International Journal of Molecular Sciences

About International Journal of Molecular Sciences

International Journal of Molecular Sciences: Journal Profile

The International Journal of Molecular Sciences, universally shortened to IJMS, is an international, peer-reviewed, fully open-access journal published by MDPI in Switzerland, providing, in the publisher's words, an advanced forum for biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, molecular biophysics, molecular medicine and all aspects of molecular research in chemistry. Its electronic ISSN is 1422-0067; a second ISSN, 1661-6596, is associated with its earlier print-era record and appears alongside 1422-0067 in aggregator listings, with 1422-0067 as the ISSN-L shown on the JournalsWorld record for this post. The JournalsWorld record lists the publisher as the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), the publisher country as Switzerland, coverage beginning in 2000, and the imported SCImago 2025 figures discussed below. Founded in 2000, IJMS has grown into one of the largest scholarly journals in the world by article volume: MDPI announced that it published its 100,000th paper in 2025. It is published semimonthly online, organises most of its content through special issues led by guest editors, charges an article processing charge of CHF 2,900, and reports — publisher figures, stated as such throughout this profile — a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 5.6, a five-year impact factor of 6.3 and a Scopus CiteScore of 10.0. Understanding IJMS requires holding its genuine scale, indexing and speed together with the debate that its special-issue-driven, high-volume model has attracted across scholarly publishing; this profile sets out both, with sources attributed claim by claim.

Quick Facts

Metrics note on attribution: the h-index of 365 quoted in this profile is the SCImago figure, based on Scopus data, as displayed in the SCImago 2025 dataset on the JournalsWorld page for this post. The OpenAlex works and citation totals (115,427 works; 3,234,312 citations; OpenAlex summary h-index 425 and i10-index 67,082) were read directly from OpenAlex source S10623703, resolved by ISSN 1422-0067, during preparation of this profile and are reported as OpenAlex figures only. That OpenAlex h-index is itself a different number from the SCImago figure, which is precisely why each metric in this profile is labelled with its database. The two aggregators count different corpora and use different windows, so their figures should never be blended, and readers comparing h-index values across directories should always note which database produced the number.

History and Growth

MDPI's own timeline for the journal, published in its September 2026 journal spotlight, records the main milestones: the inaugural issue appeared in 2000; the journal was indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) in 2004; it held its first physical meeting, at the 2nd International Symposium of Frontiers in Molecular Science, in 2017; in 2019 it became affiliated with several learned societies, including the European Calcium Society, the European Chitin Society (EUCHIS) and the Spanish Society for Cell Biology (SEBC), whose members receive a discount on article processing charges, with the Epigenetics Society and others also named as affiliates on the journal's pages; in 2025 it published its 100,000th paper; and in 2026 it received the 2025 impact factor and CiteScore figures quoted above. Within MDPI's portfolio the journal is treated as a flagship: its cluster of related titles in biochemistry and molecular biology includes Cells, Genes, Biomolecules, Biology, Molecules and many others, and its named companion journals include Biophysica, Stresses, Lymphatics, SynBio and the Inflammation Journal.

The editorial succession is part of the recent history. Maurizio Battino, of Marche Polytechnic University in Italy, served as editor-in-chief from 2017 and is the editor named in most reference sources published before 2026. MDPI's 2026 spotlight states that José L. Quiles, professor at the University of Granada in Spain, has been editor-in-chief since 2026, describing his research on ageing and associated diseases in relation to diet, redox biology and mitochondria, and his status as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher with more than 19,000 citations. Because directories update editorial names slowly, readers will encounter both names in current listings; the publisher's 2026 statement is the governing source used here, with Battino's tenure explicitly dated so that the older listings are explained rather than silently contradicted. The journal's editorial board is very large — reference sources have put it at more than 1,000 members — reflecting the volume of submissions the title handles and the breadth of its sections.

Aims, Scope and Sections

The journal's stated forum covers biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, molecular biophysics, molecular medicine and molecular research across chemistry. In practice its published scope spans molecular biology and genetics (gene expression, genetic variation, epigenetics), pharmacology and drug development, biotechnology and bioengineering, molecular neuroscience, plant molecular science and agricultural biotechnology, materials-related molecular work including nanotechnology, and environmental molecular studies such as microbial interactions and bioremediation. That breadth is organised through topical sections and, above all, through special issues: themed collections proposed and led by guest editors, with deadlines, to which authors submit targeted manuscripts. Special issues are the journal's main growth engine and its main organising device; in 2019 alone it published 500 special issues, a figure reported in higher-education press coverage, with plans reported for a far larger number of special-issue closing dates in later years. An author considering IJMS is therefore usually, in effect, choosing a special issue and its guest editors, and should evaluate that issue — its editor, its topic fit and its deadline — as carefully as the journal title itself.

