Forests Submission Guide: MDPI Process (2026)

Forests is not a stronger or weaker version of a subscription forestry journal. It is a different model. MDPI built it around speed and soundness-based review: the editorial question is whether the work is methodologically sound, within scope, and routable to a section, not whether it ranks among the most selective findings of the year. That model shapes everything about how you should prepare the package.

Two consequences matter most. First, the journal is section-based and organized by forestry subfield, so scope fit is assessed against a specific section (Forest Ecology and Management, Forest Health, Forest Inventory, Modeling and Remote Sensing, and others) rather than a vague "is this interesting" bar. Second, the pre-check is fast and partly template-driven, so completeness and clear scope are rewarded and incompleteness is punished early.

A technically competent stand survey with no mechanism and no section home can be returned before a reviewer ever sees it, while a competent, complete, in-scope silviculture or forest-ecology study moves quickly.

The core fit for most submissions is the original research article. It works best when the forest question is central, the methods are reproducible from the text and supplementary files, the stand-level replication supports the claim, and the declarations package is complete on first upload. A single clean finding from one site fits a short communication better than a research article framed as a general result.

Ask these questions before you submit:

• is the forest question the actual subject of the paper, or is it general plant physiology or a remote-sensing classification with a forest dataset attached?
• does the paper state a silvicultural, management, or ecological mechanism, or stop at description?
• can a reader reproduce the sampling design, plot layout, and analysis from the manuscript and supplementary files alone?
• do the replication and the statistical model match the design, or is a single site being generalized?

If the answers are uncertain, the scope-and-mechanism problem is usually more important than the data-quality problem.

The pre-check editor is answering a short list of questions fast.

On scope, the editor asks whether the manuscript belongs in a forestry journal and in which section. If the forest relevance is thin or the work is really plant biology or a pure remote-sensing method, the paper is redirected or returned. On soundness, the question is whether the sampling design, replication, and analysis are appropriate, and whether the inference is supported by the data actually collected.

Forests does not require the finding to be field-defining, but it does require the work to be done correctly and the claim to match the design.

On integrity, the editor checks whether ethics approvals (where field permits, protected-species work, or human dimensions are involved), data availability, and image-integrity expectations are in order. MDPI runs integrity and plagiarism checks at pre-check, and gaps here trigger fast returns. On completeness, the editor looks for the declarations block. A manuscript missing Author Contributions, Funding, or Conflicts of Interest reads as not ready, even when the science is fine.

Manuscript structure: Forests expects a defined section set: Abstract (up to 200 words, one paragraph, no images or tables), Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, plus the declarations block. The abstract is the first thing the pre-check editor reads, so the forest question, the mechanism, and the main result all need to be visible there, along with where the work was done and how many stands or sites were sampled.

Reporting and methods readiness: Provide full experimental and field detail so results can be reproduced: plot layout, stand selection, sampling design, measurement protocol, and the statistical model. For multi-stand or multi-site work, state the replication structure explicitly and use a mixed-effects model where the design calls for it. Systematic reviews must follow PRISMA with a registered protocol. A descriptive inventory presented as a general finding, with one site and no model, is the most common reviewer-stage friction point.

Declarations and ethics: Draft the Author Contributions (by initials), Funding, Data Availability, Institutional Review Board or ethics statement where applicable, and Conflicts of Interest sections before you upload. For protected species, field permits, or human-dimensions work, supply the relevant approval. These are not post-acceptance paperwork at MDPI; they are pre-check gates.

Figures, supplementary, and abstract assets: Site maps, stand-inventory tables, and mixed-model output should be in the main text or supplementary files at submission. Supplementary materials carry extended methods, full plot datasets, and additional figures.

In our pre-submission review work with Forests manuscripts, four failure patterns generate the most consistent pre-check returns and reviewer friction, and they are testable against your own manuscript before you upload. The four patterns, in order of how often they trigger a return: scope-thin single-site generalization, missing forest mechanism, scope drift to physiology or remote sensing, and pseudoreplicated statistics.

Across our forestry and forest-ecology pre-submission reviews, the pattern that surprises authors most is that the Forests pre-check is not a quality filter in the Nature sense; it is a scope-fit, mechanism, and completeness filter. The manuscripts that get returned fastest are rarely bad fieldwork. They are competent studies whose scope angle, mechanism, replication, or declarations block is not ready for a fast, section-based screen. Manuscripts coming through pre-submission review for Forests split cleanly along these four lines.

Single-site descriptive stand study framed as a general claim

The single most common pattern we see is a one-site, often one-season inventory or measurement study whose abstract and conclusions claim a general result the design cannot support. The paper measures growth, biomass, soil carbon, or diversity in one stand and then concludes something about "boreal forests" or "Mediterranean pine plantations" broadly. Reviewers read the Methods, find one site and no replication across stands, and return the paper for over-generalization.

The testable version: read your own abstract and conclusion, then count the number of independent stands or sites in your Methods. If the claim is general but the design is one site, either narrow the claim to that site and reframe as a case study or short communication, or add the cross-stand replication the inference needs.

