We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Ilias Kavouras has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of Atmosphere (IF: 2.686, ISSN 2073-4433, https://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere).

Prof. Dr. Ilias Kavouras is a Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy in New York City. He is trained as a chemist and an environmental health scientist. His research integrates natural and health sciences to understand atmospheric dynamics, from the release of contaminants, their fate in the atmosphere and the role of physical and chemical processes to exposure pathways and their relationship with biological mechanisms of toxicity and clinical outcomes. He is particularly interested in the interplay of climate change with atmospheric physical and chemical processes and the resultant environmental and health impacts.

Prof. Dr. Kavouras has been affiliated with research and academic institutes in the US and abroad, working on the aforementioned big-picture topics to address local and regional priorities while considering their diverse and unique characteristics. His experimental study designs include benchtop laboratory analysis and in vitro toxicology, methods development, field studies, community-based exposure and health studies, and integrated geospatial, inverse, and epidemiological modeling.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Ilias Kavouras, who shared his vision for the journal as well as his views on this research area:

1. What appealed to you about the journal and made you want to take the role as its Editor-in-Chief?

I am honored to serve the journal, Editorial Board, authors, and readers as the Editor-in-Chief of Atmosphere. Earth’s atmosphere is the single most important factor for the development and evolution of life on the planet. There is reciprocal and evolving interaction with both the natural and human ecosystems. An increasing number of scientists across many disciplines, from natural sciences to engineering, health, and social sciences are tackling the multifaceted mechanisms and impacts of atmospheric processes using state-of-the-art tools, technologies and methodological frameworks. Under the leadership of Dr. Aiken and the Editorial Board, the journal provides a forum for discipline-specific as well as interdisciplinary research, and facilitates the exchange of ideas and cross-pollination required to meet the scientific and societal challenges of a changing climate. It holds great potential to advance science and innovation on many different levels.

2. What is your vision for the journal?

It is my primary goal to continue and strengthen the journal’s prominence in atmospheric sciences as a forum of high-quality–high-impact, accessible research on fundamental atmospheric disciplines. Building on existing broader themes, it is also in the interests of the journal, the scientific community, and society to expand to atmosphere-driven transdisciplinary basic and applied research. The journal already has scientifically and geographically diverse editors, Advisory Panel Members and Editorial Board Members, but we are lacking in gender and racial diversity. It will be a priority for the editorial team, in consultation with the Advisory and Editorial Board, to further expand expertise, diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is also true for authors and readers. Creating pathways to increase diversity, accessibility, and inclusion of authors, reviewers, and readers from underrepresented and underserved groups is key to the mission and vision of the journal. Social media and interactive platforms of engagement will be integrated to engage a broader network of scientists, professionals, and policymakers across disciplines.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?

It is a great time to be working in atmospheric sciences today. There have been many breakthroughs in atmospheric sciences over the past few decades, but many more have yet to be discovered. As a result, there are many opportunities moving forward for fundamental processes, direct and indirect impacts on natural and human environments, and research-to-practice studies, covering subjects from climate change to atmospheric dynamics and chemistry, from droughts and wildfires to man-made emissions, from measurements to modeling, from mechanisms to policy and strategies. Due to recent advancements, we can obtain measurements, run simulations, and analyze big data more precisely and efficiently than in the not-so-distant past, allowing us to provide more detail, refine existing knowledge, and test new hypotheses and concepts.

4. What do you think of the development of Open Access in the publishing field?

Accessibility is key to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in science and research. The Open Access model resolves the shortcomings of traditional publishing models by enabling access to published research and studies. Many funding agencies now support the open access of publications through sponsored research. However, funding priorities and disparities pose a challenge in the implementation of the Open Access model, particularly from low- and middle-income regions. I will work with the editorial team to develop initiatives that improve inclusion. The type, character, impact, and size of basic and applied atmospheric research published in the journal are growing. Embedding open and fair data practices is beneficial to the scientific community as well as the publication process. It adds value and content, which is consistent with the Open Access publication model, and further utilizes the strengths of technology to communicate scientific outputs and outcomes.

It is our great honor to congratulate the publications that have been distinguished as highly cited papers by Clarivate in 2020–2021, according to the Web of Science data. As of September/October 2021, these highly cited papers received enough citations to place them in the top 1% of the academic field of geosciences, based on a high citation threshold for the field and the publication year analyzed in the "Essential Science Indicators", distinguishing them as hugely influential within their research area.

