Announcements

ChatGPT is a language model launched by OpenAI in November 2022. It has many uses, including chatbots, text summarization, language translation, and content creation. Educators view it as potentially concerning, as it offers powerful opportunities for students to produce work for assessment. Some have experimented with ChatGPT and are amazed by the quality of outputs; however, there are calls for a pause in AI development due to concerns about its impact. We hope that the established MDPI Topic “AI Chatbots: Threat or Opportunity?” will provide a suitable communication platform.

“AI Chatbots: Threat or Opportunity?”
by Antony Bryant
Informatics 2023, 10(2), 49; https://doi.org/10.3390/informatics10020049 

“SAPBERT: Speaker-Aware Pretrained BERT for Emotion Recognition in Conversation”
by Seunguook Lim and Jihie Kim
Algorithms 2023, 16(1), 8; https://doi.org/10.3390/a16010008

“Challenges and Limitations of ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence for Scientific Research: A Perspective from Organic Materials”
by Hao-Wen Cheng
AI 2023, 4(2), 401-405; https://doi.org/10.3390/ai4020021

“The Role of ChatGPT in Data Science: How AI-Assisted Conversational Interfaces Are Revolutionizing the Field”
by Hossein Hassani and Emmanuel Sirmal Silva
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2023, 7(2), 62; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc7020062

“Can ChatGPT Help in Electronics Research and Development? A Case Study with Applied Sensors”
by Zoltán Tafferner, Illés Balázs, Olivér Krammer and Attila Géczy
Sensors 2023, 23(10), 4879; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23104879  

“ChatGPT Challenges Blended Learning Methodologies in Engineering Education: A Case Study in Mathematics”
by Luis M. Sánchez-Ruiz, Santiago Moll-López, Adolfo Nuñez-Pérez, José Antonio Moraño-Fernández and Erika Vega-Fleitas
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(10), 6039; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13106039  

“ChatGPT for Education and Research: Opportunities, Threats, and Strategies”
by Md. Mostafizer Rahman and Yutaka Watanobe
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(9), 5783; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13095783

“Info-Autopoiesis and the Limits of Artificial General Intelligence”
by Jaime F. Cárdenas-García
Computers 2023, 12(5), 102; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers12050102

“ChatGPT in Supply Chains: Initial Evidence of Applications and Potential Research Agenda”
by Guilherme Francisco Frederico
Logistics 2023, 7(2), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/logistics7020026

“What Is the Impact of ChatGPT on Education? A Rapid Review of the Literature”
by Chung Kwan Lo
Educ. Sci. 2023, 13(4), 410; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13040410

Topics Webinar | AI Chatbots: Threat or Opportunity?
Date and time: 27 June 2023 at 3:00 p.m. (CEST)

Topics Webinar | AI Chatbots: Threat or Opportunity? II
Date and time: 10 July 2023 at 3:00 p.m. (CEST)
This is a free webinar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information on how to join the webinar

On 27 June 2023, MDPI, and the journals AI, Algorithms, Big Data and Cognitive Computing (BDCC), Future Internet, Informatics, Information, Languages and Publications, organized the webinar AI Chatbots: Threat or Opportunity?.

The first presentation, delivered by Dr. Ibrahim Demir, tackled “AI Chatbots: Opportunities and Challenges in Engineering Research, Education and Practice”. Dr. Demir is the Director of the UI Hydroinformatics Lab and serves as an Associate Professor in both the Civil and Environmental Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering departments at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA.

The second presenter was Dr. Haridimos Kondylakis, who presented his paper on “SummaryGPT: Leveraging ChatGPT for Summarizing Knowledge Graphs”. He is a researcher with FORTH-ICS in Greece.

Please note that this webinar is associated with the Topic titled “AI Chatbots: Threat or Opportunity?”. The abstract submission deadline is 29 February 2024.

In addition, the second webinar of the series will be held on 10 July 2023, 3 p.m. (CEST). For more information, or to register for the webinar, please visit the webpage via the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/6117.

You can watch the recorded webinar at the following link: https://youtu.be/lWEDnfGObzI.

Keynote Speakers:

• Ibrahim Demir, University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA;
• Haridimos Kondylakis, Institute of Computer Science, FORTH, Greece.

The purpose of the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day is to help raise awareness of the possibilities that the use of the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICTs) can bring to societies and economies, as well as of ways to bridge the digital divide. 17 May marks the anniversary of the signing of the first International Telegraph Convention and the creation of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

This year, World Telecommunication and Information Society Day focuses on “Empowering the least developed countries (LDCs) through information and communication technologies.” As the world becomes increasingly adept at leveraging the Internet for value creation, LDCs risk falling further behind. To further explore the information about digital transformation in these LDCs and communication technologies in the rest of the world on the 2023 World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, we have gathered academic research from several journals on the topic of digital communication, all of which are open access, enabling practitioners, policymakers and people around the world to access and share up-to-date scientific knowledge.

Let us celebrate the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day together.

As a leading open access publisher, MDPI provides scholars with a high-quality and rich academic exchange platform by continuously expanding into new and exciting research areas.

