Announcements

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

Updated Impact Factors

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
agronomy@mdpi.com
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.

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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

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: office@encyclopedia.pub)

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/.