“Modeling Pan Evaporation Using Gaussian Process Regression K-Nearest Neighbors Random Forest and Support Vector Machines; Comparative Analysis”
Shabani, S.; Samadianfard, S.; Sattari, M.T.; Mosavi, A.; Shamshirband, S.; Kmet, T.; Várkonyi-Kóczy, A.R.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/1/66

“COVID-19 and Air Pollution: Measuring Pandemic Impact to Air Quality in Five European Countries”
Skirienė, A.F.; Stasiškienė, Ž.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/3/290

“Temporal Changes in Ozone Concentrations and Their Impact on Vegetation”
Juráň, S.; Grace, J.; Urban, O.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/1/82

“Spectral Analysis of Gravity Waves from Near Space High-Resolution Balloon Data in Northwest China”
He, Y.; Sheng, Z.; He, M.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/2/133

“Quantifying the Impact of the COVID-19 Lockdown Measures on Nitrogen Dioxide Levels throughout Europe”
Solberg, S.; Walker, S.-E.; Schneider, P.; Guerreiro, C.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/2/131

“Regional Scale Impact of the COVID-19 Lockdown on Air Quality: Gaseous Pollutants in the Po Valley, Northern Italy”
Lonati, G.; Riva, F.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/2/264

“NOx Emission Reduction and Recovery during COVID-19 in East China”
Zhang, R.; Zhang, Y.; Lin, H.; Feng, X.; Fu, T.-M.; Wang, Y.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/4/433

We are pleased to highlight several papers from academicians that have been published in Atmosphere (ISSN: 2073-4433) over the last two years. We invite you to read the selection of these papers, which are listed below.

“Characterization of Urban New Particle Formation in Amman—Jordan”
Markku Kulmala (马库·库马拉)
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/1/79

“Changes in Tropical-Cyclone Translation Speed over the Western North Pacific”
Dake Chen (陈大可)
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/1/93

“Evaluation of the Performance of Low-Cost Air Quality Sensors at a High Mountain Station with Complex Meteorological Conditions”
Wenxing Wang (王文兴)
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/2/212

“WRF-Chem Simulation of Winter Visibility in Jiangsu, China, and the Application of a Neural Network Algorithm”
Huijun Wang (王会军)
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/5/520

“Interdecadal Change in the Relationship between Northern and Southern Hemisphere Meridional Circulation over the Western Pacific Ocean”
Huijun Wang (王会军)
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/10/1106

“Interdecadal Variations in Extreme High–Temperature Events over Southern China in the Early 2000s and the Influence of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation”
Huijun Wang (王会军)
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/8/829

“Aerosol Effective Radiative Forcing in the Online Aerosol Coupled CAS-FGOALS-f3-L Climate Model”
Guangyu Shi (石广玉)
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/10/1115

“Comparison of CMIP5 and CMIP6 Multi-Model Ensemble for Precipitation Downscaling Results and Observational Data: The Case of Hanjiang River Basin”
Hao Wang (王浩)
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/7/867

“Data Assimilation of Ambient Concentrations of Multiple Air Pollutants Using an Emission-Concentration Response Modeling Framework”
Jiming Hao (郝吉明)
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/12/1289

“Oxygen Isotopes in Tree Rings from Greenland: A New Proxy of NAO”
Zhengtang Guo (郭正堂)
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/1/39

“Tropospheric NO₂ Pollution Monitoring with the GF-5 Satellite Environmental Trace Gases Monitoring Instrument over the North China Plain during Winter 2018–2019”
Wenqing Liu (刘文清)
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/3/398

“Downscaling of Future Precipitation in China’s Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region Using a Weather Generator”
Deliang Chen (陈德亮)
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/13/1/22

We cordially invite you to participate in the 4th International Electronic Conference on Environmental Research and Public Health (ECERPH2022), which will be held from 15 to 30 October 2022. Prof. Dr. Jon Øyvind Odland serves as the chair of this e-conference. He is a Professor of Global Health at NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and a specialist in GYN/OB, environmental medicine, and epidemiology. This online event will bring together researchers from all over the world with no concerns regarding travel or other related expenditures.

Health effects could be very different if the world’s temperature increases from 5 to 10 °C compared to an increase from 35 to 40 °C. If we look at the mortality associated with climate change, it is obvious that the burden is higher in tropical areas. However, if we add morbidity and complications for, e.g., reproductive health and pregnancy care, the situation might be very different. The spread of infectious diseases related to vector migration is also a very important topic, as is the situation of environmental exposure to contaminants and occupational health.

This conference will provide leading scientists, working in the environmental research and public health field, with an online platform to share their latest research and engage in exciting discussions.

The main topics and sessions of the conference are:

• Pregnancy, Reproductive Health, and Climate Change;
• Vector Migration from a Climate Perspective;
• COVID-19 from a Climate Perspective;
• The Forgotten Tropical Diseases from a Climate Perspective;
• Cardiovascular Diseases and Climate Change;
• Occupational Health and Temperature Change.

