Announcements

Our portfolio of journals available for publishing up-to-date research in immediate open access format has been further expanded. In June 2026, eleven new journals released their inaugural issues and two transferred journals released their first issue as part of MDPI, covering the subjects of environmental & earth sciences, chemistry & materials science, public health & healthcare, engineering, medicine & pharmacology, and biology & life sciences. 

We extend our gratitude to the Editors-in-Chief, Associate Editors, and Editorial Board Members who will shape the future course of these new journals. Each journal is dedicated to upholding strong editorial standards through a thorough peer review process, enabling impactful open access scholarship. 

Please feel free to browse and discover more about the new journals below. 

We would like to thank everyone who has supported the development of open access publishing. If you would like to create a new journal, you are welcome to send an application here or contact the New Journal Committee (newjournal-committee@mdpi.com).

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative—the Data Special Issue Mentor Program.

This program enables early career researchers (who must hold a PhD in a related field) to gain experience in editing a Special Issue in MDPI Journals under the mentorship of our experienced Editorial Board Members or other experienced scientists. The mentor program provides an excellent opportunity for early career scientists to gain editorial experience and to cultivate their ability to edit scientific research. It is important to note that, within this program, the mentor will hold the title of Guest Editor (GE), while the mentee will be recognized as the Guest Editor Assistant (GEA).

GE Assistant’s responsibilities:

• Proposing a Special Issue title and assisting with the GE Mentor to prepare a summary (around 200–400 words) and 3–10 keywords describing the background, importance, and goal of the Special Issue;
• Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
• Preparing a list of scholars that may be interested in the Special Issue and personally e-mailing the invitations on behalf of the GEs;
• Writing an editorial for the online Special Issue together with mentor;
• Providing opinions and suggestions to the GE mentor to assist them with making their final decisions (but they cannot make decisions during paper processing, and the GE Assistant will not be listed in the published papers as an Academic Editor).

GE Mentor’s responsibilities:

• Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
• Performing editorial control of the Special issue and quality control of the publications in a timely manner;
• Providing suggestions to the GE Assistant if they have any doubts or concerns regarding submissions;
• Regularly organizing video calls with the GE Assistant and the Editorial Office to discuss problems and suggestions for improvement for the Special Issue;
• Making and submitting decisions for the submissions with the assistance of the mentees.

Certificates and awards:

After the Special Issue closes, the Editorial Office will provide official certificates for all the GE Mentors and GE Assistants.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Data Editorial Office (data@mdpi.com), and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail.

In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, Data will continue to welcome all Special Issue proposals focusing on hot research topics.

Peer review is the invisible foundation of academic progress. The 2025 MDPI Top Reviewers are some of the key experts who helped build it.

We are honored to recognize 1000 individuals from our global community of 210,000 reviewers across 67 countries and territories—chosen for their commitment to rigorous, constructive peer review and the consistency of their contributions throughout 2025.

The Top Reviewers provided constructive and impartial feedback that makes research stronger and more impactful, and we are grateful for it.

The names of these reviewers are listed below in alphabetical order by first name:

(Note: we respected all privacy preferences, with part of nominees opting for limited attribution.)

Data (ISSN 2306-5729) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Yongqing Cai (University of Macau, China) as Section Editor-in-Chief (SEiC) of the Section “Data Science for Chemistry, Energy and Materials”.

Dr. Yongqing Cai earned his BSc and MSc degrees in materials science from Northwestern Polytechnical University, China in 2004 and 2007, respectively, followed by a PhD in physics from the National University of Singapore in 2012. From 2013 to 2019, he worked at the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) in Singapore. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering (IAPME), University of Macau. Dr. Cai’s research focuses on first-principles materials simulations for nanoelectronics, photonics, and energy applications, as well as materials informatics and artificial intelligence. 

The following is a short Q&A with Dr. Yongqing Cai, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views of the research area and open access publishing:

1. What about the journal appealed to you and made you want to take the role of Section Editor-in-Chief?

I have always believed that scientific progress depends not only on new discoveries but also on high-quality, reusable research data. Over the past decade, chemistry, energy, and materials science have entered the era of data-intensive research, driven by high-throughput computations, advanced characterization techniques, autonomous experiments, and artificial intelligence. These developments have created unprecedented opportunities for data sharing and reuse. As Section Editor-in-Chief, I see an exciting opportunity to help build an interdisciplinary platform where researchers can share not only datasets, but also workflows, benchmarks, databases, and computational methodologies that accelerate scientific discovery across chemistry, energy, and materials research.

