UN SDG Publishers Compact in 2022, and its Sustainability Foundation and World Sustainability Forum continue to convene research aimed squarely at the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The SDG Hub highlights 80,000 research articles from across the portfolio mapped to SDG 13: Climate action.
Explore the thirty years behind MDPI’s 2 million articles milestone at the Anniversary page.
