Nanomaterials Submission Guide: How to Submit to Nanomaterials (MDPI)

Nanomaterials lists Articles and Reviews as its main article types, and its home page also names communications and short notes; the instructions point to MDPI's article-types page for a comprehensive list and note that not all article types are available for all disciplines. The article type you choose drives expectations more than a hard word count does.

Articles are the default lane. The Nanomaterials instructions publish no page or word limit for Articles. They require full experimental details so that results can be reproduced, and MDPI's article-types page encourages authors to publish their work in as much detail as possible. Every claimed material requires a complete characterization package in the main text or supplementary information.

Communications are the short format for a focused, timely advance. A Communication still needs complete characterization and controls at reduced length, so a Communication that omits evidence to fit the format is the wrong choice.

Reviews require a systematic organizing principle beyond a literature summary. The review must explain why the studies were selected and add analytical value the individual papers do not provide on their own.

For files, MDPI encourages its Microsoft Word and LaTeX templates and also accepts free-format submission. Figures should be of high quality, preferably no less than 600 dpi, in PNG, JPEG or TIFF format, and in a Word submission they are inserted in the main text after the paragraph of their first citation. The total amount of data for all files must not exceed 120 MB, so large micrograph stacks and raw datasets belong in clearly named supplementary files rather than a single oversized manuscript.

A data availability statement is required, and supplementary information is where most of the raw characterization belongs: full XRD patterns, additional micrographs, EDS or XPS spectra, and statistical detail. The instructions make correct English the authors' responsibility: the APC covers only minor English editing, and a paper that needs extensive editing could be returned to the author at the English editing stage of publication. The technical pre-check also looks at the overall legibility of the manuscript.

Before the format and declarations are locked, a Nanomaterials characterization and readiness check can confirm whether the evidence package genuinely supports the claim or whether a reviewer will immediately ask for the missing micrograph, pattern, or distribution.

Nanomaterials moves fast by design. MDPI reports a median time to first decision of approximately 12.5 days, with acceptance to publication in 2.7 days (median values for papers published in the first half of 2026). MDPI publishes no day-by-day schedule, so the stages below follow the order on its editorial-process page rather than fixed dates; they are planning ranges, not commitments, and the most consequential filter happens before peer review even starts.

• Submission and technical pre-check. SuSy ingests your files. The Editorial Office checks adherence to the Instructions for Authors and MDPI's publication ethics policies, legibility and article-type selection, and screens for ethics and research-integrity issues with manual and automated tools. Missing declarations and incomplete packages are flagged here.

• Editorial pre-check by an Academic Editor. A submission that clears the technical pre-check goes to an Academic Editor, who assesses whether it fits the journal's scope and meets the expected standards of scientific soundness, and may reject it, request revisions before peer review, or move it forward to peer review.

The Section choice you made at upload matters: the wrong Section delays assignment or sends the manuscript to an editor outside the subfield.

• Reviewer invitation. The Editorial Office compiles proposed reviewers, including any you suggested, before the editorial pre-check, and the Academic Editor validates the list. The Editorial Office then invites the approved reviewers, and at least two single-blind review reports are collected for each manuscript that proceeds to peer review.

• Peer review. Reviewers who accept are generally given 7 to 10 days to report, and extensions are common.

Characterization gaps surface as the most common reviewer request.

• First editorial decision and revision. Once at least two reports are in, the Academic Editor decides: accept in current form, minor revision, reconsider after major revision, reject and decline resubmission, reject and encourage resubmission, or ask for an additional reviewer.

Authors are generally given five days for a minor revision and ten days for a major revision, with extensions on request, and up to two rounds of major revision are usually allowed, so plan the additional characterization before you submit, not after.

• Acceptance and production. Articles can only be accepted by an Academic Editor. Accepted papers move to production quickly given the 2.7-day acceptance-to-publication median, with proofs and a CC BY license applied.

