Membranes (MDPI) Submission Guide: Process (2026)

Membranes is not a weaker version of the Journal of Membrane Science, and it is not a clone of it. It is a different model. MDPI built it around speed and soundness-based review: the editorial question is whether the work is methodologically sound, reports a real separation result, and fits a section, not whether it ranks among the most cited membrane advances of the year. That model shapes how you should prepare the package.

Two consequences matter most. First, the journal is section-based. Membrane science and technology lives in sections like Membrane Fabrication and Characterization, Membrane Applications for Energy (fuel cells, proton- and ion-exchange membranes), and gas-separation and water-treatment tracks, while biological membranes sit in a separate life-sciences section. The pre-check editor has to place your manuscript in one of these, so the separation context has to be unambiguous. Second, the pre-check is fast and partly template-driven, so completeness is rewarded and a half-finished performance story is punished early.

The unusual upside is cost and speed. At CHF 2,200, the APC sits well below the USD 3,680 to 4,580 charged by the Elsevier membrane and separation flagships, and a roughly 15-day first decision is far faster than the multi-month timelines at those titles. For a sound, complete, in-scope separation study that does not need a top-of-field citation home, that combination is the actual draw.

The core fit for most submissions is the original research article. It works best when the membrane is characterized AND tested, when the separation performance is reported on both axes, and when the declarations and data package are complete on first upload.

Ask these questions before you submit:

• does the paper report what the membrane separates, or only what it is made of and how it was made?
• are both flux/permeance and rejection/selectivity present, or only one half of the trade-off?
• is there a fouling or long-term stability result, or just a single fresh-membrane data point?
• could a section editor place this in a membrane section from the abstract alone, or does it read as a materials paper?

If the answers are uncertain, the separation-data problem is usually more important than the novelty problem.

The pre-check editor is answering a short list of questions fast, and for a membrane paper they are specific.

On scope, the editor asks whether the manuscript is genuinely membrane science and which section it belongs in. If the work is really nanomaterial synthesis or polymer chemistry with one permeation figure, the section assignment fails and the paper is returned or redirected.

On soundness, the question is whether the separation performance is measured properly: are flux and rejection reported under stated operating conditions, is the test cell and feed described, and is the data reproducible from the text? Membranes does not require a field-defining permeability, but it does require the separation to be characterized correctly.

On integrity, the editor checks plagiarism, image integrity (SEM cross-sections and surface micrographs are a common site of duplication concerns), and data availability. On completeness, the editor looks for the declarations block and a Data Availability Statement that actually points somewhere. A manuscript missing Author Contributions, Funding, or Conflicts of Interest reads as not ready, even when the membrane work is sound.

Manuscript structure: Membranes expects a defined section set: Abstract, 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 membrane type, the separation target, and the headline performance number (flux, rejection, permeance, or selectivity) all need to be visible there, not buried in the results.

Performance and methods readiness: Provide full experimental detail so the separation can be reproduced: membrane fabrication route, characterization (SEM cross-section and surface, contact angle, porosity, mechanical and thermal data as relevant), and the separation test conditions (feed composition, transmembrane pressure or driving force, temperature, cross-flow velocity). Report performance on both axes and show the permeability-selectivity trade-off where it applies. A gas-separation paper that omits the Robeson-bound context, or a water-treatment paper that reports flux with no rejection, is the most common reviewer-stage friction point.

Stability, fouling, and reproducibility: Include a fouling test, a long-term flux-decline run, or a cyclic-stability measurement, with error bars from replicate membranes. A single fresh-membrane data point reads as a preliminary result, not a finished study.

Figures, supplementary, graphical abstract, and declarations: A graphical abstract is optional but commonly used; if supplied, it should be a high-resolution PNG, JPEG, or TIFF. SEM cross-sections, permeance-versus-time curves, and separation-performance plots that crowd the main narrative belong in the supplementary file. Draft the Author Contributions, Funding, Data Availability, and Conflicts of Interest statements before upload; for any biological-membrane work involving human or animal material, add the Institutional Review Board and consent statements. ORCID is expected for the submitting author, and the system will ask for suggested reviewers.

In our review of Membranes-bound membrane manuscripts, four failure patterns generate the most consistent pre-check returns and reviewer friction, and each one is a named failure pattern you can test against your own manuscript before you upload. These are not abstract risks; they are the editorial triage pattern we watch repeat across separation-science submissions, where the screen rewards complete separation evidence and punishes a half-finished performance story.

Across our membrane and separation-science pre-submission reviews, the pattern that surprises authors most is that the Membranes screen is not a novelty filter in the Journal of Membrane Science sense; it is a separation-evidence-and-fit filter. The manuscripts that get returned fastest are rarely uninteresting materials. They are competent fabrication studies whose separation story is incomplete, one-sided, or untested for stability.

Manuscripts coming through pre-submission review for Membranes split along four lines: characterization with no separation performance, a one-axis performance story, fresh-membrane data with no fouling or stability test, and scope drift into materials chemistry. Each is expanded below, with the testable version you can run against your own draft.

Membrane fabrication with no separation-performance data

The single most common pattern we see is a paper that fabricates and characterizes a membrane in depth, with full SEM cross-sections, XRD, FTIR, contact angle, and mechanical data, but never measures what the membrane actually separates.

The reviewer is left with a beautifully characterized object and no evidence that it works. Membranes is section-based around applications, so a manuscript that stops at characterization cannot be placed in an applications section.

The testable version: scan your figures and ask whether any of them report flux, permeance, rejection, or selectivity under stated operating conditions. If every figure is structure or composition and none is performance, add a separation test before submitting rather than reframing the title.

