MDPI Books recently released Book Builder, a new online tool to conveniently arrange, design and produce an eBook from any content published in MDPI journals. Book Builder offers two functions: on the one hand (1) Selections, available to every registered user of MDPI; on the other hand (2) Special Issue Reprints, which can be used exclusively by Guest Editors of Special Issues.

Selections

In just a matter of a few clicks, all users are now able to assemble books from MDPI articles and receive instantaneous feedback in the form of a fully produced and compiled book (PDF), which can be downloaded or ordered as print copy. Selections can include any paper published with MDPI, picking and combining content from different journals and special issues.

This way, the user may for example choose to compile an ebook focusing around a particular topic, or assemble articles from a group of others.

 

We invite you to make yourself familiar with the new tool! The Book Builder can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/books/book_builder.

Special Issue Reprints

The Book Builder allows Guest Editors of MDPI journals to create a reprint from a successfully completed Special Issue or Topical Collection in book format. If you are a Guest Editor for an MDPI journal, you can use the new tool  to create an PDF document which includes all articles published in the Special Issue as well as a book cover and table of contents.

For Special Issues containing a minimum of 5 articles, the Guest Editor can request its publication on the MDPI Book platform. Published reprints are assigned an ISBN and DOI.

In addition to the PDF copy of the Reprint Book, as a token of our gratitude, MDPI offers every Guest Editor one (1) complimentary print copy (via print-on-demand). All contributors benefit from a discount on orders of any additional print copies, to share with colleagues or libraries or others.

 

Why choose MDPI Books?

In line with our organization's values, MDPI Books publishes all content in open access, promoting the exchange of ideas and knowledge in a globalized world. MDPI Books encompasses all the benefits of open access—high availability and visibility, as well as wide and rapid dissemination. MDPI Books are distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License, meaning as an author you retain the copyright for your work. In addition, with MDPI Books you can complement the digital version of your work with a high-quality printed counterpart.

If you are interested in editing a book volume or series, or have a monograph manuscript to be considered for publication, please submit your proposal online and look at our Information for Authors.

Contact: Laura Wagner, MDPI Books Manager (email)

In June of this year, MDPI will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its foundation. To mark this significant milestone, we have created a 25th Anniversary page on our website that evokes the development of our company over the past quarter-century.

MDPI has been a pioneer of Open Access publishing ever since the concept was first created.

In a wide-ranging interview, our CEO Delia Mihaila reflects on the company’s 25th anniversary and its contribution to the world of scientific publishing.

Delia considers how MDPI has evolved since starting life in 1996 as a visionary ‘project’ run out of an apartment in Basel, Switzerland, by Dr. Shu-Kun Lin. A chemist who was passionate about the long-term preservation of rare chemical sample, Dr. Lin was determined to help scholars publish their findings as quickly as possible and make their research results available to as wide a readership as possible worldwide. That determination remains unchanged 25 years later.

Today, MDPI is an international organization with over 4,000 employees based on three continents and in ten countries, and ranks among the world's top four academic publishers.

MDPI's mission is to accelerate access to new scientific research, delivering insight faster for researchers worldwide. Read more here about the company's remarkable success story and what the Open Access publishing model can offer the global scientific community.

Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395), is an international and cross-disciplinary scholarly journal on agronomy and agroecology published monthly online by MDPI. Agronomy is recruiting Editorial Board Members whose research interests are related to agronomy and agroecology. Please find more details at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy/sections.

We already have some highly renowned experts on our Editorial Board, and we are looking for more excellent scholars in this field to join us. If you are interested in this position or know of any potential candidates you would like to recommend, please contact the Agronomy Editorial Office ([email protected]). 

The main responsibilities of Editorial Board Members are as follows: 

• Pre-screening submissions and making decisions on whether a manuscript should be accepted or rejected for processing, as well as suggesting additional reviewers if necessary;
• Acting as Guest Editor of a Special Issue in your particular field of expertise, or recommending potential topics and Guest Editors;
• Promoting Agronomy and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences;
• Advising on the journal’s development. 

We look forward to hearing from you.
Agronomy Editorial Office

 

We welcome the following 40 recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Agronomy:

Dr. Javier Terol, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias IVIA, Valencia, Spain
Prof. Dr. Xiangnan Li, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, China
Dr. Junhua Peng, Hunan Agricultural University, China
Prof. Jianlong Li, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
Dr. Chiara Corbari, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
Dr. Daozhi Gong, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China
Prof. Dr. Siegrid Steinkellner, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Austria
Dr. J. Antonio Cortinas Rguez, University of Vigo, 32002 Ourense, Spain
Dr. Massimo Zaccardelli, CREA Research Centre for Vegetable and Ornamental Crops, Italy
Dr. Francesc Xavier Prenafeta Boldú, Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA), Spain
Dr. Yang Zhu, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Dr. Jörg Schaller, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
Prof. Dr. Linchuan Fang, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China
Prof. Dr. Luis Hernández-Callejo, University of Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain
Dr. Rose Brodrick, CSIRO Agriculture and Food , Canberra ACT 2601, Australia
Dr. Jorge Ferreira, US Salinity Laboratory, USA
Dr. Guillem Pérez-Jordà, University of Valencia, Spain
Dr. Niels P. Louwaars, Wageningen University and Plantum, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Dr. Marie France Corio-Costet, Department of Plant Health and Environment, French National Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), France
Prof. Michael Heinrich, UCL School of Pharmacy, UK
Dr. Carla Gentile, University of Palermo | UNIPA, Palermo, Italy
Prof. Dr. Cinzia Margherita Bertea, University of Torino, Italy
Dr. Aiming Qi, University of Hertfordshire, UK
Dr. Jorge Paz-Ferreiro, RMIT University, Australia
Dr. Longjiang Fan, Zhejiang University, China
Dr. Koki Toyota, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan
Dr. Jie Zhao, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Dr. Danilo Scordia, University of Catania, Italy
Prof. Dr. Gniewko Niedbała, Poznań University of Life Sciences, Poland
Dr. Ivan Francisco Garcia Tejero, Andalusian Institute of Teaching and Agricultural Researcher (IFAPA), Spain
Assoc. Prof. Magdalena Sobocińska, Wroclaw University of Economics and Business, Poland
Prof. Dr. Rosa Maria Fanelli, University of Molise, Italy
Prof. Dr. Piotr Prus, UTP University of Science and Technology in Bydgoszcz, Poland
Dr. Antonia María Rojano-Delgado, University Cordoba, 14014 Cordoba, Spain
Dr. Marco Medici, Alma Mater Studiorum-University of Bologna, 40127 Bologna, Italy
Dr. Andrea Liliana Clavijo McCormick, Massey University, New Zealand
Dr. Gianluca Allegro, University of Bologna, Italy
Dr. Xiangjun Zou, South China Agricultural University, China
Prof. Dr. Witold Grzebisz, Poznan University of Life Sciences, Poland
Prof. Dr. Francis Drummond, University of Maine, USA

Further details about the Editorial Board can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy/editors.

The editorial team would like to congratulate the winners of the Agronomy 10th Anniversary Best Paper Award, who were chosen by a Selection Committee chaired by the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Peter Langridge. Following a review process by the Evaluation Committee, six winners were selected. The winners of the “Agronomy 10th Anniversary Best Paper Award” are as follows:

Article:

The First Award: (800 CHF + a certificate)

Long-Term Effects of Biochar-Based Organic Amendments on Soil Microbial Parameters
Martin Brtnicky, Tereza Dokulilova, Jiri Holatko, Vaclav Pecina, Antonin Kintl, Oldrich Latal, Tomas Vyhnanek, Jitka Prichystalova and Rahul Datta
Agronomy 2019, 9(11), 747; doi:10.3390/agronomy9110747
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/9/11/747
“It was a very pleasant experience to publish the present work with the cooperation of Agronomy. I appreciate being able to work with a high-quality professional team at Agronomy, who rapidly moved us through the review and proof correction process. I hope more and more influential articles will be published in Agronomy in the future.”

The Second Award: (600 CHF + a certificate)

Effect of Gibberellic Acid on Growth, Yield, and Quality of Leaf Lettuce and Rocket Grown in a Floating System
Alessandro Miceli, Alessandra Moncada, Leo Sabatino and Filippo Vetrano
Agronomy 2019, 9(7), 382; doi:10.3390/agronomy9070382
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/9/7/382
“I’m very honored to accept The Second Award of Agronomy 10th Anniversary Best Paper Awards.  I accept this award on behalf of the co-authors who helped in preparing the paper. I would like to thank the colleagues of SAAF department of the University of Palermo who supported the efforts for developing this research, the Editors and the reviewers of Agronomy for their suggestions that helped to improve the article, all the readers of Agronomy who have spent their time in reading this article and, of course, my family.”

The Third Award: (300 CHF + a certificate)

Biomass Prediction of Heterogeneous Temperate Grasslands Using an SfM Approach Based on UAV Imaging
Esther Grüner, Thomas Astor and Michael Wachendorf
Agronomy 2019, 9(2), 54; doi:10.3390/agronomy9020054
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/9/2/54

“Thank you very much for selecting our paper for the „The Third Award of Agronomy 10th Anniversary Best Paper Awards“. I feel very honored and would also like to thank those who have supported my collegues and me to achieve this goal. It means a lot to us that the innovative topic of remote sensing is becoming increasingly important in agriculture and that we have been able to make our contribution.”

Review:

The First Award: (800 CHF + a certificate)

Plant Biostimulants: Importance of the Quality and Yield of Horticultural Crops and the Improvement of Plant Tolerance to Abiotic Stress—A Review
Magdalena Drobek, Magdalena Frąc and Justyna Cybulska
Agronomy 2019, 9(6), 335; doi:10.3390/agronomy9060335
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/9/6/335
“It is a big honor to obtain such eminent distinction. We are very grateful to Agronomy Editorial Office for selection our review article from between other excellent publications. I believe that our work will make a contribution to the broad recognizability of Agronomy journal. We also hope that our review about the influence of biostimulants on the quality of fruit and vegetables will help in spreading knowledge about scientific evidences of advantageous features of such agents and application of biostimulants will becoming popular between fruit and vegetable planters.”

The Second Award: (600 CHF + a certificate)

Increasing Sustainability of Growing Media Constituents and Stand-Alone Substrates in Soilless Culture Systems
Nazim S. Gruda
Agronomy 2019, 9(6), 298; doi:10.3390/agronomy9060298
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/9/6/298
"This award is a recognition for soilless culture and shows us how vital such systems in today horticulture are. Soilless culture is the key component of more intensive yet sustainable agriculture. We need research in crucial areas such as precision cultivation of high-quality products, and novel, environmental-friendly and climate-smart growing media to realise its potential. The interaction with well-qualified, independent reviewers within the fast track of the journal is appreciated. Hopefully, more papers on this topic will be published in Agronomy in the future."

The Third Award: (300 CHF + a certificate)

Microalgal Biostimulants and Biofertilisers in Crop Productions
Domenico Ronga, Elisa Biazzi, Katia Parati, Domenico Carminati, Elio Carminati and Aldo Tava
Agronomy 2019, 9(4), 192; doi:10.3390/agronomy9040192
Available Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/9/4/192
“I am extremely honoured to be receiving this important award ‘The Third Award of Agronomy 10th Anniversary Best Paper Awards’. I am earnestly grateful for the recognition I have received for my work, regarding the valorisation and the use of microalgae as biostimulants and biofertilisers in crop productions.”

Please join us in congratulating the winners of the Agronomy 10th Anniversary Best Paper Award. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our authors for their continued support of Agronomy.

Editor-in-Chief,
Prof. Dr. Peter Langridge, Agronomy

At MDPI, we strive to make your online publication process seamless and efficient. To achieve this, our team is continuously developing tools and features to make the user experience useful and convenient.

As the number of academic papers continues to grow, so does the need to analyze and work with them on a large scale. This prompted us to design a new feature aimed at helping researchers find journals that are relevant to their publication by matching their abstract topic. In this regard, we designed a similarity model that automatically identifies the most suitable academic journals for your paper.

We are pleased to introduce Journal Selector, a new feature that measures similarity in academic contexts. By simply entering the title and/or abstract into our Journal Selector, the author will see a list of the most related scientific journals published by MDPI. This method helps authors select the correct journals for their papers, highlighting the time of publication and citability.

The methodology is known as representation learning, where words are represented as vectors in hyperspace. Representation helps us differentiate between different concepts within articles, and in turn, helps us identify similarities between them.

We used an advanced machine learning model to better capture the semantic meanings of words. This helps the algorithm make better predictions by leveraging scientific text representation. In turn, this ensures high precision, helping authors decide which journal they should submit their paper to.

The goal is to support authors to publish their work in the most suitable journal for their research, as fast as possible, accelerating their career progress.

Contact: Andrea Perlato, Head of Data Analytics, MDPI (email)

Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Agronomy 10th Anniversary Outstanding Reviewer Award. The Agronomy Editorial Board and Editorial Team would like to gratefully acknowledge the time and energy dedicated by reviewers in checking the manuscripts submitted to Agronomy. It is due to their efforts that the high quality of the journal and quick turnaround are maintained.

Prof. Dr. Imre J. Holb Affiliation: Institute of Horticulture, University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary.

“I greatly appreciate your decision to grant me with your prestigious award of “Agronomy 10th Anniversary Outstanding Reviewer Award”. It is a great pleasure to review manuscripts for the journal of Agronomy (MDPI). I will do my best to review manuscripts for Agronomy in the future too. I also hope that my work as a reviewer will increase further the scientific value of Agronomy.”

Dr. Ioannis Mylonas Affiliation: Institute of Plant Breeding and Genetic Resources, Hellenic Agricultural Organization-Demeter, Greece.

“I am especially appreciative and pleased to have been selected to receive the “Agronomy 10th Anniversary Outstanding Reviewer Award”. It is an honor for me that my work in reviewing has been recognized in this way by the Agronomy Award Committee, and I promise that I will continue my efforts.”

Prof. Dr. Janusz Podleśny Affiliation: Department of Forage Crop Production, Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation, Pulawy, Poland.

“I want to thank you for giving me the award as a reviewer of Agronomy on the 10^th anniversary of this journal. It is an important distinction and a great honor for me considering the high renown Agronomy has. I am glad, that my work as a reviewer caused the increase of published papers quality and could be an indication for young scientist preparing and submitting manuscripts to the Agronomy. I suppose these aspects gained recognition among participants of Award Committee. At the end, I would like to wish you many valuable and interesting papers and keeping the high rank of Agronomy in the future, as well as health and further success for whole Redactors team in the 2021.”

Dr. Nikolaos Tsakirpaloglou Affiliation: The Crop Genome Editing Laboratory (CGEL), Texas A&M University and Texas A&M AgriLife Research, College Station, USA.

“When I first joined the Reviewer Board of Agronomy back in March 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 virus (or COVID-19 as it is widely known) had already landed on the shores of the US and we were all puzzled and rather worried to a certain extent, based on the news from Europe and elsewhere, for the development and advancement of the disease in the society. Despite the overall unrest and challenges of everyday life since then, I was fortunate to receive invitations for reviewing manuscripts for the Agronomy and other MDPI journals that enabled me to stay focused and positive, whilst expanding my knowledge in the broader area of crop improvement and agriculture, in general. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the journal Award Committee for this unanticipated recognition, as well as the editors that I communicated with the past few months. I hope that 2021 will be a better year for all of us. Until then, stay safe and stay healthy!”

The above awardees have been selected by the Editor-in-Chief of Agronomy, Prof. Dr. Peter Langridge. Each of them will receive 500 CHF, an offer to publish a paper free of charge in Agronomy before 31 June 2021, and a certificate to recognize their outstanding work.