2. What is your vision for the Section “Data Science for Chemistry, Energy and Materials”?

My vision is to establish this section as a leading international platform connecting data science with fundamental and applied research in chemistry, energy, and materials. I hope the section will publish not only high-quality datasets, but also data descriptors, benchmark databases, computational workflows, and experimental protocols. Another important goal is to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration. Future breakthroughs will increasingly emerge from the integration of chemistry, materials science, physics, computer science, and artificial intelligence. By providing a venue where researchers from different backgrounds can exchange data and methodologies, we can help accelerate innovation while reducing duplicated efforts. Ultimately, I hope the section will serve as an open scientific infrastructure that supports both scientific discovery and the development of next-generation data-driven materials research.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?

I believe we are entering a new paradigm of scientific research where data and artificial intelligence become indispensable components of discovery. Traditionally, research in chemistry and materials science has largely relied on intuition, trial-and-error experiments, and individual expertise. Today, the combination of high-performance computing, automated experiments, machine learning, and large scientific databases is fundamentally changing how new materials are designed and understood. However, AI models are only as good as the data they learn from. Therefore, generating high-quality, standardized, interoperable, and trustworthy datasets will become increasingly important. Future progress will rely not only on larger datasets, but also on better-curated data, richer metadata, uncertainty quantification, and reproducible computational workflows. Looking ahead, I expect AI-assisted materials discovery, and autonomous laboratories for chemistry and materials to become increasingly common.

4. What suggestions do you have for journals and publishers to better support young scholars and serve the academic community?

Journals today play a much broader role than simply publishing papers. They are becoming important partners in building healthy research communities. For young scholars, I believe journals can provide more opportunities for academic growth through early-career editorial boards and research awards, as well as reviewing opportunities. Finally, journals should continue fostering interdisciplinary communication by organizing special issues, academic forums, and community activities that connect researchers from different disciplines and career stages.

5. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?

Open Access has significantly transformed scientific communication over the past two decades. By removing barriers to accessing research, it enables scientists, educators, students, policymakers, and industry to benefit from scientific knowledge more rapidly and more equitably. For data-driven research, open access is especially valuable because it facilitates the sharing of not only publications but also datasets, software, and computational workflows, thereby improving reproducibility and accelerating innovation. I believe the future of scientific publishing lies in combining open access with open data, open code, and open science. Together, these principles will foster greater collaboration, transparency, and trust, ultimately enabling scientific discoveries to have a broader and more lasting impact on society.

We warmly welcome Dr. Yongqing Cai as the Section Editor-in-Chief of “Data Science for Chemistry, Energy and Materials”, and we look forward to his leadership in guiding Data to achieve many more milestones.

Conference: 27th Chinese Lexical Semantic Workshop
Date: 26–28 June 2026
Location: YanTai, China

The Chinese Lexical Semantic Workshop (CLSW) was jointly initiated in 2000 by Professor Chin-Chuan Cheng, Academician of Academia Sinica and Chair Professor of the University of Illinois; Professor Shiwen Yu of Peking University; and Professor Chu-ren Huang, Chair Professor of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Since then, it has been held in various cities, including Hong Kong, Beijing, Taipei, Singapore, Xiamen, Hsinchu, Yantai, Suzhou, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Macau, Leshan, Chiayi, Nanjing, Fuzhou, and Hohhot.

CLSW is a significant academic conference in the field of Chinese lexical semantics and related disciplines, such as theoretical linguistics, applied linguistics, computational linguistics, computational lexicography, computational lexicology, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics. Over the years, CLSW has gained widespread influence. In the current landscape, where large language models and semantic computation dominate research and social attention, Chinese lexical semantics research offers cross-disciplinary perspectives that enrich generative AI with linguistic knowledge and cultural connotations.

The 27th International Workshop on Chinese Lexical Semantics will be held from 26 to 28 June 2026, in Yantai, China, hosted by Ludong University and organized by its School of Humanities. The organizing committee warmly invites researchers to contribute their work to the conference.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Languages;
• Computation;
• Data;
• Education Sciences;
• Information;
• Language Technology.