Check whether your Membranes paper reports a real separation result →

Flux without rejection, or selectivity without permeance

The second pattern is a one-sided performance story. A water-treatment paper reports high pure-water flux but never shows solute or salt rejection; a gas-separation paper reports impressive selectivity but never reports permeance, or vice versa.

The whole point of a membrane is the trade-off between productivity and selectivity, and reviewers at Membranes expect to see both halves. For every performance claim, confirm there is a paired measurement on the other axis.

Flux must be accompanied by rejection or separation factor; permeance must be accompanied by selectivity. If your headline result lives on only one axis, a reviewer cannot judge whether the membrane is actually useful, and the paper stalls in major revision.

Check whether your Membranes performance data covers both axes →

No fouling test or long-term stability run

The third pattern shows up at the reviewer stage: performance reported only on a fresh membrane, with no fouling test, no flux-decline run, and no cyclic stability.

For most membrane applications, fouling and stability are the questions that decide real-world relevance, and a single fresh-membrane data point reads as preliminary. We repeatedly see manuscripts where the separation result is genuinely good but the study stops before the durability question.

Identify the failure mode that matters for your application, such as organic fouling, scaling, plasticization in gas separation, swelling in pervaporation, or degradation in fuel-cell operation. Then confirm you have a test that addresses it, with replicate membranes and error bars. If the membrane has only ever been measured once, the reporting is not ready.

Check whether your Membranes stability and fouling evidence is complete →

Scope drift into pure materials chemistry

The fourth pattern is scope drift. The manuscript is really a nanomaterial-synthesis, polymer-chemistry, or general-materials study, and a membrane is invoked as one possible application near the end.

Membranes welcomes new membrane materials, but the membrane function has to be the subject, not a downstream framing. When the materials chemistry dominates and the separation is an afterthought, the section editor either redirects the paper to a materials journal or returns it.

Read your abstract and ask whether a section editor could name the membrane section (fabrication and characterization, energy, gas separation, water treatment, biological membranes) from the first paragraph. If the membrane only appears as a future application, add the missing separation work or submit to the journal that actually matches the study.

Check whether your Membranes scope reads as membrane science →

Each of these is something you can check against your own draft before you commit the submission. This guide tells you what Membranes editors look for; the review tells you whether YOUR paper passes the pre-check before you upload.

Across our pre-submission review work, the single-axis-performance and missing-stability patterns above show up in a clear majority of the membrane and separation manuscripts we screen, far more often than a genuine novelty shortfall.

Paid Manusights reviews include a 60-day money-back guarantee, and we do not train models on submitted manuscripts. Run a Membranes submission package check to see whether your separation-performance story, fouling evidence, and scope framing will clear the MDPI pre-check.

What slows a Membranes manuscript down, and when not to submit yet

The honest friction at Membranes is not the pre-check itself; it is reviewer search and revision. The pre-check is fast, but a manuscript that needs a niche separation specialist (electrodialysis, membrane distillation, or a specific ion-exchange chemistry) can sit longer while the editor finds reviewers.

The most common revision request is for the exact data the failure modes above describe: the missing rejection axis, the absent fouling run, or the stability test that was never done. When that data does not yet exist, do not submit and hope to add it during revision.

The faster path is to run the missing separation or durability experiment first, because a major-revision request for missing core data costs more calendar time than the experiment would have.

Membranes reports a median first decision near 16 days and median acceptance-to-publication near 3.3 days. Treat these as planning ranges, not promises: manuscripts that need a specific separation specialist (electrodialysis, pervaporation, membrane distillation, ion-exchange) often run longer because reviewer search takes time in narrow subfields.

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

• Days 1 to 3: Editorial pre-check. The editor screens scope fit, section placement, ethics and integrity, and basic soundness. The fastest returns happen here, before any reviewer is invited, and a fabrication-only or one-sided-performance manuscript is most likely to be caught at this stage.

• **Days 3 to 7:

Reviewer invitation.** Manuscripts that pass pre-check enter single-blind reviewer search, typically targeting two or more reviewers in the relevant membrane subfield.

• Days 7 to 16: Peer review and first decision. Reviewer reports return and the editor issues the first decision, with a median near 16 days from submission.

Major revision is the most common outcome for papers that clear pre-check, often with a request for the missing rejection, permeance, or stability data.

• Days 15 to 30: Revision and acceptance. Revisions run on a short clock; resubmission and a second review cycle commonly land acceptance inside a few weeks for in-scope, complete packages.

• **Days 30 to 33:

Production and publication.** Acceptance to publication runs near 3.3 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 Membranes Instructions for Authors, the journal's aims-and-scope and section pages, MDPI's editorial-process and research-and-publication-ethics policies, the journal's reported median timelines, and Manusights pre-submission review patterns from membrane and separation manuscripts deciding between Membranes and its Elsevier peers. We reviewed and compared current MDPI author guidance with recent Manusights work reviews from authors weighing Membranes, Journal of Membrane Science, Separation and Purification Technology, and Desalination. Last reviewed by the Manusights chemical-engineering editorial team on 2026-06-07.

Source limitations: MDPI can update the APC, article-format details, abstract caps, and median-timeline numbers after this review date, so verify final administrative details against the official Membranes author pages before upload. Reported timelines are medians and vary by separation subfield. Use this guide for the decision the official instructions cannot answer: whether your separation-performance data, fouling evidence, and scope framing are ready for the MDPI pre-check.

• Membranes journal profile and metrics
• Journal of Membrane Science submission guide
• Separation and Purification Technology submission guide
• Desalination submission guide
• Nanomaterials submission guide
• Polymers submission guide

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