Announcements

We are pleased to announce that the following eight Editorial Board Members have recently joined Agriculture (ISSN: 2077-0472).

Name: Prof. Dr. Jiandong Wang
Affiliation: Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
Interests: water-saving irrigation; water and fertilizer coupling; agricultural water resources management; supplemental irrigation method; water-saving benefit assessment

Name: Prof. Dr. Junjie Fu
Affiliation: Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
Interests: crop genomics; bioinformatics; genomic selection; genomics-assisted breeding

Name: Prof. Dr. Frederic Francis
Affiliation: Laboratory of Functional and Evolutionary Entomology, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, University of Liège, 25030 Gembloux, Belgium
Interests: insect; host plant; predators–parasites interactions; pest biological control; edible insects

Name: Prof. Dr. Dingming Kang
Affiliation: Department of Plant Genetic and Breeding & Seed Science, College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China
Interests: seed biology; seed non-destructive technology; crop developmental biology; plant gene engineering; transgenic biosafety; plant tissue culture and secondary metabolites

Name: Prof. Dr. Liang Chen
Affiliation: Tea Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou, China
Interests: tea plants; genetic resources; genetics and breeding; molecular biology; genomics

Name: Prof. Dr. Gaoneng Shao
Affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Rice Biology and China National Center for Rice Improvement, China National Rice Research Institute, Hangzhou 310006, China
Interests: rice; rice quality and safety; genetics; QTL mapping; genome wide association studies; gene editing technology; molecular design breeding

Name: Prof. Dr. Wen-Hao Su
Affiliation: Department of Agricultural Engineering, College of Engineering, China Agricultural University (CAU), 17 Qinghua East Road, Haidian, Beijing 100083, China
Interests: agricultural robotics; artificial intelligence; computer vision; machine (deep) learning; weed control; plant health diagnostics; food safety; fluorescence imaging; hyper/multispectral imaging; UV/VIS/NIR/MIR spectroscopy

Name: Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Timpanaro
Affiliation: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environment, University of Catania, 95123 Catania, Italy
Interests: economic and environmental sustainability; environmental impact assessment; efficiency analysis; food supply chain management; strategic marketing planning; agri-food economics; consumer economics (theory and empirical applications); agri-food supply chain management; food chain logistics and ICT; economics of technological innovation in the agri-food industry

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Robert J. Lascano has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Agricultural Water Management” in Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472, IF 2.925).

Dr. Robert J. Lascano is a Research Leader for the Wind Erosion and Water Conservation Unit, Cropping Systems Research Laboratory, USDA-ARS, Lubbock, TX. He holds a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in soil physics from Texas A&M University (1983). Prior to joining the USDA-ARS in 2008, he was a Professor of Soil Physics at the Texas A&M University. He currently directs a research program for a unit with seven scientists working towards the development of agronomic management practices that mitigate the effects of wind-induced soil erosion and limited water availability on crop yield under variable weather conditions. He is the author of more than 150 papers and has supervised 8 post-doctoral Research Associates and the graduate studies of more than 20 students. His teaching activities included courses on soil-plant-water relationships and soil physics. He has held numerous editorial positions within the Agronomy and is a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy.

The following is a short Q&A with Dr. Robert J. Lascano, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views of the research area:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief?

A new model for the dissemination of research results in peer-reviewed journals includes open access to the readers and a rapid turnaround of the submitted manuscripts while maintaining a high standard of review in the publication process. The journal Agriculture has all of these attributes, and thus, my decision to assume the role of Section Editor-in-Chief was facilitated.

2. Can you briefly introduce your current research work in agricultural water management?

Water is the common denominator in many phases of crop production and the management of this resource is key to maximizing crop yield. The Texas High Plains is in a unique position where the two sources of water, irrigation, and rain, are variable. Irrigation water from aquifers is diminishing, rainfall is highly variable, and droughts are common. This semiarid region provides us with a large-scale landscape where we can conduct multidisciplinary research to characterize the energy and water balance of dryland and limited-irrigation cropping systems. Our current research aims to develop crop management strategies that enhance water use efficiency; to develop a framework of methods and models to quantify and study the risks associated with water from rainfall for dryland agriculture, and to evaluate management practices to increase soil water availability and to contribute to higher water and nutrient use efficiencies.

