Announcements

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)

Antibiotics is recruiting scholars who would like to serve as Editors-in-Chief in the new section, “Antibiotic Biosynthesis”. If you are interested in this position or would like to recommend potential candidates, please contact us at antibiotics@mdpi.com.

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.

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 Antibiotics—The Equal Power of Antibiotics and Antimicrobial Resistance(ECA2021), chaired by Prof. Dr. John E. Gustafson, will be held on https://eca2021.sciforum.net from 8 to 17 May 2021.

This conference aims to provide leading scientists working in the field of antibiotics with a robust common platform through which to share and discuss the latest research and to promote the advancement of this exciting and rapidly changing field. We hope to encourage discovery across the discipline as we cover the following four broad themes in sessions A–E, as listed below:

• Antimicrobial Resistance Mechanisms and Intrinsic Microbial Factors Contributing to Resistance;
• Antimicrobial Development, Stewardship and Susceptibility Testing;
• The Epidemiology and Prevention of Infections Caused by Antimicrobial-Resistant Pathogens: Future Threats;
• Antiviral Therapies: Impact in the New Era of the COVID-19 Pandemic;
• Poster;

We are pleased to invite the global community of scholars to join ECA2021 to present their latest antibiotics research and development and share novel ideas on the multidisciplinary aspects of the research and development of antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance-related topics. Thanks to the flexibility of our innovative electronic platform, you are welcome to both 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 Antibiotics (ISSN 2079-6382, IF 3.893, https://www.mdpi.com/journal/antibiotics). Papers published in this Special Issue, should one be launched, would receive a 30% discount on the article processing charge.

ECA2021 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, presentations (including videos) and comment on other presentations, as well as 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 the papers and latest research in a discussion forum. Abstracts (in English) should be submitted by 28^th February 2021 online in the section “Conference Calls” (https://eca2021.sciforum.net). After abstracts are accepted, please submit the full paper by 1^st April 2021. The conference itself will be held from 8 to 17 May 2021. We hope that you will be able to join this exciting event which is organized and sponsored by MDPI, a scholarly open access publisher (https://www.mdpi.com/). Paper Submission Guidelines: For information about the procedure for the submission, peer-review, revision and acceptance of conference proceedings papers, please refer to the section "Instructions for Authors" at: https://eca2021.sciforum.net.Timeline:Abstract Submission: 28^th February 2021 Notification of Acceptance: 15^th March 2021

Proceedings Paper Submission Deadline: 1^st April 2021

Conference Date: 8–17 May 2021

We look forward to receiving your research papers and to welcoming you to the electronic conference.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Kind regards,

ECA Secretary
Ms. Hellen Wang
MDPI Branch Office, Beijing
E-Mail: eca2021@mdpi.com

MDPI is pleased to announce its participation in supporting the Resource Identification Initiative. This project is aimed at improving traceability, reproducibility and reuse of materials reported in Life Sciences literature. Resources such as antibodies, cell lines, model organism and other tools (software and databases) are assigned unique searchable Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs), used for referencing purposes. Readers can then easily identify the resources cited, vendors and also other articles that report the same resource in a simple and convenient manner. MDPI strongly encourages authors in the fields of Life Sciences and Biomedical research to cite materials using the RRID identifiers.

Finding or Requesting an RRID:

• RRIDs can be found on the Resource Identification Portal by entering your search terms in the search bar at the top of the page. Also provided are search tips to help you quickly identify the resource of your choice.
• The RRID and identifier (for example “RRID:AB_90755”) can be directly inserted in your manuscript.
• If you cannot find your resource listed, you can easily add it by following this link: https://scicrunch.org/resources/about/resource.

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 helen.dobson@jisc.ac.uk.

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 ioap@mdpi.com.

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 Prof. Dr. Adelaide Almeida has been appointed as the Section Editor-in-Chief for the section "Bacteriophages". She works at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. We look forward to her valuable contribution.