The conference will be completely free of charge to attend, as well as for scholars to upload and present their latest work on the conference platform.

The accepted proceedings papers from the conference will most likely be published in a dedicated issue of the MDPI journal Environmental Sciences Proceedings (ISSN: 2673-4931). Please note that, before publication, Proceedings Series Journals will review accepted papers using the powerful text comparison tool iThenticate. This procedure aims to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism. Articles with a high repetition rate and lack of novelty will not be published in the conference proceedings. In addition, all participants will be encouraged to submit an extended full manuscript to one dedicated Special Issue in IJERPH (ISSN 1660-4601) with a 15% discount on the article processing charge (APC, the original APC is CHF 2500).

Important Dates:

• Abstract Submission Deadline: 10 July 2022;
• Notification of Acceptance: 31 July 2022;
• Full Paper Submission Deadline: 28 August 2022;
• Conference Date: 15–30 October 2022.

IJERPH is indexed in Scopus, SCIE (IF = 3.390), SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, and many other databases. Please visit the following website for more information: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph.

Event Awards

In recognition of the support of the conference’s esteemed authors and their outstanding scientific accomplishments, we are pleased to announce that the conference will provide one Best Paper Award and one Best Presentation Award.

For more information on ECERPH 2022, please visit the conference website (https://sciforum.net/event/ECERPH-4) or contact us by email ([email protected]).

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions and we look forward to welcoming you to this exciting online meeting.

Conference Secretariat 

We encourage applications from researchers with a background in the subject areas covered by the following Sections: “Air Pollution Control” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere/sections/air_pollution_control), “Atmospheric Techniques, Instruments, and Modeling” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere/sections/atmospheric_techniques_instruments_modeling), and “Planetary Atmospheres” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere/sections/planetary_atmospheres).

Should you decide to serve as the Section Editor-in-Chief, you would be responsible for some of the following tasks depending on your availability:

• Defining the aims and scope of the Section;
• Advising on the strategic development of the Section;
• Providing support and guidance to Editorial Board Members and editorial staff when required;
• Maintaining oversight of the editorial process to ensure the quality of the published content and discussing possible improvements;
• Suggesting themes/subjects for Special Issues and assisting in inviting Guest Editors to lead them;
• Inviting distinguished scientists to join the Editorial Board;
• Performing pre-checks of new manuscripts, final decisions after peer-review, and revisions when requested;
• Acting as an ambassador for the journal, MDPI, and Open Access publishing.

The Section Editor-in-Chief position is honorary, and MDPI will support the Section Editor-in-Chief with an annual honorarium in the amount of CHF 3000 (including any expenses and VAT, if applicable). Additionally, MDPI offers the Section Editor-in-Chief the possibility to publish up to two papers per year free of charge in any MDPI journal, and the opportunity to invite up to three distinguished authors per year to submit articles to Atmosphere to be published free of charge, if accepted after peer-review.

Atmosphere (ISSN: 2073-4433) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal of scientific studies related to the atmosphere, published monthly online by MDPI. The journal is included in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Scopus, and our 2020 Impact Factor is 2.686.

We believe that your expertise, together with our rigorous editorial policies, can build a high-standard journal. If you are interested in becoming a Section Editor-in-Chief for Atmosphere, please send your full academic CV and a short cover letter that details your interest and enthusiasm for the position to the Editorial Office ([email protected]).

The 2021 Science and Technology Annual Meeting of the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences was held in Tianjin from 19 to 21 October, 2021. A total of 26 sessions were set up for this conference, mainly focusing on the in-depth creation of the blue sky, clear water, pure land defense, ecological environmental protection and restoration, basic environmental management and scientific research, and actively built an "industry-university-research" exchange platform.

Atmosphere (ISSN: 2073-4433) sponsored this conference, of which the topic was "Atmospheric Deposition and Ecological Environment Effects", hosted by Prof. Dr. Xuejun Liu, Dr. Yuepeng Pan, and Dr. Lin Zhang. In order to thank scholars for their support and contribution of high-quality reports, and to commend their outstanding scientific research achievements, the Atmosphere Editorial Office has set up the Best Oral Presentation Award for this session and selected four outstanding reports. The reports are from the following scholars:

• Dr. Baojing Gu, Zhejiang University;
• Dr. Yu Zhao, Nanjing University;
• Dr. Yu Song, Peking University;
• Enzai Du, Beijing Normal University.

From left to right: Atmosphere Managing Editor, Yafang Wang; Prof. Dr. Yu Zhao from Peking University; Dr. Enzai Du from Beijing Normal University; Prof. Dr. Xuejun Liu from China Agricultural University, Associate Editor of Atmosphere.

