Skopje, March 2026 – A concrete step toward the internationalization of Albanian scientific research. This, in essence, is what was represented by the meeting held in the office of the Rector of “Mother Teresa” University in Skopje, Prof. Dr. Bekim Fetaji, with a high-level delegation from MDPI, one of the most significant open-access publishing platforms, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland.

The delegation was led by Prof. Dr. Nevena Blagojev, representative of MDPI’s Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). The meeting was facilitated by the Union of Public University Trade Unions in RNM, in the presence of its president, Prof. Dr. Angel Ristov. Rector Fetaji was accompanied by Vice-Rectors Prof. Assoc. Dr. Fati Iseni, Prof. Assoc. Dr. Diturije Ismaili, and Prof. Assoc. Dr. Bujamin Bela, as well as the President of the MTU Trade Union, Prof. Assoc. Dr. Avni Avdiu.

The focus of the meeting was clear and highly practical: providing MTU professors and researchers with faster and easier access to scientific journals indexed in Web of Science and Scopus the two global databases that essentially determine the international visibility of scientific work. It is no secret that publishing on these platforms remains a major challenge for many academic institutions in the region.

Rector Fetaji presented MTU’s academic developments, the growth of research capacities, and an institutional strategy increasingly oriented toward science with measurable international impact. Both parties agreed and this is the part of real significance for researchers to formalize the collaboration through an institutional agreement in the shortest possible timeframe.

Through this partnership with MDPI, MTU professors will benefit from favorable conditions for publishing in open-access journals, significantly increasing their global scientific visibility. For a university carefully building its international reputation, this collaboration marks, without exaggeration, one of the most strategic steps in recent years.