Buildings

About Buildings

Buildings — Journal Profile

Buildings is an international, peer-reviewed, fully open access journal on building science, building engineering and architectural design, published online on a semimonthly rhythm by MDPI AG of Basel, Switzerland. It has published since 2011 and has grown into one of the largest titles in the built-environment field: OpenAlex counted 4,646 works in the journal in 2025 alone, and the journal's own site listed more than 20,000 articles in November 2026. MDPI displays an Impact Factor of 3.4 (2025) with a five-year figure of 3.6, and a Journal Citation Reports rank of Q2 in Engineering, Civil, alongside a CiteScore rank of Q1 in Architecture. SCImago's 2025 series gives it an SJR of 0.686, an h-index of 85, and category rankings of Q1 in Architecture, Q1 in Civil and Structural Engineering and Q2 in Building and Construction. Its editor-in-chief is Prof. Dr. David Arditi of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. The journal is affiliated with the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB), whose members receive a discount on its article processing charge. This profile was compiled from sources consulted directly for this record in November 2026: MDPI's journal and aims-and-scope pages, the journal's DOAJ record, SCImago's ranking tables for its ISSN record, and the OpenAlex source record.

Key facts at a glance

• Title: Buildings
• Online ISSN: 2075-5309 (online-only journal; no print ISSN)
• Publisher: MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland
• History: publishing since 2011; Scopus coverage 2011–2026; listed in DOAJ since December 2012
• Frequency: semimonthly online (24 issues a year in recent volumes)
• Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Dr. David Arditi, Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA (MDPI listing)
• Impact Factor (MDPI journal page): 3.4 (2025); five-year Impact Factor 3.6 (2025); JCR rank Q2 — Engineering, Civil; CiteScore rank Q1 — Architecture
• SCImago (2025 series, Scopus data): SJR 0.686; Q1 in Architecture, Q1 in Civil and Structural Engineering, Q2 in Building and Construction; h-index 85; citations per document (2 years) 3.975 for 2025. The journal's own 2024 SJR was 0.652
• OpenAlex record: source S4210191137; 20,167 works and 192,195 citations at the time of checking; h-index 103 on OpenAlex's broader count; two-year mean citedness 4.402
• Open access: fully open access under CC BY 4.0; article processing charge CHF 2,600 (DOAJ and OpenAlex agree); copyright retained by authors
• Peer review: double anonymous peer review (DOAJ record)
• Indexing (per MDPI): SCIE (Web of Science), Scopus, Ei Compendex, Inspec and other databases; preservation through CLOCKSS and the Swiss National Library (DOAJ record)
• Affiliation: affiliated journal of the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB)
• Editorial speed (MDPI, medians for the first half of 2026): first decision about 14.7 days after submission; acceptance to publication about 3.5 days

Origins and growth

Buildings began in 2011, in the first wave of MDPI's expansion beyond its original science titles into engineering and the built environment. Its founding premise was that the study of buildings — as structures, as engineered systems, as designed artefacts and as the setting of most human activity — was fragmented across civil engineering, architecture, construction management, building physics and facilities journals, and that a single broad, open access venue could serve the whole community. The journal was admitted to DOAJ in December 2012, an early marker of its open access credentials, and its Scopus coverage runs from 2011. A significant indexing milestone came when the journal was accepted into the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE); MDPI's announcement at the time noted that articles from Volume 8 (2018) onward would be covered in the Web of Science Core Collection, and that its first Impact Factor was expected in the June 2021 Journal Citation Reports release.

Growth since then has been steep. OpenAlex's annual counts for the journal's ISSN record show 3,148 works in 2023, 4,096 in 2024 and 4,646 in 2025, with a further 4,173 already counted for 2026 at the time of checking — a volume that places the journal among the largest in its field by output. That scale is a deliberate product of the model: semimonthly issues, a large international editorial board organised into subject sections, an extensive special-issue programme, and rapid editorial handling (MDPI quotes a median first decision of about 14.7 days for papers published in the first half of 2026). Scale of this kind attracts debate in the field, and authors should weigh it honestly: the journal offers speed, visibility and indexing that many slower titles cannot match, while its very breadth means a paper competes for attention inside a large flow of content rather than a small curated issue.

Scope and subject coverage

MDPI's aims statement defines the journal as an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes original articles, critical reviews, research notes and communications on building science, building engineering and architecture design, with no restriction on the maximum length of papers and an encouragement to publish related electronic files or software as supplementary material. The stated scope areas are: architecture; architectural and building engineering; design; building construction; construction management; building materials; energy and buildings; building operations; building physics; building structures; building mechanical systems; building lighting systems; green buildings; and building and facility management — together with the philosophy, art and science of architectural design, and the linkages between the built environment and ecology, natural resources, climate, local communities, public policy and economic development.

