MDPI History

MDPI is one of the leading open access publishers in the world. It was founded by researchers in Basel, Switzerland in 1996 as an institute to collect, preserve and redistribute rare chemical samples for research purposes. The acronym originally stood for Molecular Diversity Preservation International. The journal Molecules was launched in the same year in collaboration with Springer-Verlag. The journal Molecules was taken over by MDPI in 1997. After 2006, the publication project was gradually separated from the samples preservation initiative. In 2010, MDPI AG was formally registered in Basel as a professional publishing house. The acronym now stands for Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute. The chemical samples preservation initiative was turned into the non-profit MDPI Sustainability Foundation in 2012 and the samples are now distributed through MolMall.

Information and Policy

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. This means:

• everyone has free and unlimited access to the full-text of all articles published in MDPI journals;

• everyone is free to re-use the published material if proper accreditation/citation of the original publication is given;

• open access publication is supported by the authors' institutes or research funding agencies by payment of a comparatively low Article Processing Charge (APC) for accepted articles.