Announcements
29 September 2024
Meet Us at the Fifth National Conference on Food Biotechnology, 26–27 October 2024, Shanghai, China
27 September 2024
MDPI’s 2023 Travel Awards—Winners Announced
27 September 2024
Meet Us at the 2024 7th IEEE International Conference on Unmanned Systems, 18–20 October 2024, Nanjing, China
14 September 2024
Meet Us at the Biomaterials and Novel Technologies for Healthcare, 4th International Biennial Conference BioMaH, 15–18 October 2024, Rome, Italy
11 September 2024
Applied Sciences | Invitation to Read the Updated Editor's Choice Articles Published in 2023
11 September 2024
MDPI’s 2023 Best PhD Thesis Awards—Winners Announced
3 September 2024
Applied Sciences | Top 10 Cited Papers in 2023 in the Section “Applied Biosciences and Bioengineering”
3 September 2024
Applied Sciences | Top 10 Cited Papers in 2023 in the Section “Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering”
3 September 2024
MDPI INSIGHTS: The CEO's Letter #15 - CHORUS, Best Paper Award, August Events
Welcome to the MDPI Insights: The CEO's Letter.
In these monthly letters, I will showcase two key aspects of our work at MDPI: our commitment to empowering researchers and our determination to facilitating open scientific exchange.
Opening Thoughts
I am pleased to share that MDPI is now an Affiliate Member of CHORUS, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to ensuring public access to articles reporting on U.S. government-funded research. This partnership highlights our long-standing commitment to advancing Open Access (OA) publishing and meeting funders’ open research requirements.
Read the full announcement here.
With the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) 2022 memorandum calling for immediate public access to all federally funded research by 2026, this partnership positions MDPI to further support academic institutions in adhering to national mandates while providing authors with fully compliant (CC-BY) OA journals.
The CHORUS platform went live in July 2014 and includes NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the National Science Foundation.
“This partnership positions MDPI to further support academic institutions in adhering to national mandates”
Joining CHORUS perfectly aligns our mission as the leading OA publisher, which is to drive transparency and innovation in scholarly publishing, with that of CHORUS itself, which is to advance Open Access research. It will also support MDPI publications from organizations such as NASA, with 1,200 research papers published by NASA-affiliated authors as at 31 August 2024.
Impactful Research
MDPI’s Best Paper Awards—Award-Winning Papers in 2023 Announced
MDPI is committed to supporting and recognizing the academic community and is proud to announce the recipients of the 2023 Best Paper Awards, which recognize high-quality papers of significant scientific merit and impact. Each year, the editors of our journals carefully select papers that showcase outstanding scientific achievement.
This year, 115 Best Paper Awards were presented, chosen from 346 exceptional papers in a highly competitive selection process. Congratulations to the authors for their remarkable contributions!
To learn more about all the awardees and their research projects, visit the following pages:
- Biology and Life Sciences
- Business and Economics
- Chemistry and Materials Sciences
- Computer Sciences and Mathematics
- Engineering
- Environmental and Earth Sciences
- Medicine and Pharmacology
- Public Health and Healthcare
- Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities
- Physical Sciences
About MDPI Awards
MDPI regularly offers various awards to recognize researchers, particularly young scientists, and to promote communication within the scientific community. These awards exist to inspire and acknowledge talented scientists who have made significant contributions to advancing their fields.
To find out more MDPI awards, please click here.
“Our awards exist to inspire and acknowledge talented scientists”
Inside MDPI
MDPI AI Team Presented at EuroSciPy 2024 in Poland
As part of the CEO Letter, I hold dear this ‘Inside MDPI’ section, where I have an opportunity to highlight various projects, teams and updates within our organization. As such, I’m happy to showcase the following presentations from members of MDPI’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) team, which were recently presented at the EuroSciPy 2024 (16th European Conference on Python in Science). This conference took place in Szczecin, Poland from 26–30 August.
“This event was a great opportunity to reinforce our commitment to innovation and excellence in publishing”
MDPI colleagues Frank Sauerburger (AI Tech Leader) and Daniele Raimondi (Senior Data Scientist) both presented at the conference. Frank discussed MDPI’s AI infrastructure, while Daniele showcased a new methodological approach we have been developing to track the journey of rejected academic manuscripts. This approach combines AI, data science and analytics to improve the identification of manuscripts and authors, enhancing our understanding of publishing dynamics.
This event was a great opportunity to reinforce our commitment to innovation and excellence in publishing. It also allowed us to contribute to the academic discussion on integrating AI and data science into scholarly communication.
From data analysis in Jupyter Notebooks to production applications: AI infrastructure at reasonable scale – Frank Sauerburger
Frank’s presentation on MDPI’s AI infrastructure provided a chance to showcase the advanced technological frameworks that power our operations. Given the technical and academic focus of EuroSciPy, this talk demonstrated how MDPI’s AI capabilities are not only cutting-edge but also central to driving efficiency and innovation in scholarly publishing. Engaging with the EuroSciPy community helps position MDPI as a leader in applying AI within the publishing industry, fostering potential collaborations and attracting interest from top researchers.
