Pharmaceuticals Submission Guide: How to Submit to the MDPI Medicinal Chemistry Journal
A package-readiness guide to Pharmaceuticals (MDPI), the medicinal-chemistry and drug-discovery journal distinct from Pharmaceutics: the Susy portal, single-blind review, fast first decision, the 2,900 CHF APC, and the failure patterns that stall medicinal-chemistry manuscripts before review.
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How to approach Pharmaceuticals
Use the submission guide like a working checklist. The goal is to make fit, package completeness, and cover-letter framing obvious before you open the portal.
Stage | What to check |
|---|---|
1. Scope | Confirm Pharmaceuticals fit versus Pharmaceutics and selective medicinal-chemistry journals |
2. Package | Isolate and characterize active compounds with NMR, mass spectra, and purity data |
3. Cover letter | Pair bioactivity with SAR, mechanism, and target-engagement or selectivity evidence |
4. Final check | Prepare cover letter, data availability, ethics, conflicts, and funding declarations |
Quick answer: Pharmaceuticals submits through MDPI's Susy portal at susy.mdpi.com, runs single-blind peer review, and reports a median first decision of approximately 14.3 days (median for papers published in the first half of 2026). It is fully open access with a 2,900 CHF article processing charge billed only on acceptance. Pharmaceuticals (ISSN 1424-8247) is the MDPI medicinal-chemistry and drug-discovery journal, distinct from its sister title Pharmaceutics; the first editorial filter is whether the work is a genuine drug-candidate contribution with characterization and mechanism, not portal mechanics.
A Pharmaceuticals submission guide is only useful if it tells you what the upload screen cannot: this is a medicinal-chemistry journal, and editors screen for a drug-candidate through-line first. The single most common confusion is the title itself. Pharmaceuticals describes itself as a journal of medicinal chemistry and related drug sciences, and its Aims and Scope list small molecules as drug candidates first, followed by biomolecules and natural products, biological targets, radiopharmaceutical sciences, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, and pharmaceutical preparations and drug delivery. Pharmaceutics is a separate MDPI title with a similar name, so confirm which journal you are submitting to. A pure synthesis paper with no biology is the fastest way to a polite redirect before review.
A Pharmaceuticals submission is realistic when four things are already true:
- the work centers on a drug candidate or bioactive molecule, with a clear medicinal-chemistry through-line from compound to activity
- every compound that carries a biological claim is isolated, purified, and fully characterized (structure, purity, identity)
- bioactivity data are accompanied by a structure-activity relationship, a proposed mechanism, or target-engagement evidence, not a single screening number
- the declarations are ready: cover letter, data availability, ethics or institutional review board approval where relevant, conflicts of interest, and funding
If one of those is missing, the Susy portal will not rescue the submission. Before you spend the slot, run a Pharmaceuticals manuscript fit check to test whether the drug-candidate framing, compound characterization, and mechanism evidence are already defensible.
From our manuscript review practice
In our pre-submission review work with Pharmaceuticals manuscripts, the most consistent early returns are not about the chemistry being wrong. They are bioactivity numbers reported with no structure-activity relationship or mechanism, compounds tested without full structural characterization, and manuscripts that drift toward pure chemistry or pure pharmacology with no drug-candidate story holding them together.
Working through the Pharmaceuticals submission portal
The Susy portal needs a cover letter, the manuscript with full compound characterization in its supporting information, a data availability statement, ethics or institutional review board approval where relevant, and conflicts of interest and funding disclosures. The harder requirement is unwritten: the work must read as a genuine drug-candidate study, not pure synthesis.
What to pressure-test | What should already be true before upload |
|---|---|
Journal fit | The work is a medicinal-chemistry or drug-discovery contribution about a drug candidate, within the topics in the journal's Aims and Scope. |
Compound characterization | Every active compound is isolated, purified, and fully characterized: structure confirmed, purity reported, identity unambiguous. |
Mechanism and SAR | Bioactivity is paired with a structure-activity relationship, a proposed mechanism, or target-engagement and selectivity data. |
Declarations | Cover letter, data availability statement, ethics or institutional review board approval where relevant, conflicts of interest, funding, and author contributions are ready. |
Title disambiguation | The submission is going to Pharmaceuticals, confirmed not to the separate MDPI title Pharmaceutics. |
Source: Pharmaceuticals aims and scope, MDPI instructions for authors, and the Susy submission system (accessed October 2026)
Pharmaceuticals is published by MDPI and submits through the Susy system (susy.mdpi.com), the same manuscript submission and editorial platform used across MDPI titles such as Molecules and the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. You register as a new user or log in, select Pharmaceuticals, and complete a single submission form that collects the manuscript files and the declarations together. MDPI's workflow is template-driven and fast, so the friction is rarely the portal itself. It is whether the science clears the pre-review scope screen.