If you attend this conference, please feel free to visit our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the official website: https://www.colips.org/conferences/clsw2026/web/en/.

Impact Factors measure how often articles in scientific journals are cited—specifically, the average number of citations received in a given year by articles published in that journal over the previous two years, as tracked in the Web of Science. For researchers, the number answers a practical question: how often is work published in this journal being picked up and built upon?

The metric is assigned to the journal as a whole, not to individual articles. A high Impact Factor tells you something useful about a journal's place in its field; it tells you less about any single paper within it.

For a complementary, article-level view, MDPI lists an Altmetric score on each article page. Where the Impact Factor tracks academic citations, the Altmetric score captures broader online attention: how an article is being shared, discussed, and referenced beyond the journal literature. Together, they offer two different ways of asking the same question: is this research reaching people?

With 2025 CiteScores from Scopus published a few weeks ago, Clarivate has now released this year's Journal Impact Factors in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR).

254 MDPI Journals Saw a Rise in Impact Factor

This year's JCR include 330 MDPI journals across a wide range of disciplines. Of these, 231 journals are placed in the top 50% (Q1 or Q2) of their respective subject categories, a result that spans fields as different as materials science, public health, environmental studies, and mathematics. 78 journals hold a top-quartile position (Q1), and 33 journals have a JIF of 5.0 or above.

• 330 journals earned a Journal Impact Factor (JIF)
• 29 journals earned a first JIF
• 254 journals had an increase in JIF
• 71% of ranked journals are in Q1 or Q2

For the full metrics on any MDPI journal, visit our Web of Science journals overview page or a journal's individual statistics page.

29 MDPI Journals Received Their First Journal Impact Factor

A first Impact Factor is a confirmation for an emerging journal. It marks the point at which a journal has been publishing long enough, and cited broadly enough, to enter the formal record of scientific influence. For the research communities those journals serve, it signals that the work being published is being read and built upon.

This year, 29 MDPI journals received a Journal Impact Factor for the first time, across a range of emerging and established research areas. Each represents years of editorial development and peer review—recognized in 2026 for the first time in the JCR.

This is also part of a longer shift in how science gets indexed. When the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) launched in 2016, 24 MDPI journals were included. By 2024 that number had grown to over 200, reflecting a broader change in the visibility of open access publishing within major citation tracking systems, not just at MDPI but across the sector.

Open Access with Impact

MDPI journals have received a total of 25.2 million citations in Web of Science. That figure matters less as a measure of MDPI's reach and more as a measure of what happens when research is freely available: it gets found, read, and used. Open access is only meaningful if the work actually travels and citations are one indicator that it does.

More than 4.6 million authors have published with MDPI. That breadth, across disciplines, institutions, and geographies, is what makes open access at this scale worth doing.

Thank You to the MDPI Scholarly Community

These results belong to the people who do the actual work: the Editors-in-Chief who set the standards, the Editorial Board Members and reviewers who hold them, and the authors who choose open access for their research. The numbers in the Journal Citation Reports are the downstream effect of decisions made at the desk, in the review, and at submission. Thank you for making them.

Data: 2025 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports™ (Clarivate, 2026)

Conference: 2026 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT 2026)
Date: 28 June–3 July 2026
Location: Guangzhou, China

MDPI will be attending the 2026 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory as an exhibitor. We welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest ideas with us.

ISIT is the flagship annual conference of the IEEE Information Theory Society. It covers all classical areas of information theory, including Shannon Theory, Coding Theory and Techniques, Information Security, Signal Detection and Estimation, and related fields. The symposium also strongly encourages frontier cross-disciplinary research that integrates information theory with areas such as Bioinformatics, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, DNA Storage, and Quantum Information. Pilot workshops on selected emerging topics aim to attract new talents to the community.

The primary audience includes researchers, academics, engineers, and students in information theory, communications, signal processing, computer science, and related interdisciplinary fields. It serves as a key gathering for both established experts and emerging scholars, including a significant number of graduate students (often over 300 in recent years). Industry practitioners and R&D professionals interested in the mathematical foundations of information technology also participate actively in this event.

The IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory traces its roots to the first Information Theory meeting held in London in 1950, where Claude Shannon—whose seminal 1948 paper founded the field—was a major participant. It evolved into the flagship event of the IEEE Information Theory Society and has been held annually since the early 2000s (with earlier sporadic editions).