Winners

Prof. Dr. Baojing Gu

Prof. Dr. Baojing Gu is a researcher of the "Hundred Talents Program" of Zhejiang University, and the winner of the Zhejiang Outstanding Youth Fund and National Outstanding Youth Fund. He is mainly engaged in cross-research in the field of resource and environmental management, and has achieved relevant research results in the construction of large-scale nitrogen cycle models, resource and environmental effect assessment, cost-benefit analysis, and management regulation. He has published more than 90 papers, of which more than 70 are included in SCI/SSCI, including papers published in renowned journals, as the first/corresponding author. He has presided over a number of scientific research projects, such as the National Natural Science Foundation, the Provincial Outstanding Youth Fund, the National Key Research and Development Program, the United Nations Environment Program Fund, and the British Newton Fund. He has served as a fund review expert in China, Sweden, Australia, and other countries; he is a member of the International Nitrogen Promotion Association (INI) Asian Working Committee; he is a research team leader of the International Nitrogen Management System (INMS); and he is a member of the Nitrogen Working Group of the Chinese Soil Society.

Prof. Dr. Yu Zhao

Prof. Dr. Yu Zhao is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the Nanjing University. He is the National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Winner, selected by the Ministry of Organizations Ten Thousand Talents Program-Young Top Talent Support Program, New Century Excellent Talent Support Program of the Ministry of Education, Jiangsu Innovation and Entrepreneurship High-Level Talent Introduction Program, National Natural Science Foundation of China Excellent Youth Science Fund, and Jiangsu Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China Outstanding Youth Science Foundation, and the winner of the 4th Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences Young Scientist Gold Award. His main research direction is environmental atmospheric science, focusing on research on the sources of atmospheric pollutants and their typical environmental effects.

Prof. Dr. Yu Song

As a professor at the School of Environment, Peking University, Prof. Dr. Yu Song has been engaged in atmospheric environment simulation research. His research interests include numerical calculations of atmospheric boundary layer processes and atmospheric chemistry mechanisms, coupled simulations of atmospheric pollution and ecosystems, and agricultural source emissions of atmospheric pollution. He has published nearly 150 academic papers, including PNAS, which have been cited 6600 times, with a H-Index index of 40.

Dr. Enzai Du

Dr. Enzai Du is an associate professor at the School of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geographical Sciences, Beijing Normal University, and a Young Changjiang Scholar of the Ministry of Education. His research directions are biogeochemistry and forest ecology, with particular attention to the changes in the geographic pattern of key element biogeochemical processes and their ecological environmental effects, and he is committed to revealing the key ecological processes of forest ecosystems against the background of global changes, especially the large-scale law of element cycles, to provide theoretical and strategic support for the protection of ecological resources at regional, national, and global scales; the realization of the "carbon neutral" goal; and the construction of green infrastructure. His research group has been committed to the following research directions for many years: the temporal and spatial laws of atmospheric deposition of key elements and their ecological effects; the temporal and spatial dynamics of terrestrial vegetation productivity nitrogen and phosphorus limitations and their driving mechanisms; the impact of global changes on the northern coniferous forest ecosystem and its mechanisms; urban forest biogeochemical cycle pattern and mechanism; plant diversity geographic pattern and protection design.

Related Special Issue:

“Agricultural Ammonia Emission and Mitigation Effects”

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere/special_issues/agricultural_ammonia

Guest Editors: Xuejun Liu, Baojing Gu and Lin Zhang

Submission Deadline: 30 June 2022

It is our great honor to congratulate the Editorial Board Members and Editors in MDPI's journals who have been distinguished as 2021 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate, according to Web of Science data. We herewith express our gratitude for the immense impact the named researchers continue to make on scientific progress and on our journals' development.

Clarivate's annual list of Highly Cited Researchers^TM identifies the most highly cited scientists for the past decade. Their impactful papers are among the top 1 per cent in the citation distribution of one or more of 22 fields analyzed in the "Essential Science Indicators", distinguishing them as hugely influential among their peers.

The full list of 2021 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed at the following webpage in the Web of Science^TM https://recognition.webofscience.com/awards/highly-cited/2021/.

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

Academic editors play a crucial role in leading our journals and ensuring that each article undergoes a robust and timely peer-review. With the launch of Topics this year and addition of Topic Editors to our family of academic editors, we decided it would be a good time to restructure our academic boards, thus providing more clarity and support for each role. MDPI is pleased to announce the launch of a new position—Topical Advisory Panel Member, that will replace the previous position of Topics Board Member. The Topical Advisory Panel will be comprised of early career researchers eager to gain experience in editorial work.

The main responsibility of the new members of the Topical Advisory Panel is to regularly provide support to Guest Editors, Topic Editors, and Section Board Members. The responsibilities of the Topical Advisory Panel are available here: https://www.mdpi.com/editors.