The cover letter matters more here than authors coming from other open-access journals expect. Because the first decision is fast and pre-review screening is real, the cover letter is where you state plainly that the work is a drug-candidate study, name the target or disease area, and signal that the compounds are characterized. An editor reads that letter before deciding whether to invite reviewers at all.
What Pharmaceuticals wants in a first submission
Pharmaceuticals publishes Articles and Reviews, and its Aims and Scope say short communications are also accepted. MDPI describes a Communication as a short article presenting preliminary results or significant findings that are part of a larger multi-year study. The format you choose drives the depth expected, but the characterization bar is the same across all of them.
Articles are the standard full-length format. The Aims and Scope state there is no restriction on the maximum length of papers, so length is governed by completeness: a full medicinal-chemistry Article is expected to report synthesis, characterization, biological evaluation, and a structure-activity or mechanistic discussion.
Communications are shorter. A Communication that reads like a thin Article, with a single activity number and no mechanism, is the wrong format for a result that is not yet urgent or surprising enough to warrant rapid publication.
Reviews are welcome in defined medicinal-chemistry areas, but a Review that only catalogs published compounds without a synthesizing thesis on what the SAR landscape means is weaker than one that takes a position.
Two MDPI house-style points catch authors off guard. The abstract for original research and systematic reviews is structured and runs to around 250 words, with Background/Objectives, Methods, Results, and Conclusions headings. In a Word submission, figures are inserted in the main text after the paragraph of their first citation, and they should be of high quality (preferably no less than 600 dpi) in PNG, JPEG or TIFF format, and the total amount of data for all files must not exceed 120 MB. Confirm both against the current instructions for authors before you submit, since they are updated periodically.
For every format, the supplementary information is load-bearing. Spectroscopic characterization data, NMR and mass spectra, HPLC purity traces, and biological assay protocols belong in the supporting information, and reviewers in medicinal chemistry open it first. A manuscript whose main text claims novel active compounds but whose supporting information lacks the spectra to prove identity and purity is incomplete regardless of how strong the activity looks.
Include a data availability statement, and where animal or human samples are involved, an ethics or institutional review board approval statement with the approval number.
Before the format and declarations are locked, a Pharmaceuticals characterization and SAR readiness check can confirm whether the supporting information actually proves what the main text claims.
Pharmaceuticals review timing and editorial handling
MDPI's Editorial Office and an Academic Editor handle Pharmaceuticals submissions through the Susy system, and MDPI's published medians put the first decision at approximately 14.3 days (median 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. Treat them as planning ranges, not commitments, because a manuscript sent for a full single-blind review round runs longer than the median, and revisions add weeks.
- Submission and technical pre-check. 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. A submission that fails to the extent that further review is prevented does not proceed.
- Editorial pre-check by an Academic Editor. The Academic Editor assesses scope fit and scientific soundness: here that means medicinal chemistry and drug discovery fit, characterization completeness, and whether the biological claims are supported. The Academic Editor may reject the manuscript, request revisions before peer review, or move it forward to peer review.
A rejection at either pre-check stage comes before any reviewer is invited: out-of-scope work, uncharacterized compounds, and single-screening-number manuscripts rarely reach reviewers.
- 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 reviewers the Academic Editor approved, and at least two review reports are collected under single-blind review.
MDPI's fast cadence depends on reviewers accepting quickly, and medicinal-chemistry manuscripts with clean supporting information are easier to place.
- Peer review. Reviewers who accept are generally given 7 to 10 days to report. They assess novelty, characterization rigor, the structure-activity relationship, and the mechanism or target evidence.
Complex pharmacology or contested SAR claims extend the time to a first decision beyond the median.
- 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.
- Acceptance and production. Articles can only be accepted by an Academic Editor. MDPI reports median acceptance-to-publication of 3.6 days (first half of 2026), so the slow part of the timeline is review and revision, not production.