Kind regards,
Prof. Dr. Peter Langridge
Editor-in-Chief, Agronomy

 

To expand our contribution and impact on the fields of agronomy and agroecology, we are recruiting scientists to join our Editorial Board. We encourage applications from researchers with a background in a wide range of subject areas (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy/sections).

Should you decide to serve on the Agronomy Editorial Board, you would be responsible for some of the following tasks depending on your availability:

1. Helping review 6–10 manuscripts per year, include making pre-check decision, first decision, and final decision;
2. You may choose to help edit a Special Issue on a topic related to your research;
3. Promoting Agronomy and published papers at conferences that you attend or organize.

Benefits for Agronomy Editorial Board Members include the following:

1. You can publish one paper per year free of charge;
2. A recognition certificate as an Editorial Board Member of Agronomy;
3. We may apply travel grants for conferences that you attend or organize;
4. Additional sponsorships are offered by Agronomy for conferences that you organize.

Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395; CODEN: ABSGGL) is an international, scientific, peer-reviewed, open access journal published monthly online by MDPI. Its impact factor is 2.603 (2019), and it has been indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)-Web of Science, Scopus, and other databases. For more information about Agronomy, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy.

To apply or request further information, please contact the Agronomy Editorial Office ([email protected]).

We welcome the following 22 recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Agronomy:

Dr. Jana Okleštková, Palacký University, Czech Republic

Dr. Christina Eynck, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Canada

Dr. Betty Benrey, University of Neuchatel, Switzerland

Dr. Adamo Domenico Rombolà, University of Bologna, Italy

Prof. Dr. Mark P. Widrlechner, Iowa State University, USA

Dr. Sabine Tausz-Posch, CQUniversity, Australia

Dr. Salvatore Ceccarelli, Bioversity International, Italy

Dr. Arnd Jürgen Kuhn, Wilhelm-Johnen-Straße, Germany

Dr. Rodolfo Gentili, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy

Prof. Nikolaos Papadopoulos, University of Thessaly, Greece

Dr. Vladimir Nekrasov, Hertfordshire, UK

Prof. Ana I Ribeiro-Barros, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (UNL), Portugal

Dr. Stéphane Bourque, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, France

Prof. Dr. Nazim Gruda, University of Bonn, Germany

Dr. Emanuele Radicetti, University of Tuscia, Italy

Dr. Sophie Parks, NSW Department of Primary Industries, Australia

Prof. Dr. Essaid Ait Barka, Universite de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France

Dr. Siegbert Melzer, University of Kiel, Germany

Dr. Nunzio Fiorentino, University of Naples Federico II, Italy

Dr. Fabienne Micheli, Cirad, France

Dr. Victor Gaba, Agricultural Research Organization—The Volcani Center, Israel

Dr. Vicente J. Febres, University of Florida, USA

We look forward to their contributions to the journal.

MDPI is proud to adopt the principles of the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) to support building equity, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications.

The C4DISC represents organizations and individuals working in scholarly communications and is focused on addressing issues of diversity and inclusion within the publishing industry.

MDPI’s Managing Editors encourage the Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors to appoint diverse expert Editorial Boards. This is also reflective in our multi-national and inclusive workplace. We are proud to create equal opportunities without regard to gender, ethnicity, geographic location, sexual orientation, age, disability, political beliefs, religion, or socio-economic status. There is no place for discrimination in our workplace and editors of MDPI journals are to uphold these principles in high regard.

Representatives from C4DISC meet monthly, and have started to implement initiatives to shed light and improve on the lack of diversity in scholarly communications. Some of the initiatives include developing a joint statement of principles; conducting market research; providing training resources, best practices, toolkits, and documentation for our collective memberships; and establishing outreach programs, curricula, events, and publications.

The Coalition is committed to:

• eliminating barriers to participation, extending equitable opportunities across all stakeholders, and ensuring that our practices and policies promote equitable treatment and do not allow, condone, or result in discrimination;
• creating and maintaining an environment that respects diverse traditions, heritages, and experiences;
• promoting diversity in all staff, volunteers, and audiences, including full participation in programs, policy formulation, and decision-making;
• raising awareness about career opportunities in our industries to groups who are currently underrepresented in the workforce;
• supporting our members in achieving diversity and inclusion within their organizations.

At MDPI we have slightly revised the layout for articles to be published in the 2021 Volume, starting at the end of December 2020. As of today, the article templates available for download on ‘Instructions for Authors’ pages have been updated.

The most noticeable change can be found on the first page of the article, where a left-hand column has been created to include the following front matter elements: (i) the recommended citation style for the article, (ii) the publishing history, (iii) as well as the Creative Commons Attribution license used (iv) a standard note regarding affiliations. At the same time, the extra spacing on the left means the authors’ affiliations are now more clearly set apart than before. Other front matter key elements such as journal logo, article type, article title, authors, abstract and keywords remain unchanged.

The blank column on the left runs through all pages in an article; as a result, the main text is slightly more condensed, which improve reader friendliness for smaller screens. Small figures/tables are aligned on the left with standard indenture, while large figures/tables are centered and covering the full width of the page. The revised layout was applied in the article pictured below, to serve as an example:

1) Information is displayed in the left information bar.

2) In the main text, there is a blank column on the left.

3) Small tables/figures are aligned on the left, large tables/figures are centered.

We are pleased to acknowledge that many academic editors who have made an impact on MDPI journals as editorial board members, editors-in-chief, or section editors, are recognized as 2020 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate.

Highly Cited Researchers highlights the top 1% of researchers, by citations, in one or more of the 22 fields used in Clarivate Analytics Essential Science Indicators. We offer our congratulations to 279 academic editors of MDPI journals who were recognized as the most influential scholars in their fields in 2020.

Adams, Dave Agarwal, Ravi P. Ahn, Choon Ki Ahn, Myung-Ju Albrecht, Randy A. Andersson, Dan I. Anker, Stefan D. Apergis, Nicholas Ariga, Katsuhiko Artaxo, Paulo Balsamo, Gianpaolo Barba, Francisco J. Benediktsson, Jon Atli Benelli, Giovanni Bhatnagar, Amit Bialystok, Ellen Blaabjerg, Frede Blay, Jean-Yves Bogers, Marcel Bolton, Declan J. Boyer, Cyrille Brocca, Luca Bruix, Jordi Buhalis, Dimitrios Burdick, Jason A. Byrd, John C. Cabeza, Luisa F. Cabrerizo-Lorite, Francisco Javier Cai, Jianchao Calhoun, Vince D. Cantu, Robert C. Cerqueira, Miguel Chang, Jo-Shu Chau, Kwok-wing Chemat, Farid Chen, Jianmin Chen, Jun Chen, Min Chen, Shaowei Chen, Wei Chen, Wei-Hsin Chen, Xiaofeng Chen, Yangkang Chen, Zhi-Gang Chiclana, Francisco Corella, Dolores Cortes, Javier Cortes, Jorge Cummings, Kenneth Michael Dai, Shifeng Decker, Eric A. DePinho, Ronald A. Dimopoulos, Meletios-Athanasios Dincer, Ibrahim Du, Yihong Dupont, Didier Edwards, David Ellahi, Rahmat Ellis, Erle C. ElMasry, Gamal Esteller, Manel Estruch, Ramón Fang, Chuanglin Fasano, Alessio Fernandez-Lafuente, Roberto Ferreira, Isabel Fortino, Giancarlo Galluzzi, Lorenzo Galvano, Fabio Gandomi, Amir H. Gandomi, Amir H. Gao, Bin Gao, Feng Gao, Wei Garbe, Claus García, Hermenegildo Geschwind, Daniel H. Giampieri, Francesca Giralt, Sergio A. Glanz, Karen Goldewijk, Kees Klein Gössling, Stefan Govindan, Kannan Granato, Daniel Grosso, Giuseppe Grosso, Giuseppe Guerrero, Josep M. Haase, Dagmar Hagger, Martin S. Hamblin, Michael R. Han, Heesup Jankovic, Joseph Janotti, Anderson

Jiang, Hai-Long Kalaji, Hazem M. Kalantar-Zadeh, Kourosh Kaner, Richard B. Karimi, Hamid Reza Kataoka, Kazunori Keesstra, Saskia Kepp, Oliver Kerminen, Veli-Matti Keyzers, Robert A. Khademhosseini, Ali Khan, Nafees A. Kim, Ki-Hyun Klemeš, Jiří Jaromír Klenk, Hans-Peter Konopleva, Marina Y. Krammer, Florian Krebs, Frederik C. Kroemer, Guido Kudo, Masatoshi Kurths, Juergen Kurzrock, Razelle Kuznetsov, Nikolay V. Kyrpides, Nikos C. La Vecchia, Carlo Lai, Yuekun Lam, James Lancellotti, Patrizio Lee, Sangmoon Leung, Victor C. M. Li, Jinghong Li, Yurui Lindahl, José M. Merigó Lip, Gregory Y. H. Loh, Xian Jun Long, Hualou Lund, Henrik Luo, Jingshan Luque, Rafael Lyons, Timothy W. Ma, Jun Ma, Wen-Xiu Ma, Yanming Maeda, Keisuke Makarova, Kira Mantovani, Alberto Martín-Belloso, Olga Martinoia, Enrico Marzband, Mousa Masclaux-Daubresse, Celine Masson, Patrick Mateos, María Victoria Mathiesen, Brian Vad Matyjaszewski, Krzysztof McArthur, Grant A. McCauley, Darren Medlock, Jolyon M. Melero, Ignacio Mezzetti, Bruno Miroshnichenko, Andrey E. Moran, Daniel Mueller, Lukas A. Mueller-Roeber, Bernd Naushad, Mu Nemeroff, Charles B. Nieto, Juan J. O'Donnell, Colm Ogino, Shuji Olabi, Abdul-Ghani O'Regan, Donal Orsini, Nicola Oswald, Isabelle P. Ozcan, Aydogan Pahl-Wostl, Claudia Pang, Huan Payne, James E. Peng, Shushi Perc, Matjaz Perez-Alvarez, Jose Angel Piquero, Alex R. Ploss, Alexander Postolache, Mihai Pradhan, Biswajeet Prinsep, Michele R. Qian, Dong Qu, Xiaogang Reiter, Russel J. Riahi, Keywan Richter, Andreas Rignot, Eric Robert, Caroline Ros, Emilio Rosell, Rafael

Rosen, Marc A. Rossolini, Gian Maria Saad, Fred Saad, Walid Sadorsky, Perry Sakthivel, Rathinasamy Schwab, Matthias Scolyer, Richard A. Serra-Majem, Lluis Sethi, Gautam Seto, Karen C. Settele, Josef Seymour, John F. Shi, Peng Siano, Pierluigi Sillanpää, Mika Simal-Gandara, Jesus Smagghe, Guy Srivastava, Hari M. Stadler, Peter F. Sun, Fengchun Sunderland, Elsie M. Suzuki, Nobuhiro Svenning, Jens-Christian Tan, Weihong Teixeira, José António Thakur, Vijay Kumar Tong, Shilu Tornabene, Francesco Tsao, Rong Tukker, Arnold Turskis, Zenonas Uversky, Vladimir N. van Wesemael, Bas Van Zwieten, Lukas Vangronsveld, Jaco Varma, Rajender S. Varshney, Rajeev K. Vasquez, Juan C. Velicogna, Isabella Vieta, Eduard Wade, Timothy J. Wagner, Wolfgang Wamba, Samuel Fosso Wang, Chunsheng Wang, Guoxiu Wang, Joseph Wang, Qi Wang, Tao Wang, Yuan Wiens, John J. Wu, Hao Bin Wu, Hui Wu, Tom Wu, Zhongbiao Xia, Xinhui Xiao, Wenjiao Xin, Sen Xiong, Rui Xu, Bin Xu, Zeshui Yan, Huaicheng Yang, Bing Yang, Hongxing Yang, Jie Yang, Xiao-Jun Yin, Shen Ying, Guang-Guo Young, Allan H. Yu, Guihua Zarco-Tejada, Pablo J. Zavadskas, EdmundasKazimieras Zeadally, Sherali Zhang, Fan Zhang, Liangpei Zhang, Qichun Zhang, Xian-Ming Zhang, Yue-Jun Zhao, Guochun Zhao, Li-Dong Zhu, Zhe Zhuang, Xiaodong Zou, Quan

The full list of 2020 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed on https://recognition.webofsciencegroup.com/awards/highly-cited/2020/

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

Dear scientists, researchers, and authors,

We are pleased to announce that the 1st International Electronic Conference on Agronomy (IECAG 2021), chaired by Prof. Dr. Youssef Rouphael, will be held on https://iecag2021.sciforum.net from 3 to 17 May 2021.

This conference aims to provide leading scientists working in the field of agronomy with a platform where they can share and discuss the latest research and promote the advancement of this exciting and rapidly changing field. We hope to encourage discovery across the discipline as we cover the following seven topics, as listed below:

• Application of New Breeding Technologies to Crop Improvement
• Sustainable Management Practices for Soil Health and Food Security
• Agronomic Innovations for Sustainable Intensification of Horticultural Production Systems
• Challenges in Grassland Agro-Ecology in a Global Change Context
• Weed Invasion, Biology and Management in Agricultural Settings
• Sustainable and Resilient Farming Systems
• Precision and Digital Agriculture

We proudly invite the global community of scholars to join IECAG 2021 to present their latest research and developments and share novel ideas on all multidisciplinary aspects of agronomy. Thanks to the flexibility of our innovative electronic platform, you are welcome both to upload and present your work and to attend the conference completely free of charge. We are also considering creating a Special Issue for selected conference papers in our journal Agronomy (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/Agronomy/special_issues/IECAG2021). In this case, papers published in this Special Issue would receive a 20% discount on the article processing charge.

IECAG 2021 offers you the opportunity to participate in an international scholarly conference without the concerns and expense of travelling—all you need is access to the Internet. During the conference period, you will be able to upload papers, posters, and presentations (including videos) and to comment on other presentations and otherwise engage with fellow scholars in real time. In this way, the conference offers a novel opportunity to exchange opinions and views within the scholarly community and to discuss papers and the latest research in a discussion forum. A number of live online sessions are planned throughout the duration of the conference. During each session, participants will have the possibility to ask questions during the Q&A session. The live sessions are free for authors. Authors with submissions to IECAG 2021 will be given priority for registration (with no extra cost) to the live online sessions with our keynote speakers.

Time Schedule:

• Abstract Deadline: 31 January 2021
• Abstract Acceptance Notification Deadline: 20 February 2021
• Full Paper Submission Deadline: 31 March 2021
• Conference: 3–17 May 2021

Paper Submission Guidelines:

For information about the procedures for submission, peer review, revision, and acceptance of conference proceedings papers, please refer to the section “Instructions for Authors” at the website (https://sciforum.net/conference/IECAG2021).We look forward to receiving your research papers and to welcoming you to our 1st International Electronic Conference on Agronomy (IECAG 2021).Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.