Each year, the members’ performances are evaluated, and outstanding members are promoted to the Editorial Board by the Editor-in-Chief.

To qualify as a Topical Advisory Panel Member, applicants must:

• Have expertise and experience in the field related to the journal;
• Have received a Ph.D. in the last 10 years, approximately;
• Have at least 6-8 published papers in the last 5 years as first author or corresponding author;
• Currently hold an independent research position in academia or a government institute.

If you are interested in this role, please contact the editorial office by email.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Founded in 1996, MDPI was one of the first fully Open Access publisher. Over 25 years MDPI has grown to become the largest Open Access publisher globally, publishing over 160,000 articles across more than 350 journals in 2020. At the core, MDPI was founded in response to a pressing need of fast publication and inclusion. The scholar was set at the centre of the publication process for the first time. Acting as a service provider, rather than a product provider, MDPI exists to help scientists achive their objective to disseminate research results. At MDPI, we believe scientists deserve a better service from the publishing world.

The International Open Access Week (Open Access Week), founded by the SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Alliance and student partners in 2008, has been successfully running for 13 years. As an advocate and pioneer of open access publishing, MDPI actively responds to the call of International Open Access Week. This year’s theme of “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity” highlights the Recommendation’s call for equitable participation from all authors and readers.

For the last 25 years, MDPI has been committed to disseminating open research. Here is a video showing MDPI’s Commitment to Equity, Inclusion and Diversity for More than 25 Years.

International Open Access Week is an important opportunity to catalyze new conversations, create connections across and between communities that can facilitate this co-design, and advance progress in the building of more equitable foundations for opening knowledge—discussions and actions that need to be continued, year in and year out. MDPI has always aimed to provide professional and efficient publishing services to scholars around the world.

Our mission is to make scientific research accessible to everyone; this year, we interview and hold discussions with open science ambassadors on how to build an equal and inclusive environment for open science. Academic editors help us collaborate with more institutions to advocate for open access ideas.

Read our anniversary blog post: "Sharing 'Collective Human Knowledge': The Benefits of Open Access Publication"

Besides this, our scientific community is a key driver of our success and MDPI’s remarkable growth. Despite the pandemic, we have prepared online conferences and workshops to gather scholars from different communities.

The Basel Sustainable Publishing online forum provides an equal opportunity for stakeholders and researchers from multi-cultural environments to exchange ideas and eliminate barriers to participation.

Conference date: 25 October 2021, online
Conference website: https://bspf2021.sciforum.net/
Main topics: MDPI discusses the current dilemma of open access science from various perspectives such as governments, libraries, and publishers, and related measures on how to change the status quo of discrimination from a global perspective.

We aim to support equality, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications. We collaborate with universities and key laboratories and have scholarly communications with researchers, teachers, and students on open access workshops.

• 25 October 2021
  Energies journal and Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

• 28 October 2021
  Machines journal and State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong University

• 29 October 2021
  Processes journal and Beijing Institute of Technology

• 29 October 2021
  Coatings journal and Wuhan University of Technology

MDPI is committed to providing open access and high-quality publishing services for scholars and promoting rapid dissemination of academic achievements. We hope to promote the practices and policies of open access publishing and diversify the dissemination of academic achievements.

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high-quality academic publishing. Over 369,916 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2020. 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 of all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year, the MDPI Top Reviewer Award was announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise and dedication, and their high-quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2020 MDPI Top Reviewer Award:

• Adriana Burlea-Schiopoiu;
• Alban Kuriqi;
• Álvaro González-Vila;
• Alessandro Alaimo;
• Alexey Beskopylny;
• Alexander Yu Churyumov;
• Alberto Fernández-Isabel;
• Andrea Mastinu;
• Antonios N. Papadopoulos;
• Anton Rassõlkin;
• Antonio Humberto Hamad Minervino;
• Arkadiusz Matwijczuk;
• Artur Słomka;
• Baojie He;
• Bartłomiej Potaniec;
• Bojan Đurin;
• Camilo Arturo Rodriguez Diaz;
• Carmelo Maria Musarella;
• Chiachung Chen;
• Chiman Kwan;
• Cristian Busu;
• Danil Pimenov;
• Dan-Cristian Dabija;
• Delfín Ortega-Sánchez;
• Demetrio Antonio Zema;
• Denis Butusov;
• Elena Lucchi;
• Gaurab Dutta;
• Livia Anastasiu;
• M. R. Safaei.

For more information about how to become a reviewer of MDPI journals, please see: www.mdpi.com/reviewers.

UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. In 2020 the SDG Publishers Compact was launched, aimed to inspire publishers and accelerate progress to achieve the 17 goals by 2030. Members of the programme are committed to support the publication of materials that will promote and inspire actions towards SDGs.