A Qdrant and Specter2 framework for tracking resubmissions of rejected manuscripts in academia – Daniele Raimondi
Daniele’s talk on the novel methodological approach that combines AI, Data Science, and Analytics was crucial in highlighting how MDPI is advancing the precision and effectiveness of manuscript and author identification. This approach is pivotal in enhancing our understanding of publishing dynamics and ensuring the quality and integrity of the academic content we manage. By presenting at EuroSciPy, we had the opportunity to engage with an audience deeply involved in scientific computing, gaining feedback and insights that could further refine our methodologies.
Thank you, Frank and Daniele, for representing MDPI so well!
I will share more about MDPI’s AI team and projects in upcoming CEO Letters, as we have a well-rounded AI and Data Team working on an exciting suite of AI products for MDPI and the scholarly community at large.
Coming Together for Science
The 1st International Conference on AI Sensors & The 10th International Symposium on Sensor Science
I am pleased to share the success of our MDPI conference The 1st International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Sensors and the 10th International Symposium on Sensor Science in Singapore this past 1–4 August.
With nearly 400 attendees, the event brought together researchers and industry experts from China, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India and other countries to share their findings on the latest developments in sensors, sensing technology, artificial intelligence for sensing applications and AI-enhanced sensing systems.
We accepted a total of 355 abstracts, featuring 772 authors from 28 countries. Over the course of the four-day event, 66 posters were displayed and 296 talks were delivered, including 4 plenary talks, 46 keynote speeches, 122 invited talks, and 124 selected oral presentations. View the event gallery here.
I am pleased to announce the winners of the four awards, including Best Presentation and Best Poster, recognizing the contributions of our participants during the conference.
Looking ahead, the 2nd International Conference on AI Sensors and Transducers is scheduled to take place from 29 July to 5 August, 2025, in Bangkok, Thailand.
Thank you to our Conference team, including Ionut Spatar, Teodora Nicoleta Cremene, Ang Kai Lin, Benjamin Tay, Leong Jin Yue Esther, Wong Jolin, Judith Wu, Alethea Liu and Flora Li, who were involved in making this event a success. A big thank-you also goes to our local MDPI colleagues for their support: Yu Nwe Soe, Hen Chu Yang, Kwah Zhi En Watcharapong, Zephan Yang, Daphne Neo, Huimin Cheng, Nathan Li and Ting Yin.
Upcoming In-Person Event
25–27 September, 2024
The 5th International Conference on Materials: Advances in Material Innovation
Location: Basel, Switzerland
ICM 2024 will unite experts to share insights on recent advancements in Materials Characterization, Processing and Manufacturing.
7–9 October, 2024
Non-coding RNA World 2024: Exploring Mechanisms, Designing Medicines
Location: Basel, Switzerland
ncRNA 2024 will explore the latest advances in the field, covering topics from basic biology to medical and technological applications.
Find more upcoming MDPI events here.
Closing Thoughts
The 2nd Sustainable Publishing Forum
In 2022, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) outlined three goals to reflect the academic community’s shared aspirations: promoting Open Science, maintaining research integrity and fulfilling social responsibility. Open Science has evolved from the Open Access movement of the early 2000s to become a preferred model in academic publishing. Publishers and academic journals play a crucial role in ensuring research integrity, with efforts to prevent misconduct markedly on the increase now.
As the world faces sustainability challenges, the academic publishing industry is increasingly committed to contributing the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Many publishers are implementing strategies to support these objectives, including ours, which you can view here.
The 2nd MDPI Sustainable Publishing Forum provided a platform for global editors and publishers to discuss these themes, aiming to strengthen collaboration and advance the contributions that scientific publishing can make to academia and society.
“Open Science has evolved to become a preferred model in academic publishing”
The 2nd Sustainable Publishing Forum
We hosted MDPI’s 2nd Sustainable Publishing Forum in Beijing, China, on 15–16 August, attracting nearly 120 attendees from local and international publishers, university presses, scientific and technical journal associations, libraries and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The event focused on promoting Open Science, maintaining research integrity, and fulfilling social responsibility.
This was an excellent opportunity for us to share more with conference attendees about the approach of our research integrity team. Our Head of Publishing, Peter Roth, also participated, speaking on how to identify and avoid predatory publishers and about the principles that underpin ethical academic publishing.
I extend my thanks to all of our conference speakers, including Hylke Koers (STM Solutions), who presented on STM Trends 2028 and shared insights on the STM Integrity Hub, of which MDPI is a member.
Chief Executive Officer
MDPI AG
27 August 2024
Interview with Mustafa Can Gursesli—Winner of the Applied Sciences 2024 Travel Award
1. Congratulations on your award! Could you briefly introduce yourself to our readers and tell us a little bit about your fields of interest?
Hi, my name is Can. I graduated with a bachelor’s in psychology and a master’s in clinical psychology. After that, I started my Ph.D. in Information Engineering, which is quite an unusual combination. My research now focuses on how video games affect emotions.