In our pre-submission review work with Nanomaterials manuscripts, across roughly manuscripts Manusights team reviewed for nanoscience or adjacent materials fit, four patterns generate the most consistent early returns. None of them are about the science being wrong. They are about evidence packaging and scope discipline that this journal screens for at the pre-check stages, before peer review begins.

In our review of nanoscience manuscripts, each of these is a named rejection pattern you can check your own draft against, and each reflects an editorial triage pattern specific to how MDPI screens a fast, high-volume open-access journal. The speed of the process raises the stakes on every one of these, because a thin package is returned early rather than buried in a slow queue.

Editors consistently screen for these before sending a manuscript out for review.

Nanomaterials Instructions for Authors and the MDPI editorial process define the mechanics below; the patterns describe how manuscripts coming through pre-submission review for this journal most often fall short of them. The journal's fast 12.5-day median first decision is consistent with what we see: most attrition happens at the pre-check and first-revision stages, before reviewers can rescue an incomplete package, and these four patterns are why.

The characterization package shows a representative image instead of a size distribution. This is the single most common stall we see on nanomaterials manuscripts. The paper presents a nanoparticle, a nanostructure, or a composite and supports it with one clean TEM or SEM micrograph and a sentence asserting the size.

An editor in nanoscience reads that and asks the obvious question: how do I know this is the population rather than the best particle on the grid? When the manuscript has no size distribution histogram, no count statistics, no XRD pattern to confirm the crystalline phase, and no XPS or EDS to confirm composition, the characterization gap is visible immediately.

Reviewers expect identity and nanoscale structure to be proven, not asserted, and a figure that shows a hero image with no distribution and no complementary technique reads as incomplete. The fix is to treat the supplementary information as an audit trail: full patterns, multiple fields of view, count-based size distributions, and the spectra that confirm what the material actually is.

Check whether your Nanomaterials characterization package proves identity and size distribution

A synthesis paper whose only advance is another route to a known particle. A large share of submissions to a broad open-access nano journal are syntheses. The recurring weakness is a manuscript that reports a new preparation method for a material the field already makes, with no property, mechanism, or application advance that the new route enables.

The abstract frames the work as novel because the synthesis is different, but the figures show a known particle with known behavior. In a high-volume venue this reads as incremental, and the methods and results sections are where it is decided: if the only new thing is the procedure, and the resulting material behaves like the published versions, the contribution is a process note rather than a nanoscience advance.

The repair is to anchor the novelty to what the nanoscale structure does, not to how it was made: a property gained, a mechanism clarified, an architecture that enables a new function, or a measurable performance change against the nearest published benchmark.

Check whether your Nanomaterials manuscript has a nanoscale-specific advance beyond the synthesis route

The core contribution is really chemistry or bulk materials. Nanomaterials covers the preparation, characterization, and application of nanomaterials, and a recurring desk return is a manuscript whose real contribution sits in chemistry, bulk materials, or applied engineering with a nano component added for fit.

The introduction frames the work as nanoscience, but the novel result is a molecular property, a bulk processing improvement, or a device outcome, and the nanoscale behavior is a measurement context rather than the advance. Academic Editors at this journal are nanoscience specialists, and they identify quickly when the nano angle is the setting rather than the subject.

A manuscript whose genuine contribution would be evaluated more naturally by a chemistry or bulk-materials reviewer is consistently flagged as a scope mismatch, and within the MDPI portfolio it is often redirected toward a sister journal rather than reviewed at Nanomaterials.

Check whether your Nanomaterials manuscript is genuinely nanoscience or a sister-journal fit

Reproducibility detail thin enough that a reviewer cannot judge the methods. Because Nanomaterials explicitly asks for full experimental and methodical detail, a methods section that omits synthesis parameters, instrument settings, or quantitative analysis conditions reads as a gap rather than brevity.

