Rejected from Applied Sciences (MDPI)? The 7 Best Journals to Submit Next

Source: MDPI journal pages and APC tables (applsci, sensors, materials, electronics), IEEE Access author information, Heliyon and Scientific Reports journal information, and Clarivate JCR 2024 (accessed June 2026). Figures are approximate and change annually; confirm on each journal's site before submitting.

These seven cover the realistic landing zones for an Applied Sciences reject. The three MDPI siblings are the path of least resistance because you can transfer the file and reviewer comments directly. IEEE Access and Results in Engineering are step-ups in JIF for engineering work that is genuinely solid. Heliyon and Scientific Reports are the broad sound-science backstops when the topic does not fit a specialty title.

The cleanest cascade for an Applied Sciences reject runs through MDPI first, then out to the wider applied-science field.

Tier 1, stay inside MDPI via transfer. When you submit to an MDPI journal you select up to three alternative journals in preference order. If the first-choice journal deems the paper out of scope, MDPI automatically transfers it to your first alternative, and again to the second if needed. There is no transfer fee; you pay only the new journal's APC on acceptance.

If Applied Sciences rejected your sensing paper for scope, Sensors is the obvious first alternative; for a materials paper, Materials; for circuits or power electronics, Electronics. Accept the editor-recommended transfer when the redirect is about fit, not quality.

Tier 2, step up the JIF for solid engineering. If the work is genuinely sound and you want a higher metric than the Applied Sciences JIF near 2.5, IEEE Access (IF around 3.6) and Results in Engineering (IF around 7.9) both publish rigorous applied results. IEEE Access is fast for an indexed engineering title, with most first decisions in four to six weeks. Results in Engineering rewards translational, application-driven findings.

Tier 3, broad sound-science backstops. When the topic crosses fields or does not fit a specialty journal, Heliyon and Scientific Reports judge soundness rather than novelty. Scientific Reports accepts roughly 57 percent of submissions and reaches a first decision in about three weeks median, so it is a dependable next tier when the science is correct but the home is unclear.

Do not blast the same file down the ladder without reading the decision letter. A scope reject moves cleanly; a validation reject does not. The table below maps the rejection reason to the fastest correct next move.

Source: Manusights editorial routing matrix, built from MDPI transfer policy and the alternative journals' stated review criteria (June 2026).

In our pre-submission review work with Applied Sciences submissions, the rejections we see most often cluster into four named patterns, and three of them are fixable before you resubmit anywhere. These patterns come from the manuscripts we reviewed before their authors submitted, cross-checked against the journal's stated scope and review criteria.

Wrong-section scope, where the paper lands outside the section it was sent to. Applied Sciences is broad overall but routes every manuscript through one of its roughly 32 sections, and the most frequent desk reject we see across Applied Sciences submissions is a paper whose method or contribution belongs to a neighboring section, or to a sister journal entirely.

Across our Applied Sciences pre-submission reviews, the tell is an abstract framed for a general applied-science reader while the actual contribution is narrowly a sensor-calibration result, a circuit-design optimization, or a materials-characterization study. Check that the section's stated remit matches your central result, not your motivation paragraph. This is the pattern MDPI's transfer service exists to absorb, which is why a redirect to Sensors, Materials, or Electronics is so common.

Insufficient novelty for a sound-science megajournal. Applied Sciences does not reject for low impact, but it does reject when the work restates a known result with a small parameter change and no new insight. In our review of Applied Sciences submissions we see this most in papers that apply a standard model or standard sensor to a slightly different dataset and report the obvious outcome.

The fix is in the discussion and the claims, not the data: state explicitly what is new relative to the closest prior work, and remove claims the experiments do not support.

Incomplete experimental validation, visible from the methods and results. Applied Sciences expects results that are actually validated, and manuscripts without explicit validation extend revision rounds or trigger rejection. We see this pattern in Applied Sciences submissions we review as a missing baseline comparison, an absent ablation or control condition, a sample size that does not support the statistical analysis, or a simulation reported with no experimental confirmation. These gaps in the methods section follow the paper to every sound-science journal, so fix them before you transfer or move on.

English and presentation that block the reviewers. Applied Sciences draws a wide international author base, and language quality is a genuine barrier. In our Applied Sciences pre-submission reviews, figures that are unreadable at print size, undefined error bars, and dense unedited prose are the presentation failures that most often turn a borderline paper into a reject. Tighten the figures and have the manuscript professionally edited; the same problems read the same way at IEEE Access, Heliyon, and Scientific Reports.

Each of these is testable against your own manuscript right now. Open the methods and results, check the section remit against your central claim, and you can usually predict the next decision before you submit. A targeted Applied Sciences desk-rejection risk check surfaces the scope and validation gaps that trigger these patterns.

A rejection is only useful if you act on what it told you. The honest friction here is that an out-of-scope desk reject is easy to route, but a post-review reject usually means the manuscript needs real work, and dropping it down the ladder unchanged just buys you a slower rejection at the next journal.

Read the decision letter literally. If it cites scope, pick a better-fit section or accept the MDPI transfer and move quickly. If it cites methods, validation, novelty, or statistics, those are content problems that travel with the paper. Reviewers at IEEE Access, Heliyon, and Scientific Reports screen for the same gaps, so the fastest path to publication is to fix them once rather than rediscover them three rejections later.

Resist the urge to appeal unless you can point to a concrete factual error in the review; appeals on scope and novelty calls rarely succeed and they cost weeks.