In December 2022, MDPI launched five new journals, covering multiple subjects such as life sciences, biology, medicine and pharmacology, social sciences and humanities. These new journals are being edited by established scholars across the world.

If you are interested in creating more open access journals with us to publish cutting-edge research, please send your journal proposal application to newjournal-committee@mdpi.com.

MDPI is pleased to announce that we now display the co-authors’ email addresses in addition to the corresponding author’s email address on the webpage of published papers, protected by Captcha. For more information about this change, please visit the journal’s instructions for authors page. 

We believe this change will facilitate academic discussions and advance our cause of open science and research. The corresponding authors are responsible for communicating with their co-authors and indicating in our system (https://susy.mdpi.com/) if co-authors would prefer for their email addresses not to be displayed.

On 9 February 2023, Clarivate, a global leader in providing trusted insights and analytics, added the Preprint Citation Index to the Web of Science platform, streamlining the research process by allowing researchers to locate and link to preprints alongside other trusted content in the database.

The Preprint Citation Index will act as a bridge to connect cutting-edge preprints with peer-reviewed journal articles published within the Web of Science Core Collection. Alerts can be easily set to monitor new research across several repositories and authors will also be able to include preprints on their Web of Science Research Profile to more accurately display their various research outputs.

As of its launch, the Preprint Citation Index will provide nearly two million preprints from various repositories, including MDPI’s own Preprints.org.

MDPI's Preprints Platform – Preprints.org

To advance Open Science and the fast dissemination of research, MDPI offers researchers a free multidisciplinary preprint platform. Preprints.org accepts submissions from all research areas and offers authors high visibility, permanent archiving, article-level Metrics and immediately citable content by assigning a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to all preprints.

During submission to any MDPI journal, authors have the option to share their research as a preprint. After an initial screening, the manuscript is available online in 48 hours or less. Once online, preprints can be downloaded, shared, commented on, and cited, providing authors maximum visibility.

We invite you to join the ranks of the over 100k researchers using Preprints.org and share your research.

For more information, please visit Preprints.org.

1. “6G Cognitive Information Theory: A Mailbox Perspective”
by Yixue Hao, Yiming Miao, Min Chen, Hamid Gharavi and Victor C. M. Leung
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2021, 5(4), 56; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc5040056
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/5/4/56

2. “AI Based Emotion Detection for Textual Big Data: Techniques and Contribution”
by Sheetal Kusal, Shruti Patil, Ketan Kotecha, Rajanikanth Aluvalu and Vijayakumar Varadarajan
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2021, 5(3), 43; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc5030043
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/5/3/43

3. “Forecasting Plant and Crop Disease: An Explorative Study on Current Algorithms”
by Gianni Fenu and Francesca Maridina Malloci
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2021, 5(1), 2; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc5010002
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/5/1/2

4. “Assessment of Cybersecurity Awareness among Students of Majmaah University”
by Talal Alharbi and Asifa Tassaddiq
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2021, 5(2), 23; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc5020023
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/5/2/23

5. “IoT Technologies for Livestock Management: A Review of Present Status, Opportunities, and Future Trends”
by Bernard Ijesunor Akhigbe, Kamran Munir, Olugbenga Akinade, Lukman Akanbi and Lukumon O. Oyedele
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2021, 5(1), 10; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc5010010
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/5/1/10

6. “Big Data and Personalisation for Non-Intrusive Smart Home Automation”
by Suriya Priya R. Asaithambi, Sitalakshmi Venkatraman and Ramanathan Venkatraman
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2021, 5(1), 6; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc5010006
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/5/1/6

7. “A Study on Singapore’s Ageing Population in the Context of Eldercare Initiatives Using Machine Learning Algorithms”
by Easwaramoorthy Rangaswamy, Girija Periyasamy and Nishad Nawaz
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2021, 5(4), 51; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc5040051
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/5/4/51

8. “Big Data and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) at a Glance”
by Hossein Hassani, Xu Huang, Steve MacFeely and Mohammad Reza Entezarian
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2021, 5(3), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc5030028
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/5/3/28

9. “ParlTech: Transformation Framework for the Digital Parliament”
by Dimitris Koryzis, Apostolos Dalas, Dimitris Spiliotopoulos and Fotios Fitsilis
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2021, 5(1), 15; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc5010015
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/5/1/15

10. “Processing Big Data with Apache Hadoop in the Current Challenging Era of COVID-19”
by Otmane Azeroual and Renaud Fabre
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2021, 5(1), 12; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc5010012
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/5/1/12

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative—the MDPI Special Issue Mentor Program.

This program will enable early career researchers (who must hold a Ph.D. in a related field) to experience editing a Special Issue in MDPI journals, under the mentorship of our experienced Editorial Board Members or other experienced scientists. The mentor program will provide an excellent opportunity for early career scientists to gain editorial experience, and to cultivate their ability to edit scientific research.