OpenAlex's topic profile for the journal shows what that scope produces in practice. Its leading topics include building energy and comfort optimisation, the structural behaviour of reinforced concrete, seismic performance and analysis, BIM and construction integration, and building energy efficiency and sustainability. Recent articles on the journal's home page at the time of checking illustrate the same spread: EnergyPlus simulation studies of rural dwelling roof insulation and plateau-climate building energy use, a bibliometric review of smart community governance, and work on how the physical environment of recovery facilities shapes health and social outcomes. A manuscript fits this journal when its contribution is to a building — its design, fabric, systems, construction, operation or performance — rather than to a general civil-engineering or materials question with no building application.

Editor and editorial structure

The editor-in-chief named in MDPI's listing is Prof. Dr. David Arditi of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where he is associated with the construction engineering and management programme in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering. Arditi is a long-established figure in construction management research, and his editorship anchors the journal's construction and management side alongside its architecture and engineering sections. Below the editor-in-chief, the journal operates through a large board of section and topic editors who handle the special-issue programme and the regular submission flow in their subject areas; the editorial office is MDPI's, in Basel, and the journal's contact address is its MDPI editorial mailbox. MDPI is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and its ethics statement for the journal describes iThenticate screening of submissions and a zero-tolerance approach to plagiarism, data falsification and inappropriate authorship.

Metrics and standing

MDPI displays an Impact Factor of 3.4 for 2025 and a five-year Impact Factor of 3.6, with the journal ranked Q2 in the JCR category Engineering, Civil and Q1 by CiteScore in Architecture. The Impact Factor of 3.4 previously stored on this Journals World record matches MDPI's displayed 2025 figure. SCImago's independent Scopus-based series for the journal's own record (source 26980, matched on ISSN 2075-5309) gives an SJR of 0.686 for 2025, up from 0.652 in 2024 and 0.575 in 2023, with 2025 category rankings of Q1 in Architecture, Q1 in Civil and Structural Engineering (improved from Q2 in 2024) and Q2 in Building and Construction, an h-index of 85, and a two-year citations-per-document figure of 3.975 for 2025 (3.645 for 2024). The h-index of 85 previously stored on this record is the SCImago value.

OpenAlex's record (source S4210191137) counts 20,167 works and 192,195 citations, an h-index of 103, an i10-index of 5,723 and a two-year mean citedness of 4.402. As with other titles in this batch, the OpenAlex h-index exceeds the SCImago one because OpenAlex computes over a wider citation universe than Scopus; the two figures are reported with their sources rather than merged. Read together, the metrics describe a high-volume, mid-to-upper-tier field journal: not a small prestige title, but one whose citation indicators have improved year on year and whose best category standings (Q1 in Architecture on both Scopus-based readings available here) are genuinely strong for a journal of its size.

Indexing, archiving and access model

MDPI lists the journal as indexed within SCIE (Web of Science), Scopus, Ei Compendex and Inspec, among other databases — a combination that matters in engineering, where Ei Compendex coverage is often a specific institutional requirement alongside Web of Science and Scopus. The journal's DOAJ record, created in December 2012, confirms the access model in detail: fully open access, articles under a CC BY licence with copyright retained by authors, an article processing charge whose maximum is CHF 2,600, double anonymous peer review, and digital preservation through CLOCKSS with further deposit at the Swiss National Library. DOAJ listing also means the journal's open access terms have been vetted against the directory's criteria, which authors under funder mandates can cite. There is no print edition and no print ISSN; the single ISSN 2075-5309 identifies the online journal, so citations or database records that attach a second, print ISSN to this title should be treated with caution.

Sections, special issues and the shape of the content

The journal organises its flow through subject sections that mirror its scope list — building structures, building materials, building energy, construction management, architectural design and related areas — each with its own editors, so that a submission is handled within its sub-community rather than by a single generalist desk. Layered on top of the regular flow is an extensive special-issue programme: guest-edited collections on defined themes, which account for a large share of the journal's recent growth. The special-issue route has practical consequences an author should understand. A paper in a special issue is reviewed under the same stated standards, but it is framed by the issue's theme, read alongside companion papers on that theme, and often reaches readers who follow the theme rather than the journal as a whole — a genuine visibility advantage for work on a well-defined topic such as retrofit of a particular building stock, seismic assessment of a construction type, or digital tools for a stage of the construction process. The corresponding caution is fit: guest editors invite and shape their collections, and a manuscript that only loosely matches the theme is better sent to a regular section. The journal's featured and highly accessed article lists at the time of checking show the same thematic breadth as the scope — energy simulation, smart-community governance, healthy built environments — indicating that readership rewards papers that connect a technical study to its human or urban consequences.

