Energies Submission Guide: MDPI Process (2026)

Energies is not a stronger version of an Elsevier energy journal, and it is not simply a weaker one. It is a different model. MDPI built it around speed, breadth, and soundness-based review: the editorial question at pre-check is whether the work is methodologically sound and within the energy scope, not whether it ranks among the most selective findings of the year. That model shapes everything about how you should prepare the package, and it is also the source of the journal's reputation problem.

Two consequences matter most.

• Section fit is specific. Energies is organized by energy subfield (renewable energy, storage, conversion, efficiency, materials, economics and policy, and others), so scope fit is assessed against a section rather than a vague "is this interesting" bar.

• Reviewers protect the novelty bar. The journal's enormous volume and sub-three-week first-decision median make reviewers skeptical of incremental work. A paper can clear the fast pre-check and still draw a reject from a reviewer who has seen ten near-identical optimizations of the same system this quarter.

The practical reality you should plan around: in December 2024 the Finnish Publication Forum downgraded Energies along with many MDPI titles, and the journal's APC and volume draw recurring predatory-publishing accusations. None of that makes Energies a bad venue for the right paper, but it does mean a thin, incremental, or label-only-energy manuscript is exactly the kind of submission that confirms the criticism and gets filtered.

The journal is a strong home for a sound, validated, genuinely energy-systems result that wants fast open-access publication; it is a poor home for a paper hoping speed will substitute for a contribution.

The core fit for most submissions is the original research article. It works best when the energy question is central, the result is validated against something external, the contribution generalizes, and the declarations package is complete on first upload.

Ask these questions before you submit:

• is the energy-systems question the actual subject of the paper, or is energy a downstream framing on a power-electronics, materials, or policy study?
• is the central result validated against experiment, field data, or a benchmark, or is it a stand-alone simulation a reviewer cannot check?
• does the contribution transfer past the single system optimized, or is it one more parameter sweep of one configuration?
• are the declarations and data statements complete and specific, or are they still stub text?

If the answers are uncertain, the novelty-and-fit problem is usually more important than the engineering problem.

The pre-check editor is answering a short list of questions fast, and then handing the survivors to reviewers who apply a second, harder filter.

On scope, the editor asks whether the manuscript belongs in an energy journal and in which section. If the energy relevance is thin or bolted on, the paper is redirected or returned. On soundness, the question is whether the methods are reproducible and the analysis appropriate. Energies does not require the finding to be field-defining at pre-check, but reviewers do require the work to be done correctly, validated where validation is possible, and reported in full.

On integrity, the editor checks plagiarism, image and data integrity, and the declarations block. MDPI runs integrity and similarity checks at pre-check, and gaps here trigger fast returns. On completeness, the editor looks for Author Contributions, Funding, Data Availability, and Conflicts of Interest. A manuscript missing any of these reads as not ready, even when the engineering is fine.

Then the reviewer asks the question the pre-check does not: does this generalize? At a journal this size, the most common reviewer rejection is not "this is wrong," it is "this is correct but incremental." The editor's working model is that a fast decision is only defensible if the paper either clears or fails on a clear contribution, so a result that reads as one more optimization of an already-studied system is the easy reject that protects the journal's reputation.

Manuscript structure: Energies expects a defined section set: Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods (or Methodology / Model Description for modeling work), Results, Discussion, Conclusions, plus the declarations block. The abstract is the first thing the pre-check editor reads, so the energy-systems question, the method, and the main quantitative result all need to be visible there. State the energy contribution in the first two sentences of the abstract, not after a paragraph of background.

Validation and methods readiness: Provide full experimental or modeling detail so results can be reproduced, and validate the model against something external. A simulation paper that compares its output only to its own assumptions is the most common reviewer-stage friction point at Energies. If you ran a techno-economic analysis, state the cost-data vintage and source. If you ran an optimization, report the baseline you beat and by how much, with sensitivity analysis.

A modeling result with no experimental anchor, no field data, and no published benchmark is treated as unverifiable.

