According to Collins Dictionary, an encyclopedia is a book or set of books in which facts about many different subjects, or one particular subject are arranged for reference, usually in alphabetical order ^[1]. Ideally, the authors are experts with a profound understanding of the topics and the entries are peer-reviewed. In the era of the Internet, people want to learn quickly about current hot topics (e.g., coronavirus, Zika virus, US elections, etc.). However, in the absence of reliable and trusted sources, sensational information spreads faster on social media than verified information and creates so-called fake news. Ten years ago, we planned to launch a scholarly online encyclopedia for which scholars and experts, whose identities would be registered and verified on our platform, sciprofiles.com, would take the responsibility as authors to write the entries, the content would be reviewed and the quality would be controlled by peers and experts in the related field. In 2018, we launched a collaborative content platform, Encyclopedia, at www.encyclopedia.pub for the use of the scholarly community ^[2].

Here, we announce the launch of Encyclopedia (ISSN 2309-3366), the multidisciplinary open access journal that records high-quality expert entries in all research fields, in a formal, encyclopedia format. All submitted entries will be peer-reviewed before publication online. The Encyclopedia journal will publish the final version of all original entries in an official way, with a DOI. It will provide benchmark information for researchers, as well as the general public interested in accurate and trusted information on specific topics.

Entries published in the Encyclopedia journal are not required to exhibit high novelty or innovativeness, but should be significant to the field and scientifically sound, citing established results, achievements and reliable sources. Papers should be specific to a certain topic, including, but not limited to, a research topic, a definition or introduction to a scientific concept, a hypothesis, a protocol, a biography of scholars or history of research institutes or universities, or interesting videos/images.

Publications in the Encyclopedia journal could be either from entries on the Encyclopedia platform, encyclopedia.pub ^[2], or directly from regular submissions to the Encyclopedia journal. For well-prepared entries on the Encyclopedia platform encyclopedia.pub, authors could apply for publication with an official DOI in the Encyclopedia journal once they have received more than two comments from other scholars to support the publication. The final decision on the Encyclopedia journal would be based on all comments from both open peer-reviewing on the platform and single-blind peer-reviewing moderated by our in-house editors.

MDPI Encyclopedia platform is an open access knowledge-sharing project, updated regularly and open for comments and discussions, with a companion peer-reviewed periodical journal. We plan to offer publication free of charge for at least the first two years or that it remains free both for readers and authors as long as MDPI has enough financial resources to support it. We plan to release Encyclopedia in printed volumes in the future, once enough entries on a topic or field are available.