Kind regards,
Prof. Dr. Youssef Rouphael
University of Naples Federico II

Conference Secretariat

Ms. Alicia Ren
Ms. Leda Xuan
Ms. Gris Guo
Email: [email protected]

We welcome the following 34 recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Agronomy:

Prof. Dr. Thomas E. Reagan, Louisiana State University, USA

Dr. Anita Ierna, National Research Council (CNR-IBE), Italy

Prof. Richard Webster, Rothamsted Research, UK

Prof. Dr. Carlos Iglesias, North Carolina State University, USA

Dr. Ward Smith, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Canada

Dr. Luke Moe, University of Kentucky, USA

Prof. Dr. Massimo Fagnano, University of Naples Federico II, Italy

Dr. Pavlos Tsouvaltzis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Prof. Dr. Victor Galea, The University of Queensland, Australia

Dr. Jianjun Yang, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China

Prof. Dr. José L.S. Pereira, Agrarian School of Viseu, Portugal

Dr. Joseph Robins, Utah State Univ., USA

Dr. Andreas Stahl, Univ Giessen, Germany

Prof. Dr. Zvi Peleg, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Prof. Dr. Enrico Porceddu, Tuscia University, Italy

Dr. David W. Archer, USDA Agricultural Research Service, USA

Dr. Antonios Zambounis, Institute of Plant Breeding and Genetic Resources, Greece

Dr. Giacomo Mangini, Italian National Research Council, Italy

Dr. Ivan Hiltpold, Agroscope, Switzerland

Dr. Yuba Kandel, Iowa State University, USA

Dr. Carlos Miranda, Universidad Pública de Navarra, Spain

Dr. Katja Klumpp, INRA, France

Prof. Dr. Amanda Kennedy, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Prof. Dr. Jacynthe Dessureault-Rompré, Laval University, Canada

Dr. Maik Veste, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus–Senftenberg, Germany

Dr. Fred Muehlbauer, USDA‐ARS, USA

Dr. Nikolaos Ntoulas, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece

Dr. Federico Vita, University of Florence, Italy

Dr. Riccardo Velasco, CREA - Research Centre for Viticulture and Enology, Italy

Dr. Naeem Khan, University of Florida, USA

Prof. Dr. Lech Wojciech Szajdak, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland

Dr. Ashraf Tubeileh, California Polytechnic State University, USA

Prof. Dr. Jose Beltrao, Unversity of Algarve, Portugal

Dr. Juan Jose Rios, Centro de Edafologia y Biologia Aplicada del Segura (CEBAS-CSIC), Spain

We are delighted to announce the establishment of our Open Access agreement with Jisc Collections, which will allow UK institutions to benefit from access to article processing charge (APC) discounts and streamlined payment workflows.

All institutions participating in the agreement will also gain access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information for easy identification and additional transparency.

Eligible authors affiliated with the participating institutions are prompted to choose the corresponding Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system.

About Jisc

Jisc's vision is for the UK to be the most digitally advanced education and research nation in the world. At its heart is the super-fast national research and education network, Janet, with built-in cyber security protection.  Jisc also provides technology solutions for its members (colleges, universities and research centres) and customers (public sector bodies), helps members save time and money by negotiating sector-wide deals and provides advice and practical assistance on digital technology. Jisc is funded by the UK higher and further education and research funding bodies and member institutions.

For more information, contact [email protected]

About MDPI

MDPI is a publisher of fully peer-reviewed, Open Access journals with a focus on thorough and rapid editorial processing. Its aim is to ensure that high-quality research is verified and made available to the research community as quickly as possible. MDPI stands at the forefront of the Open Access movement, having launched its first online journal Molecules in 1996. Today, MDPI is a leader in Open Access publishing with over 250 journals across all research disciplines, and all content published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

For any questions about this agreement, please contact the MDPI IOAP team at [email protected].

The updated citation metrics have been released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), published by Clarivate. The recent release of the JCR includes seventy-one MDPI titles. Out of these, 18 titles are newcomers, receiving a first Journal Impact Factor which is based on citation activity in 2019: Actuators, Agriculture, Biology, Biomedicines, Biosensors, Chemosensors, Children, Healthcare, Journal of Fungi, Journal of Personalized Medicine (JPM), Land, Life, Magnetochemistry, Membranes, Pharmaceuticals, Photonics, Separations and Toxics.

• Out of the previously listed journals, a total of 72 percent boast an increased Impact Factor.
• 25 journals are ranked among the top 25% of journals in at least one of the categories they are ranked for.
• Articles published in 2019 in MDPI journals account for approximately 17 percent of of articles published in gold Open Access journals covered in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).
  
  

First Impact Factors

Journal	Impact Factor	Rank	Category	Details
Actuators	1.957	31/64 (Q2)	• Instruments & Instrumentation	Link
Agriculture	2.072	25/91 (Q2)	• Agronomy	Link
Biology	3.796	19/93 (Q1)	• Biology	Link
Biomedicines	4.717	30/138 (Q1) 36/270 (Q1)	• Medicine, Research & Experimental • Pharmacology & Pharmacy	Link
Biosensors	3.240	24/86 (Q2)	• Chemistry, Analytical	Link
Chemosensors	3.108	16/64 (Q1) 27/86 (Q2) 13/27 (Q2)	• Instruments & Instrumentation • Chemistry, Analytical • Electrochemistry	Link
Children	2.078	50/128 (Q2)	• Pediatrics	Link
Healthcare	1.916	62/102 (Q3) 45/87 (Q3)	• Health Care Sciences & Services (SCIE) • Health Policy & Services (SSCI)	Link
Journal of Fungi	4.621	5/29 (Q1) 31/135 (Q1)	• Mycology • Microbiology	Link
Journal of Personalized Medicine	4.433	24/165 (Q1) 10/102 (Q1)	• Medicine, General & Internal • Health Care Sciences & Services	Link
Land	2.429	58/123 (Q2)	• Environmental Studies (SSCI)	Link
Life	2.991	26/93 (Q2) 109/267 (Q2)	• Biology • Microbiology	Link
Magnetochemistry	1.947	22/45 (Q2) 109/159 (Q3) 201/314 (Q3)	• Chemistry, Inorganic & Nuclear • Chemistry, Physical • Materials Science, Multidisciplinary	Link
Membranes	3.094	53/143 (Q2) 129/314 (Q2) 23/89 (Q2)	• Engineering, Chemical • Materials Science, Multidisciplinary • Polymer Science	Link
Pharmaceuticals	4.286	49/270 (Q1)	• Pharmacology & Pharmacy	Link
Photonics	2.140	48/97 (Q2)	• Optics	Link
Separations	1.900	53/86 (Q3)	• Chemistry, Analytical	Link
Toxics	3.271	32/92 (Q2) 92/265 (Q2)	• Toxicology • Environmental Sciences	Link

Updated Impact Factors

Journal	Impact Factor	Rank	Category	Details
Agronomy	2.603	18/91 (Q1) 65/234 (Q2)	• Agronomy • Plant Sciences	Link
Animals	2.323	10/63 (Q1) 14/142 (Q1)	• Agriculture, Dairy & Animal Science • Veterinary Sciences	Link
Antibiotics	3.893	23/93 (Q1) 64/270 (Q1)	• Infectious Diseases • Pharmacology & Pharmacy	Link
Antioxidants	5.014	10/139 (Q1) 56/297 (Q1) 7/61 (Q1)	• Food Science & Technology • Biochemistry & Molecular Biology • Chemistry, Medicinal	Link
Applied Sciences	2.474	161/314 (Q3) 32/91 (Q2) 88/177 (Q2) 62/154 (Q2)	• Materials Science, Multidisciplinary • Engineering, Multidisciplinary • Chemistry, Multidisciplinary • Physics, Applied	Link
Atmosphere	2.397	48/93 (Q3)	• Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences	Link
Biomolecules	4.082	98/297 (Q2)	• Biochemistry & Molecular Biology	Link
Brain Sciences	3.332	113/271 (Q2)	• Neurosciences	Link
Cancers	6.126	37/244 (Q1)	• Oncology	Link
Catalysts	3.520	65/159 (Q2)	• Chemistry, Physical	Link
Cells	4.366	70/195 (Q2)	• Cell Biology	Link
Coatings	2.436	10/21 (Q2)	• Materials Science, Coatings & Films	Link
Crystals	2.404	10/26 (Q2) 165/314 (Q3)	• Crystallography • Materials Science, Multidisciplinary	Link
Diagnostics	3.110	39/165 (Q1)	• Medicine, General & Internal	Link
Diversity	1.402	119/168 (Q3)	• Ecology	Link
Electronics	2.412	125/266 (Q2)	• Engineering, Electrical & Electronic	Link
Energies	2.702	63/112 (Q3)	• Energy & Fuels	Link
Entropy	2.494	33/85 (Q2)	• Physics, Multidisciplinary	Link
Foods	4.092	27/139 (Q1)	• Food Science & Technology	Link
Forests	2.221	17/68 (Q1)	• Forestry	Link
Genes	3.759	53/177 (Q2)	• Genetics & Heredity	Link
Insects	2.220	18/101 (Q1)	• Entomology	Link
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	2.849	58/193 (Q2) 32/170 (Q1) 105/265 (Q2)	• Public, Environmental & Occupational Health (SCIE) • Public, Environmental & Occupational Health (SSCI) • Environmental Sciences (SCIE)	Link
International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	4.556	74/297 (Q1) 48/177 (Q2)	• Biochemistry & Molecular Biology • Chemistry, Multidisciplinary	Link
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJGI)	2.239	31/50 (Q3) 18/30 (Q3)	• Geography, Physical • Remote Sensing	Link
Journal of Clinical Medicine	3.303	36/165 (Q1)	• Medicine, General & Internal	Link
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering	2.033	31/66 (Q2)	• Oceanography	Link
Marine Drugs	4.073	16/61 (Q2)	• Chemistry, Medicinal	Link
Materials	3.057	132/314 (Q2)	• Materials Science, Multidisciplinary	Link
Mathematics	1.747	28/324 (Q1)	• Mathematics	Link
Medicina	1.205	107/165 (Q3)	• Medicine, General & Internal	Link
Metabolites	4.097	95/297 (Q2)	• Biochemistry & Molecular Biology	Link
Metals	2.117	18/79 (Q1) 185/314 (Q3)	• Metallurgy & Metallurgical Engineering • Materials Science, Multidisciplinary	Link
Micromachines	2.523	56/92 (Q3) 23/64 (Q2)	• Nanoscience & Nanotechnology • Instruments & Instrumentation	Link
Microorganisms	4.152	37/135 (Q2)	• Microbiology	Link
Minerals	2.380	6/21 (Q2) 11/30 (Q2)	• Mining & Mineral Processing • Mineralogy	Link
Molecules	3.267	70/177 (Q2) 141/297 (Q2)	• Chemistry, Multidisciplinary • Biochemistry & Molecular Biology	Link
Nanomaterials	4.324	89/314 (Q2) 42/103 (Q2)	• Materials Science, Multidisciplinary • Nanoscience & Nanotechnology	Link
Nutrients	4.546	17/89 (Q1)	• Nutrition & Dietetics	Link
Pathogens	3.018	65/135 (Q2)	• Microbiology	Link
Pharmaceutics	4.421	44/270 (Q1)	• Pharmacology & Pharmacy	Link
Plants	2.762	58/234 (Q1)	• Plant Sciences	Link
Polymers	3.426	16/89 (Q1)	• Polymer Science	Link
Processes	2.753	59/143 (Q2)	• Engineering, Chemical	Link
Remote Sensing	4.509	9/30 (Q2)	• Remote Sensing	Link
Sensors	3.275	22/86 (Q2) 77/266 (Q2) 15/64 (Q1)	• Chemistry, Analytical • Engineering, Electrical & Electronic • Instruments & Instrumentation	Link
Sustainability	2.576	120/265 (Q2) 26/41 (Q3) 53/123 (Q2) 6/8 (Q3)	• Environmental Sciences (SCIE) • Green & Sustainable Science & Technology (SCIE) • Environmental Studies (SSCI) • Green & Sustainable Science & Technology (SSCI)	Link
Symmetry	2.645	29/71 (Q2)	• Multidisciplinary Sciences	Link
Toxins	3.531	21/92 (Q1) 34/139 (Q1)	• Toxicology • Food Science & Technology	Link
Universe	1.752	18/29 (Q3) 42/68 (Q3)	• Physics, Particles & Fields • Astronomy & Astrophysics	Link
Vaccines	4.086	57/158 (Q2) 50/138 (Q2)	• Immunology • Medicine, Research & Experimental	Link
Viruses	3.816	12/37 (Q2)	• Virology	Link
Water	2.544	31/94 (Q2)	• Water Resources	Link

Source: Clarivate 2020, InCites Journal Citation Reports®.

We are pleased to announce that the following papers have been selected to receive the Agronomy Best Paper Awards of 2019:

[Article]

Title: Microbial Consortia versus Single-Strain Inoculants: An Advantage in PGPM-Assisted Tomato Production?

Author: Klára Bradáčová, Andrea S. Florea, Asher Bar-Tal, Dror Minz, Uri Yermiyahu,

Raneen Shawahna, Judith Kraut-Cohen, Avihai Zolti, Ran Erel, K. Dietel, Markus Weinmann,

Beate Zimmermann, Nils Berger, Uwe Ludewig, Guenter Neumann, and Gheorghe Poşta

Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/9/2/105

[Review]

Title: Biostimulants Application in Horticultural Crops under Abiotic Stress Conditions

Authors: Roberta Bulgari, Giulia Franzoni, and Antonio Ferrante

Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/9/6/306

We believe that the above papers represent valuable contributions to Agronomy and the scientific literature and warmly congratulate Ms. Klára Bradáčová and Dr. Giulia Franzoni and their colleagues. In recognition of their accomplishments, each of the corresponding authors will be granted a certificate and the chance to publish two papers (either review papers or research articles) free of charge in Agronomy by the end of 2020 (after the completion of the normal peer-review process).

Agronomy Editorial Office
St. Alban-Anlage 66
CH-4052, Basel, Switzerland
[email protected]
www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy

Since 1996, MDPI has been committed to supporting the research community by providing the latest research freely available and making relevant and useful research available as quickly as possible. The world is current experiencing a pandemic of COVID-19, and researchers are working extremely hard to understand it and find a cure.

The values MDPI holds strongly are particularly important at the moment, and we will continue to publish relevant, peer-reviewed research as quickly as possible in open access format. This means that it will immediately be available for researchers, health professionals, and the general public to read, distribute, and reuse. We believe that scientific advancements will be crucial to overcoming this pandemic, and will do everything we can to support researchers working looking for solutions.

COVID-19 Academic Resources Center contains a variety of information related to COVID-19 available from MDPI, including journal articles, special issues, and preprints, among others.

For more information, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/covid-19

As a leading Open Access publisher, MDPI is committed to fostering open scientific exchange in all forms across all disciplines. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, many researchers have to stay at home and many academic conferences have been cancelled or postponed. In light of these changes, MDPI has adopted numerous initiatives that may help accelerate scientific exchange and provide support to the academics during this period.

Scholarly Community—Encyclopedia

Encyclopedia is an online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as providing benchmark information for researchers and the general public interested in accurate and advanced knowledge on specific topics.

Comprehensive and Free Literature Database—Scilit

Scilit is a comprehensive, free database for scientists that uses a new method to collate data and index scientific material. Our crawlers extract the latest data from CrossRef and PubMed on a daily basis. This means that newly published articles are immediately added to Scilit.

Display Academic Achievements—SciProfiles

SciProfiles is an innovative social network for researchers and scholars that is developed by MDPI. In line with our broad mission, the purpose of SciProfiles is to accelerate discovery and innovation by facilitating immediate access to research results and providing opportunities for academic networking.

Organize and Participate in Conferences Online—Sciforum

Sciforum is an event planning platform that supports open science by offering the opportunity to host and participate in academic conferences. It provides an environment for scholarly exchange, discussion of topics of current interest, building of networks, and establishing collaborations.

Post Early Versions of Research Outputs—Preprints

Preprints is a platform dedicated to making early versions of research outputs permanently available and citable. We post original research articles and comprehensive reviews, and papers can be updated by authors at any time. Content on Preprints is not peer-reviewed, and feedback can be received from readers.