Key traditions include the prestigious Shannon Lecture delivered by the recipient of the Claude E. Shannon Award, daily plenary talks, tutorials, and vibrant social events that foster community and collaboration. ISIT 2026 in Guangzhou represents a historic milestone as the first ISIT held in Mainland China.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Entropy;
• Information;
• Electronics;
• Future Internet;
• Network;
• Big Data and Cognitive Computing;
• Mathematics;
• Cryptography;
• Data;
• IoT.

If you are planning to attend this conference, please do not hesitate to start an online conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://2026.ieee-isit.org.

MDPI will participate in the upcoming 4th Joint Conference on Statistics and Data Science, which will be held from 11 to 13 July 2026 in Guiyang, China.

Since its inception, the Joint Conference on Statistics and Data Science has successfully held three sessions. From its inaugural meeting in Beijing to the in-depth discussions in Kunming, and then to the dynamic development in Hangzhou, each edition has reflected the rapid progress of statistics and data science, as well as the dedication and insight of countless colleagues in the field.

This conference will explore the latest research trends in statistics and data science, share cutting-edge theories and practical applications, foster an innovative academic environment, and promote vibrant intellectual exchange to jointly address complex and evolving scientific and technological challenges. The program will feature plenary lectures, invited talks, and contributed presentations, along with a variety of additional activities, showcasing new ideas, technologies, and developments in statistics and data science from multiple perspectives.

The following MDPI journals will be represented at the conference:

• Mathematics;
• AppliedMath;
• Axioms;
• Analytics;
• Data;
• Fractal Fract;
• Stats.

If you are planning to attend the above conference, we warmly invite you to visit our booth and engage with our representatives. We look forward to meeting you in person and assisting with any questions or queries that you may have. For more details about the conference, please visit the official website.

The 2025 CiteScore metrics have been officially released by Scopus, and the results confirm what has become a consistent pattern for MDPI's journal portfolio: broad recognition across disciplines, steady improvement across the majority of ranked titles, and a growing presence at the top of subject category rankings.

CiteScore, published annually by Elsevier's Scopus database, measures the average citations received by articles published in a journal over a four-year window. As a complement to the Journal Impact Factor, which uses a two-year window based on the Web of Science database, CiteScore provides an alternative, long-term perspective on citation performance.

The 365 MDPI journals in Scopus (as of May 2026) are indexed across a wide range of subject categories, ensuring that open access research remains highly discoverable to a global readership through one of the most widely used platforms in academic publishing.

Data Summary (2025 CiteScores)

• New Additions: 41 MDPI journals received a CiteScore for the first time.
• Trending Upward: 234 of 322 previously ranked journals (73%) saw an increase in their CiteScore compared to last year.
• High Visibility: 314 journals (86%) rank in Q1 or Q2 in at least one subject category.
• Elite Performance: 42 journals rank in the top 10% of their subject categories.

Portfolio Performance

Among the 322 journals that held a CiteScore in 2024, 234 saw an increase this year. Quartile improvements outnumbered declines across the portfolio, with 52 journals moving to a higher quartile and only 20 seeing a decline. Furthermore, no previously ranked journals were removed. The 42 journals now ranked in the top 10% of their subject categories are drawn from a strong foundation of 178 journals holding a Q1 position.

With the large majority of our indexed portfolio ranked in the top half of research fields, researchers can confidently choose MDPI to meet funder mandates for high-quality, fully compliant Open Access publishing.

Exceptional Achievements for Foods and Life

Notably, both Foods and Life achieved a 99th percentile ranking in their respective subject categories for the 2025 CiteScores. This outstanding placement positions them as leading journals in their fields and highlights the high visibility and global impact of the open access research they publish.

Journal Metrics and Beyond

Journal-level metrics describe outlets, not individual articles. An increasing number of funders and institutions—including signatories of DORA and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment—now explicitly encourage evaluation at the article level rather than by the journal in which research appears. MDPI supports this direction: we report CiteScore alongside the Journal Impact Factor, Journal Citation Indicator, and article-level usage data because no single number captures the full reach and contribution of published research.

Thank You

These results reflect the sustained effort of thousands of editors-in-chief, editorial board members, reviewers, and authors across every field MDPI serves. The metrics are the outcome; the work is yours.