3. What is your vision for the journal?

My vision is to maintain the rigorous standard of the review process and to support the general scope of Agriculture. This journal provides a platform whereby an author knows that they have access to a journal that will reach a wide audience and do not have to wait for an extended period of time to publish submitted manuscripts. Furthermore, speeding up the review process does not compromise the quality of the published articles. Agriculture is an international journal and of interest to readers is to see how problems in one region are approached and solved and the transferability of those solutions to other locations. Problems in agriculture are general, but solutions are site-specific.

4. What does the future of this field of research look like?

Agricultural research is using digital technologies to collect experimental data at an unprecedented rate at the spatial and temporal scales. This trend will continue, and authors will need to share collected data while maintaining ownership. Additionally, we have gravitated from traditional small plot replicated to large-scale landscape experiments. This transition includes the application of precision agriculture methods, data collection using drones, data analysis using spatial statistics, the application of three-dimensional simulation models, and metadata analysis. The future of this research will continue to involve a multi-disciplinary approach, incorporating and adopting the many tools that are available to measure in situ soil and plant variables to characterize the fate of water in soil-plant systems.

5. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?

Open access is the future of the publishing field. Nowadays, with access via the Internet to databases such as Scopus, SCIE, PubAg, Google Scholar, and others, readers have access to any article that has a Digital Object Identifier (doi). The tools that a reader needs to access a published article are simply a smartphone, tablet, or computer with Internet access.

We warmly welcome Dr. Robert J. Lascano as the Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Agricultural Water Management”, and we look forward to achieving many milestones under his leadership.

For further information on the journal's Sections, please visit the following link:

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Martin Weih has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Crop Production” in Agriculture (ISSN: 2077-0472). 

Prof. Dr. Martin Weih is a professor of plant ecology and eco-physiology of agricultural crops at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Department of Crop Production Ecology. 

He holds a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in ecological botany from Uppsala University (1998) and is currently the Chair of Plant Ecology at the SLU in Uppsala, Sweden. His major research activities focus on the improvement of the yield and ecological sustainability (e.g., resource use efficiency) of agricultural crops and trees grown for food, feed, and biomass (e.g., wheat for food and feed; Salix and Populus for biomass).

He is the author of more than 140 papers indexed by Scopus. His teaching activity includes courses on sustainable crop production, experimental approaches in plant growth analysis and phenotyping, plant nutrient use efficiency, and the production of biomass for energy.

He is participating as a proposer or as a scientific partner for several R&D projects funded by various national and international research funding organizations, including the framework of the European Union (e.g., DIVERSify, Dendromass4Europe).

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Martin Weih as the Section Editor-in-Chief of “Crop Production”, and we look forward to achieving many milestones under his leadership. For further information on the journal's Sections, please visit the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agriculture/sections.

Name: Prof. Dr. Jun-Yi Gai
Affiliation: College of Agriculture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China
Interests: genetics and plant breeding; quantitative genetics; experimental statistics; germplasm population; cropping system; soybean science

Prof. Dr. Jun-Yi Gai, from the Nanjing University, is a professor of crop genetics and breeding, Director of the National Soybean Improvement Center, and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He is engaged in soybean genetic breeding and quantitative genetic research. So far, he has collected and studied 12,000 soybean landrace resources in southern China, revealed the genetic potential of the main economic traits of the population, and established 10 traits in terms of yield, disease and insect resistance, quality, and fertility, cooperatively established a soybean genetic map, marked and located 6 linked SMV resistance genes, completed a pedigree map and genetic basis analysis of Chinese soybean varieties, proposed the maturity group division method and variety ecological zoning of Chinese soybean varieties, and proposed a molecular genetics argument to support the origin of cultivated soybeans in wild populations in the south. He has also extended the polygene hypothesis of quantitative inheritance to the major gene + polygene mixed inheritance model and has achieved a breakthrough, from the sole study of the overall effect of multiple genes to the ability to identify 1–3 major gene effects and the overall effect of multiple genes at the same time. Finally, he has won 17 national, provincial, and ministerial awards and published more than 430 books.