***

MDPI remains committed to open science and open data and has signed a statement, along with more than thirty scholarly publishers, showing our intention to facilitate sharing of new research findings as early on as possible. The initiative sees publishers collectively removing barriers to new research, in the face of a global healthcare crisis.

The world is currently suffering from a global pandemic of the corona virus COVID-19. MDPI expresses its sympathies for all of those affected by the virus and stands in solidarity with medical staff and researchers treating patients and searching for scientific solutions.

MDPI has previously published papers covering corona viruses in addition to new papers on the current outbreak, see all papers here. In particular, Viruses has published a number of Special Issues and papers on the topic (see here, here, and here) as well as a forthcoming Special Issue.

Alongside journal articles, MDPI has been a strong supporter of preprints, which are increasingly being used to rapidly disseminate the latest research, and we run the preprint server Preprints.org. Our database of research articles, Scilit, is free to use and covers all publishers including preprint servers. New papers are often in search results within hours of publication and users can set up alerts for new papers.

Our main priority during this period has been the health and safety of staff, and we continue to allow staff to work at home and closely monitor the situation in all locations in which we work. Despite the restrictions, we continue to provide a full publication service and, by close collaboration with our editorial boards and making use our in-house teams, ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in publishing vital research. Fast and open publication has always been at the core of MDPI values and is now more important than ever.

We hope that a solution to the current situation will emerge soon. In the meantime, we will do our best to continue communicating vital research in all fields.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2020 Outstanding Reviewer Awards, sponsored by MDPI and Agronomy. The awards were granted to two outstanding reviewers working in agronomy areas:

Outstanding Reviewer Awards in Agronomy 2019

The Agronomy Editorial Board and Editorial Team would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the time and energy dedicated by our reviewers to assessing the manuscripts submitted to the journal in 2019. With their support, we have been able to publish many interesting, high-quality papers in Agronomy, and a quick peer-review process has been maintained consistently.

Two reviewers have been selected on the basis of the timeliness, quality, and speed of their review reports. Each of them will receive a chance to publish one paper in Agronomy free of charge before 31 December, 2020, 500 Swiss Francs, and a certificate:

Dr. Agnieszka Synowiec Department of Agroecology and Crop Production, University of Agriculture in Kraków, 31-120 Kraków, Poland
Dr. Thorsten Kraska Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation & Field Lab Campus Klein-Altendorf, University of Bonn, 53359 Rheinbach, Germany

If you are interested in reviewing articles for Agronomy, please register your contact details, including your ORCID identifier, institutional affiliation, a short CV, and 5–6 keywords in line with your expertise at the following link: https://susy.mdpi.com/volunteer_reviewer/step/1. The managing editors will send you a notification once approved.

For more information about Agronomy awards, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy/awards.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2020 Travel Awards, sponsored by MDPI and Agronomy. The awards were granted to two outstanding PhD Researchers working in agronomy areas:

Travel Award for PhD Researchers in Agronomy 2020

Mr. Ahmed Kayad, a PhD student at Digital Agriculture Lab, University of Padova, Italy, is studying agricultural engineering and sustainable precision and digital agriculture. His current work focuses on monitoring crop yield spatial variability at the field scale from remote and ground sensors. He is planning to attend the 15th International Conference on Precision Agriculture (held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, 28 June–1 July, 2020). Here, he will present his research entitled “Monitoring Corn (Zea mays) Yield Using Sentinel-2 and Machine Learning for Precision Agriculture Applications”.

Mr. Roberto Berni, a PhD student at University of Siena, has developed a strong interest in the valorization of plant biodiversity. He carries out research on characterization of plant secondary metabolites used for nutraceutical purposes. He will attend the “Plant Biology Europe 2020 congress” (held in Turin, Italy, 29 June–2 July 2020), where he will present his research entitled “Valorising Non-Commercial Tuscan Varieties of Sweet Cherry: A Metabolomics and Gene Expression Study”.

Please join us in congratulating Mr. Ahmed Kayad and Mr. Roberto Berni for their outstanding achievements. As the awardees, Mr. Ahmed Kayad and Mr. Roberto Berni will receive an honorarium of 600 Swiss Francs and a certificate.

We would like to thank all the applicants from various fields of study for their participation as well as all the Award Committee members for their careful evaluation of the large number of excellent applications.

For more information about Agronomy awards, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy/awards.

The advantages of the open access model of scientific publishing are being increasingly recognized in the scientific community. It allows new scientific evidence to be accessed from the moment of publication for free by anyone around the globe, boosting the impact of new research. In response, many funders, libraries and universities have been adopting new principles to accelerate the transition to open access.

Recently, “transformative agreements” have been negotiated between traditional publishers and various institutions. While increasing the number of open access papers, these agreements lack binding commitments to a full transition to open access, their conditions vary across different regions, and access is still limited for many users.

MDPI is a co-signatory of the recent position statement raising concerns about potential downsides of transformative agreements and how they may delay a full transition to open access. The statement highlights that these models “risk perpetuating current limitations on access, transparency and market competitiveness, while simultaneously facilitating excessive charges on the public purse”.

As a pioneering open access journal publisher, MDPI is the first to promote the importance of science being made available to everyone. Our peer-reviewed journals, covering diverse academic disciplines, are fully accessible to the public free of charge under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). This is why, along with other open access publishers, MDPI is a proud signatory of the position paper and is committed to contributing to the replacement of weak transitional agreements with “agreements with publishers that are already fully committed to open science and who offer full, immediate and transparent Open Access”.

Read the position paper here

We are pleased to announce that Encyclopedia will be awarding five Outstanding Contributor Awards for researchers in 2020. The nominations and applications will be assessed by an Evaluation Committee consisting of senior scholars from the Encyclopedia Editorial Board.

Prize for Winners

1. An official certificate;
2. A cash award of 500 CHF or an MDPI discount voucher of 800 CHF.

Application Deadline

31 December, 2020 (Please send your application email with a list of all entries you contributed to our office before the deadline: [email protected])

Candidate Requirements

1. Have a Ph.D. degree;
2. Have more than three qualified entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020.

Evaluation Standards

1. Number of entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020;
2. Quality of entries online (including length, figure quality, and novelty);
3. Impact of entries (including the number of likes, discussion contents, views, and downloads).

If you are a researcher and have not yet contribute entries to Encyclopedia, please do not miss this chance to highlight your research results.

MDPI will be attending the 8^th International Crop Science Congress, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, 21–25 June 2020.

This is a conference on Crop Science to stimulate thinking among scientists as to how advances in crop science, in all their aspects, can assist in meeting the critical diverse global challenges that lie ahead. This congress will address basic and applied aspects of plant and crop sciences as they relate to strategies to develop unique, sustainable, agricultural systems having the capacity to support animal and human health on a global scale, while being mindful of our custodial responsibilities towards the well-being of our planet Earth.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Agronomy (leading journal);
• Agriculture;
• Sustainability;
• Foods;
• Plants;
• Challenges.

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.icsc2020.com/.

MDPI is pleased to announce the release of SciProfiles, its social network platform for researchers and scholars.

The purpose of SciProfiles is aligned with MDPI’s broad mission to accelerate discovery and innovation by facilitating immediate access to research results and to serve scholars and communities by providing opportunities for academic networking.

SciProfiles also ambitions to serve as a sustainable, transparent and community-driven research evaluation system aligned with the DORA principles (https://sfdora.org/). Through their scientific profiles, academics can highlight their contribution to research communities, and measure their impact on their field, beyond publication numbers and impact factors. SciProfiles is currently a beta version and will enrich to give researchers the possibility to highlight all of their contributions to science and their scientific communities as authors, reviewers, editors, conference organizers, conference panelists, conference keynote speakers, or even as lecturers or student mentors at their University.

The classic components of popular community social networks, including follower/following, classical metrics, endorsements and recommendations (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1690), comments (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1397) are or will be very soon highlighted in SciProfiles as open science contributions.

To help increase the impact and visibility of articles and their authors to an appropriate audience, the platform offers a NewsFeed that includes recommendations of relevant content based on interests, publication history, saved searches or colleagues’ recommendations.

SciProfiles’ avatars are now being integrated on several MDPI platforms, meaning that you will directly access researchers’ profiles from any of the MDPI platforms:

MDPI's journal publishing website: www.mdpi.com
MDPI's conference hosting and management website: www.sciforum.net
MDPI's pre-print website : www.preprints.org
MDPI's knowledge sharing website : www.encyclopedia.pub
MDPI's books store: www.mdpi.com/books
MDPI's literature database : www.scilit.net

SciProfiles aims to serve scientific communities at large. It can be embedded into third-party websites and also welcomes integration of data from third-parties.

Dr. Shu-Kun Lin: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/2
Dr. Franck Vazquez: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/FranckVazquez
Dr. Martyn Rittman: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/martynrittman

We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2019 MDPI Writing Prize. Entrants were asked to write on the theme "Judging research: How should research and researchers be evaluated and rewarded?" We received a large number of excellent essays from PhD students and postdocs, and the process of shortlisting and choosing winners was not an easy one. The winners demonstrated excellent writing skills alongside interesting and thought-provoking ideas.

As last year, we will begin the process of collating all entries into a book that will be available in open access format. Alongside promoting good writing skills, we see the prize as a way to promote the voices of early career researchers within broader debates and policy discussions.

Congratulations to all of the participants and especially the winners. The winners are:

1st Prize (500 CHF):
Albin Nilsson (National Centre for Nuclear Research, Warsaw, Poland)
[Read here]

2nd Prize (250 CHF):
Qi Zhang (Shandong University, Jinan, China)
[Read here]
Igor Ogashawara (Indiana University, Indianapolis, US)
[Read here]

3rd Prize (100 CHF):
Margaret Sivapragasam (Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Perak, Malaysia)
[Read here]
Arvind Sharma (The University of Queensland, Gatton, Australia)
[Read here]
Jose Flores-Guerrero (University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands)
[Read here]

The MDPI Writing Prize is an annual award supported by MDPI Author Services, which provides services including language editing, reformatting, plagiarism checks, and image editing.

MDPI is pleased to announce the release of a new functionality giving the possibility for researchers and scholars to endorse, and formally recommend articles to their colleagues.

MDPI was an early signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (https://sfdora.org/read/) which calls for improvement in how quality and impact of scholarly research outputs are evaluated, especially in moving beyond journal-based citation metrics (journal Impact Factor, Scopus Citescore, etc.).

MDPI supports the establishment of article-level impact metrics, including citations, views, downloads, and Altmetric scores. These measures serve as an impact indicator for research articles on a case–by-case basis, assessing paper on its own merit. However, these metrics are also subjective and can give a biased picture of the article impact: they do not directly reflect the quality or the intrinsic scientific value of the article.

In our view, community engagement with publications based on community-driven metrics can help to overcome this limitation. We have therefore launched an option for scholars to endorse articles, indicating their own assessment of its content and making a recommendation to their community. This follows our implementation of the open source Hypothesis commenting tool, which has been available for all articles published by MDPI for over a year (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1397). Both endorsement and commenting are available for all previously published and forthcoming MDPI articles.

In addition to potentially serving as a sustainable solution to article assessment, endorsements will help scientific communities to identify the most relevant articles, independently of the journal in which it was published.

The code for the endorsing functionality, which relies on DOIs and ORCIDs, will be made available on GitHub with an open source license.

Dr. Shu-Kun Lin, President and Founder
Dr. Franck Vazquez, Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Martyn Rittman, Publishing Director

Encyclopedia is pleased to announce that certain well-prepared entries are eligible for a 100 CHF voucher, which can be used for paper publication in any journals in MDPI. We believe that your contribution would be a great help in keeping up with scientific developments. Do not miss the chance to publish with us. Please clink here to find the detailed guideline.

Encyclopedia is a free online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as provide a comprehensive record of scientific development. If you have any suggestions or questions, please feel free to contact us via [email protected].

We are pleased to announce that Preprints has passed the milestone of 10,000 posted preprints. We are delighted to have reached this after just over three years of operation. Our congratulations and thanks go to our authors and advisory board who have supported growth of the platform and been crucial to its operation.

You can find further details at https://www.preprints.org/announcement/show/37.

MDPI will be attending the “Embracing the Digital Environment” 2019 ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas, USA, November 10-13, 2019.

The American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of America will host approximately 4,000 scientists, professionals, educators, and students at the 2019 International Annual Meeting. This premier scientific meeting provides unlimited networking opportunities, scientific abstracts, oral and poster sessions, a robust exhibit hall, technical workshops, and professional and destination tours. Plus, there's a career center, graduate and undergraduate programs, distinguished lecturers, awards, continuing education units (CEU's), prizes, and more! 

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Agronomy
• Insects
• Forests
• Plants
• Sustainability

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #320). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.acsmeetings.org/

Last week, the DeepGreen initiative in Germany started into an advanced test phase with the publishing partners S. Karger AG, SAGE Publishing, MDPI, Frontiers and De Gruyter, as well as 27 universities from all over Germany, from Hamburg University of Applied Sciences to University of Konstanz.

DeepGreen aims at lowering the barriers for open access publishing by automatically delivering metadata and full text publications from participating publishers to authorized repositories at German universities.

In preparation for a later live operation, the advanced test phase serves to gain experience with extensive data deliveries from publishers and also handling different repository software (including OPUS4, DSpace, EPrints, MyCoRe). DeepGreen thereby acts as a sophisticated platform, receiving articles published by authors affiliated with German universities and depositing these articles to respective university repositories, based on the affiliation metadata. For more information about DeepGreen: https://deepgreen.kobv.de

Karger AG has been a close cooperation partner of the DeepGreen consortium since 2016. S. Karger has more than 80 subscription-based and around 20 open access journals covering a wide spectrum in health science. DeepGreen will assign S. Karger articles to authorized institutions on the legal basis of German alliance and national licenses.

SAGE Publishing  was founded by Sara Miller McCune in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE publishes more than 1,000 journals and over 600 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. Our growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne. SAGE Publishing has been a close cooperation partner of DeepGreen since 2016.

MDPI  is a scientific open access publisher and has been a partner of DeepGreen since 2017. MDPI comprises 205 peer-reviewed journals of various disciplines. All articles are published under a CC-BY license and are freely available without embargo period.

Frontiers  is a scientific open access publisher with 61 journals of over 600 academic disciplines. All articles are peer-reviewed and published freely available under CC-BY license.

De Gruyter  is an academic publisher with more than 700 subscription-based and open access journals of 29 disciplines. Articles provided by De Gruyter will be assigned to institutions with German alliance and national licenses.

There is promising communication with other publishers.

DeepGreen is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the consortium comprises six institutions: the Cooperative Library Network Berlin-Brandenburg, Bavarian State Library, Bavarian Library Network, University Library of the Technische Universität Berlin, University Library of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Helmholtz Open Science Coordination Office at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

If you would like to know in more detail which institutions take part in the advanced test phase of DeepGreen, you can find more information here.

The University of Basel and the MDPI Sustainability Foundation are organizing the First Basel Sustainable Publishing Forum on 9th September 2019.

The aim of this event is to provide background and perspectives on Plan S to Learned Societies, which have to make well-informed decisions to transition their journals to Open Access (OA).

The BSPF will bring together several representatives of Learned societies, Plan S architects as well as representatives from various publishers and publishing platforms. After getting the big picture from cOAlition S, panel discussions will allow to better understand the diverse challenges that Learned societies are facing to transition their journals to OA as well as to identify sustainable, implementable and scalable solutions for successful Open Access transition.