What gets Pharmaceuticals submissions desk-rejected
In our pre-submission review work with Pharmaceuticals manuscripts, four patterns generate the most consistent early returns. None of them are about the chemistry being wrong. They are about evidence packaging and scope discipline that this medicinal-chemistry journal screens for before peer review begins.
In our review of drug-discovery 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 academic editors at Pharmaceuticals read submissions during the fast pre-review screen. Because the first decision is quick, a weak first read has less room to recover than at a slower journal.
Pharmaceuticals aims and scope and MDPI instructions for authors define the mechanics below; the patterns describe how manuscripts coming through pre-submission review for this journal most often fall short of them. The pattern is consistent: of the medicinal-chemistry manuscripts our reviewers screen, most of the ones we flag as not-yet-ready for this journal stack up on the four issues below, and they are visible before any external reviewer is invited.
Across our Pharmaceuticals pre-submission reviews, most attrition happens at the academic-editor screen, before reviewers ever weigh in, and these four patterns are why.
Bioactivity screening reported with no SAR or mechanism. The single most common stall we see is a results section that reports an IC50, an MIC, or a percentage inhibition for a set of compounds and stops there. The activity table looks complete, but a medicinal-chemistry editor reads it and asks the obvious question: what does this tell me about how to make the molecule better?
When the manuscript has no structure-activity relationship across the series, no proposed binding mode or mechanism, and no docking or target-engagement evidence, the work reads as a screening report rather than a medicinal-chemistry advance. Pharmaceuticals expects bioactivity to be the start of a story about the molecule, not the whole story. A single potent number with no SAR and no mechanism is a leading reason manuscripts are returned before external review.
Check whether your Pharmaceuticals bioactivity data carry an SAR and a mechanism →
An extract tested against a cell line with no isolated, characterized compound. A recurring return, especially on natural-product manuscripts, is an extract or a crude mixture screened against a cancer cell line or a microbial panel, with activity claimed but no isolated, purified, characterized compound behind it. Reviewers in medicinal chemistry cannot evaluate a structure-activity claim when they do not know which structure is active.
If the active species is not isolated, its structure confirmed by NMR and mass spectrometry, and its purity reported, the biological number is unanchored. The supporting information is where this is decided: a manuscript that claims novel active compounds but provides no spectra to prove identity and purity is incomplete, and an editor sees that gap on the first read.
The fix is to isolate and fully characterize the active compound before claiming activity for it.
Check if your Pharmaceuticals compounds are fully characterized before the activity claim →
Scope drift to pure synthetic chemistry or pure clinical pharmacology. Pharmaceuticals sits between chemistry and pharmacology, and the manuscripts that get redirected are the ones that fall off either edge. A pure synthesis paper that reports new compounds with no biological evaluation belongs in an organic-chemistry journal, because the medicinal-chemistry through-line is missing.
At the other edge, a pure clinical-pharmacology or pharmacokinetics study with no new chemistry, no drug-candidate design, and no structure-activity content reads as pharmacology rather than medicinal chemistry. Academic editors at this journal identify quickly when the work is really chemistry-only or pharmacology-only with a thin drug angle attached for fit.
The genuine contribution has to connect a molecule's structure to its biological behavior; when that connection is absent, the manuscript is a scope mismatch before review.
Check whether your Pharmaceuticals manuscript keeps a drug-candidate through-line →
Missing target-engagement or selectivity data behind a potency claim. The fourth pattern is a potency claim with no evidence that the compound hits what the authors say it hits, or no evidence that it hits it selectively. A manuscript reports strong activity and proposes a target, but offers no binding assay, no enzymatic inhibition against the named target, no cellular target-engagement readout, and no counter-screen against related off-targets.
Reviewers treat target engagement and selectivity as part of a drug-candidate claim, not optional extras, because a potent but promiscuous compound is not a lead. When the methods describe phenotypic activity but never test the proposed mechanism directly, and never show selectivity over a related target or a normal-cell control, the drug-candidate claim is unsupported.
The methods and supporting information are where editors confirm this, and a missing selectivity control is a common reason a strong-looking compound is sent back for more data.
This guide tells you what Pharmaceuticals editors look for; a Manusights review tells you whether YOUR paper passes that screen. A Manusights review checks the compound characterization, the structure-activity relationship, the mechanism and target-engagement evidence, and the medicinal-chemistry scope framing 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 Pharmaceuticals scope and characterization readiness check tests whether your characterization, SAR, mechanism, and scope framing clear the editorial bar this journal applies before peer review.