The field context also matters for interpreting the journal's position. Building research sits between architecture, where citation cultures are slow and book-based, and civil engineering, where journal citation is the norm; a journal spanning both will always show middling citation densities against pure-engineering titles and strong ones against architecture titles. That is exactly the pattern in the verified figures here: CiteScore Q1 in Architecture, SJR Q1 in Architecture and (from 2025) in Civil and Structural Engineering, but Q2 in Building and Construction and Q2 in the JCR civil engineering list. Authors and evaluators should therefore judge the journal within the category relevant to their paper, rather than by a single headline number.

Publishing in Buildings

Submissions are made through MDPI's online system, and the journal's stated article types are original articles, critical reviews, research notes and communications. Three features of the process deserve an author's attention. First, speed: MDPI quotes median times of roughly 14.7 days to a first decision and 3.5 days from acceptance to publication for the first half of 2026, so authors should be ready with revisions and proofs on a short clock, and should not submit before the manuscript is genuinely finished. Second, cost: the article processing charge is CHF 2,600, confirmed identically by DOAJ and OpenAlex; CIB members receive a discount under the journal's affiliation agreement, and MDPI's waiver and institutional-agreement arrangements may apply — check eligibility before submission rather than after acceptance. Third, fit and framing: with thousands of papers a year passing through, a clear statement of the building-level contribution, well-chosen section placement, and complete methods reporting (simulation settings, experimental detail, data provenance) are what distinguish a paper in this flow. The journal imposes no maximum length and welcomes supplementary files and software, which suits simulation- and data-heavy building research that print-era page limits would compress.

Is this journal right for your paper?

Buildings suits authors who need a fast, fully open access, SCIE- and Scopus-indexed venue for building-focused research, and whose funders or institutions require CC BY publication. It is a particularly practical choice for applied work — energy performance, retrofit, structural and seismic assessment of buildings, construction processes, BIM workflows, occupant comfort and health in buildings — where timely dissemination matters and the paper's value lies in usable detail. Authors should weigh, on the other side, the article charge, the journal's very large volume (which some evaluators discount), and the fact that its strongest quartile standings are in Architecture and Civil and Structural Engineering rather than in every category it touches. For a methods paper aimed at a small specialist community, a society journal may serve better; for a solid applied study that should be openly readable by practitioners, this journal's reach is hard to match in its field.

Frequently asked questions

What is the ISSN of Buildings? 2075-5309, the online ISSN. The journal is online-only and has no print ISSN; DOAJ and SCImago both record the single number.

Who publishes Buildings? MDPI AG of Basel, Switzerland. Earlier versions of this Journals World record showed a numeric code in the publisher field; that code identified nothing, and MDPI is confirmed by the journal's own pages, its DOAJ record and SCImago.

Who is the editor-in-chief? Prof. Dr. David Arditi of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, per MDPI's listing.

What does it cost to publish? The article processing charge is CHF 2,600 (DOAJ maximum and OpenAlex record agree). Articles are published under CC BY 4.0 and authors retain copyright.

What are its rankings? MDPI displays Impact Factor 3.4 (2025), JCR Q2 in Engineering, Civil and CiteScore Q1 in Architecture. SCImago's 2025 series gives SJR 0.686, Q1 in Architecture and in Civil and Structural Engineering, Q2 in Building and Construction, and an h-index of 85.

How fast is it? MDPI quotes medians for the first half of 2026 of about 14.7 days to first decision and 3.5 days from acceptance to publication.

Sources and verification

Compiled in November 2026 from: MDPI's journal pages for Buildings (description as an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal published semimonthly online; CIB affiliation and member discount; SCIE, Scopus, Ei Compendex and Inspec indexing; JCR Q2 in Engineering, Civil and CiteScore Q1 in Architecture; Impact Factor 3.4 (2025) and five-year 3.6; median first decision 14.7 days and acceptance-to-publication 3.5 days for the first half of 2026; editor-in-chief listing for David Arditi); MDPI's aims and scope page for the journal (article types, scope list, CC BY terms, COPE membership and iThenticate screening); the journal's DOAJ record, retrieved through the DOAJ search API by ISSN (MDPI AG, Switzerland; added December 2012; CC BY; article charge maximum CHF 2,600; double anonymous review; CLOCKSS and Swiss National Library preservation); SCImago's record 26980, matched on the ISSN (SJR 0.686 for 2025 and 0.652 for 2024, category quartiles, h-index 85, citations per document, coverage 2011–2026); the OpenAlex source record S4210191137 (20,167 works, 192,195 citations, h-index 103, article charge CHF 2,600, annual counts 2023–2026); and MDPI's announcement of the journal's SCIE acceptance (coverage from Volume 8, 2018). One conflict is reported rather than resolved: secondary compilations quote differing CiteScore values for the journal, so this profile cites MDPI's displayed CiteScore rank (Q1, Architecture) without asserting a CiteScore number. Where a figure could not be verified from an official or primary source it has been left out rather than estimated.