MDPI is an eager advocate of SDGs and has already been supporting the programme by creating Special Issues and publishing a series of books on SDGs prior to joining the Compact in 2021. MDPI's Sustainability Foundation initiated the World Sustainability Awards in 2016. We fully support UN's goals to promote sustainable actions that make the world a better place for all and, as part of its commitment, we will focus our actions on SDG10: Reduced Inequalities whilst promoting all 17 SDGs. For more details, please visit the programme’s website: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sdg-publishers-compact/.

Joining this initiative was a unanimous decision. MDPI has in its core values the dissemination of science for all, breaking the wall between research access and under-represented members of the scientific community and the general population. To support this initiative further and continue to support under-represented scientists, MDPI will take a series of actions that will be announced once ready.

The first action MDPI takes is to nominate Dr. Liliane Auwerter as the coordinator of the programme. Dr. Auwerter studied Environmental Process Technology (UTFPR, Brazil), obtained her MSc degree in Water and Environmental Engineering (University of Surrey, UK) and in 2020 completed her PhD in self-healing low-friction materials for water transport (Imperial College London, UK), always focusing on diverse scientific projects that would potentially bring sustainability to industrial processes. As a student in Brazil, she engaged in volunteering activities focused on environmental education and took part in the Millennial Development Goals meetings held at the university.

For more information, please contact:
Dr. Liliane Auwerter
Scientific Officer
[email protected]

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new Section, “Air Pollution Control”, to provide a specific venue for this field of research in Atmosphere (ISSN: 2073-4433). It covers topics including, but not limited to:

• Cyclones;
• Scrubbers;
• Electrostatic precipitators;
• Baghouse filters;
• Absorption;
• Electrostatic precipitation;
• Wet/dry scrubbing and packed scrubbers;
• Flue gas desulfurization;
• Gas catalysis reaction/catalysts;
• Catalytic converters for VOC emission control;
• Regenerative thermal oxidizers and thermal recuperative oxidizers for VOC abatement;
• Rotary concentrators for high air volume low VOC concentration processes;
• Particulate filters;
• Evaporative emission controls;
• Crankcase emission controls;
• Thermal management strategies;
• Engine and fuel management;
• Enhanced combustion technologies;
• Sensor technologies;
• GHG emissions reduction technologies;
• Alternative fuel sources;
• Urban motor vehicle pollution control.

We are now recruiting Editorial Board Members (EBMs) and Guest Editors (GEs) for this Section (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere/sections/air_pollution_control). If you are an active researcher in one of the aforementioned fields and are passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to get in touch ([email protected]).

Alternatively, you may submit your work directly via the following link: https://susy.mdpi.com/user/manuscripts/upload?journal=atmosphere. Submissions before 30 November 2021 may enjoy a CHF 400 discount on the article processing charge.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions.

We look forward to collaborating with you.

Atmosphere Editorial Office

We are pleased to inform you that the open access journal Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433; IF 2.686) has been indexed in the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR): Area 08 / Class A - Sector 08/C1. The journal will be officially included in the next list, which should be published by October 2021.

Atmosphere is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal of scientific studies related to the atmosphere, published monthly online by MDPI. The Italian Aerosol Society (IAS) and the Working Group of Air Quality in European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) are affiliated with Atmosphere and their members receive a discount on the article processing charges. More details can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere.

We warmly welcome you to consider Atmosphere as the platform for publishing your work.

Atmosphere Editorial Office

This serves to announce to our valued authors based in Japan that value-added tax, or consumption tax will now be imposed on article processing fees and other service fees for all papers submitted, or resubmitted (assigned new paper IDs), effective from 15 August 2021. The change is in accordance with the Japanese "Act for Partial Revision of the Income Tax Act and Other Acts" (Act No. 9 of 2015), which includes a revision of consumption taxation on cross-border supplies of services such as digital content distribution.

For additional information from the National Tax Agency please see here ("Cross-border supplies of electronic services").

Contact: Setsuko Nishihara, MDPI Tokyo

MDPI will be attending the 2nd International Conference for Global Chinese Academia on Energy and Built Environment (CEBE 2021) in Chengdu, China, on 16–19 July 2021. The conference aims at establishing a worldwide platform for promoting global cooperation and innovative communications for ethnic Chinese around the globe, sharing cutting-edge achievements in the utilization of clean energy, the enhancement of energy efficiency via the built environment, and the improvement in environmental quality.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Energies
• Nanomaterials
• Buildings
• Atmosphere
• Clean Technologies
• Processes
• Materials
• Sustainability

If you are 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 the following link: http://www.cebe2021.com.