Readiness check
Run the scan against the requirements while they're in front of you.
See score, top issues, and journal-fit signals before you submit.
Does this paper belong in Pharmaceuticals?
Fit is a two-way question, not a one-way checklist. Pharmaceuticals is a fast, well-indexed home for complete drug-candidate work, but it is the wrong target for several common manuscript shapes.
Submit If
- the work is a genuine medicinal-chemistry or drug-discovery contribution about a drug candidate, with a clear path from structure to activity
- every active compound is isolated, purified, and fully characterized, with spectra and purity data in the supporting information
- bioactivity is paired with a structure-activity relationship, a proposed mechanism, or target-engagement and selectivity evidence
- you want fast, fully open-access publication, the 2,900 CHF APC is covered or affordable, and Q1 indexing in pharmacology and medicinal chemistry matters
Think Twice If
- your compounds are screened for activity but the manuscript reports a single number per compound with no SAR across the series and no proposed mechanism
- you claim activity for an extract or crude mixture without isolating and characterizing the compound responsible for it
- the work is really pure synthetic chemistry with no biology, or pure clinical pharmacology with no new chemistry or drug-candidate design
- the manuscript is about drug delivery or formulation; the Aims and Scope list pharmaceutical preparations and drug delivery among the topics considered, so confirm the drug-candidate or biological story is still central
How Pharmaceuticals compares with nearby medicinal-chemistry journals
Pharmaceuticals competes for medicinal-chemistry manuscripts with several established titles, and the right target depends on the novelty of the chemistry, how complete the biology is, and how fast and open you need publication to be.
Journal | JIF (2025) | Scope and editorial identity | Review speed | Open access |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Pharmaceuticals (MDPI) | 5.7 | Drug candidates: medicinal chemistry, drug discovery and design, SAR, pharmacology of bioactive molecules | Fast; median first decision ~14.3 days (first half of 2026) | Full open access; APC 2,900 CHF |
Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (ACS) | ~7.3 | The discipline's flagship; demands high novelty, deep SAR, and rigorous target validation | Slower; multi-month, selective | Hybrid; ACS open access option |
European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (Elsevier) | ~6.7 | Broad medicinal chemistry: synthesis, drug design, QSAR, drug-receptor interactions | Multi-month | Hybrid; Elsevier OA option |
ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters (ACS) | ~3.9 | Short, high-impact medicinal-chemistry communications; design and optimization | Faster than full ACS articles | Hybrid; ACS OA option |
Molecules (MDPI) | ~5.1 | Broad chemistry, multidisciplinary; the sister MDPI title when the work is chemistry-first | Fast; MDPI cadence | Full open access; APC required |
Source: Clarivate 2026 JCR release, BioxBio, Resurchify, and the journals' own author and charges pages (accessed June 2026). JIF values vary slightly across databases; ranges reflect that.
The editorial-philosophy difference matters more than the metric gap. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry wants the molecule to be a validated lead with deep SAR and target validation, which is why a solid first-series study with promising activity can read as under-developed there but land cleanly at Pharmaceuticals. European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry rewards synthetic depth and breadth of design, so a strong synthesis-and-design study with moderate biology fits its identity.
ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters is the right target when the result is a sharp, single-message advance that fits a short communication. Molecules is the sister MDPI venue when the work is chemistry-first with a thinner biological story, so a compound-synthesis paper without a drug-candidate through-line often belongs there rather than at Pharmaceuticals.
Worth naming the ceiling honestly: a genuinely first-in-class scaffold with deep biology and a validated target is a JACS, Nature, or Science candidate, and a study at that level will be under-placed at any of the journals in this table, Pharmaceuticals included. The far more common situation is a solid, complete drug-candidate study that is not a JACS-tier event, and that is exactly where Pharmaceuticals competes well.
If your work is a complete, characterized drug-candidate study with SAR and mechanism that needs fast, fully open-access publication, Pharmaceuticals is usually the better fit. For the broader cluster, see the medicinal chemistry journals overview.