Declarations and ethics: Draft the Author Contributions (by initials), Funding, Data Availability, and Conflicts of Interest sections before you upload. For work involving human participants (energy-behavior surveys, occupant studies) add an ethics-approval and informed-consent statement. These are not post-acceptance paperwork at MDPI; they are pre-check gates.

Figures, supplementary, and abstract assets: Energies submissions lean heavily on quantitative figures, so resolution and reproducibility matter. Supply line art (efficiency curves, load profiles, Sankey energy-flow diagrams, P-V or I-V characteristics) at MDPI-ready resolution, and provide the underlying datasets, model parameters, and code or simulation files as supplementary material so a reviewer can rerun the analysis.

A graphical abstract is optional but useful for systems-level papers because it lets a section editor see the energy flow at a glance; if supplied, use a high-resolution PNG, JPEG, or TIFF. Split large time-series datasets or long simulation logs into separate supplementary files rather than padding the main figure set. There is no fixed cap on the number of figures, but a research article carrying more than 10 figures, most of them parameter sweeps, usually signals that the main contribution is not yet focused.

In our pre-submission review work with Energies manuscripts, four failure patterns generate the most consistent pre-check returns and reviewer rejections, and each is testable against your own manuscript before you upload.

Across our energy and chemical-engineering pre-submission reviews, the pattern that surprises authors most is that the Energies pre-check is not a quality filter in the Applied Energy sense; it is a fast completeness-and-fit filter, and the real quality bar lives one step later with reviewers who are protective of the journal's high-volume reputation. The manuscripts that get returned or rejected fastest are rarely broken.

They are competent studies whose energy framing, validation evidence, generalizable contribution, or declarations block is not ready for a fast screen followed by a novelty-skeptical reviewer. Manuscripts coming through pre-submission review for Energies split cleanly along these four lines.

Energy-thin framing that the section editor cannot place

The most common pattern we see is a manuscript whose energy relevance is downstream rather than central. The study is really a power-electronics, control-theory, materials-synthesis, or pure-policy paper, and an energy application has been added so the work can target an energy journal.

Energies is section-based, so the pre-check editor has to place the manuscript in a specific energy subfield. When the energy question is not the actual subject, the section assignment fails and the paper is returned or redirected fast. The testable version: read your own abstract and introduction, and ask whether a section editor could name the energy subfield (storage, conversion, efficiency, renewables, policy) from the first paragraph alone.

If the energy angle only appears in the discussion or as a future application, the framing is too thin, and the fix is to rebuild the introduction and abstract around the energy-systems question rather than around the device or method.

Check whether your Energies scope angle reads as energy-systems from the abstract →

The "yet another optimization of system X" manuscript with no generalizable insight

The second pattern is the one Energies reviewers reject most often, and it is the journal's signature failure mode given its volume. The study takes a well-studied system (a specific PV-battery configuration, a particular heat-exchanger geometry, one micro-grid dispatch scheme) and reports a single optimized run with a percentage improvement, but offers no transferable mechanism, scaling argument, or design rule.

To a reviewer who has seen many near-identical parameter sweeps, this is the easy reject that protects the novelty bar. The testable version: state, in one sentence, what a reader can do differently on a different system because of your result. If the honest answer is "tune the same way and maybe get a similar percent," the contribution is incremental, and the fix is to extract the generalizable insight, add a comparison across configurations, or reframe the paper around the transferable finding rather than the single optimized point.

Check whether your Energies contribution generalizes past one optimized system →

Simulation or case study with no validation or benchmark

The third pattern is a modeling or case-study paper presented stand-alone, with no validation against experiment, field data, or a published benchmark. We repeatedly see techno-economic analyses whose cost assumptions are unsourced, CFD or system-dynamics models compared only to their own inputs, and single-site case studies with no reference baseline.

Because Energies publishes a large amount of modeling work, reviewers are particularly alert to results that cannot be checked. The testable version: for the central quantitative claim of your paper, name what it was validated against. If the answer is "the model's own assumptions," add an experimental anchor, a field-data comparison, or a benchmark against published results, and report the agreement quantitatively. An unvalidated simulation reads as unverifiable at a journal already fighting a rigor reputation.

