MDPI INSIGHTS: The CEO’s Letter #39 - Peer Review Week, Chief Publishing Officer, Tu Youyou Award, OASPA & AI
Opening Thoughts
Recognizing the People Behind Peer Review
September marked Peer Review Week 2026, this year focused on "Peer Review Capacity: Volume, Speed, and Quality." The theme reflects a challenge across scholarly publishing: research output and submissions continue to grow, while the time and expertise researchers can dedicate to reviewing are finite.
At MDPI, more than 200,000 reviewers contribute their expertise each year. Their work is fundamental to maintaining the quality and integrity of the research we publish, and Peer Review Week gave us an opportunity not only to thank them, but also to reflect on how we can better support their contribution.
This year, we highlighted three commitments that guide our approach: protecting reviewers’ time and judgment, ensuring high-quality and efficient processes, and recognizing and rewarding reviewers for their contribution. We also shared results from our 2026 Voice of the Community surveys. Among 1,627 reviewer respondents, 86% rated their experience with MDPI as “Good” or “Excellent,” 88% said manuscripts matched their expertise, and 92% found our reviewer instructions clear and helpful. From the author perspective, 95% of 16,795 respondents agreed that reviewers’ comments helped improve their manuscripts.
Recognition is an important part of this relationship too. Through our Top 1000 Reviewers program, 743 scholars accepted awards this year, with a combined CHF 526,500 returned directly to the reviewer community through cash awards and APC vouchers. During Peer Review Week, we also created opportunities for reviewers to share their own experiences through webinars, including The Reviewer’s Perspective: Navigating Volume, Speed, and Quality in Peer Review and our UK Reviewer Club.
Peer review ultimately depends on people choosing to give their time and expertise to the work of other researchers. As publishing continues to evolve, including through new technologies and increasing research volumes, we should not lose sight of that human contribution. Thank you to all the reviewers who work with MDPI, and to our colleagues who support them every day.
Read more about Peer Review Week 2026 here.
Inside MDPI
Welcoming Dr. Constanze Schelhorn as MDPI’s Chief Publishing Officer
This month, we announced the appointment of Dr. Constanze Schelhorn as MDPI’s Chief Publishing Officer (CPO). The appointment marks an important step for MDPI and the latest chapter in a journey within the organization that now spans a decade.
Stefan Tochev (CEO, MDPI) with Constanze at STM, Frankfurt, Germany, October 2025.
Constanze joined MDPI in June 2016 and has taken on several different responsibilities across editorial, indexing, and publishing over the years.
Since 2023, she has held leadership roles as Head of Indexing and later Head of Publishing, before taking on the role of Chief Publishing Officer.
I’ve had the opportunity to work with Constanze over many of those years and to see her take on increasingly important responsibilities.
What I’ve always appreciated is the growth mindset and expertise she brings to her work, together with a commitment to quality.
She understands how MDPI works and how the publishing environment is evolving to meet the expectations of the academic communities we serve.
Looking Ahead
Publishing has changed considerably over the past decade, and that change is only accelerating. Research integrity, artificial intelligence, editorial standards, indexing requirements, new publishing models, and changing expectations from researchers and institutions are just some of the areas we are navigating.
Stefan Tochev (CEO, MDPI) with Constanze and Prof. Dr. Manoj Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of MDPI journal Technologies, in Singapore, January 2025.
MDPI has changed considerably too. As we celebrate our 30th anniversary this year, our journal portfolio now includes more than 540 titles, and the scale of our work brings greater opportunities and responsibilities.
Continuing to develop our publishing practices and ensuring that we respond to changes in academic publishing will remain important priorities for us.
Constanze’s experience across several areas of MDPI puts her in a position to help us do that.
As CPO, she will help provide strategic direction across our publishing functions while working with colleagues throughout the organization. She will also represent MDPI with external stakeholders, including industry organizations and indexing partners, ensuring that we remain engaged in the conversations shaping the future of publishing.
“Please join me in congratulating Constanze on her appointment”
Growing Together
There is another aspect of this appointment that I think is worth recognizing about MDPI. I appreciate seeing people develop alongside the organization. Constanze’s journey from joining MDPI in 2016 to becoming our Chief Publishing Officer ten years later is a good example of what can happen when experience, knowledge, and responsibility build over time.