For program details and registration, please follow the link below:
https://sciforum.net/conference/SustainableSolutionsToOpenAccess

We are pleased to inform that Agronomy received an updated Journal Impact Factor of 2.259 in the recent release of the Journal Citation Reports®. Agronomy now ranks 19/89 (Q1) in the category Agronomy' and 78/228 (Q2) in the category 'Plant Sciences'.

Source: data according to Journal Citation Reports®, 2018 release, a Clarivate Analytics product.

The organizer of the conference is the Entomological Society of America (ESA), which is the largest organization in the world serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and individuals in related disciplines. Entomology 2019 is the flagship conference of the Entomology field.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

Insects
Agronomy
Diversity
Plants
Pathogens
Forests

If you are also going to be in attendance, please stop by our booth (# 319). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have regarding open access publishing or our journals. For more information about this conference, please visit https://www.entsoc.org/events/annual-meeting.

We are pleased to welcome more universities from Poland, Italy, Germany, Brazil and other parts of the world to MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). A warm welcome to the institutions listed below, who have joined the Program in February and March this year.

James Madison University (JMU), Harrisonburg	USA
Loughborough University	UK
Lublin University of Technology	Poland
Marquette University, Milwaukee	USA
Massey University, Palmerston North	New Zealand
Medical College of Wisconsin	USA
Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń	Poland
Poznań University of Life Sciences	Poland
Robert Koch-Institut, Berlin	Germany
Rothamsted Research, Harpenden	UK
Santa Clara University (SCU)	USA
Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau	Germany
University of Aveiro	Portugal
University of Brasília	Brazil
University of Duisburg-Essen	Germany
University of Greifswald	Germany
University of Molise	Italy
University of Naples Parthenope	Italy
University of São Paulo (USP) - São Carlos Institute of Physics	Brazil
University of Szczecin	Poland
University of Warmia and Mazury, Olsztyn	Poland
University West, Trollhättan	Sweden
UTP University of Science and Technology, Bydgoszcz	Poland
VTT - Technical Research Centre of Finland	Finland

Authors affiliated with these institutions can now enjoy a discount on the APC for papers accepted for publication in any MDPI journal. If you would like to learn more about our program, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap or email us at [email protected].

We are delighted to announce our participation in Jisc’s Publication Router project, as of March 2019.

Publications Router is a Jisc service that automatically sends notifications about research articles to institutions' systems such as their repositories or CRISs, since May 2015. Through this agreement, MDPI will provide Jisc with daily feeds and information regarding published articles, which will be gathered by their system and delivered to institutions also registered to this service. Nearly all of our articles are published within 15 days of acceptance, so institutions will receive them quite promptly.

The feed will include the full text of the published version of record, with no embargo, so the articles can be exposed immediately for public view. They are accompanied by rich metadata, including confirmation of the immediate CC BY licence, minimising the need for any manual intervention or checking.

For more information about Publications Router, you may contact Jisc’s central helpdesk at [email protected]. For any queries about MDPI’s institutional agreements and collaborations, you may get in touch with MDPI’s Institutional Engagement team at [email protected], which would be very happy to hear from further UK institutions.

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high quality academic publishing. Over 97,000 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2018. 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 all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year the “MDPI Top Reviewer Awards” are announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise, dedication, high quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2018 MDPI Top Reviewer Awards:

• Ali Behnood
• Andrea Pezzuolo
• Angela Gorgoglione
• Anna D'Auria
• Antonio D'Andrea
• Azhar Abbas
• Bogdan Zagajewski
• Chunhui Chen
• Dominika Głąbska
• Dominika Guzek
• Dragan Pamucar
• Francisco J. G. Silva
• Frank Li
• Gianluca Serafini
• Gyorgy Szekely
• Haozhi Pan
• Helvi Heinonen-Tanski
• José Manuel Gómez-Soberón
• Kathy Lewis
• Klara Kosova
• Luis N. López De Lacalle
• M. Z. Naser
• Malwina Tytła
• Masoume Amirkhani
• Matteo Ghidelli
• Moretti Laura
• Petra Schneider
• Roberto Cerchione
• Spyros Papaefthymiou
• Ştefan Cristian Gherghina

Since 2010, MDPI has run its own online submission system. More recently, we have made the software, with accompanying publishing services, available to other publishers as JAMS (Journal and Article Management System). We are now delighted to announce the launch of JAMS Journals, a standardized platform for operating open access journals at low cost.

JAMS Journals provides a comprehensive service, including a shared submission website, journal websites hosted at a URL provided by the publisher, and a full production service. There is a small setup fee and the cost for each published paper is just a few hundred Swiss francs.

The platform demonstrates that running an open access journal can be straightforward and affordable. The JAMS Journals platform is suitable for

• small publishers or groups of scholars looking to launch their own journal;
• existing publishers or societies seeking to explore open access options;
• publishers looking to convert an existing subscription journal to open access.

JAMS journals launches with two journals from Canadian-based publisher Etcetera Publications:

• Canadian Journal of Pesticides & Pest Management (http://www.cjppm.ca)
• Nanotechnology in Agriculture, Food & Environment (http://www.nanoafe.ca)

Dr AJ Al-Rajab (President of Etcetera Publications) comments:

“In the past few months, we were working on our project to launch new open access scientific journals in the field of agricultural and environmental sciences. We decided to go with JAMS for this venture because of the high quality of their services, reasonable prices, professionalism and easy communication. Our portfolio is expected to grow rapidly during 2019 to include more titles covering different areas in agriculture and environment. MDPI earned already our complete satisfaction and we are looking for a long term cooperation.”

Alongside the new platform, we continue to provide flexible, tailored journal management solutions for existing publishers. For any questions or to request a quotation, contact Dr. Constanze Schelhorn ([email protected]).

2018 was a great year for preprints, with increasing numbers of authors looking to make their papers available online before peer review. Along with other preprint servers, our platform Preprints.org  saw an increase in the uptake from authors, and more than double the number of announced papers compared to 2017. In fact, we recently passed two important milestones: 8000 preprints online and 30,000 authors. 

We believe that the whole research community has the opportunity to benefit from work being available online as early as possible. We thank and congratulate our authors for supporting us to make this goal a reality.

In 2019, we will be looking carefully at how to provide better value for authors, maintain efficiency while growing in size, and make sure we remain well-connected with the research community. 

If you want to participate, you can consider screening preprints or joining our advisory board. And, of course, posting your own work.

We are delighted to announce the establishment of our national Open Access agreement with the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Through this national agreement, the Austrian institutions listed below as well as FWF will cover the Article Processing Charges (APC) of manuscripts published by eligible corresponding or funded authors in MDPI journals as long as central funds are available.

All participating institutions have gained access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information as well as Funder and Grant ID details for easy identification and additional transparency. At the same time eligible authors are benefited from an APC discount which comes at no cost for the institutions.

Eligible corresponding authors affiliated with the participating institutions are prompted to choose the corresponding Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system. The program will be selected automatically if authors submit their papers using their institutional email address. To claim their discount, FWF funded authors should choose the particular funder and add their Grant ID upon online submission of their manuscript. The institutions will then crosscheck the information and confirm the APC funding.

Eligible authors that have their APC covered by their institution or funder are advised to include the following sentence in their acknowledgments: "Open Access Funding by the [name of the institution/funder]".

The full text of the agreement is openly available online at: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2536007

For any questions about the agreement, please contact the KEMÖ Consortium at [email protected], FWF at [email protected], or the MDPI IOAP team at [email protected]

The Austrian institutions participating in this agreement are:

• Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
• University for Continuing Education Krems
• University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna
• University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria
• University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien
• Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences
• International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
• Institute of Science and Technology Austria
• MCI Management Center Innsbruck
• University of Graz
• University of Linz
• University of Salzburg
• Graz University of Technology
• TU Wien
• University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna
• University of Vienna

This is our first collective agreement with a national library consortium, while the individual institutions around the world participating in our IOAP are now more than 500 - see details here: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap. We would be mostly interested in discussing about possible collaborations with other consortia, funders, and institutions in our mutual efforts to accelerate Open Access.

We are pleased to announce the new platform Encyclopedia, which is an online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as providing benchmark information for researchers and the general public interested in accurate and advanced knowledge on specific topics.

We encourage authors of review articles to quote and adapt the content of their published papers to create Encyclopedia entries. You can create completely new entries on topics in which you have knowledge and expertise. There is no limit on the topics or research fields. All of science and the humanities are included. Each entry will be published directly after submission.

We also have prepared a DOI application function in Encyclopedia. Once a DOI application is approved, the entry website will announce the DOI number and a pdf version with DOI information will be automatically created.

We look forward to your contributions and hope you will make use of this service. Find more about the service at: https://encyclopedia.pub/

 

We are delighted to announce that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is now a participant of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). Authors funded by the BMGF can enjoy discounts on the APC, while the funder covers the costs of eligible articles centrally. BMGF also has access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information as well as Grant ID details for easy identification and additional transparency.

We hope that funded authors find the programme beneficial and we are happy to offer our IOAP to other funders that need a streamlined workflow of compliance checking and APC coverage. 

To claim their discount, BMGF funded authors should choose the particular funder and add their Grant ID upon online submission of their manuscript.

For any questions about the BMGF agreement, please contact the funder at [email protected] or the MDPI IOAP team at [email protected].

Recently, it was announced that a group of European funders supported 10 principles that will help to expand open access, known as Plan S. MDPI warmly welcomes this move as a step towards achieving more open and accessible communication of research across all disciplines. Some aspects remain to be clarified, however the details given so far match the aims and values that MDPI has held over the past two decades.

We believe that open access publishers should be active participants in discussions around Plan S, particularly regarding potential new business models and practical aspects of implementation. MDPI supports APCs as a transparent unit of payment for article publishing, however we are committed to exploring other measures and recently signed the Jussieu Call. Sustainability is a key value for MDPI, and future funding models should have at their heart the sustainability of knowledge and research dissemination. Plan S provides an opportunity for funders and publishers to directly discuss funding of open access journals in ways that are beneficial to all parties involved.

The 13th European Nitrogen Fixation Conference (ENFC 2018) was held in Stockholm, Sweden, 18–21 August 2018. This European-based biennial congress brings together scientists focused on biological N2 fixation (BNF) from the diverse research topics of biochemistry, microbiology, plant physiology, and, more recently, genetic engineering and aquatic microbiology.

At the conference three Postdocs were announced winners of the Best Poster Awards (pictured above): Dr. Carmen Sánchez Cañizares (University of Oxford, United Kingdom), Dr. Marcin Nadzieja (Aarhus University, Denmark) and Dr. Kira Gysel (Aarhus University, Denmark). The prizes are sponsored by the academic open-access journals Agriculture, Agronomy and Nitrogen.

   

We are happy to announce the establishment of an Open Access (OA) agreement with Qatar National Library (QNL). QNL is committed to supporting and helping Qatar authors publish OA at no cost. Through this national agreement, QNL will cover the Article Processing Charges (APC) of manuscripts published by Qatar-based corresponding authors in MDPI journals.

Eligible corresponding authors affiliated with Qatar research centers and universities are prompted to choose QNL as part of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system. The program will be selected automatically if authors submit their papers using their institutional email and/or a computer registered with the institution’s IP range. QNL will then crosscheck the information and confirm the APC funding.

Qatar authors that have their APC covered by QNL are advised to include the following sentence in their acknowledgments: "The publication of this article was funded by Qatar National Library".

For more information, please visit Open Access at QNL or email the QNL Open Access team at [email protected].

 

We are pleased to announce that Agronomy has received a first Impact Factor in the latest edition of the Journal Citation Reports®, published by Clarivate Analytics in June 2018.

Agronomy is covered in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) in Web of Science and received a first Impact Factor of 1.419. The journal ranks 35/87 (Q2) in the 'Agronomy' category and 112/222 (Q3) in 'Plant Sciences.'

The Journal Citation Reports®, 2018 release, is a Clarivate Analytics product.

Location: Geneva, Switzerland
Date: 27th to the 31th of August, 2018
Website: http://www.esa-congress-2018.ch/

We will be attending the XV ESA Congress in Geneva from the 27th to the 31th of August 2018. The congress will offer a broad base of sessions related to crop physiology, cropping systems, farming systems and value chains in order to manage natural capital by making secure the availability and by managing the quality of natural resources. It is organized by four Swiss institutions involved in agricultural research (Agroscope, ETH Zurich, FiBL Switzerland and the Swiss Society of Agronomy) and it is open to scientists, professionals and students interested to discuss the scientific advances and possible practical applications. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

• Agriculture
• Agronomy
• Sustainability

If you are attending this conference, please stop by our booth (Booth #5). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have concerning open access publishing and our journals.

For more information about the conference, please visit: http://www.esa-congress-2018.ch/.

Location: Baltimore, MD, USA
Date: 4–7 November 2018

We will be attending the 2018 ASA and CSSA Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD, USA, to be held 4–7 November 2018. The American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America, and the Canadian Society of Agronomy will host approximately 2,500 scientists, professionals, educators, and students at the 2018 International Annual Meeting, "Enhancing Productivity in a Changing Climate". It’s the premiere opportunity for professionals working in agronomic, crop, soil, and related sciences to hear about the latest research, meet and learn from their peers, expand their knowledge base, and take advantage of an abundance of networking opportunities to enhance their career. This year’s Annual Meeting will feature more than 2,000 technical presentations, along with a host of networking events and award ceremonies. The world-class exhibition displays the latest scientific equipment, supplies, services, and reference materials available. Representatives of the following MDPI open access journals will attend:

• Agronomy
• Insects
• Agriculture
• Plants
• Horticulturae
• Sustainability
• Land

If you are attending this conference, please stop by our booth (Booth #624). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have concerning open access publishing and our journals.

For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.acsmeetings.org/about

We are pleased to report Agronomy received a CiteScore of 1.38 for 2017. The metric reflects citation activity in 2017 in Scopus for papers published in the period 2014‒2016.

For the full details in the current CiteScore release, please see the journal's Source profile. To check the full list of MDPI journals receiving CiteScores, please see here.

The 2017 CiteScore™ data is available now, based on citation data in the Scopus® database. The current CiteScore reflects citation activity in 2017 for articles published in 2014‒2016. Please note that the list below includes journals assigned a CiteScore in this year’s release. For a full list of journals indexed in Scopus, please see our journal list.

Thirteen of our journals received a CiteScore which is in the top 10% of the distribution in at least one of the categories (marked with * in the table below), while a further 32 journals exhibit scores that are in the first quartile of the respective categories.

To access the full data for MDPI journals, please see here. More data can also be found in SJR Scimago Journal & Country Rank.

Unlike CiteScores and the widely used Journal Impact Factors, the Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) metrics are normalized in order to correct for differences in citation practices between scientific fields. Therefore, the SNIP allows direct comparison between journals specialized in different fields.

According to 2017 data, MDPI publishes six journals with an average citation impact, or SNIP, in excess of 1.500. These journals are Biomolecules, Cancers, Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM), Marine Drugs, Remote Sensing and Sensors (see the last column in the table below).