Article types include original research articles and reviews, together with other formats described in the journal's instructions for authors, such as communications and case-related formats in molecular medicine. Manuscripts must be well prepared, in good English, with clear figures; the publisher warns that unresolved preparation issues can cause delays or rejection, and offers paid author services for language and figure editing, which are separate from the APC. Affiliated-society membership and participation in MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program can reduce the APC for eligible authors, as the journal's APC page states.

Peer Review, Speed and Editorial Process

MDPI publishes the journal's recent service times on its journal page, and they are among the fastest in mainstream scholarly publishing: a first decision provided approximately 17.5 days after submission, and acceptance to publication in approximately 2.9 days, stated as median values for papers published in the journal in the first half of 2026. Those are publisher-reported medians for published papers, not guarantees for any individual submission, and they exclude papers rejected without external review or withdrawn. A secondary analysis of MDPI's journal statistics put the rejection rate at about 61 per cent in 2025 and 57 per cent for 2026 to mid-year; rejection statistics are quoted here as secondary reporting of publisher statistics, since MDPI's own statistics pages are the primary source and readers can consult them directly. Review is anonymous in the sense described in MDPI's standard editorial process, with academic editors making decisions on the basis of reviewer reports; reviewers whose reports are timely and of high quality receive an APC discount voucher for a future MDPI publication, a recognition scheme the journal itself advertises.

Speed at this scale is the journal's central trade-off, and honest evaluation should name it as such. Rapid decisions benefit authors facing grant, graduation and appointment deadlines, and the journal's defenders note that its indexing record and citation performance show that fast does not automatically mean uncited or unread. Critics of the wider model argue that very high volumes and thousands of special issues strain reviewer pools and make selectivity uneven between issues. Both observations can be true simultaneously because selectivity in a journal of this size is an average across thousands of editorial decisions. Authors should inspect recent papers in their own section or special issue, read them critically, and decide whether that company is right for their manuscript.

Open Access, Licensing and Charges

All IJMS articles are published in full open access. The journal's APC page states the charge precisely: an article processing charge of CHF 2,900 (Swiss francs) applies to papers accepted after peer review, covering peer review, copyediting, typesetting, long-term archiving and journal management; payment is also accepted in euros, US dollars, pounds sterling, Japanese yen and Canadian dollars; invoices are issued by MDPI after acceptance, local VAT or sales tax may be added, and the page warns authors that only official MDPI invoices are valid. One transparency check must be reported exactly as found: a DOAJ search-API query for ISSN 1422-0067 made for this profile returned total 0, with the same method returning records for other MDPI titles such as Molecules and Sensors, and OpenAlex likewise flags this source as not in DOAJ. No DOAJ listing is therefore claimed here, whatever older directories may show; listings change, and authors whose funders require a DOAJ-listed venue should re-check DOAJ directly before submitting. Authors retain copyright under the CC BY licence and readers may reuse content with attribution, which is the most permissive standard open licence and the one most funder mandates require. Many funders and institutions explicitly cover APCs, and MDPI's institutional programme and society affiliations can produce discounts, as noted above; authors should establish their discount position before acceptance, not after invoicing.

Indexing and Standing

The journal's own page lists high-visibility indexing in Scopus, SCIE (Web of Science), PubMed, PubMed Central, MEDLINE, Embase, CAPlus / SciFinder and other databases. Its Journal Citation Reports position, as reported by MDPI, is Q1 in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for the 2025 impact factor of 5.6, with rank reported in secondary coverage as 72 of 319 in that category and a five-year factor of 6.3; its CiteScore position is reported as Q1 in Inorganic Chemistry with a CiteScore of 10.0. The SCImago dataset imported to JournalsWorld (2025) gives a compatible but distinct picture from Scopus category data: SJR 1.316, h-index 365, coverage 2000–2026, and category quartiles of Q1 in Catalysis, Computer Science Applications, Inorganic Chemistry, Medicine (miscellaneous), Organic Chemistry, Physical and Theoretical Chemistry and Spectroscopy, with Q2 in Molecular Biology. These three systems — Journal Citation Reports, CiteScore and SCImago — use different databases and windows; a careful profile reports each under its own name, as done here, rather than merging them into a single claim of “Q1, impact factor 5.6” without attribution.

Scale metrics complete the picture. OpenAlex records 115,427 works and 3,234,312 citations for the source (S10623703) — a corpus inflated relative to a count of peer-reviewed articles alone, as aggregator corpora always are, but sufficient to show the order of magnitude: IJMS is not a niche title. MDPI's milestone of 100,000 published papers by 2025 makes the same point from the publisher's side. For context, that volume is what drives both the journal's visibility in search and indexing services and the scrutiny described shortly.

