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

Nanomaterials publishes Articles, Reviews, Communications, and other MDPI article types, plus Editorials and Perspectives. The article type you choose drives expectations more than a hard word count does.

Articles are the default lane. MDPI does not enforce a strict page limit, but research Articles typically run 4000 to 8000 words with full experimental and methodical detail, because the journal explicitly asks authors to publish their work in as much detail as possible so results are reproducible. 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 provides Microsoft Word and LaTeX templates, and figures should be uploaded as separate high-resolution files. Individual files uploaded through SuSy must stay under the platform limit of roughly 50 MB per file, 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. Manuscripts that are unclear because of English-language quality can be returned for editing before review, so the language bar is enforced at pre-check, not deferred.

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 near 14 days, with acceptance to publication around 2.5 days for recent papers. The stages below are planning ranges, not commitments, and the most consequential filter happens before peer review even starts.

• Day 0: Submission and pre-check. SuSy ingests your files. A Managing Editor runs the technical pre-check for completeness, scope fit, ethics, plagiarism screening, and data availability. Incomplete characterization, missing declarations, and out-of-scope work are flagged here.

• Days 1 to 3: Academic Editor assignment. A submission that clears pre-check is routed to an Academic Editor in the relevant Section.

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

• Days 3 to 5: Reviewer invitation. The Academic Editor or editorial office invites reviewers, typically aiming for at least two single-blind reports. MDPI's reviewer-discount incentive supports fast turnaround at this stage.

• Days 5 to 14: Peer review. Reviewers return reports, usually two or more, on a roughly two-week cadence.

The first decision at the 14-day median lands here for clean manuscripts. Characterization gaps surface as the most common reviewer request.

• Weeks 3 to 8: Revision. Most accepted papers go through at least one major or minor revision.

A revised manuscript must include a point-by-point response to each reviewer comment; MDPI revision windows are short, so plan the additional characterization before you submit, not after.

• Weeks 4 to 10: Final decision and production. Accepted papers move to production quickly given the 2.5-day acceptance-to-publication median, with proofs and a CC BY license applied. Total handling time for a clean paper is often well under two months.

In our pre-submission review work with Nanomaterials manuscripts, across roughly 90 manuscripts the Manusights team reviewed for nanoscience or adjacent materials fit when this guide was built, 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 Managing Editor pre-check, 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 in days 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 14-day 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.

Nanomaterials expects 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.

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. We checked the characterization expectations, the open-access APC, the single-blind review model, and the fast 14-day first-decision median against MDPI's own pages, and we cross-checked competitor metrics against Clarivate JCR 2024 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. To pressure-test the manuscript 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. The check is free to run (/ai-review) and takes a single upload.