CiteScore Data for MDPI Journals

Journal	Rank (Quartile)	Category	Link	CiteScore 2017	2016	2015	SNIP 2017
Aerospace	43/116 (Q2)	• Aerospace Engineering	Link	1.23	-	-	1.152
Agriculture	69/309 (Q1) 91/398 (Q1) 78/255 (Q2)	• Agronomy and Crop Science • Plant Science • Food Science	Link	1.93	-	-	1.133
Agronomy	46/309 (Q1)	• Agronomy and Crop Science	Link	2.38	-	-	1.115
Algorithms	22/46 (Q2) 61/125 (Q2) 60/107 (Q3) 64/114 (Q3)	• Numerical Analysis • Computational Mathematics • Computational Theory and Mathematics • Theoretical Computer Science	Link	1.03	1.15	1.07	0.749
Animals	12/154 (Q1) * 48/367 (Q1)	• General Veterinary • Animal Science and Zoology	Link	2.02	1.46	1.66	1.099
Antibiotics	6/68 (Q1) * 62/263 (Q1) 55/230 (Q1) 31/108 (Q2) 47/134 (Q2) 139/398 (Q2)	• General Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics • Infectious Diseases • Pharmacology (medical) • Microbiology (medical) • Microbiology • Biochemistry	Link	2.85	1.65	-	0.975
Antibodies	43/143 (Q2) 61/164 (Q2) 85/189 (Q2)	• Drug Discovery • Immunology and Allergy • Immunology	Link	2.85	-	-	0.844
Antioxidants	23/119 (Q1) 35/169 (Q2) 100/398 (Q2) 119/367 (Q2) 102/264 (Q2)	• Clinical Biochemistry • Physiology • Biochemistry • Molecular Biology • Cell Biology	Link	3.42	-	-	1.361
Applied Sciences	48/270 (Q1) 15/66 (Q1) 31/116 (Q2) 18/53 (Q2) 151/434 (Q2) 186/535 (Q2)	• General Engineering • Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes • Instrumentation • Process Chemistry and Technology • General Materials Science • Computer Science Applications	Link	1.90	-	-	0.801
Biology	12/177 (Q1)* 32/186 (Q1) 10/40 (Q1)	• General Agricultural and Biological Sciences • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology • General Immunology and Microbiology	Link	3.48	3.02	2.78	0.961
Biomolecules	31/398 (Q1) * 41/367 (Q1)	• Biochemistry • Molecular Biology	Link	5.72	1.67	3.08	1.542
Biosensors	20/119 (Q1)	• Clinical Biochemistry	Link	3.59	2.83	2.37	1.122
Brain Sciences	47/111 (Q2)	• General Neuroscience	Link	2.56	-	-	0.695
Cancers	26/323 (Q1) * 23/191 (Q1)	• Oncology • Cancer Research	Link	5.82	5.02	4.07	1.567
Catalysts	32/151 (Q1) 21/46 (Q2)	• Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Catalysis	Link	3.23	3.44	3.45	0.954
Crystals	76/272 (Q2) 140/434 (Q2) 127/398 (Q2) 26/64 (Q2)	• General Chemical Engineering • General Materials Science • Condensed Matter Physics • Inorganic Chemistry	Link	1.97	1.89	1.47	0.745
Diagnostics	49/119 (Q2)	• Clinical Biochemistry	Link	2.43	-	-	0.788
Diversity	30/124 (Q1) 14/52 (Q2) 83/306 (Q2) 11/29 (Q2)	• Nature and Landscape Conservation • Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous) • Ecology • Ecological Modelling	Link	2.15	2.03	1.96	1.300
Electronics	109/644 (Q1) 26/148 (Q1) 42/224 (Q1) 50/259 (Q1) 23/96 (Q1)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Hardware and Architecture • Control and Systems Engineering • Computer Networks and Communications • Signal Processing	Link	2.97	-	-	1.227
Energies	6/73 (Q1) * 31/192 (Q1) 103/644 (Q1) 4/16 (Q1) 47/140 (Q2)	• Control and Optimization • Energy Engineering and Power Technology • Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Energy (miscellaneous) • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment	Link	3.11	2.50	2.87	1.340
Entropy	35/202 (Q1)	• General Physics and Astronomy	Link	2.41	1.87	1.99	1.189
Forests	17/129 (Q1)	• Forestry	Link	2.31	2.06	1.76	0.990
Future Internet	132/259 (Q3)	• Computer Networks and Communications	Link	1.25	-	-	-
Games	132/187 (Q3) 78/110 (Q3) 305/418 (Q3)	• Statistics and Probability • Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty • Applied Mathematics	Link	0.61	0.87	0.57	1.038
Genes	21/91 (Q1) 74/311 (Q1)	• Genetics (clinical) • Genetics	Link	3.49	3.62	3.18	0.374
Geosciences	32/182 (Q1)	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	1.97	1.67	1.29	0.856
Information	143/251 (Q3)	• Information Systems	Link	1.16	0.78	0.94	1.146
Insects	27/135 (Q1)	• Insect Science	Link	1.85	1.81	1.38	0.719
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	80/478 (Q1) 34/106 (Q2)	• Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health • Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis	Link	2.41	2.38	2.42	0.931
International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	7/69 (Q1) * 61/535 (Q1) 20/163 (Q1) 9/64 (Q1) 26/151 (Q1) 89/367 (Q2) 17/46 (Q2)	• Spectroscopy • Computer Science Applications • Organic Chemistry • Inorganic Chemistry • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Molecular Biology • Catalysis	Link	3.86	3.73	3.37	0.998
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJGI)	79/605 (Q1) 22/82 (Q2) 13/36 (Q2)	• Geography, Planning and Development • Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) • Computers in Earth Sciences	Link	2.10	1.62	1.52	1.062
Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM)	10/841 (Q1) *	• General Medicine	Link	7.07	-	-	1.535
Journal of Functional Biomaterials (JFB)	43/199 (Q1) 23/77 (Q2)	• Biomedical Engineering • Biomaterials	Link	3.47	-	-	1.344
Journal of Low Po- wer Electronics and Applications (JLPEA)	301/644 (Q2)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering	Link	1.12	0.98	0.83	0.367
Journal of Personalized Medicine (JPM)	54/189 (Q2)	• Medicine (miscellaneous)	Link	2.61	-	-	0.944
Land	50/124 (Q2) 129/306 (Q2) 36/65 (Q3)	• Nature and Landscape Conservation • Ecology • Global and Planetary Change	Link	1.44	-	-	0.658
Life	4/94 (Q1) * 70/561 (Q1) 40/186 (Q1) 20/80 (Q2)	• Palaeontology • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology • Space and Planetary Science	Link	3.16	2.95	1.68	0.935
Marine Drugs	17/146 (Q1)	• Drug Discovery	Link	4.58	3.83	3.66	1.537
Materials	83/434 (Q1)	• General Materials Science	Link	3.02	3.26	3.11	1.285
Membranes	5/18 (Q2) 15/53 (Q2) 4/10 (Q2)	• Chemical Engineering (miscellaneous) • Process Chemistry and Technology • Filtration and Separation	Link	2.69	2.19	2.95	0.880
Metabolites	47/209 (Q1) 103/398 (Q2) 127/367 (Q2)	• Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism • Biochemistry • Molecular Biology	Link	3.35	-	-	0.925
Metals	155/434 (Q2)	• General Materials Science	Link	1.87	-	-	0.955
Micromachines	105/554 (Q1) 154/644 (Q1) 64/224 (Q2)	• Mechanical Engineering • Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Control and Systems Engineering	Link	2.31	1.83	1.78	0.987
Minerals	33/175 (Q1) 45/208 (Q1)	• Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology • Geology	Link	2.21	2.13	1.77	1.149
Molecules	4/25 (Q1) 25/172 (Q1) 18/104 (Q1) 31/163 (Q1) 30/151 (Q1) 31/146 (Q1) 55/160 (Q2)	• Chemistry (miscellaneous) • Pharmaceutical Science • Analytical Chemistry • Organic Chemistry • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Drug Discovery • Molecular Medicine	Link	3.27	3.09	2.65	1.146
Nutrients	11/255 (Q1) * 9/112 (Q1) *	• Food Science • Nutrition and Dietetics	Link	4.35	4.29	4.07	1.403
Pathogens	38/263 (Q1) 20/108 (Q1) 9/40 (Q1) 40/164 (Q1) 110/367 (Q2)	• Infectious Diseases • Microbiology (medical) • General Immunology and Microbiology • Immunology and Allergy • Molecular Biology	Link	3.52	-	-	1.166
Pharmaceuticals	14/172 (Q1) * 33/160 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science • Molecular Medicine	Link	4.12	4.90	3.64	1.370
Pharmaceutics	21/172 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science	Link	3.68	3.83	2.68	1.092
Photonics	30/116 (Q1) 80/270 (Q2) 53/160 (Q2)	• Instrumentation • Radiology Nuclear Medicine and Imaging • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics	Link	1.96	-	-	0.817
Plants	73/561 (Q1) 48/389 (Q1) 44/306 (Q1)	• Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics • Plant Science • Ecology	Link	3.13	-	-	0.969
Polymers	17/142 (Q1) 63/359 (Q1)	• Polymers and Plastics • General Chemistry	Link	3.30	3.74	3.37	1.213
Religions	26/389 (Q1) *	• Religious Studies	Link	0.56	-	-	0.676
Remote Sensing	13/182 (Q1) *	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	4.03	3.56	3.76	1.559
Resources	19/142 (Q1) 39/261 (Q1)	• Nature and Landscape Conservation • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law	Link	2.69	-	-	1.387
Scientia Pharmaceutica	92/172 (Q3)	• Pharmaceutical Science	Link	0.86	-	-	0.513
Sensors	9/116 (Q1) * 25/160 (Q1) 100/644 (Q1) 19/104 (Q1) 113/398 (Q2)	• Instrumentation • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics • Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Analytical Chemistry • Biochemistry	Link	3.23	2.78	2.21	1.550
Social Sciences	81/213 (Q2)	• General Social Sciences	Link	0.60	-	-	0.445
Sustainability	61/605 (Q1) * 55/261 (Q1) 60/140 (Q2)	• Geography, Planning and Development • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment	Link	2.37	1.96	1.78	1.030
Symmetry	44/327 (Q1) 17/45 (Q2) 16/40 (Q2) 14/25 (Q2)	• General Mathematics • Computer Science (miscellaneous) • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous) • Chemistry (miscellaneous)	Link	1.32	1.12	0.95	0.802
Toxins	18/106 (Q1) 21/111 (Q1)	• Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis • Toxicology	Link	3.32	3.34	3.76	1.136
Vaccines	5/230 (Q1) * 13/263 (Q1) * 18/302 (Q1) * 11/146 (Q1) * 32/189 (Q1)	• Pharmacology (medical) • Infectious Diseases • Pharmacology • Drug Discovery • Immunology	Link	4.88	1.23	3.76	1.255
Viruses	29/263 (Q1) 16/68 (Q1)	• Virology • Infectious Diseases	Link	3.88	3.60	3.74	1.130
Water	66/605 (Q1) 37/191 (Q1) 43/199 (Q1) 193/398 (Q2)	• Geography, Planning and Development • Water Science and Technology • Aquatic Science • Biochemistry	Link	2.29	2.05	1.96	1.007

MDPI will be represented at the ESA Annual Meeting 2018 which will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, 5–10 August 2018.

Extreme events, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, fires and storms, are exacerbated by human activities and challenge populations, communities and ecosystems, as well as our human health and living conditions. The ability of ecosystems to respond to these challenges depends on the integrity of resilience mechanisms that have been severely undermined by land-use practices that increase effects of extreme conditions. Past civilizations, such as the Maya and Mesopotamians, apparently exacerbated the droughts (that caused their demise) through deforestation and agricultural practices similar to our own. Clearly, the sustainability of ecosystem services and human well-being depends on ecosystem resilience to extreme events.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Forests
• Land
• IJERPH
• Water
• Environments
• Fire
• Sustainability
• Safety
• Agronomy
• Social Science
• Climate

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #208). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have regarding open access publishing or our journals. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://esa.org/neworleans/

We are pleased to announce the results of the first MDPI Writing Prize. We received a large number of entries from across the globe on the theme of “The Global Benefits of Open Research”. It was a pleasure to read so many original, well-researched and well-presented ideas, and the final choice was not an easy one. We are pleased to announce that the winners are as follows:

1st prize (500 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Edmond Sanganyado, Shantou University, China

2nd prizes (250 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Kamala T. Rajahgopal, Asia e University, Malaysia
Yin Zhixuan, Qingdao University of Technology, China

3rd prizes (100 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Alexandra Ticea, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Romania
Ankur Sarker, University of Virginia, USA
Daniel Attoye, United Arab Emirates University, UAE

Congratulations to all of them! The winning entries can be downloaded by clicking on the names above. A compilation of all entries will soon be available as an open access book.

The writing prize is sponsored by the MDPI English editing service.

Location: Vancouver Convention Center, Vancouver, Canada
Date: 11–14 November 2018

We will be attending the 2018 ESA, ESC, and ESBC Joint Annual Meeting (Entomology 2018) in Vancouver, Canada from November 11 to 14, 2018. The Entomological Society of America (ESA) is the largest organization serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and individuals in related disciplines from around the world. This Annual Meeting offers unique opportunities to share your research, gain exposure, and collaborate across border and across these three Societies. Connect with over 3,000 scientists and researchers from around the globe over the four science-filled days. Representatives of the following MDPI open access journals will attend:

Insects (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/insects)
Agriculture (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agriculture)  
Agronomy (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy)
Biology (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/biology)
Diversity (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/diversity)
Forests (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forest)

If you are attending this conference, please stop by our booth (Booth #407). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have concerning open access publishing and our journals.

For more information about the conference, please visit:

https://www.entsoc.org/events/annual-meeting

At MDPI, we always want to keep you up to date. Even for already published articles, some corrections or minor changes may occur. To prevent you from missing any updates, from now on you will be able to access the latest version of any manuscript by clicking on the “check for updates” logo that you can find in the PDF file, even if you have saved the file on your computer.

We are proud to announce that MDPI is now a member of UKSG, the UK´s largest scholarly communications community. Through UKSG, different stakeholders share their knowledge and experience in order to improve the knowledge and information environment for researchers. UKSG´s members include universities, publishers, content providers, intermediaries, and other similar organisations. Members participate in discussions and events on issues around scholarly communications.

The UKSG Annual Conference and Exhibition is a flagship initiative from the UKSG and one of the most stimulating events in the scholarly communications calendar. It is held annually and attracts a large number of delegates. More information is available at https://www.uksg.org/events/annualconference

MDPI is delighted to be a part of this active community and we look forward to making our own contribution. We will continue to support organisations and initiatives that boost collaboration and vision within scholarly communication.

More information about UKSG can be found at https://www.uksg.org/. The full membership list is available at: https://www.uksg.org/members.

The DORA initiative addresses the need for advanced approaches in the evaluation and measurement of the quality of scientific research outputs. It is a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines. MDPI proudly joins a list of more than 400 organizations around the world which support DORA’s recommendations for improving the way the quality of research results is evaluated.

More info can be found at http://www.ascb.org/dora/

We will be attending the 255th ACS National Meeting & Exposition. It is an interdisciplinary forum open to anyone with an interest in Chemistry and the related disciplines. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Agronomy
Applied Sciences
Beverages
Biomimetics
Biosensors
C
Catalysts
ChemEngineering
Chemosensors
Coatings
Energies
Environments
Fibers
Foods
Gels
Inorganics
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (JMSE)
Lubricants
Materials
Mathematics
Metals
Molecules
Nanomaterials
Polymers
Processes
Resources
Safety
Sensors
Separations
Sustainability
Symmetry
Toxins
Water

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #640). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/meetings/national-meeting.html?sc=home_meetings_170818_mtg_NO18_od

The collection of journals in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)—the most prestigious part of the Web of Science Core Collection—keeps expanding. Last year, nine MDPI open access journals were added in SCIE; they are due to receive first Journal Impact Factors in June 2018.