Check whether your Forests claim matches your stand replication →

No silvicultural, management, or ecological mechanism

The second pattern is a manuscript that describes what was measured without explaining why it matters for forest management or forest ecology. The work reports a pattern (taller trees here, more carbon there, a species-richness difference between treatments) but never states the mechanism or the management implication. Forests sits at the intersection of ecology and management, so a paper that stops at description reads as incomplete for the journal even when the data are clean.

The testable version: for your central result, write one sentence stating the mechanism (why the pattern occurs) and one sentence stating the silvicultural or management consequence. If you cannot write both from the manuscript as it stands, the mechanism is missing and the Discussion needs rebuilding around it.

Check whether your Forests paper states a forest mechanism →

Scope drift into pure plant biology or remote-sensing method

The third pattern is scope drift in two directions. In one direction, the manuscript is really a plant-physiology, molecular, or general-ecology study that used a tree species, and the forest framing is bolted on; that work usually belongs in Tree Physiology, a plant journal, or a general-ecology title.

In the other direction, the manuscript is a remote-sensing or machine-learning method paper whose contribution is the algorithm, and forest cover is just the test dataset; that work usually belongs in Remote Sensing. The testable version: ask whether your contribution is a forest finding (fits Forests) or a method finding (fits a methods or remote-sensing venue).

If a section editor could not name the forestry subfield from your title and abstract, the scope has drifted and the framing, not the science, is the problem.

Check whether your Forests scope reads as forestry, not method →

Weak replication and mismatched statistics across stands

The fourth pattern shows up at the reviewer stage: replication and statistics that do not match the sampling design. Pseudoreplication is the recurring offense, treating sub-samples within one stand as independent replicates, or treating plots within a single site as if they represent the population of stands. The companion failure is a statistical model that ignores the nested structure of forest data (plots within stands within sites) instead of using a mixed-effects model.

In a journal where management recommendations hang on whether a treatment effect is real, this is the highest-leverage fix before submission. The testable version: map your random and fixed effects to your sampling units, confirm your replication is at the level of your claim, and supply the mixed-model output and the design description in the supplementary files. If your degrees of freedom come from sub-samples rather than independent stands, the analysis is not ready.

Check whether your Forests statistics match your sampling design →

Each of these is something you can check against your own draft before you commit the submission. This guide tells you what Forests editors look for; the review tells you whether YOUR paper passes the pre-check before you upload. We have reviewed forestry and forest-ecology manuscripts deciding between Forests 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 a Forests submission package check to see whether your scope framing, mechanism, replication, and declarations block will clear the MDPI pre-check.

Forests reports a median first decision near 16.8 days and median acceptance-to-publication near 2.5 days for papers published in the second half of 2025. Treat these as planning ranges, not promises: manuscripts in hard-to-staff subfields or needing major revision often run longer because reviewer search takes time.

• Day 0: Submission via SuSy. The portal accepts the package and routes it to the section editor for pre-check and section assignment.

• Days 1 to 3: Editorial pre-check. The editor screens scope fit, section routing, ethics completeness, integrity and plagiarism checks, and basic soundness. The fastest returns (scope-thin, no mechanism, missing declarations) happen here, before any reviewer is invited.

• **Days 3 to 8:

Reviewer invitation.** Manuscripts that pass pre-check enter single-blind reviewer search, with the editorial office targeting at least two reviewers in the relevant forestry subfield.

• Days 8 to 17: Peer review and first decision. Reviewer reports return, MDPI gives reviewers about 10 days, and the editor issues the first decision near the 16.8-day median from submission.

Major revision is the most common outcome for papers that clear pre-check.

• Days 17 to 35: 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 in-scope, complete packages.

• Days 35 to 40: Production and publication. Acceptance to publication runs near 2.5 days at median, 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 Forests Instructions for Authors, the journal's aims-and-scope, sections, and journal-statistics pages, the Forests APC page, MDPI's research and publication ethics policy, and Manusights pre-submission review patterns from forestry and forest-ecology manuscripts deciding between Forests and peer journals. We compared current MDPI author guidance with recent Manusights review work from authors weighing Forests, Forest Ecology and Management, Forestry, Canadian Journal of Forest Research, Annals of Forest Science, and Tree Physiology. Last reviewed by the Manusights environmental editorial team on 2026-06-06.

Source limitations: MDPI can update the APC, article-format details, abstract caps, and editorial-process numbers after this review date, so verify final administrative details against the official Forests author pages before upload. The 16.8-day median first decision and 2.5-day acceptance-to-publication figures are journal-reported medians for the second half of 2025 and vary by subfield. Use this guide for the decision the official instructions cannot answer: whether your scope framing, mechanism, stand replication, and declarations block are ready for the MDPI pre-check.

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Before you upload, run your manuscript through a Forests submission readiness check to catch the scope, mechanism, replication, and declarations gaps the MDPI pre-check filters for. The check is free to run (/ai-review) and takes a single upload.