MDPI updates their official LaTeX template (mdpi.cls) several times a year. The version on Overleaf's template gallery is almost always behind the version on MDPI's actual website.
If you submit using the Overleaf version, MDPI's production team will ask you to reformat with the current template. That means updating the Definitions/ folder, adjusting frontmatter commands, and potentially fixing citation settings before your paper goes into production.
Also worth knowing: not all MDPI journals use numbered citations. The social sciences and humanities journals (Administrative Sciences, Econometrics, Education Sciences, Humanities, and others) use author-date format. Using the wrong one is a common rejection reason.
If you'd rather skip the template archaeology, there's an MDPI LaTeX formatting service that always downloads from MDPI's site directly, not Overleaf, and verifies the citation style for your specific journal before starting.
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