Annual Report 2018 Content Content 2 About MDPI 3 Message from the CEO 4 Key Figures 6 MDPI Services 8 ­Plan S 11 Societies and Partnerships 12 Institutional Open Access Program 14 Quality of Service 16 SCIE Indexed Journals 18 Journal Development in 2018 20 15 Journals Launched in 2018 21 Encyclopedia 21 Scilit 22 MDPI Books 24 MDPI Conferences in 2018 26 Sciforum Conferences 2018 27 MDPI Conferences in 2019 28 MDPI Conferences 2019 29 Conference Proceedings 30 Social Media 2018 31 Corporate Social Responsibility at MDPI 32 Stay Connected 1 MDPI Annual Report 2018 About MDPI ▶ www.mdpi.com/about Being a pioneer in academic Open Access publishing, MDPI has been focused on serving and strengthening the scientific community since 1996. In 2018, MDPI contributed more Open Access articles to DOAJ than any other publisher. Our purpose is to provide a valuable service to the academic community. Our mission is to foster scientific exchange in its various forms, across all scientific disciplines. The driving principles behind everything that we do are the following: Accessibility Flexibility We offer access to science and the latest In a changing and evolving publishing research to readers free-of-charge. All of our environment, we are constantly adapting content is published in Open Access format and developing new tools and services. By and distributed under a Creative Commons listening to feedback from authors, editors, License, which means free distribution and and readers, we can make changes to better the right to share and re-use published articles. meet the needs of our research community and keep MDPI relevant. Speed Simplicity We publish quickly to ensure the latest research All of our tools and services can be found in one is rapidly disseminated, using thorough, place and prioritize user-friendliness. Simple precise editorial work. A first decision is processes keep our editorial process highly provided to authors in approximately 19 days; efficient. once accepted, papers are published in 5–10 days. Service Sustainability We aim to provide a service that supports In addition to being a key theme in our journals, scholars and their work. By offering a range of we support sustainability by ensuring the long- different options, including journal publication term preservation of published papers and at mdpi.com, early publication at Preprints.org, the future of science through partnerships, and conferences on Sciforum, we support sponsorships, and awards. scientific communities worldwide to make a positive impact on research. 2 Message from the CEO Message from the CEO I would like to open by wishing you a happy, years. To assist with the transition and engage healthy, and successful 2019 on behalf of the with other stakeholders, MDPI has already MDPI management team! I also wish to thank established partnerships with more than 60 all MDPI team members for their full engage- scien tific societies and signed Institutional ment and outstanding contributions, which Open Access Program participation agree- have made 2018 such a successful year. ments with more than 500 university libraries. MDPI has focused on its mission with its three Moreover, the global implementation of the Dr. Franck Vazquez key aspects (see margin) for many years, espe- DORA principles on research assessment is Chief Executive Officer cially on providing the best possible service to anticipated to lead to more openness and scholars. This has led to a solid performance better community engagement. In 2018, we over the past 12 months. In 2018, MDPI extended an optional peer-review scheme to published 64,680 articles—an 80% increase all MDPI journals. We implemented the Hypo- compared to 2017. Our editorial process, thesis interactive commenting framework, MDPI's mission is threefold: policies, and standards have not changed; available on the webpage of every published rather, we have received a great many more article, to enhance community conversations. 1) Support scholarly papers—165,500 submissions, a growth of We also launched the new journal Sci, which communities and offer 100% compared to 2017. This has brought our uses a post-publication peer-review workflow. the best publishing experience for overall rejection rate to 61%. academic editors, MDPI team members located across the world authors, reviewers, and readers. This outstanding performance came with are fully committed to our mission and drive a number of organizational challenges but to serve scholars. Consistent with our commit- also with extraordinarily positive feedback ment to maintain a sustainable publishing eco- 2) from the scholarly community. We thank our system, we have released JAMS (Journal and Bring greater flexibility, timeliness, authors, reviewers, and editors for their trust Article Management System) to help publishers fairness, and in our editorial service, their huge contribution and learned societies flip subscription journals sustainability