Is Your Paper Ready for Sustainability? MDPI's Broad Sustainability Journal

That 40-50% acceptance rate deserves context. It doesn't mean Sustainability accepts weak papers. It means the journal's scope is wide enough and its volume is high enough that a large share of submissions genuinely fall within the editorial criteria. Compare this to journals like Journal of Cleaner Production (~25-30% acceptance) or Energy Policy (~20-25%), and you'll see why Sustainability attracts researchers who've been rejected from more selective venues. That's not automatically a bad thing. But it is something to understand about the journal's position.

Let's address this directly. MDPI has a reputation problem in some academic circles, and pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone.

The concerns are real and they're specific. MDPI publishes at enormous scale. The special issue machine generates thousands of themed collections with guest editors, and the quality of those guest editors varies. Review turnaround times are very fast, which makes some researchers wonder whether the review process is thorough enough. And some hiring or promotion committees, particularly in Europe, have started treating MDPI publications with skepticism.

Here's what's also true: Sustainability is indexed in Web of Science and Scopus. It has maintained its impact factor through multiple JCR cycles. The papers in it are real research by real academics. MDPI follows COPE guidelines and isn't on any major predatory journal lists. The publisher is legitimate.

The honest take is this: publishing in Sustainability won't raise the same eyebrows as publishing in a journal nobody has heard of. But it also won't carry the same weight as publishing in Journal of Cleaner Production, Environmental Science & Technology, or Nature Sustainability. If you're at a career stage where journal prestige matters for tenure or promotion, you should know how your committee views MDPI before you submit. If you're in a field where Sustainability is commonly cited and widely read, the perception issue may not apply to you at all.

This isn't a judgment on the science. It's a reality of how journal brands function in academia right now.

Sustainability runs hundreds of active special issues at any given time. This is the single most distinctive feature of the journal, and it shapes the submission experience more than anything else.

Here's how special issues work at MDPI. A guest editor (or small team of guest editors) proposes a themed collection. MDPI approves the proposal and creates a dedicated page for the special issue. The guest editor then solicits submissions, often by directly inviting researchers in their network. Submitted papers go through the same peer review process as regular submissions, but the guest editor typically handles the editorial decisions.

When this works well: You get a themed collection organized by someone who knows the field, with papers that genuinely speak to each other. The guest editor provides focused editorial attention, and the collection becomes a useful resource for the subcommunity. Some Sustainability special issues have produced well-cited, coherent sets of papers.

When this doesn't work well: The guest editor is passive, the topic is too broad to create coherence, or the invitation model brings in papers that wouldn't have been submitted otherwise. In the worst cases, special issues feel like a mechanism to increase submission volume rather than to build a useful collection.

Before submitting to a Sustainability special issue, check three things:

1. Who's the guest editor? Look up their publication record. Are they active in the field the special issue covers? Do they have editorial experience?
2. How specific is the call? "Sustainability in the 21st Century" is too vague to produce a coherent collection. "Life Cycle Assessment Methods for Urban Water Infrastructure" is specific enough to attract targeted work.
3. Would you submit this paper as a regular submission? If your paper only makes sense as part of the special issue and wouldn't hold up as a standalone contribution, that's a warning sign.

Regular submissions to Sustainability go through the standard editorial office. They aren't second-class. If you don't find a special issue that fits, submitting to the regular track is perfectly fine.

Sustainability works well in specific situations, and it's worth being honest about what those are.

Your paper spans multiple sustainability dimensions. If your work sits at the intersection of environmental policy and social equity, or economic development and ecological impact, Sustainability's broad scope is actually an advantage. More specialized journals might tell you the paper doesn't fit neatly enough into their domain.

You need speed. A 2-4 week first decision and 6-10 weeks to publication is genuinely fast. If you're finishing a PhD and need publications on your CV before you go on the job market, or if your research is time-sensitive and tied to a policy window, speed matters. You shouldn't pretend it doesn't.

You're working in sustainability education or corporate sustainability. These subfields don't have as many journal options as, say, environmental engineering or climate science. Sustainability is one of the primary venues for this type of work, and papers in these areas are well-represented in the journal's most-cited articles.

Your paper is solid but not flashy. If you've done a careful regional case study, a systematic literature review, or a survey-based analysis that produces meaningful but not dramatic findings, Sustainability is a realistic target. Journals like Nature Sustainability or Global Environmental Change want field-defining contributions. Sustainability wants sound, peer-reviewed research.

You have funding for the APC. At roughly $2,400, the article processing charge isn't cheap. But it's in line with other large open-access journals. If your grant covers publication costs, this is straightforward. If it doesn't, you'll need to weigh the cost against the career benefit.

Even with a 40-50% acceptance rate, a lot of papers get rejected. Here's what typically goes wrong.

Scope that's too tangential. Sustainability is broad, but it isn't a general social science journal. If the word "sustainability" appears only in your introduction and conclusion but not in your research question or methodology, the editors will notice. You can't take a standard management study, add a paragraph about sustainable development goals, and call it a Sustainability paper.

Literature reviews with no analytical framework. Sustainability receives an enormous number of systematic literature reviews and bibliometric analyses. The ones that get rejected tend to be catalogs of existing papers with no original analytical contribution. If your review doesn't produce a framework, a gap analysis with specific research questions, or a methodological critique, it won't clear the bar.

Weak methodology in qualitative or survey-based work. The social science side of Sustainability attracts papers with surveys, interviews, and case studies. Reviewers look for proper sampling justification, validated instruments, appropriate analysis methods, and honest discussion of limitations. A convenience sample of 50 students isn't going to support claims about national sustainability attitudes.

Missing data availability. MDPI requires a data availability statement. For quantitative work, reviewers increasingly expect to see the underlying data or a clear explanation of why it can't be shared. Don't leave this as an afterthought.

Sustainability uses MDPI's standard submission system. A few practical points that'll save you time.

Use the MDPI template. MDPI provides LaTeX and Word templates. Using them from the start avoids reformatting headaches after acceptance. The templates are stricter about formatting than most journals, and the editorial office will send your paper back for formatting corrections before it goes to review if you don't follow them.

Write a structured abstract. While Sustainability doesn't enforce specific subheadings, your abstract should clearly state the research question, methods, main findings, and implications. Reviewers read thousands of abstracts for this journal. Make yours scannable.

Include sustainability framing throughout. This sounds obvious, but many rejected papers treat sustainability as window dressing. Your research design, your analysis, and your discussion should all engage with sustainability concepts. The paper should read as sustainability research, not as general research with a sustainability label.

Prepare your data availability statement early. MDPI takes this seriously. Decide before submission whether you'll deposit data in a repository (Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad) or explain why the data can't be shared.

Before submitting, running your manuscript through an AI-powered manuscript review can catch scope mismatches, missing methodological details, and formatting issues that would otherwise slow you down during editorial screening.