Announcements

The 2022 citation metrics have been released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), and we’re pleased to announce the following results for MDPI journals:

We are thrilled to announce that 90% of our ranked MDPI journals, specifically 86 out of 96 (captured in the table below), are performing above average in Q1 or Q2. This year, Clarivate has expanded its Impact Factor (IF) awards to include journals in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), providing greater transparency for the full set of journals indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection. As a result, 111 of MDPI journals have received their first IF in 2023, with 37 journals surpassing an IF of 3.0. In total, 208 MDPI journals have been honored with an IF.

Clarivate explains that by "expanding the coverage but holding to highly selective standards, the [Impact Factor] is now a reliable indicator of trustworthiness, as well as a measure of scholarly impact, at the journal level."

Please visit our blog post where we discuss the release of the latest citation metrics with our Indexing Manager, Dr. Constanze Schelhorn, to find out what's different this time around and how to make use of different metrics available.

Note: The Journal of Personalized Medicine's Impact Factor was omitted in the original release and will be assigned separately. Please find the data on the journal webpage in due course.

Source: 2022 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ^TM (Clarivate, 2023)

International Asteroid Day is observed annually on 30 June to mark the date of Earth’s largest asteroid impact in recorded history, the Siberia Tunguska event. It was established by the United Nations in 2016 to increase public awareness of the risk of an asteroid impact and to inform the public about crisis communication actions to be taken at the global level in the event of a credible NEO threat.

To further explore the related research on the 2023 International Asteroid Day, we have gathered open access academic articles on the topic of asteroids. We hope to share the up-to-date scientific knowledge in the field of asteroids with the world on this special day.

“Applied Trajectory Design for CubeSat Close-Proximity Operations around Asteroids: The Milani Case”
by Claudio Bottiglieri, Felice Piccolo, Carmine Giordano, Fabio Ferrari and Francesco Topputo
Aerospace 2023, 10(5), 464; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace10050464

“Fitting Power Spectrum of Scalar Perturbations for Primordial Black Hole Production during Inflation”
by Daniel Frolovsky and Sergei V. Ketov
Astronomy 2023, 2(1), 47-57; https://doi.org/10.3390/astronomy2010005

“Avoiding the “Great Filter”: A Projected Timeframe for Human Expansion Off-World”
by Jonathan H. Jiang, Philip E. Rosen and Kristen A. Fahy
Galaxies 2021, 9(3), 53; https://doi.org/10.3390/galaxies9030053

“History of the Terminal Cataclysm Paradigm: Epistemology of a Planetary Bombardment That Never (?) Happened”
by William K. Hartmann
Geosciences 2019, 9(7), 285; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences9070285

“Small All-Range Lidar for Asteroid and Comet Core Missions”
by Xiaoli Sun, Daniel R. Cremons, Erwan Mazarico, Guangning Yang, James B. Abshire, David E. Smith, Maria T. Zuber, Mark Storm, Nigel Martin, Jacob Hwang et al.
Sensors 2021, 21(9), 3081; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21093081

“Trajectories Derived from Periodic Orbits around the Lagrangian Point L1 and Lunar Swing-Bys: Application in Transfers to Near-Earth Asteroids”
by Rebeca S. Ribeiro, Cristiano F. de Melo and Antônio F. B. A. Prado
Symmetry 2022, 14(6), 1132; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym14061132

“Capture in Regime of a Trapped Motion with Further Inelastic Collision for Finite-Sized Asteroid in ER3BP”
by Sergey Ershkov, Dmytro Leshchenko and Alla Rachinskaya
Symmetry 2022, 14(8), 1548; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym14081548

“New Tools for the Optimized Follow-Up of Imminent Impactors”
by Maddalena Mochi and Giacomo Tommei
Universe 2021, 7(1), 10; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe7010010

“Near-Earth Asteroid Capture via Using Lunar Flyby plus Earth Aerobraking”
by Yirui Wang and Mingtao Li
Universe 2021, 7(9), 316; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe7090316

“Short-Term Consequences of Asteroid Impacts into the Ocean: A Portuguese Case Study”
by Renato H. Morais, Luís F. F. M. Santos, André R. R. Silva and Rui Melicio
Universe 2022, 8(5), 279; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe8050279

The International Day of Human Space Flight commemorates the first manned space flight by the Soviet citizen Yuri Gagarin on 12 April 1961. This day was declared the International Day of Human Space Flight in 2011 by the United Nations General Assembly resolution, to celebrate the beginning of the human space age. It reaffirms the important contribution of space science and technology in achieving sustainable development goals and increasing the well-being of countries and people, as well as ensuring the realization of their aspiration to preserve outer space for peaceful purposes. 

In the course of human exploration of space, we have established many remarkable achievements and breakthrough milestones:

• In 1957, the first human-made Earth satellite, Sputnik I, was launched into outer space;
• In 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth;
• In 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot upon the surface of the Moon;
• In 1996, the first spacecraft in human history successfully landed on Mars;
• In 1998, the International Space Station, a 16-nation international space program, launched for the first time;
• In 2009, the Kepler space telescope was launched, which has helped humans find thousands of exoplanets;
• In 2015, SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket and recovered the first stage. 

