Ensuring Conference Proceedings Are Open Access

Jack McKenna11 February 2025 Open Access, Open Science

Ensuring Conference Proceedings Are Open Access

Conferences are an important aspect of academia, bringing together researchers around a common aim and giving them space to present new ideas and methodologies and inspire collaboration. Conference proceedings are published afterwards and serve as written records. However, many of these remain inaccessible due to subscription fees.

Here, we’ll introduce you to conference proceedings and highlight their importance. Then, we’ll showcase MDPI’s Proceedings journals, which ensure that conference proceedings are openly accessible to all.

What are conference proceedings?

A conference proceeding is a published record of a conference, or any other type of meeting. It often includes abstracts or reports of the papers presented by the participants.

In many fields, these are published in journals, as a book or book series, or as a serial publication. The level of quality control varies, but there will always be a minimum level of review that occurs, with many undergoing full peer review.

Publishing proceedings ensures there is a written record from a conference and that those who could not attend it can access and engage with what was presented.

Benefits of conference proceedings

There are many benefits to publishing proceedings for the authors and readers.

Proceedings allow readers to engage with research before it is officially published in a peer-reviewed journal. This means fellow researchers can build on findings, innovations, best practices, or new methodology at a quicker rate.

They also allow researchers to present their work in a less formal environment and in an unfinished form. Consequently, researchers can receive feedback and support at early stages of their research projects.

Conferences are ideal for connecting with research, researchers, and institutions performing similar work. Proceedings further extend this by establishing a permanent record of what occurs at a conference.

Finally, conferences can represent barriers for some. This can stem from geographical, financial, or time restrictions. Proceedings therefore help extend the reach of these conferences, allowing more people to participate with what is presented.

Ensuring conference proceedings are Open Access

Conference proceedings extend the reach of conferences; however, many proceedings papers remain behind paywalls.

According to InCites data (Clarivate) extracted in January 2025, 78% of proceedings papers were published in a closed access format from 2018 to 2023 globally.

Given that conferences represent a barrier to some researchers, adding another barrier in the form of subscription fees will heavily restrict certain researchers from participating in them.

MDPI’s Proceedings journals provide a high-quality service and are dedicated to making the output of conferences widely available.

MDPI Proceedings journals

MDPI publishes a series of Open Access conference journals in all research fields, including

All published items are approved by the conference committee and original research content is peer reviewed. There are two forms of peer review applied to proceedings journals.

The first is coordinated by the conference committee and is single- or double-blind peer review. Conference chairs serve as academic editors making the final assessment.

The second option is to request that MDPI organise a single-blind peer review, relying on the conference chairs to make the final decision based on reviewer recommendations.

Benefits of publishing in MDPI Proceedings

MDPI is committed to publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed, and openly accessible research. Publishing your conference proceedings with MDPI offers a range of benefits.

All your papers will be published as Open Access using a CC BY 4.0 license. This ensures that authors retain copyright and that the text can be reused with attribution.

The journals are flexible regarding what is published; all kinds of outputs from conferences can be included, including abstracts, proceedings, posters, etc. There are no space constraints or colour charges, nor are there restrictions on the number of papers in an issue or figures in a paper.

MDPI’s journals are making significant progress in expanding their indexing coverage. As of February 2025, Engineering Proceedings is indexed in Scopus. Also, one of the volumes, Proceedings of the 15^th International Aluminium Conference achieved indexing in the Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI).

More indexing applications will be submitted to enhance the international visibility and academic recognition of the proceedings journals in 2025.

The cover is designed by MDPI’s professional in-house design team and the papers are all promoted on the MDPI website, newsletters, and social media. Papers are highly visible, receiving a digital object identifier, making them citable, whilst also appearing on MDPI.com and search engines like Google Scholar.

Further, those who submit can optionally use MDPI’s free, professional platform to host their scientific conference, Sciforum.

All this is supported by MDPI’s high-quality and rapid editorial process, including copyediting and English Editing.