The mentee’s responsibilities include:

• Proposing a Special Issue title and assisting the mentor in preparing a summary (around 200–400 words) and 3–10 keywords describing the background, importance, and goal of the Issue;
• Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
• Preparing a list of scholars who may be interested in the Issue and personally e-mailing invitations on behalf of Guest Editors;
• Writing an editorial for the online Special Issue together with the mentor.

The mentor’s responsibilities include:

• Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
• Performing editorial control of the Special Issue and quality control of the publications, both of which must be carried out in a timely manner;
• Providing suggestions to younger scholars if they have any doubts or concerns regarding submissions;
• Organizing video calls with young scholars and the Editorial Office regularly to discuss problems and improvement suggestions for the Special Issue;
• Making and submitting decisions regarding submissions with the assistance of mentees.

Certificates and awards:
After the Special Issue closes, the Editorial Office will provide official certificates for all the mentors and early career researchers.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Editorial Office of a journal you choose, and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail. The full list of MDPI journals is as follows: https://www.mdpi.com/about/journals.

In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, we will continue to welcome all Special Issue proposals focusing on hot research topics.

1. “A Complete VADER-Based Sentiment Analysis of Bitcoin (BTC) Tweets during the Era of COVID-19”
by Toni Pano and Rasha Kashef
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2020, 4(4), 33; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc4040033
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/4/4/33

2. “A Review of Blockchain in Internet of Things and AI”
by Hany F. Atlam, Muhammad Ajmal Azad, Ahmed G. Alzahrani and Gary Wills
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2020, 4(4), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc4040028
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/4/4/28

3. “Text Mining in Big Data Analytics”
by Hossein Hassani, Christina Beneki, Stephan Unger, Maedeh Taj Mazinani and Mohammad Reza Yeganegi
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2020, 4(1), 1; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc4010001
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/4/1/1

4. “A Review of Local Outlier Factor Algorithms for Outlier Detection in Big Data Streams”
by Omar Alghushairy, Raed Alsini, Terence Soule and Xiaogang Ma
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2021, 5(1), 1; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc5010001
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/5/1/1

5. “Big Data Analytics for Search Engine Optimization”
by Ioannis C. Drivas, Damianos P. Sakas, Georgios A. Giannakopoulos and Daphne Kyriaki-Manessi
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2020, 4(2), 5; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc4020005
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/4/2/5

6. “Big Data and Its Applications in Smart Real Estate and the Disaster Management Life Cycle: A Systematic Analysis”
by Hafiz Suliman Munawar, Siddra Qayyum, Fahim Ullah and Samad Sepasgozar
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2020, 4(2), 4; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc4020004
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/4/2/4

7. “Ticket Sales Prediction and Dynamic Pricing Strategies in Public Transport”
by Francesco Branda, Fabrizio Marozzo and Domenico Talia
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2020, 4(4), 36; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc4040036
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/4/4/36

8. “MOBDA: Microservice-Oriented Big Data Architecture for Smart City Transport Systems”
by Suriya Priya R. Asaithambi, Ramanathan Venkatraman and Sitalakshmi Venkatraman
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2020, 4(3), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc4030017
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/4/3/17

9. “An Adaptable Big Data Value Chain Framework for End-to-End Big Data Monetization”
by Abou Zakaria Faroukhi, Imane El Alaoui, Youssef Gahi and Aouatif Amine
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2020, 4(4), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc4040034
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/4/4/34

10. “Hybrid Siamese Network for Unconstrained Face Verification and Clustering under Limited Resources”
by Nehal K. Ahmed, Elsayed E. Hemayed and Magda B. Fayek
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2020, 4(3), 19; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc4030019
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-2289/4/3/19

MDPI has just become the first open access (OA) publisher to reach the milestone of one million articles published. That is one million articles freely available to all, to circulate and build upon! We are proud to share this special moment with the global scientific community.

This landmark has been reached thanks to the immeasurable support of more than 600,000 expert reviewers, 66,000 editorial board members and 6700 hard-working colleagues across MDPI’s global offices.

Within more than 25 years of publishing, our journals received 2.1 million manuscripts and generated 4.6 million peer review reports to get to one million papers published.

Reaching the milestone of one million articles published reinforces our mission to remove any existing barriers and to make scientific research accessible to all. Since its inception, MDPI’s goal has been to create reliable processes to make science open. This is a path towards facilitating the dissemination of novel insights in scientific communities.

Regular feedback from authors and reviewers shows that our service is greatly appreciated and needed. At the same time, the feedback helps us identify areas for further improvement.

As it stands, a significant share of published research findings remain closed access. More than half of the content published with the most well-known legacy publishers stays behind a paywall, and that is not including articles published in hybrid OA journals, or made available months or years after publication.

A new policy announced by the US administration in August 2022 requires that, as of January 2026, all US federally funded research be made freely and immediately available after publication. While the new policy does not mandate articles be published under an open access license, it is aligned with the open access movement in removing all barriers to research. Similarly, some of the most advanced research institutions in the world intend to have all funded research articles published in open access by 2025.

MDPI is proud to be the leading agent of the transition to open access.

"Thanks a Million" to all the contributors!