Journal	Current Volume	Scope
	Vol. 10 (2018) | articles Twitter	Oncology | more | submit article
	Vol. 8 (2018) | articles	Animal science; animal welfare | more | submit article
	Vol. 7 (2018) | articles	Cell biology; cell structure; cell function and processes; molecular biology and biophysics | more | submit article
	Vol. 10 (2018) | articles Twitter	Pharmacokinetics; pharmacodynamics; biopharmaceutics; molecular biology and biotechnology | more | submit article
	Vol. 7 (2018) | articles Twitter	General and internal medicine; healthcare research and practice | more | submit article
	Vol. 9 (2018) | articles Twitter	Entomology; physiology and ecology of insects; taxonomy of insects | more | submit article
	Vol. 6 (2018) | articles Twitter	Chemistry applied to agronomy; agroecology; food science | more | submit article
	Vol. 7 (2018) | articles	Electrical engineering; microelectronics; signal processing | more | submit article
	Vol. 6 (2018) | articles	Chemical engineering and processing; biochemistry | more submit article

     

Professor Yantai Gan (right), is the recipient of 2017 CSSA (Crop Science Society of America) Fellow Award in 2017 ASA, CSSA & SSSA International Annual Meeting, Tampa, FL, USA, based on his professional achievements. The CSSA Fellow award is the highest recognition bestowed by CSSA.

 

The competition is still open until end of March! Please check out the banner for more details: https://res.mdpi.com/data/english-prize.pdf

We are delighted to announce that UCL Press has adopted MDPI's Journal Article & Management System, JAMS, including production services. JAMS is a modular, integrated editorial platform for academic publishers. It offers flexibility, ease-of-use, and is a fully integrated solution for the end-to-end management of scholarly journals. JAMS is based on the software used to publish MDPI’s portfolio of journals. 

Ian Caswell, UCL Press Journals Manager, says he is "excited to see UCL Press and MDPI partner together to implement the JAMS submission system for all UCL Press journals. The system offered a flexible, efficient and straightforward solution for our processes from author submission to ready for publication. I am grateful for the valuable experience and support MDPI have offered and look forward to developing our programme with an effective submission system in place.” Dr Martyn Rittman, MDPI’s Publishing Services Manager, adds, “We are proud to support one of the UK’s premier university presses in their publishing operation. This is an excellent way for us at MDPI to share our experience and knowledge, and benefit the research community beyond our own journals.”

JAMS combines services that are kept separate for many publishers. The entire editorial process, production and invoicing (e.g. for open access article processing charges) are fully integrated into a single platform. This allows for efficient, fast manuscript processing. For further information about JAMS, see https://www.mdpi.com/publishing_services. 

We are pleased to welcome new participants to MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), designed to help institutions manage the transition to the Open Access publishing model. Researchers affiliated with participating universites benefit from a 10% discount on the Article Processing Charges (APC) for any paper published in an MDPI journal, while the participating library or university incurs no basic fee for participating in the program.

The IOAP set of free services, provided by MDPI to institutions that sign up, include:

• No fee for participants and no obligation to prolong after the initial 12 months. The participants may withdraw from the programme at any time, and we will also keep it free for the library for as long as they continue in the programme.
• Authors affiliated with the university will receive a 10% discount on the APC.
• The institution is granted free access to the MDPI submission system and can receive free alerts of new submissions to our journals.
• By default, authors from the institution will continue to be invoiced directly unless the institution opts for central billing.
• Auto-archiving of papers into the institutions´ repository as long as it supports SWORD 1.3.

More details about the programme and a list of our current participant institutions can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap

Institutions which are interested to participate may do so online at: https://www.mdpi.com/ioap-form

The following North American universities have signed up to the IOAP program recently:

Connecticut College, USA
Emory University, USA
Florida International University, USA
Johns Hopkins University, USA
Mississippi State University, USA
Northeastern University, USA
Rice University, USA
University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada
University of Rhode Island, USA
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA
University of Toronto, Canada
University of Windsor, Canada
University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA
Wellesley College, USA
West Virginia University, USA

Many prestigious institutions from Europe and Asia have joined as well:

Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation, Malaysia
Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic
Gdansk University of Technology, Poland
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Newcastle University, UK
Northumbria University, UK
Southwest University, China
Technical University of Crete, Greece
University Malaya, Malaysia
University of Antwerp, Belgium
University of Cyprus, Cyprus
University of Manchester, UK
University of Reading, UK
University of Sussex, UK
University of Warwick, UK
West Pomeranian University of Technology Szczecin, Poland

We offer a warm welcome to the new participants!

In order to reward the academic community, especially young researchers, and enhance communication among scientists, MDPI journals regularly offer various awards to researchers in specific fields, for example, Young Investigator Awards, Travel Awards, Best Paper Awards, and Best Poster Awards, etc. The awardees range from PhD students to junior scientists.

Currently, the following 44 awards given by MDPI journals are accepting applications. Please click on the award title below to check whether you are eligible for it and start the application process.

Subject	Journal	Award	Intended Awardee
Biology & Life Sciences	Animals	Travel Award 2018	PhD students or postdoctoral researchers
	Antioxidants	Travel Awards 2018	Postdoctoral researchers or PhD students
	Biology	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Forests	2019 Travel award	Postdocs or PhD students
	International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	Outstanding Contribution Awards 2018	Ground-breaking contribution in the fields of Molecular Biology, and Molecular Pathology
	Journal of Fungi (JoF)	Travel Awards 2018	PhD graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows
	Life	Travel Award 2018	PhD students or postdoctoral fellows
	Metabolites	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
	Pharmaceuticals	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
	Toxins	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows
	Viruses	Best Oral Presentation Award 2018	Viruses 2018 participants
	Viruses	Best Poster Award 2018	Viruses 2018 participants
	Water	2018 Young Investigator Award	Young investigators
Chemistry & Materials Science	Biomimetics	Travel Award 2018	Graduate Student or Postdoctoral Trainee / Research Associate
	Catalysts	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
	Chemosensors	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Entropy	Young Investigator Award 2018	Young investigators
	Fibers	2018 Travel award	Postdocs or PhD students
	Magnetochemistry	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs
	Materials	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Metals	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Minerals	Travel Awards 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Sensors	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Sensors	Outstanding Reviewer Awards 2017	Sensors' reviewers in 2017
	Sensors	Young Investigator Award 2018	Young investigators
	Technologies	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
Computer Science & Mathematics	Multimodal Technologies and Interaction (MTI)	Travel Awards 2018	Postdoctoral researchers or PhD students
	ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information(IJGI)	2018 Travel Award	Postdocs
	Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks (JSAN)	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
	Journal of Imaging	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
Engineering	Actuators	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Remote Sensing	Best Paper Awards 2019	Authors
	Machines	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Micromachines	Travel Awards 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Fluids	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
	ChemEngineering	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral researchers and PhD students
Environmental & Earth Sciences	Diversity	Travel Awards 2018	Postdoctoral fellows
	International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	Best Paper Award 2018	Authors who submit from 1 Nov 2017 to 31 Oct 2018
	Resources	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs or PhD students
	Geosciences	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
Physical Sciences & Astronomy	Galaxies	Travel Award 2018	Ph.D. students, postdoctoral fellows, or lecturers in cosmology or galaxies physics
	Applied Science	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs
Medicine & Pharmacology; Public Health & Healthcare	Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM)	2018 Travel Award	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Medicines	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs

The Jussieu Call aims to develop and implement alternative models to meet the aims of open science while promoting bibliodiversity. In particular it wishes to promote new business models for funding open access publication. It was drafted on the Jussieu campus in Paris by a group of French researchers and scientific publishing professionals.

MDPI supports scholarly communities and initiatives that innovate and further promote Open Access publishing. There is a need to explore different frameworks to fund open access in ways that ensure that excessive funds are not diverted from research towards publishing. Many fair funding models already exist, and they can be further developed and extended. These include institutional support, library contributions or subsidies, premium services, participatory funding, etc. For this reason, MDPI has signed up to the Jussieu call and welcomes its aims.

More information can be found at http://jussieucall.org/ (archived here)

We are pleased to announce that the Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM) as well as Agronomy and Animals have been accepted into the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) in the Web of Science Core Collection (Clarivate Analytics). Coverage for the newly added titles starts from first issues in 2015. Agronomy, Animals and JCM are now eligible to be included in next year's Journal Citation Reports (JCR); they are due to receive first Journal Impact Factors in 2018.

   

The Society for Scholarly Publishing’s popular blog about topics in academic publishing, Scholarly Kitchen, recently interviewed MDPI’s CEO, Dr. Franck Vazquez. He shared some thoughts and information on the past and future of MDPI and open access publishing in general:

“In the long run, we aim to anchor MDPI in research communities. We recently developed and launched the preprint platform Preprints, revamped our free-to-use conference hosting platform Sciforum, and are working on other projects, such as Scilit, our bibliographic database.”

Read the full interview here.

We will be attending the ASA CSSA SSSA Annual Meeting 2017, which will be held at Tampa Convention Center, October 22–25, 2017, representing the following open access journals:

Agronomy
Forests
Agriculture
Foods
Plants
Land
Horticulturae
Sustainability

Please come visit our stand to chat with our delegates about our journals and travel awards that you might be interested in. The Editorial Board Member of Agronomy, Professor Jerry L. Hatfield, section leader of Global Agronomy, will also be there to answer your questions about the journal and publishing. We look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have.

Conference address:
2017 ASA CSSA SSSA Annual Meeting
Tampa Convention Center, Tampa, FL, USA

Conference date:
October 22–25 2017

For more information on the conference, please visit:
https://www.acsmeetings.org/home

We are delighted to have welcomed 24 new participants to our Institutional Open Access Programme (IOAP) since the beginning of September this year. These are University libraries and Research Institutions located around the world; from the USA and Canada to the UK, and from Norway and Spain to Greece. Well respected Universities, such as the University of Denver, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the University of Arizona in the US, have signed up, while their researchers can now benefit from a 10% discount on the Article Processing Charges (APC) for any papers they publish in MDPI journals, at no cost for the library or the University.

We are more than happy to see the Open Access movement growing stronger and wider every day and we appreciate the vital role which librarians, repository managers, and other scholarly communications professionals play in the field. Our communication with and service to this community is, therefore, one of our principal priorities. The IOAP is our way to support academic and scientific Institutions as well as their scholars in managing, administrating, and publishing research in an Open Access world.

The IOAP set of free services, provided by MDPI to institutions that sign up, include:

• No fee for participants and no obligation to prolong after the initial 12 months. The participants may withdraw from the programme at any time, and we will also keep it free for the library for as long as they continue in the programme.
• Authors affiliated with the university will receive a discount on the article processing charge (APC).
• The institution is granted free access to the MDPI submission system and can receive free alerts of new submissions to our journals.
• By default, authors from the institution will continue to be invoiced directly unless the institution opts for central billing.
• Auto-archiving of papers into the institutions´ repository as long as it supports SWORD 1.3.

More details about the programme and a list of our current participant institutions can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap

Institutions which are interested to participate may do so online at: https://www.mdpi.com/ioap-form

 The full list of the Institutions that signed up in September is as follows:

1. University of Denver, USA
2. University of Colorado Boulder, USA
3. University of Arizona, USA
4. Institute of Metrology of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina
5. Middlebury College, USA
6. Touro College, USA
7. University of New Orleans, USA
8. University of Leicester, UK
9. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
10. University of Strathclyde, UK
11. Cranfield University, UK
12. Hope College, USA
13. Oregon State University, USA
14. Drew University, USA
15. Swansea University, UK
16. University of South Florida, USA
17. University of Georgia, USA
18. Arizona State University, USA
19. University of Southern Mississippi, USA
20. Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada
21. Grinnell College, USA
22. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
23. University of Patras, Greece
24. Public University of Navarre, Spain

Congratulations to the authors Javier Monroy and Javier Gonzalez-Jimenez from Universidad de Malaga, Spain, Victor Hernandez-Bennets, Han Fan and Achim Lilienthal from Örebro University, Sweden for publishing the 100,000th peer-reviewed article.

The article is published in the Chemical Sensors section of Sensors.

GADEN: A 3D Gas Dispersion Simulator for Mobile Robot Olfaction in Realistic Environments

Evermore pressing environmental concerns have led global actors and decision-makers to search for stricter emission monitoring approaches. As part of novel monitoring systems, robots with gas and environmental sensors are a promising solution. However, validation of such robotic inspectors is expensive, time consuming, and plagued by repeatability issues. In this article, we present GADEN (the short form for Gas Dispersion Simulator for Mobile Robot Olfaction in Realistic Environments), which combines gas dispersion and robotics simulation in a common framework. Developed under the widely used Robot Operating System (ROS), GADEN enables validation of sensing strategies with gas dispersion being simulated using computational fluid dynamics and filament dispersion theory. GADEN allows simulating complex, realistic, 3D environments for reproducible testing of robotic gas sensing algorithms. Through qualitative and quantitative evaluations, we show that GADEN is a versatile and user-friendly evaluation tool and emphasize its enormous potential for the mobile robot olfaction community.

 

Read the full article here: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/17/7/1479/htm

The CiteScore, the new citation metric for journals covered in the Scopus® database, was released on 1 June 2017, reflecting the citation activity in 2016 for articles published during the three previous years. Please note that the list below does not contain all MDPI journals covered in Scopus. For the CiteScore to serve as a reliable metric at least three volumes of articles need to be indexed in Scopus; journals which have not met this criterion have been omitted here.

Ten MDPI journals received a CiteScore which is in the Top 10% of scores in at least one of the categories, while a further 21 journals exhibit scores that are in the first quartile of the respective categories.