into the academic publishing to the process, and their outstanding support. to Open Access and run those journals in a process. We give back to these communities as much cost-efficient way. At the heart ofJAMS is the as possible, through discount vouchers to simple, efficient publishing system developed reviewers, by adding more journals to the over time by MDPI. Such an offering can help 3) Publons reviewer credit scheme, and sponsor- publishers come into line with Plan S recently Improve the availability and ing conferences organized by scholars. At the announced by the cOAlition S funders. discoverability of research output to same time, we continue investing in new jour- accelerate discovery nal titles, supporting the World Sustainability MDPI will continue to be fully committed to its and innovation. Forum and its award and nonprofit projects like mission of making all research results available Sciforum.net, Scilit.net, and Preprints.org, which in a timely and open manner. We look forward are free to use for the research community. to further supporting scholars, librarians, funders, learned societies, researcher net- The publishing environment is going through a works, and policy-makers in this crucial trans- crucial and transformative period, anticipated formative period. to lead to full Open Access within the next 3 MDPI Annual Report 2018 Key Figures Submissions Articles Published Peer-Review Reports Received Received 165.5 K 67.3 K 337.3 K 35.9 K 171.7 K 82.1 K 58.6 K 23.5 K 128.8 K 35+39+1002016 2017 2018 201635+54+100 2017 2018 38+51+1002016 2017 2018 Median Time— Median Time— Submission to Publication Submission to First Decision 68 days 50 days 39 days 28 days 25 days 19 days 68+50+392016 2017 2018 201628+25+19 2017 2018 Academic Editors Journals Published 43,140 = 23,522 203 190 169 15,715 = = = = = 157 235 431 169 190 203 2016 2017 2018 2016 2017 2018 4 Key Figures Journals Covered by the Journals Covered Journals Covered Web of Science Core Collection * by SCIE by Scopus 127 110 111 86 85 54 60 37 27 34+55+2016 201762 2018 201614+18 2017+24 2018 201630+43+50 2017 2018 * Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, Emerging Sources Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index Access to mdpi.com 88.2M Page Views 20.41% 52.1M = Mobile Access + 20 (including tablets) 36.8M 36.4M 22.2M 18.3M Sessions 79.59% 15.2M 12.1M 8.7M Users Desktop Access 79 20169+12+1815+22+3637+52+88 2017 2018 5 MDPI Annual Report 2018 MDPI Services JAMS language editing to authors, we have added technical editing and type-setting services. ▶ jams.pub MDPI has continued to develop and offer its Over 4000 manuscripts have been edited, journal management platform JAMS. The main and we have recently launched a LinkedIn aim of JAMS remains to provide a versatile, page at https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/ easy-to-use, modular system that compre- mdpi-english-editing-service offering writing hensively covers peer review, production, and publishing tips. Further editing options Open Access invoicing, and journal website will be added in 2019. management. JAMS additionally offers pro- duction services, to create professional pub- lication-ready versions of submitted articles. Preprints The focus in the second half of the year was Preprints make the latest research freely availa- towards building a lightweight, standardised ble in Open Access format ahead of peer review version that can be deployed quickly and run and have become increasingly popular with at low cost. A platform running this version as researchers from many different fields. Our a service was launched in early 2019. platform Preprints.org has seen a great deal of interest and now hosts nearly 8000 papers, of We have also continued to collect feedback which 5500 were posted in 2018. Preprints has from publishers and improved a number of now posted work from over 30,000 authors. aspects of the software. By sharing the in- house expertise we have developed over two In the last year, Preprints has made changes decades, we believe that we can continue to to its screening process to better involve the develop JAMS as an integral service for publish- research community. Any active researcher is ers of any size. able to assist in performing basic checks on submitted papers to assess their suitability for JAMS is used by UCL Press, the London-based posting online. We still aim to keep our typical Open Access university press, to run a number processing time to within one working day in of their journals. This includes providing a order to ensure that research is disseminated submission system and production service. as quickly as possible. ▶ www.preprints.org Author Services ▶ mdpi.com/authors/english Launched in 2016, our author services assist authors in preparing their manuscripts for submission and thereby increase their chances of having their work accepted quickly ▶ www.linkedin.com/ by journal editors.