The paper presents results, but the methods do not give precursor concentrations, reaction temperatures and times, calibration details, or the software and parameters used for size analysis, so a reader cannot reproduce the work or judge the controls. For application papers, the parallel failure is performance data reported without the baseline, the control sample, or the error bars that let a reviewer assess whether the nanomaterial actually caused the claimed effect.

The methods and supplementary information are where this is decided: if the experimental detail is not sufficient for an expert to reproduce the result, the manuscript is not yet ready for this journal regardless of how clean the data look.

This guide tells you what Nanomaterials editors look for; a Manusights review tells you whether YOUR paper passes that screen. A Manusights review checks the characterization completeness, the novelty claim, the scope framing, and the reproducibility detail against the editorial bar this journal applies before peer review. Paid Manusights reviews include a 60-day money-back guarantee, and we do not train models on submitted manuscripts.

Before submitting, a Nanomaterials scope and characterization readiness check tests whether your characterization package, novelty claim, and scope framing clear the editorial bar this journal applies before peer review.

Journal fit runs in both directions. Nanomaterials is a fast, broad, open-access home for complete and well-characterized nanoscience work, but it is the wrong target for several common manuscript shapes.

Submit If

• the central result is a genuine nanomaterials advance, and the abstract names what the nanoscale structure does rather than how it was made
• the characterization package proves identity and nanoscale structure: TEM or SEM with a size distribution, XRD for phase, and XPS or EDS for composition where relevant
• the methods give enough synthesis and analysis detail for an expert to reproduce the work, with baselines and controls for any performance claim
• the data availability statement and declarations are ready, and you want a fast, fully open-access route with rapid time to first decision

Think Twice If

• your characterization rests on one representative micrograph with no count-based size distribution and no complementary technique, so identity and population are asserted rather than shown
• your contribution is a new synthesis route to a particle the field already makes, with no property, mechanism, or application advance the nanoscale structure enables
• the novel result in your manuscript is a molecular property, a bulk processing gain, or a device outcome, and the nanoscale behavior is only the measurement context rather than the advance
• the work is genuinely strong but better matched to a sister MDPI journal such as Materials, Molecules, or IJMS, where the primary audience actually sits
• the methods section, first characterization figure, or cover letter would make more sense in a chemistry or bulk-materials journal because the nanoscale structure is not the thing being tested

This guide was built from the Nanomaterials Instructions for Authors, MDPI's editorial process and SuSy submission documentation, the journal's aims and scope, APC pages, and Manusights pre-submission review patterns from nanoscience and materials manuscripts. Across our pre-submission review work, the repeated Nanomaterials issue was not upload mechanics; it was whether size distribution, phase evidence, composition evidence, reproducibility detail, and nanoscale-specific novelty were visible before the pre-check stages.

Official guidance can state article types and APCs, but it cannot tell whether one draft's first characterization figure, methods, supplementary spectra, and cover letter prove a real nanomaterials contribution. We checked the open-access APC, the single-blind review model, and the 12.5-day first-decision median (first half of 2026) against MDPI's own pages, and we cross-checked competitor metrics against Clarivate 2026 JCR release and Resurchify. The failure patterns describe what we see most often when nanomaterials manuscripts come through pre-submission review for this journal.

Use this page before you upload, when the official instructions cannot answer the real question: whether your characterization package, novelty claim, reproducibility detail, and scope framing are already defensible. Source limitation: MDPI updates APC figures, scope language, and policy details after this review date, and MDPI pages can block automated access, so confirm administrative specifics against the journal's official pages before submission. For a read on the draft itself, run a manuscript readiness check.

• ACS Nano submission guide
• Nanoscale submission guide
• Small submission guide
• For the broader cluster, see the materials science journals overview.

Before you upload, run your manuscript through a Nanomaterials submission package check to catch the scope, characterization, and novelty issues editors filter for on first read. Free to run (/ai-review), and you upload once.

Scope statements are written broadly. Editorial behaviour is much narrower. Compare my abstract's fit with Nanomaterials before I reformat.