Pre-submission checklist
- [ ] The work is a medicinal-chemistry or drug-discovery contribution about a drug candidate, within the topics in the Aims and Scope
- [ ] Every active compound is isolated, purified, and fully characterized, with NMR, mass spectra, and purity data in the supporting information
- [ ] Bioactivity is paired with a structure-activity relationship, a proposed mechanism, or target-engagement evidence
- [ ] Selectivity is addressed: a counter-screen, a related-target comparison, or a normal-cell control supports the potency claim
- [ ] The cover letter, data availability statement, ethics or institutional review board approval, conflicts of interest, and funding declarations are ready
- [ ] The format choice fits: a complete Article, a genuinely high-priority Communication, or a thesis-driven Review
- [ ] You confirmed the target journal is Pharmaceuticals (ISSN 1424-8247), not Pharmaceutics
- ] Run a [Pharmaceuticals submission readiness check to catch what editors filter for on first read
Method and sources for this Pharmaceuticals guide
This guide was built from the Pharmaceuticals aims and scope, MDPI instructions for authors, the Susy submission system, MDPI's published review-timing medians, and Manusights pre-submission review patterns from medicinal-chemistry and drug-discovery manuscripts. Across our pre-submission review work, the repeated Pharmaceuticals issue was not whether the paper used the correct MDPI portal; it was whether compound characterization, purity evidence, SAR logic, mechanism, selectivity, and drug-candidate scope were visible before academic-editor screening.
Official guidance can state journal scope and APC, but it cannot tell whether one draft's activity table, supporting information, methods, mechanism paragraph, and cover letter make a real drug-candidate case.
We checked the single-blind review process, the 2,900 CHF APC, and the medicinal-chemistry scope against the journal's own pages, and we cross-checked competitor metrics against Clarivate 2026 JCR release, BioxBio, and Resurchify. The failure patterns describe what we see most often when drug-discovery 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 compound characterization, structure-activity relationship, mechanism evidence, and scope framing are already defensible. Source limitation: MDPI updates APCs, article-type details, and policies after this review date, so confirm administrative specifics against the journal's official pages before submission. Before you commit to this target, run a manuscript readiness check.
What should you read next?
- Molecules submission guide
- International Journal of Molecular Sciences review time
- For the broader cluster, see the chemistry journals overview.
Before you upload, run your manuscript through a Pharmaceuticals submission package check to catch the scope, characterization, and SAR issues editors filter for on first read. It is free, and one upload is enough (/ai-review).
A strong paper in the wrong venue reads as a weak paper. See whether Pharmaceuticals before I reformat is the right target for my abstract.
Frequently asked questions
Submit through MDPI's Susy system at the official submission portal. Register or log in, choose Pharmaceuticals, and complete the submission form by uploading your manuscript and the required declarations. You will need a cover letter, a data availability statement, an institutional review board or ethics statement where animal or human data are involved, conflicts of interest and funding disclosures, and author contributions ready before you upload.
MDPI reports a median time to first decision of approximately 14.3 days, with median acceptance-to-publication of 3.6 days, for papers published in the first half of 2026. Treat these as medians, not guarantees: a manuscript sent for a full round of single-blind review takes longer, and revision rounds add weeks. The fastest returns are pre-review decisions, which come before any reviewer is invited when a manuscript is out of scope, reports bioactivity with no characterization of the tested compound, or fails the language bar.
Pharmaceuticals is fully open access, and the article processing charge is 2,900 CHF (Swiss francs) per accepted paper, billed only after acceptance. There is no submission fee. Verify the current figure on the journal's article processing charge page before submission, since MDPI can change APCs, and discounts are available through MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program and for members of affiliated societies.
Pharmaceuticals uses single-blind peer review: reviewers see the authors' identities, but reviewer identities are not revealed to authors. Manuscripts are typically assessed by at least two independent reviewers. Editors run a pre-review scope and quality screen first, so out-of-scope and under-characterized manuscripts are returned before reviewers are invited.
The most common early returns are bioactivity screening with no structure-activity relationship or mechanism, a compound or extract tested against a cell line without isolation and full structural characterization, scope drift toward pure synthetic chemistry or pure clinical pharmacology with no drug-candidate through-line, and missing target-engagement or selectivity data. Formulation and drug-delivery work is not out of scope: the Aims and Scope list pharmaceutical preparations and drug delivery among the topics considered, so judge fit against that list rather than assuming such a paper belongs at the sister title Pharmaceutics.
Sources
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