Check whether your Energies results are validated against an external benchmark →

Incomplete declarations, data-availability, and reporting block

The fourth pattern is a declarations block that is missing, generic, or left as stub text. MDPI treats Author Contributions, Funding, Data Availability, and Conflicts of Interest as pre-check gates, not as paperwork to finalize after acceptance.

We repeatedly see a Data Availability Statement that reads only "data available on request" with no repository, accession, or concrete access route, no statement of where model code or simulation files live, and (for occupant or energy-behavior studies) no ethics or consent language. Because the pre-check is fast, a single missing statement can return the manuscript before review.

The testable version: for every quantitative result and every model in your paper, confirm there is a corresponding entry in the Data Availability Statement naming where the data, parameters, or code actually live, and confirm the full declarations block is drafted before upload.

Check whether your Energies declarations and data block is complete for pre-check →

Each of these is something you can check against your own draft before you commit the submission. This guide tells you what Energies editors and reviewers look for; the review tells you whether YOUR paper passes both the pre-check and the novelty bar before you upload. We have reviewed 80+ manuscripts targeting energy and chemical-engineering journals, including Energies and its open-access and subscription peers.

Paid Manusights reviews include a 60-day money-back guarantee, and we do not train models on submitted manuscripts. Run an Energies submission package check to see whether your energy-systems framing, validation evidence, and declarations block will clear MDPI's pre-check and the reviewer's novelty filter.

Energies reports a median first decision near 17 days from submission. Treat this as a planning range, not a promise: heavily modeling-driven or large multi-system manuscripts often run longer because finding two qualified reviewers in a narrow energy subfield takes time.

• Day 0: Submission via SuSy. The portal accepts the package and routes it to the Academic Editor or the relevant Special Issue editor for pre-check.

• Days 1 to 3: Editorial pre-check. The editor screens scope fit, declarations completeness, integrity and similarity checks, and basic soundness.

The fastest returns happen here, before any reviewer is invited.

• Days 3 to 7: Reviewer invitation. Manuscripts that pass pre-check enter single-blind reviewer search, typically targeting at least two reviewers in the relevant energy subfield.

• Days 7 to 17: Peer review and first decision. Reviewer reports return and the Academic Editor issues the first decision, with a median near 17 days from submission.

Major or minor revision is the most common outcome for papers that clear pre-check; an incremental-contribution reject often arrives here.

• Days 17 to 32: Revision and acceptance. Revisions are usually requested on a short clock; resubmission and a second review cycle commonly land acceptance inside a few weeks for sound, validated, in-scope packages.

• **Days 32 to 36:

Production and publication.** Acceptance to publication runs only a few days, so the slow part of the calendar is reviewer search and revision, not production.

This guide was researched and built from primary sources: the sources we checked include the Energies Instructions for Authors, the journal's aims-and-scope and editorial-process pages, the section structure, MDPI's research and publication ethics policy, SciRev community turnaround reports, and Manusights pre-submission review patterns from energy and chemical-engineering manuscripts deciding between Energies and peer energy journals. We reviewed and compared current MDPI author guidance with recent Manusights work reviews from authors weighing Energies, Applied Energy, Energy Conversion and Management, Journal of Energy Storage, and Renewable Energy. Last reviewed by the Manusights energy editorial team on 2026-06-07.

Source limitations: MDPI can update APC, article-format details, abstract caps, and editorial-process numbers after this review date, so verify final administrative details against the official Energies author pages before upload. Median timelines are reported by the journal and SciRev and vary by subfield. Use this guide for the decision the official instructions cannot answer: whether your energy-systems framing, validation evidence, generalizable contribution, and declarations block are ready for the MDPI pre-check and the reviewer novelty bar.

• Applied Energy submission guide
• Energy Conversion and Management submission guide
• Journal of Energy Storage submission guide
• Renewable Energy submission guide
• Rejected from Applied Energy, where next?

Before you upload, run your manuscript through an Energies submission readiness check to catch the scope, validation, and declarations gaps the MDPI pre-check and reviewers filter for. The check is free to run (/ai-review) and takes a single upload.