Announcements

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 openaccess@qnl.qa.

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

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

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

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/forests)

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