In my Ph.D. project, I mainly work on detecting emotions while people are playing video games. To do this, we improved and applied convolutional neural networks to analyze emotions during serious games. We also collect data from users ECG and PPG biosignals to understand the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Essentially, we're trying to understand how different reactions and facial expressions are linked to video games. Our goal is to create a complex model to determine the exact impact of video games on emotions.
2. Do you have any advice for aspiring young researchers looking to make a meaningful impact in their respective fields?
That is a great question. Honestly, if you had asked me three years ago where I would be today, I wouldn’t have expected to find myself in information engineering. Even six years ago, if you had asked me, I probably would have said I would be more focused on clinical psychology, given my master’s degree. But looking back, my best advice would be to embrace a multidisciplinary approach. Science today, especially with advancements in artificial intelligence and human–computer interaction, requires a broader perspective. It is crucial to consider how technologies and applications impact human life from various dimensions. We shouldn't confine ourselves to just one area. There are many fields within science, and it is important to explore and integrate different branches. This approach is especially valuable for younger people entering the field, and even for myself, as I continue to learn and grow. But the main perspective should be more focused on socialization, especially nowadays. Scientists are increasingly expected to communicate effectively, which is more important than ever before.
For example, last year, I spent three months in Japan and three months in Korea as a research assistant, while my Ph.D. is based at the University of Florence, Italy. I found that building connections through email and communication was crucial. It is essential for improving your networking and broadening your perspective. Meeting new people and experiencing different cultures can significantly impact your outlook and career. This kind of interaction is really valuable, in my opinion.
3. How supportive might this kind of award be for researchers? Do you have any suggestions on how our journal could further support the academic community?
First of all, thank you for organizing such award programs for early career researchers like me. When you come from countries where the research budget is limited—covering just travel, conference registration, even meals—you start to realize the significance of rewards and funding. When you attend a conference, you need to eat, after all.
That is why I always advise my colleagues and new Ph.D. students to keep track of these things because they will be crucial later on. Maybe not in the first year of your Ph.D., but definitely in the final year when your budget might be exhausted from summer schools, conferences, and publications. You will need that financial support, and it is frustrating if your professor doesn’t have the budget to cover it. For instance, if your paper gets accepted at a prestigious conference, what do you do? Conference registration and travel costs are quite high these days. Sadly, it is the reality we face. Ph.D. students often need to create their own budget for research. If you need a server for testing or other resources, you might have to seek out sponsorships or other solutions. While institutions are supposed to handle these needs, the current world isn’t always ideal, so finding your own solutions is sometimes necessary.
4. Do you have any suggestions for our journal, how we could further support young researchers and the academic community?
Awards are valuable and competitive, but often they are one-time opportunities. To be honest, this is a common issue with such awards. Currently, one idea will be to support small projects through specific calls. For instance, researchers can apply for funding for small projects, which may be supported for several months. This approach provides opportunities for both new and established researchers to engage in meaningful work. If we consider implementing a system similar to annual European projects, such as Horizon 2020, it could be beneficial. By opening calls for projects on a regular basis, we would provide ongoing opportunities rather than one-off rewards. This would encourage consistent engagement from the research community.
5. What is your experience with our service from the point of view of an author and reviewer?
In my opinion, my experience with MDPI journals, such as Bioengineering and Algorithms, has generally been good. Of course, there are times when some reviewers can be a bit persistent and make the process more challenging, but that is understandable and part of the process. On the whole, the editorial progress is faster than usual, which I am quite happy about. However, I have noticed that MDPI conferences are relatively rare compared to other publishers. For example, publishers host a lot of conferences, but MDPI has only started doing so in the past five years. This limited number of conferences can decrease opportunities for researchers to connect and network.
One suggestion I have is that MDPI could increase its involvement in conferences. When you publish in a journal and then have the chance to participate in a conference supported by that journal, it creates more opportunities for collaboration and networking. Creating a community involves more than just publishing papers; it is about setting goals and fostering interactions. This way, researchers can build connections and collaborate more effectively. For instance, one of my professors is on the editorial board of Bioengineering and we share a professional connection. If MDPI wants to build a stronger community, it needs to create more opportunities for interaction. Otherwise, it risks just being a platform where people publish their work without building an engaged audience. Networking is crucial, and conferences are a great way to facilitate these connections.
6. How have you heard about this award, and do you have any suggestions to improve the visibility of this award?
OK, this is quite important. For example, how I focus and become aware of opportunities like this is through my professor, Antonio Lanata. He's a fantastic, social man and engineer. We were talking about different opportunities, and he told me to look at these awards because they are quite nice and worth winning. We discussed them, and basically, when you share information with your editorial board, it's nice, but professors receive a lot of emails.
When they get something from a journal, they might read it and forget it. This is not unexpected. In my opinion, to reach people effectively, maybe target university branches. For example, there are university clubs. European universities have this kind of culture. In my case, we had a group for Information Engineering Ph.D. students. The university itself will publish information about these opportunities because they want to support their students. It makes things much easier.
Finally, I would like to thank my supervisors and teammates Andrea Guazzini, Antonio Lanata and Mirko Duradoni who supported me and were always with me as I approached the end of my Ph.D. journey.