It is our great honor to congratulate the Editorial Board Members and Editors in MDPI's journals who have been distinguished as 2021 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate, according to Web of Science data. We herewith express our gratitude for the immense impact the named researchers continue to make on scientific progress and on our journals' development.

Clarivate's annual list of Highly Cited Researchers^TM identifies the most highly cited scientists for the past decade. Their impactful papers are among the top 1 per cent in the citation distribution of one or more of 22 fields analyzed in the "Essential Science Indicators", distinguishing them as hugely influential among their peers.

The full list of 2021 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed at the following webpage in the Web of Science^TM https://recognition.webofscience.com/awards/highly-cited/2021/.

--- Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) is a Clarivate product.

Academic editors play a crucial role in leading our journals and ensuring that each article undergoes a robust and timely peer-review. With the launch of Topics this year and addition of Topic Editors to our family of academic editors, we decided it would be a good time to restructure our academic boards, thus providing more clarity and support for each role. MDPI is pleased to announce the launch of a new position—Topical Advisory Panel Member, that will replace the previous position of Topics Board Member. The Topical Advisory Panel will be comprised of early career researchers eager to gain experience in editorial work.

The main responsibility of the new members of the Topical Advisory Panel is to regularly provide support to Guest Editors, Topic Editors, and Section Board Members. The responsibilities of the Topical Advisory Panel are available here: https://www.mdpi.com/editors.

Each year, the members’ performances are evaluated, and outstanding members are promoted to the Editorial Board by the Editor-in-Chief.

To qualify as a Topical Advisory Panel Member, applicants must:

• Have expertise and experience in the field related to the journal;
• Have received a Ph.D. in the last 10 years, approximately;
• Have at least 6-8 published papers in the last 5 years as first author or corresponding author;
• Currently hold an independent research position in academia or a government institute.

If you are interested in this role, please contact the editorial office by email.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Founded in 1996, MDPI was one of the first fully Open Access publisher. Over 25 years MDPI has grown to become the largest Open Access publisher globally, publishing over 160,000 articles across more than 350 journals in 2020. At the core, MDPI was founded in response to a pressing need of fast publication and inclusion. The scholar was set at the centre of the publication process for the first time. Acting as a service provider, rather than a product provider, MDPI exists to help scientists achive their objective to disseminate research results. At MDPI, we believe scientists deserve a better service from the publishing world.

The International Open Access Week (Open Access Week), founded by the SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Alliance and student partners in 2008, has been successfully running for 13 years. As an advocate and pioneer of open access publishing, MDPI actively responds to the call of International Open Access Week. This year’s theme of “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity” highlights the Recommendation’s call for equitable participation from all authors and readers.

For the last 25 years, MDPI has been committed to disseminating open research. Here is a video showing MDPI’s Commitment to Equity, Inclusion and Diversity for More than 25 Years.

International Open Access Week is an important opportunity to catalyze new conversations, create connections across and between communities that can facilitate this co-design, and advance progress in the building of more equitable foundations for opening knowledge—discussions and actions that need to be continued, year in and year out. MDPI has always aimed to provide professional and efficient publishing services to scholars around the world.

Our mission is to make scientific research accessible to everyone; this year, we interview and hold discussions with open science ambassadors on how to build an equal and inclusive environment for open science. Academic editors help us collaborate with more institutions to advocate for open access ideas.

Read our anniversary blog post: "Sharing 'Collective Human Knowledge': The Benefits of Open Access Publication"

Besides this, our scientific community is a key driver of our success and MDPI’s remarkable growth. Despite the pandemic, we have prepared online conferences and workshops to gather scholars from different communities.

The Basel Sustainable Publishing online forum provides an equal opportunity for stakeholders and researchers from multi-cultural environments to exchange ideas and eliminate barriers to participation.

Conference date: 25 October 2021, online
Conference website: https://bspf2021.sciforum.net/
Main topics: MDPI discusses the current dilemma of open access science from various perspectives such as governments, libraries, and publishers, and related measures on how to change the status quo of discrimination from a global perspective.

We aim to support equality, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications. We collaborate with universities and key laboratories and have scholarly communications with researchers, teachers, and students on open access workshops.