Our 30th anniversary naturally gives us an opportunity to look back at how far MDPI has come. But it should also make us think about the people who will shape where we go next. I’m pleased that Constanze will be one of those people.
Please join me in congratulating Constanze on her appointment as we look forward to continuing to work with her in this new role and seeing what we can accomplish together.
P.S. A fun fact about Constanze: she loves climbing. So, if she’s visiting your city and you’re wondering how to make her feel at home, point her towards the nearest climbing gym.
Here’s a photo from a climbing session during our visit to the Singapore office in January 2025.
Impactful Research
A Decade of the Tu Youyou Award: Celebrating Scientific Excellence
Few examples demonstrate the potential impact of scientific research as clearly as Professor Tu Youyou's discovery of artemisinin. Her team’s work contributed to the development of artemisinin-based combination therapies for malaria, which the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends as the main treatment for P. falciparum malaria.
Behind that achievement is also a remarkable scientific journey: drawing on knowledge from traditional Chinese medicine, Professor Tu and her team investigated hundreds of extracts before identifying artemisinin and helping transform the treatment of malaria.
This legacy is at the heart of the Tu Youyou Award, established by MDPI in 2016 to recognize outstanding achievements in natural products chemistry and medicinal chemistry.
“Professor Tu Youyou's scientific journey is an extraordinary example”
Ten Years of the Tu Youyou Award
This year marks a decade since the award was established. Over that time, six scholars have been recognized as Tu Youyou laureates for their contributions to research and innovation.
The connection between MDPI and Professor Tu Youyou’s work goes back even further. In 2009, MDPI Founder and President, Dr. Shu-Kun Lin, launched a Special Issue in MDPI journal Molecules commemorating Professor Tu’s 80th birthday, several years before the establishment of the award.
Below is a photo of Professor Tu Youyou with MDPI Founder and President Dr. Shu-Kun Lin during an MDPI visit to congratulate Professor Tu on receiving the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
The 2026 Tu Youyou Award continues this tradition, awarding CHF 100,000, together with a medal and certificate, to recognize the achievements in natural products chemistry and medicinal chemistry.
Scientific Excellence and Impact
Professor Dr. William Gerwick, Chair of the 2026 Tu Youyou Award Committee, recently reflected on what distinguishes the award: “This award is truly special in that it recognizes scientific excellence as well as impact.”
I think this combination is important. Research advances our understanding, but its influence can extend much further: inspiring new discoveries, informing new treatments, addressing societal challenges, and ultimately improving people’s lives.
Professor Tu Youyou's scientific journey is an extraordinary example. Her work combined rigorous scientific investigation with a problem of enormous human importance, ultimately contributing to treatments that have transformed the fight against malaria.
Recognizing researchers who continue this tradition allows us to celebrate both scientific achievement and the broader contribution research can make to society.
Nominations Open Until 31 October
Nominations for the 2026 Tu Youyou Award are now open to scientists with outstanding achievements and contributions in natural products chemistry and medicinal chemistry. Nominations may be submitted by directors of nominees’ host research institutions or scientists within the field. Self-nominations are not accepted.
The nomination deadline is 31 October 2026, with the announcement of the winner planned for March 2027.
Learn More
Coming Together for Science
OASPA 2026: Conversations Shaping the Future of Open Access
From 21–23 September, I attended the 2026 Conference of the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) in Zagreb, Croatia.
MDPI has been a Platinum Sponsor of the OASPA conference for several years, supporting an event that brings together the open access (OA) community to discuss some of the opportunities and challenges shaping publishing. This year, MDPI also sponsored the conference reception at the City Museum of Zagreb.
The program covered topics from sustainable publishing and research assessment to open infrastructure, new models for OA agreements, and, of course, the growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI). For me, though, the value of conferences like OASPA goes beyond the program. It’s about hearing different perspectives from across publishing, reconnecting with familiar faces, building new relationships, and having conversations that sometimes lead somewhere unexpected.
Stefan Tochev (CEO, MDPI) at the OASPA conference in Zagreb, Croatia.
Open Access in the Age of AI
One discussion I particularly enjoyed was the opening-day panel, “Does open access still matter in a Gen AI world?” As AI continues to become an interface through which people discover and interact with research, making knowledge openly available remains important. But questions around trust, provenance, governance, and responsibility are becoming more difficult to separate from the OA conversation.