Debate Around the Model

IJMS sits at the centre of a wider scholarly argument about special-issue-led, APC-funded mega-journals. Reported facts can be separated from opinion. As fact: the journal published 500 special issues in 2019, and higher-education reporting (Inside Higher Ed, cited in reference summaries) described plans for 3,514 special issues with a closing date in 2023 — nearly ten per day. Also as fact: its article volume and publisher-reported rejection rates show a journal that both accepts very large numbers of papers and rejects a majority of submissions. Opinion divides on what that means: supporters see an efficient, author-funded dissemination system that evaluates technical soundness and lets the community judge importance afterwards; critics see incentives in which more special issues and more accepted papers produce more APC revenue, and question whether editorial quality can be uniform at that throughput. This profile takes no institutional position, but it gives authors the practical translation: in a journal where the special issue is the real editorial unit, due diligence means vetting the issue and its guest editor, checking that the issue belongs to the genuine journal (hijacked and imitation calls for papers exist across publishing), and submitting only through the journal's official manuscript system linked from mdpi.com.

Who the Journal Fits, and How to Submit

IJMS fits authors with a complete, methodologically sound molecular study or review who need open access with strong indexing, can fund or obtain a waiver or discount for a CHF 2,900 APC, and value a first decision measured in weeks. It particularly fits work that matches an open special issue closely, interdisciplinary molecular work that straddles the journal's sections, and authors whose funders require CC BY publication in a Web of Science and Scopus indexed title. It fits less well where a department or funder evaluates primarily by very selective journal brands, where no APC funding exists, or where the manuscript's contribution is incremental and likely to be judged more harshly in an issue whose guest editors are applying a novelty standard.

The submission route is MDPI's online manuscript system, entered from the journal page, selecting the relevant section or special issue. Prepare the manuscript to the journal's template, ensure ethics approvals, consent, data-availability and conflict statements meet MDPI policies before submission, and record any society or institutional discount entitlement in the submission. Expect the advertised medians — a first decision in a matter of weeks for papers sent to review, and production within days of acceptance — while planning for the possibility of major revision like any other journal.

Reading IJMS Papers as a Literature User

For readers rather than authors, IJMS is one of the journals most likely to appear in any molecular-science search result, simply because of its size and its full open access. That ubiquity makes source criticism practical rather than optional. When an IJMS paper is used to support a clinical, nutritional or pharmacological claim, check the article type first — a narrative review, an in vitro study and a randomised trial carry very different evidential weight even inside one journal — then check whether the paper belonged to a special issue and who edited that issue, confirm the funding and conflict statements, and look for the data-availability statement that MDPI requires. Because every article is openly readable in full, none of these checks requires a subscription, which is a genuine public benefit of the model: students, patients and practitioners anywhere can read the primary text of a molecular-medicine claim rather than relying on an abstract or a press summary. Used with those ordinary checks, the journal is a large, useful, permanent part of the molecular literature; used as a bare citation count, it tells a reader almost nothing about any single paper.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ISSN of IJMS? 1422-0067 is the electronic ISSN and ISSN-L; 1661-6596 appears with it in aggregator records from the journal's earlier publishing history.

What is its impact factor? MDPI reports a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 5.6 and a five-year factor of 6.3. CiteScore is reported by MDPI as 10.0, and SCImago's 2025 SJR is 1.316 with an h-index of 365; each figure belongs to its own database and year.

How much does it cost? CHF 2,900 APC on acceptance, confirmed on MDPI's APC page and in its DOAJ record, before any society or institutional discount and any applicable tax.

Who is editor-in-chief? MDPI's 2026 journal spotlight names Prof. Dr José L. Quiles, succeeding Prof. Dr Maurizio Battino (2017–2026); many directories still show Battino's name.

How fast is it? Publisher-reported medians for the first half of 2026: about 17.5 days to first decision and 2.9 days from acceptance to publication.

Is it in DOAJ? No record was returned by the DOAJ search API for ISSN 1422-0067 during preparation of this profile (total 0, with control MDPI titles returning records by the same method). Re-check DOAJ directly, as listings change.

Sources

MDPI official journal page for IJMS (description, indexing, journal rank, rapid-publication medians, impact factor 5.6 and five-year 6.3); MDPI APC page for IJMS (CHF 2,900, what it covers, currencies, invoicing, discounts); MDPI blog journal spotlight, September 2026 (ISSN, editor-in-chief succession from Battino to Quiles, timeline 2000–2026, society affiliations, 100,000th paper, CiteScore 10.0); DOAJ search API query for ISSN 1422-0067 (total 0 returned at checking; control queries for Molecules and Sensors returned records); OpenAlex source S10623703, resolved by ISSN and read directly (115,427 works, 3,234,312 citations, OpenAlex h-index 425, ISSNs, open-access status); JournalsWorld live profile for this post (SCImago 2025: SJR 1.316, h-index 365, coverage 2000–2026, category quartiles, ISSNs 1422-0067 and 1661-6596); Wikipedia's IJMS article and Inside Higher Ed reporting as summarised there (special-issue counts) for the debate section, attributed as secondary reporting.