To further explore the information about space on the 2023 International Day of Human Space Flight, we have gathered academic research from several journals on the topic of space flight, 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 International Day of Human Space Flight together.

The ORIGIN Space Instrument for Detecting Biosignatures and Habitability Indicators on a Venus Life Finder Mission Aerospace 2022, 9(6), 312; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9060312
Venus Life Finder Missions Motivation and Summary Aerospace 2022, 9(7), 385; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9070385
Theoretical and Observational Constraints on Lunar Orbital Evolution in the Three-Body Earth-Moon-Sun System Astronomy 2022, 1(2), 58-83; https://doi.org/10.3390/astronomy1020007
Energetic Neutral Atom (ENA) Imaging Simulation of the Distant Planetary Magnetosphere and ENA Emission Discussion of the Solar Wind Astronomy 2022, 1(3), 235-245; https://doi.org/10.3390/astronomy1030013
Revisiting Fractional Cosmology Fractal Fract. 2023, 7(2), 149; https://doi.org/10.3390/fractalfract7020149
Special Issue: Orbit Determination Methods for Space Missions and Applications to the Exploration of the Solar System	Special Issue: Feature Papers in the Astronomical Sciences

Whirl Tower Demonstration of an SMA Blade Twist System Actuators 2022, 11(6), 141; https://doi.org/10.3390/act11060141
A Tutorial and Review on Flight Control Co-Simulation Using Matlab/Simulink and Flight Simulators Automation 2022, 3(3), 486-510; https://doi.org/10.3390/automation3030025
Reconfigurable Fault-Tolerant Control for Spacecraft Formation Flying Based on Iterative Learning Algorithms Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(5), 2485; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12052485
Wilderness Search for Lost Persons Using a Multimodal Aerial-Terrestrial Robot Team Robotics 2022, 11(3), 64; https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics11030064
Special Issue: Advances in CubeSat Sails and Tethers	Special Issue: Aerospace Mechanisms and Actuation
Special Issue: Advanced Fault Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Control Technology of Spacecraft	Special Issue: Smart Sensors and Devices: Recent Advances and Applications

Investigation of UAV Detection by Different Solid-State Marine Radars Electronics 2022, 11(16), 2502; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11162502
Edge Machine Learning for the Automated Decision and Visual Computing of the Robots, IoT Embedded Devices or UAV-Drones Electronics 2022, 11(21), 3507; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11213507
Autonomous Tracking of ShenZhou Reentry Capsules Based on Heterogeneous UAV Swarms Drones 2023, 7(1), 20; https://doi.org/10.3390/drones7010020
A Human-Detection Method Based on YOLOv5 and Transfer Learning Using Thermal Image Data from UAV Perspective for Surveillance System Drones 2022, 6(10), 290; https://doi.org/10.3390/drones6100290
Multi-UAV Conflict Resolution with Graph Convolutional Reinforcement Learning Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(2), 610; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12020610
Special Issue: Control and Applications of Intelligent Unmanned Aerial Vehicle	Special Issue: Navigation, Control and Mission Planning Advances for Safe, Efficient and Autonomous Drones

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.

Scientists at Stanford have recently published an update of the list of the top 2% most widely cited scientists—the World’s Top 2% Scientists.

The time node of the statistical data of this list is from 1960 to 2022, and it is divided into two lists: "Lifetime Scientific Influence Ranking" and "2022 Annual Scientific Influence Ranking". The "Lifetime Scientific Influence Ranking" counts the comprehensive influence performance of scientists during their careers, and the "2022 Annual Influence Ranking" focuses on highlighting the academic influence of scientists in the previous year. This ranking, considered the most prestigious worldwide, is based on the bibliometric information contained in the Scopus database and includes more than 200,000 researchers from the more than 10 million scientists considered to be active worldwide, with 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields taken into account.

We are pleased to share that 51 Editorial Board Members from MDPI’s Aerospace (ISSN: 2226-4310) were featured in the World’s Top 2% Scientists list in 2022.

The latest rankings reflect the significant influence and research excellence of the scientists, who are committed to furthering their knowledge for the benefit of the world.

We would like to congratulate our Editorial Board Members on their excellent achievement and thank them for their immense contribution to the scientific progression and development of Aerospace.

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.

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!

We are pleased to announce that the website of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation has been revamped! For the past couple of months, our UX UI team and front-end developers have been working hard to launch the website in time for the opening of the Sustainability Awards nominations.

The website is not the only thing that has had a remodeling. Indeed, the format of the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award (ESLA) has been updated. ESLA is now a competition open to individual researchers or start-ups founded by researchers under the age of 35. Nominee applications will go through 2 rounds of selection until the final 3 are decided. The finalists will then be invited to give pitch presentations during the Award Ceremony to win either first place (10,000 USD) or runner-up (2 x 5000 USD).

The World Sustainability Award, on the other hand, remains the same: a total prize money of 100,000 USD is up for grabs by senior individual researchers or groups of researchers from the international research community.

Nominations for both the World Sustainability Award and the Emerging Sustainability Leader award are now open! Check out our new website for more information on how to nominate.