| 2003 |
Marine Drugs is founded at the Ocean University of China. Prof. Dr. Hua-Shi Guan is the founding Editor-in-Chief. Inaugural volume is released, initially published as a quarterly journal. |
| 2005 |
Marine Drugs is indexed by Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE). |
| 2007 |
Marine Drugs is covered by PubMed. |
| 2010 |
Marine Drugs becomes a monthly journal and is covered by Scopus. The 2010 impact factor for Marine Drugs increased to 3.471, meaning Marine Drugs has become the leading open access journal in the field of drugs sourced from the maritime environment. |
| 2011 |
Four active Associate Editors are added. They have previously served on the Editorial Board: Prof. Dr. Nobuhiro Fusetani, Prof. Dr. Alejandro M. Mayer, Prof. Dr. Jordan K. Zjawiony and Prof. Dr. Guido Cimino. |
| 2012 |
The 2011 impact factor for Marine Drugs increases to 3.854. |
| 2013 |
The impact factor continues to increase to 3.978. Marine Drugs is ranked 6/59 in the Medicinal Chemistry category of SCIE. Marine Drugs launches its Best Paper Award. Marine Drugs sponsors the 14th International Symposium on Marine Natural Products (MANAPRO 2013). |
| 2014 |
The impact factor is 3.512, and Marine Drugs is ranked 10/58 in the Medicinal Chemistry category of SCIE. Marine Drugs sponsors the 2014 Gordon Research Conference on Marine Natural Products and the 2014 Oceans & Human Health Gordon Research Conference. Associate Editors increased to 5 members: Prof. Dr. Nobuhiro Fusetani, Prof. Dr. Jordan K. Zjawiony, Prof. Dr. Orazio Taglialatela-Scafati, Dr. Peer B. Jacobson and Dr. Keith B. Glaser. |
| 2015 |
The impact factor is 2.853, and Marine Drugs is ranked 22/59 in the Medicinal Chemistry category of SCIE. Marine Drugs sponsors and collaborates with more conferences, including the 9th European Conference on Marine Natural Products, the 1st Congress of Marine Fungal Natural Products Consortium, 2015 Gordon Research Conference in Heterocyclic Compounds, and the 1st Sino-Italian symposium on Natural Products. It also builts a relationship with TASCMAR (an EU project). The Twitter account for Marine Drugs is created. |
| 2016 |
The impact factor increases to 3.345, and Marine Drugs is ranked 13/59 in the Medicinal Chemistry category of SCIE. Marketing promotion continues to be enlarged. The Young Investigator Award is offered. |
| 2017 |
The impact factor increases to 3.503, ranked 13/60 in Category "Chemistry, Medicinal" in SCIE. |
| 2018 |
The impact factor increases to 4.379, ranked 5/59 in Category "Chemistry, Medicinal" in SCIE. |
| 2019 |
The impact factor is 3.772, ranked 15/61 (Q1) in Category “Chemistry, Medicinal” in SCIE. Prof. Dr. Bill J. Baker was appointed as Associate editor of Marine Drugs. |