• 25 October 2021
  Energies journal and Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

• 28 October 2021
  Machines journal and State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong University

• 29 October 2021
  Processes journal and Beijing Institute of Technology

• 29 October 2021
  Coatings journal and Wuhan University of Technology

MDPI is committed to providing open access and high-quality publishing services for scholars and promoting rapid dissemination of academic achievements. We hope to promote the practices and policies of open access publishing and diversify the dissemination of academic achievements.

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high-quality academic publishing. Over 369,916 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2020. We are extremely appreciative of all those who made a contribution to the editorial process in this capacity. At the beginning of every year, journal editorial offices publish a list of all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year, the MDPI Top Reviewer Award was announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise and dedication, and their high-quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2020 MDPI Top Reviewer Award:

• Adriana Burlea-Schiopoiu;
• Alban Kuriqi;
• Álvaro González-Vila;
• Alessandro Alaimo;
• Alexey Beskopylny;
• Alexander Yu Churyumov;
• Alberto Fernández-Isabel;
• Andrea Mastinu;
• Antonios N. Papadopoulos;
• Anton Rassõlkin;
• Antonio Humberto Hamad Minervino;
• Arkadiusz Matwijczuk;
• Artur Słomka;
• Baojie He;
• Bartłomiej Potaniec;
• Bojan Đurin;
• Camilo Arturo Rodriguez Diaz;
• Carmelo Maria Musarella;
• Chiachung Chen;
• Chiman Kwan;
• Cristian Busu;
• Danil Pimenov;
• Dan-Cristian Dabija;
• Delfín Ortega-Sánchez;
• Demetrio Antonio Zema;
• Denis Butusov;
• Elena Lucchi;
• Gaurab Dutta;
• Livia Anastasiu;
• M. R. Safaei.

For more information about how to become a reviewer of MDPI journals, please see: www.mdpi.com/reviewers.

UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. In 2020 the SDG Publishers Compact was launched, aimed to inspire publishers and accelerate progress to achieve the 17 goals by 2030. Members of the programme are committed to support the publication of materials that will promote and inspire actions towards SDGs.

MDPI is an eager advocate of SDGs and has already been supporting the programme by creating Special Issues and publishing a series of books on SDGs prior to joining the Compact in 2021. MDPI's Sustainability Foundation initiated the World Sustainability Awards in 2016. We fully support UN's goals to promote sustainable actions that make the world a better place for all and, as part of its commitment, we will focus our actions on SDG10: Reduced Inequalities whilst promoting all 17 SDGs. For more details, please visit the programme’s website: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sdg-publishers-compact/.

Joining this initiative was a unanimous decision. MDPI has in its core values the dissemination of science for all, breaking the wall between research access and under-represented members of the scientific community and the general population. To support this initiative further and continue to support under-represented scientists, MDPI will take a series of actions that will be announced once ready.

The first action MDPI takes is to nominate Dr. Liliane Auwerter as the coordinator of the programme. Dr. Auwerter studied Environmental Process Technology (UTFPR, Brazil), obtained her MSc degree in Water and Environmental Engineering (University of Surrey, UK) and in 2020 completed her PhD in self-healing low-friction materials for water transport (Imperial College London, UK), always focusing on diverse scientific projects that would potentially bring sustainability to industrial processes. As a student in Brazil, she engaged in volunteering activities focused on environmental education and took part in the Millennial Development Goals meetings held at the university.

For more information, please contact:
Dr. Liliane Auwerter
Scientific Officer
liliane.auwerter@mdpi.com

We are pleased to announce the Topic “Soil Fertility and Plant Nutrition for Sustainable Agriculture” (https://www.mdpi.com/topics/Fertility_Nutrition_Agriculture).

This collection invites contributions on new agricultural practices that maintain or restore soil life and fertility; new methods and technologies for mineral and organic feeding and plant fertilization; new sources of, and processes for, providing healthy food without negative impacts on the soil; the use of cultivars that efficiently valorize soil resources; and the use of plant cover or crop associations. Contributions concerning biocontrol and soilborne disease are also welcome.

The relevant journals are Horticulturae, Plants, Agronomy, Agriculture, and Sustainability. The submission deadline is 31 December 2022. Contributions to the topic are welcome.