Who is responsible for ensuring that AI-generated or AI-mediated information can be trusted? What responsibilities sit with publishers, researchers, institutions, infrastructure providers, and AI companies? And, perhaps most importantly, how do we work together rather than trying to address these challenges in isolation?
There are no simple answers, but hearing these discussions highlighted the fact that many of us across publishing are working with similar questions. Creating spaces where we can explore them together is valuable.
“Who is responsible for ensuring that AI-generated or AI-mediated information can be trusted?”
Conversations That Lead Somewhere
The conference also reminded me of the value of simply meeting people. I had a great conversation with César Pallares from Consortia Colombia about the publishing ecosystem in Colombia and the possibility of exploring a consortium agreement with MDPI in Colombia. César was very open to continuing the conversation, and I’ve already connected this opportunity with colleagues from our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) team.
I also caught up with Yvonne Campfens, Executive Director of OA Switchboard, who has recently taken on the role of Director for the Academic Publishing in Europe (APE) conference. We look forward to continuing to support APE as part of MDPI’s broader commitment to academic and publishing-industry events.
And, of course, it was good to connect with familiar faces from previous OASPA conferences and meet new ones. These conversations happen over coffee, between sessions, at receptions, or sometimes while walking through a city. Not every conversation needs to result in a project or partnership. Sometimes the value is simply understanding another perspective, sharing what we’re working on, or beginning a relationship that develops over time.
Thank you to the OASPA team, speakers, moderators, participants, and fellow sponsors for creating that space in Zagreb. I’m pleased that MDPI could once again support the conference and, more importantly, be part of the conversations taking place there. I look forward to seeing where some of them lead.
Closing Thoughts
AI Is Making Science More Accessible. How Do We Keep It Trustworthy?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing how people find, understand, and interact with scientific research.
For decades, one of the biggest barriers to engaging with scientific research was access. Open Access (OA) has helped change that, with around 61% of global journal articles, reviews, and conference papers published in 2025 now openly accessible. AI is now beginning to lower another barrier: understanding. Researchers can quickly navigate large volumes of literature, patients can ask for complex medical research to be explained in plain language, and policymakers can more easily explore findings outside their own areas of expertise.
But easier access and understanding don’t automatically make scientific information easier to trust.
This is the topic explored by our Scientific Communications Lead, Dr. Giulia Stefenelli, in her recent article for Research Information, Scientific literacy must keep pace with artificial intelligence.
A recent study cited in the article found that when GPT-4o was tested without external retrieval and asked to cite recent scientific literature, it fabricated citations in 78–90% of cases. By contrast, OpenScholar, a specialized AI system that retrieves information from millions of OA papers, achieved citation accuracy comparable to human experts.
One line about the gap between AI content generation and verification particularly stood out to me: “Generation is becoming cheap, but verification is not.” While AI can reproduce the appearance of credible scientific information, verifying the underlying data, references, methods, and conclusions still requires time, expertise, and access to the evidence.
“The important question is whether the underlying research can be trusted”
Detection Is Not Verification
Giulia’s distinction between AI detection and research verification is particularly relevant to scholarly publishing. A manuscript can contain AI-assisted language and report sound research. Equally, something written entirely by a person can contain fabricated data, inappropriate methods, or unsupported conclusions. The important question isn’t only “Was AI used?” but whether the underlying research can be trusted.
For publishers, this makes strong editorial processes, expert peer review, research integrity checks, transparency, and human accountability increasingly important.
A Shared Responsibility
Giulia argues that publishers cannot address this challenge alone. Researchers, institutions, publishers, technology providers, and readers all have a role to play in how scientific information is created, evaluated, communicated, and understood.
As AI continues to develop, our understanding of scientific literacy must develop alongside it. Making knowledge accessible and helping people understand it are important. The next question is: how do we make it easier for people to examine where information comes from and decide how much confidence it deserves?
You can read the full article on Research Information. It is a great example of the expertise within MDPI contributing to conversations about the future of scientific publishing and communications. Technology can help us address some of these challenges, but ultimately people must remain accountable for the decisions that shape the scientific record.