CiteScore Data for MDPI Journals

Journal	Rank	Category	Link	CiteScore 2016	2015	2014
Algorithms	44/112 (Q2) 49/111 (Q2) 19/42 (Q2) 52/113 (Q2)	• Numerical Analysis • Computational Mathematics • Computational Theory and Mathematics • Theoretical Computer Science	Link	1.15	1.07	1.06
Animals	69/343 (Q1) 21/146 (Q1)	• Animal Science and Zoology • General Veterinary	Link	1.46	1.66	0.74
Biology	13/92 (Q1) 34/81 (Q1) 10/75 (Q1)	• General Agricultural and Biological Sciences • General Biochemistry, Gene- tics and Molecular Biology • General Immunology and Microbiology	Link	3.02	2.78	1.74
Biomolecules	234/382 (Q3) 260/353 (Q3)	• Biochemistry • Molecular Biology	Link	1.67	3.08	1.00
Biosensors	36/118 (Q2) 209/2156 (Q1)	• Clinical Biochemistry • General Medicine	Link	2.83	2.37	2.04
Cancers	29/196 (Q1) 27/321 (Q1)	• Cancer Research • Oncology	Link	5.02	4.07	2.31
Catalysts	18/44 (Q2) 27/144 (Q1)	• Catalysis • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry	Link	3.44	3.45	2.17
Crystals	70/270 (Q2) 25/64 (Q2) 118/398 (Q2) 131/424 (Q2)	• General Chemical Engineering • Inorganic Chemistry • Condensed Matter Physics • General Materials Science	Link	1.89	1.47	1.03
Diversity	10/41 (Q1) 9/25 (Q2) 76/291 (Q2) 24/109 (Q1)	• Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous) • Ecological Modelling • Ecology • Nature and Landscape Conservation	Link	2.03	1.96	1.82
Energies	-	-	Link	2.50	2.87	2.66
Entropy	51/198 (Q2)	• General Physics and Astronomy	Link	1.87	1.99	1.69
Forests	17/127 (Q1)	• Forestry	Link	2.06	1.76	1.84
Games	204/398 (Q3) 83/181 (Q2) 48/105 (Q2)	• Applied Mathematics • Statistics and Probability • Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty	Link	0.87	0.57	0.64
Genes	62/300 (Q1) 18/90 (Q1)	• Genetics • Genetics (clinical)	Link	3.62	3.18	1.33
Geosciences	36/169 (Q1)	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	1.67	1.29	1.13
Information	156/237 (Q3)	• Information Systems	Link	0.78	0.94	0.74
Insects	28/131 (Q1)	• Insect Science	Link	1.81	1.38	1.23
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	67/446 (Q1) 31/102 (Q2)	• Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health • Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis	Link	2.38	2.42	2.47
International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	23/157 (Q1) 8/64 (Q1) 90/353 (Q1) 22/144 (Q1) 16/44 (Q1) 8/62 (Q1)	• Organic Chemistry • Inorganic Chemistry • Molecular Biology • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Catalysis • Spectroscopy	Link	3.73	3.37	3.06
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information	12/29 (Q2) 28/79 (Q2) 96/587 (Q1)	• Computers in Earth Sciences • Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) • Geography, Planning and Development	Link	1.62	1.52	-
Journal of Low Power Electronic Applications (JLPEA)	301/645 (Q2)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering	Link	0.98	0.83	0.83
Life	65/525 (Q1) 36/186 (Q1) 5/92 (Q1) 20/80 (Q2)	• Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics • General Biochemistry, Gene- tics and Molecular Biology • Palaeontology • Space and Planetary Science	Link	2.95	1.68	1.20
Marine Drugs	18/145 (Q1)	• Drug Discovery	Link	3.83	3.66	3.59
Materials	63/424 (Q1)	• General Materials Science	Link	3.26	3.11	2.69
Membranes	103/424 (Q1)	• Materials Science	Link	2.19	2.95	2.42
Micromachines	173/645 (Q2) 69/211 (Q2) 113/526 (Q1)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Control and Systems Engineering • Mechanical Engineering	Link	1.83	1.78	2.10
Minerals	45/206 (Q1) 29/167 (Q1)	• Geology • Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology	Link	2.13	1.77	-
Molecules	32/157 (Q1)	• Organic Chemistry	Link	3.09	2.65	2.62
Nutrients	12/247 (Q1)	• Food Science	Link	4.29	4.07	3.78
Pharmaceuticals	8/168 (Q1) 21/158 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science • Molecular Medicine	Link	4.90	3.64	1.92
Pharmaceutics	19/168 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science	Link	3.83	2.68	2.46
Polymers	13/138 (Q1) 44/354 (Q1)	• Polymers and Plastics • General Chemistry	Link	3.74	3.37	4.10
Remote Sensing	13/169 (Q1)	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	3.56	3.76	3.23
Sensors	25/96 (Q2) 25/159 (Q1) 124/382 (Q2) 103/645 (Q1)	• Analytical Chemistry • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics • Biochemistry • Electrical and Electronic Engineering	Link	2.78	2.21	2.40
Sustainability	49/129 (Q2) 68/587 (Q1) 56/236 (Q1)	• Renewable Energy, Sustai-nability and the Environment • Geography, Planning and Development • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law	Link	1.96	1.78	1.52
Symmetry	17/42 (Q2) 49/111 (Q2)	• Numerical Analysis • Computational Mathematics	Link	1.12	0.95	1.02
Toxins	16/102 (Q1) 16/108 (Q1)	• Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis • Toxicology	Link	3.34	3.76	2.85
Vaccines	146/184 (Q4) 151/250 (Q3) 93/145 (Q3) 186/299 (Q3) 130/232 (Q3)	• Immunology • Infectious Diseases • Drug Discovery • Pharmacology • Pharmacology (medical)	Link	1.23	3.76	2.85
Viruses	15/68 (Q1) 34/250 (Q1)	• Virology • Infectious Diseases	Link	3.60	3.74	3.80
Water	33/184 (Q1) 48/195 (Q1) 62/587 (Q1) 198/382 (Q3)	• Water Science and Technology • Aquatic Science • Geography, Planning and Development • Biochemistry	Link	2.05	1.96	1.45

We are pleased to announce that the Goethe University of Frankfurt, the Technical University of Hamburg (TU Hamburg-Harburg), as well as the Humboldt University of Berlin, in Germany, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

          

 

As an open access publisher, we are keen to support openness and transparency in the research process. Citation data is very important for assessing the value of individual papers and the contribution of researchers. As such, we support the recently launched Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC). The initiative recognizes that citations should be freely available and machine-readable. By doing so, authors gain the maximum benefit from having their work cited.

MDPI now uploads citation data with metadata uploaded to Crossref when registering digital object identifiers (DOIs) for published papers. We are delighted to take this step to support a truly open research environment.

Getting high quality review reports is critical for any journal’s editorial process. At MDPI we have put in place several measures to motivate reviewers and reward them for their work. We are proud of the quality of reviewer reports we receive and grateful for the hours put in by active researchers from across the globe.

Reviewers of MDPI’s largest journals can get recognition via Publons, a website dedicated to rewarding peer reviewers. They have now taken this one step further and launched the Publons Reviewer Academy to help train reviewers to provide useful feedback. Through the academy, researchers can be trained and tutored in various aspects of how to provide structured feedback that will be of genuine help to editors and authors. We support this initiative and recommend it to potential MDPI reviewers, especially early career researchers. See the Publons announcement for further information.

More information on reviewing for MDPI, including how to volunteer as a reviewer, can be found here.

We are pleased to announce that the following universities have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, USA and the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia. Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

     

 

Preprints.org is a platform run by MDPI that allows authors to make early versions of manuscripts available before peer review has been completed.

One of the major benefits of putting a preprint online is to get feedback before journal submission. Until now, however, the feedback has been on a voluntary basis. Preprints is delighted to be the first preprint server to collaborate with Publons to acknowledge substantial comments as reviews and give commentators the opportunity to receive credit for their efforts. 

When you add a comment to any article, there is a check box to click for it to appear on Publons. If you have already linked your account it will be passed on automatically. If you don't already have a Publons account, you will be contacted soon afterwards with instructions on how to create one.

We appreciate the enthusiasm and cooperation of Publons in this project and expect it to be of great benefit to authors and commenters alike.

We are pleased to announce that our annual report for the year 2016 has now been published. 

It contains information regarding company and journal performance, conferences and other publishing services that we provided throughout 2016. 

To read the report in full or download a copy, please click here.

After the 20th anniversary of MDPI in 2016, we will reach another milestone this year and will publish the 100,000th peer-reviewed article in one of our 170+ open access journals.

We would like you to be part of this great achievement and so are offering to publish the 100,000th accepted paper free of charge.

To be in with a chance, select a journal in one of our 10 scientific subject areas and submit your paper.

Access the live tracker on published articles here.

 

 

We are delighted that Preprints now has 1000 papers online since its launch on 3 May 2016.

For more information, see the editorial here.

 

We are pleased to announce that MDPI will be attending the 2017 AAG Annual Meeting (5-9 April 2017) and representing the following open access journals:

Remote Sensing
Sustainability
Land
Water
Humanities
Agriculture
Geosciences
Agronomy
Social Sciences
Administrative Sciences
Data
Climate
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information
Urban Science

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #422) and meet the representative editors.

Conference details:

2017 AAG Annual Meeting
5-9 April 2017
Hynes Convention Center
Boston, MA, USA
http://www.aag.org/annualmeeting

 

Earlier this week the Science Technology Park in Belgrade, Serbia was visited by Swiss Secretary of State Dr. Mauro Dell’Ambrogio, as well as Serbian Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government Ana Brnabic, State Secretary Dr. Vladimir Popovic and Mayor of Belgrade Mr. Siniša Mali.

During the visit to the STP they had a short presentation from MDPI’s CEO Dr. Franck Vazquez and IT Manager Mr. Miloš Čučulović, and further discussed important issues such as Open Access and Open education. Dr. Dell'Ambrogio said he was impressed with the potential for development and ideas for business.

For more information please see:

http://bit.ly/2kpIu7k and http://bit.ly/2kpUQfz

   

We are pleased to announce that the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, the University of Manitoba, Canada and the Technical University of Cartagena, Spain, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

 

          

 

  

The 6^th World Sustainability Forum is currently being held at the Cape Sun Hotel until 28 January 2017. 

The Forum will showcase the work of internationally renowned researchers and include more than 150 presentations. During the conference dinner, the World Sustainability Award, associated with a US$ 100,000 prize, will be announced, as well as the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award, associated with a US$ 10,000 prize. The prizes are sponsored by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation and Sustainability, an academic open access journal by MDPI.

Here are some pictures from the forum so far:

To see the full WSF2017 program and schedule, please see here: https://sciforum.net/conference/wsf-6/page/schedule

Cape Town will host the 6^th World Sustainability Forum at the Cape Sun Hotel on 27 and 28 January 2017. This prominent event, held for the first time in Africa, will include many illustrious South African and international experts, such as Her Excellency Graça Machel (Sustainable Development Advocate for the United Nations, Mozambique), Joyene Isaacs (HoD Agriculture Western Cape Government), Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University, USA), Max Bergman (SRaM, University of Basel), Mark New (Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of Cape Town), Frans Swanepoel (FutureAfrica, University of Pretoria) and Francis Petersen (Vice-Chancellor-designate, University of the Free State). The Forum will provide a stage for national and international debates on sustainability in South Africa, the African continent, and about international perspectives on sustainability. It brings together researchers and representatives from government and the business sector to discuss a wide-ranging set of issues associated with sustainability, including food security, water and energy scarcity, mining, poverty reduction, climate change, and urbanisation.

The next few decades will be marked by profound changes in the relationships between global economics, national societies, and the environment. We have entered what some call the Anthropocene, an age in which human activity dominates the climate and the environment. These changes will have numerous consequences on societies around the globe. South Africa and Africa will play a central role, for better or worse, in creating opportunities and risks during these changing times as Africa is profoundly influencing and being influenced by global developments.

The adoption of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in September 2015 was accompanied by what insiders considered an optimism they have not experienced in relation to UN resolutions before. The relative efficiency in the drafting, the lack of trenches between East and West, or between North and South, and the unanimity of support of the 193 countries speak volumes. In stark contrast, sustainability seems to go against a changing economic and political tide, where waves of nationalism and protectionism from some of the most powerful countries risk the wellbeing of the rest of the world. The 6^th World Sustainability Forum will enable fruitful exchanges, which sensitise South African and international communities to the global urgency and specifics of sustainability.

The Forum will showcase the work of internationally renowned researchers and include more than 150 presentations. During the conference dinner, the World Sustainability Award, associated with a US$ 100 000 prize, will be announced, as well as the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award, associated with a US$ 10 000 prize. The prizes are sponsored by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation and Sustainability, an academic open access journal by MDPI. The World Sustainability Forum is preceded by the Postgraduate Forum on Sustainability, which will introduce more than 100 young scholars from South Africa and the African continent to sustainability research. Both events are organized and sponsored by the University of Cape Town, the University of the Western Cape, the University of Basel, MDPI, and by the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

Contacts:

Scientific Matters: Prof Manfred Max Bergman, Social Research and Methodology Group (SRaM), University of Basel, Switzerland; Email:  [email protected]

Press Accreditation and General Enquiries: Mr Matthias Burkhalter, MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland; Email: [email protected]; Tel. +41 61 683 77 34 

Follow us on Twitter

#WSF2017SA

 

MDPI is now a proud supporter of the OA2020 Initiative.

Open Access 2020 is an international initiative that aims to induce the swift, smooth and scholarly-oriented transformation of today’s scholarly journals from subscription to open access publishing.

MDPI is participating in the upcoming Berlin13 conference in March 2017, where we are contributing to the initiative by aiding in the design of the roadmap which will make OA the default publishing model.

For more information please see here.

 

We are pleased to announce that the University of Texas at Arlington, USA, the Harbin Institute of Technology, China and TU Darmstadt, Germany, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

            

Season's greetings from everyone at MDPI!

We are pleased to announce that the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Germany and the University of California, Berkeley, USA, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

 

  

The Wellcome Trust has, for a number of years, required that the results of its funded projects are published in open access format. Recently it announced criteria that publishers must fulfil for publication fees to be paid by the Trust. MDPI is pleased to have been added to the list of compliant publishers.

Only publishers who have confirmed their compliance by 16 December 2016 will be eligible to receive payment of APCs by the Wellcome Trust as of 1 April 2017. For more information on the criteria and a full list of publishers that meet them, see here.

MDPI is currently attending the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting (12–16 December, 2016)

If you are also attending the conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #1147) and meet the representative editors.

Conference details:

2016 AGU Fall Meeting
12–16 December 2016
Moscone Center
747 Howard St
San Francisco, CA 94103, USA

 

We are pleased to announce that Purdue University, USA, the Universitat Politécnica de Valencia, Spain and the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

                           

The deadline for the World Sustainability Award has been extended for one last time! You now have one more month to nominate an individual researcher, group or project! The final deadline for nominations will be December 15, 2016. 

For full details, please visit here.

We are pleased to announce that the University of Minnesota, USA, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

                           

MDPI has become a member of the United Nations Global Compact to support corporate sustainability and have committed ourselves to the ten principles associated with the Compact.

Sustainability has always been at the core of MDPI’s values, starting with the collection and preservation of rare chemical samples that started in 1996 and led to the first journal, Molecules. Sustainability has become one of our flagship journals and we have supported and organized several conferences and events based on Sustainability, including the upcoming 6th World Sustainability Forum. As a global enterprise, we see it as our duty to promote responsible practices that will ensure a bright future for our planet. Given this, the choice to join the Global Compact was an easy one and we will do our utmost to fully implement it.

 

We are delighted to announce that MDPI has become a member of SPARC Europe, an organization that works for open scholarship in Europe, including support of open access publication.

As one of the few publishers to join SPARC Europe to date, MDPI looks forward to making a contribution that puts open scholarship on a positive and sustainable path. We fully support the goals of open scholarship that allow the largest number of people possible to benefit from work of researchers in all disciplines. We hope that our membership will enable us to work with other stakeholders to find the best possible solution.

The deadline for the World Sustainability Award has been extended! You now have until November 15, 2016 to nominate an individual researcher, group or project!

For full details, please visit here.

.

We are pleased to announce that the Wuppertal Institut, Germany, the University of Girona, Spain and Central South University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

  

Meet us during International Open Access Week 2016! We will be presenting at various locations in Europe and China. 

To get involved and for full details see the complete list of events organised by MDPI here.

 

We are pleased to announce that the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain and Aalto University, Finland, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

   

We are pleased to announce that the Iowa State University and the University of North Texas, USA, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

  

Meet MDPI during the Open Access Days held from 10-11 October 2016 at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. 

The two-day event will feature experts from the open access sector, scientists from all disciplines, publishing representatives and supporters of scientific research and communication from libraries as well as research institutes and funding institutions. Join us!

For more information about the event and to see the program, visit the event webpage.

We are pleased to announce that the University of Sevilla and the University of Alicante, Spain have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

  

We are pleased to announce that the University of Delaware, USA, has joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from this university will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

As an open access publisher indebted to the work of our peer reviewers, we are proud to support Peer Review Week 2016. As part of the week's activities and to celebrate this year's theme "Recognition for Review", MDPI will host two webinars that anyone can join.

These webinars will explore the role and value of reviewers and the recognition they receive from a publishers perspective, with examples from MDPI's experience in publishing nearly 80,000 peer reviewed papers, along with evidence from reviewer surveys. It will also touch upon potential changes in how review is carried out and tips for early career researchers who want to be involved in the review process.

Details and links to join can be found below:

Wednesday September 21, 08:00 (CEST)

Friday September 23, 16:00 (CEST)

For more information about all the activites taking place, please visit the Peer Review Week website.

 

We are pleased to announce that Kansas State University and Northwestern Universty, USE, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.