The 2020 citation metrics have been officially released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR)!

We are pleased to announce that 85 MDPI journals are included, of which:

• 10 journals received their first impact factor
• 96% of journals increased their impact factor from 2019
• 32 journals (38%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category

* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2021

Source: 2020 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ® (Clarivate, 2021)

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Xuejun Liu has been appointed Associate Editor of Atmosphere.

Prof. Dr. Xuejun Liu is from the College of Resources and Environmental Sciences at China Agricultural University, Beijing, China. He has been involved in teaching and research work on plant nutrition and environmental sciences, and carried out fruitful studies in the fields of the farmland nitrogen cycle and atmospheric settling. He has undertaken research on many major topics for the National Natural Science Foundation in China and Sino-German international cooperation projects and published over 50 papers, including 24 SCI papers and 6 monographs.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Xuejun Liu as the Associate Editor in Atmosphere and look forward to his contribution to the continued success of Atmosphere.

It is our pleasure to welcome the following 51 recognized researchers who have recently joined the Editorial Board of Atmosphere:

We look forward to their contributions to the journal.

MDPI will be attending IGARSS 2021, to be held in virtual form from 12th to 16th of July 2021.

IGARSS 2021, which will take place from 12 to 16 July 2021, is a joint effort of the Low Countries, the Netherlands and Belgium, and they have chosen Crossing Borders as the overall theme of the conference:

• Between countries and research institutes;
• Between types of platforms (from satellites to drones);
• Between data sources;
• Between disciplines.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Remote Sensing
• Atmosphere
• Water
• Sustainability
• Data
• Soil Systems
• IJGI
• Drones

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start an online conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have. For more information about the conference and our virtual booth, please visit: https://igarss2021.com/default.asp.

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.

It is our pleasure to welcome the following 15 recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Atmosphere:

Dr. Maya Garcia-Comas, Spain
Prof. Dr. Anthony Joseph Hynes, USA
Prof. Dr. Qiusheng Li, Hong Kong
Dr. Shaofei Kong, China
Dr. Antonietta Ianniello, Italy
Dr. Thomas Gill, USA
Prof. Dr. Maud Leriche, France
Dr. Yoshiteru Iinuma, Japan
Prof. Dr. Peter Wiesen, Germany
Prof. Dr. Zhengqiang Li, China
Prof. Dr. Jinyuan Xin, China
Prof. Dr. Jun Zheng, China
Prof. Dr. Zhiwei Han, China
Prof. Dr. Małgorzata Rajfur, Poland
Dr. Maciej Kryza, Poland
Dr. Huan Yu, China
Dr. Jean-Baptiste Renard, France
Prof. Dr. Francesco Malara, Italy
Dr. Alexandros Papayannis, Greece

We look forward to their contributions to the journal.

• Indoor Air Pollution from Residential Stoves: Examining the Flooding of Particulate Matter into Homes during Real-World Use
  Rohit Chakraborty et al.
  Atmosphere 2020, 11(12), 1326; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11121326 
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/12/1326
• Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown on Air Pollution in 20 Major Cities around the World
  Franck Fu et al.
  Atmosphere 2020, 11(11), 1189; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11111189 
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/11/1189
• Indicators Framework for Sustainable Urban Design
  Andrea López Chao et al.
  Atmosphere 2020, 11(11), 1143; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11111143 
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/11/1143
• Impact of the COVID-19 Outbreak on Air Quality in Korea
  Ji Hoon Seo et al.
  Atmosphere 2020, 11(10), 1137; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11101137
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/10/1137
• Quantification of Atmospheric Ammonia Concentrations: A Review of Its Measurement and Modeling
  Arshad Arjunan Nair and Fangqun Yu
  Atmosphere 2020, 11(10), 1092; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11101092
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/10/1092
• Increasing Neurons or Deepening Layers in Forecasting Maximum Temperature Time Series?
  Trang Thi Kieu Tran et al.
  Atmosphere 2020, 11(10), 1072; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11101072
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/10/1072
• Evaluating Land Suitability and Potential Climate Change Impacts on Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) Production in Ethiopia
  Sintayehu Alemayehu et al.
  Atmosphere 2020, 11(10), 1124; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11101124
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/10/1124
• Automatic Fire and Smoke Detection Method for Surveillance Systems Based on Dilated CNNs
  Yakhyokhuja Valikhujaev et al.
  Atmosphere 2020, 11(11), 1241; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11111241
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/11/1241
• The Effect of the Covid-19 Lockdown on Air Quality in Three Italian Medium-Sized Cities
  Gabriele Donzelli et al.
  Atmosphere 2020, 11(10), 1118; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11101118
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/10/1118
• WRF-LES Simulation of the Boundary Layer Turbulent Processes during the BLLAST Campaign
  Mireia Udina et al.
  Atmosphere 2020, 11(11), 1149; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11111149
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/11/1149

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)

We are pleased to inform you that the open access journal Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433; CODEN: ATMOCZ) is now covered in the Environmental Sciences category in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) - Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) as of January 2021, in addition to Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences.

Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433; CODEN: ATMOCZ) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal of scientific studies related to the atmosphere, published monthly online by MDPI. The Italian Aerosol Society (IAS) and Working Group of Air Quality in European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) are affiliated with Atmosphere and their members receive a discount on the article processing charges. More details can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere.

We ask you to consider Atmosphere as the platform for publishing your work.

Sincerely,
Atmosphere Editorial Office
[email protected]

It is our pleasure to welcome the following 15 recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Atmosphere:

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.

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.

It is our pleasure to welcome following 54 recognized researchers to join the Editorial Board of Atmosphere. We look forward to their contributions to the journal.

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Prashant Kumar has been appointed as the Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Air Quality” of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). His term started in September 2020.

Prof. Dr. Prashant Kumar
Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
Website: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/prashant-kumar
E-mail: [email protected]

Professor Prashant Kumar is Chair in Air Quality and Health and the founding Director of the Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) at the University of Surrey, UK. He is the Head of the GCARE’s Air Quality Laboratory and the Deputy Director of Research for the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Since March 2018, he is also an Adjunct Professor at the School of Engineering at the Trinity College Dublin in Ireland.

His current research projects are focused in broad multidisciplinary areas of air pollution monitoring/modelling, low-cost sensing, nature-based solutions, climate change mitigation and developing innovative technological and passive (e.g. green infrastructure) solutions for air pollution exposure control for both developing and developed world.

The editorial team warmly welcomes Professor Prashant Kumar as the Editor-in-Chief of the “Air Quality” section and looks forward to his contribution to the continued success of Atmosphere.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Allison C. Aiken has been appointed as the Editor-in-Chief of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). Her term started in August 2020.

Dr. Allison C. Aiken
Affiliation: Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
Website: https://www.lanl.gov/expertise/profiles/view/allison-aiken
E-mail: [email protected]

Dr. Allison C. Aiken received her Diploma from Furman University in 2002, and her Ph.D. from University of Colorado, Boulder, in 2008. She has been Senior Research Scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, NM, since 2018. She is one of the most highly cited authors in 2014.

Her main research activities include:

• Harnessing state-of-the-art aerosol and trace gas signatures for aerosol processes and national security;
• Development of revolutionary elemental analysis methods and their application to ambient aerosol sampling;
• Specializing in single-particle in situ aerosol measurements and their complex data analysis, including through mass spectrometry, photoacoustic spectroscopy, single-particle laser-induced incandescence, etc.;
• Over 15 years of expertise in the field and laboratory regarding online direct aerosol measurement;
• Managing the operations of ~40 aerosol and gas-phase instruments for the US DOE ARM Program;
• A decade of experience measuring aerosol optical properties (e.g., black carbon, brown carbon, and dust).

Amongst her numerous appointments and activities, she serves as Co-Chair of the User Executive Committee, Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM), and member of ARM-ASR Coordination Team (AACT), US DOE Office of Science, and also Board Member and Executive Committee Treasurer-elect in AAAR.

The editorial team warmly welcomes Dr. Allison C. Aiken as the Editor-in-Chief, and looks forward to her contribution to the continued success of Atmosphere.

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

Updated Impact Factors

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

The 3rd International Electronic Conference on Atmospheric Sciences (ECAS2020) will be held online from 16 to 30 November 2020. It aims to provide a platform for scholars to present their latest findings and discuss the latest thinking around atmospheric science. This conference will be organized around the following general and related themes which correspond to the Atmosphere journal.

• Aerosols
• Air Quality
• Air Quality and Human Health
• Climatology
• Meteorology
• Biometeorology
• Atmospheric Techniques, Instrumentation, and Modeling
• Biosphere/Hydrosphere/Land-Atmosphere Interactions
• Upper Atmosphere
• Planetary Atmospheres

There will be no cost for attendees to participate. All accepted papers will be published in the Special Issue “Selected Papers from the Third International Electronic Conference on Atmospheric Sciences” after peer review and enjoy a 20% discount on processing fees. We will also choose the best paper to win a 500 CHF award. If you are interested in attending this exciting conference, please do not hesitate to contact us ([email protected]).

Atmosphere Editorial Office

We are now recruiting the Editorial Board Members (EBMs) for the following Sections:

• Aerosols
• Air Quality
• Air Quality and Human Health
• Climatology
• Meteorology
• Atmospheric Techniques, Instruments, and Modeling
• Biosphere/Hydrosphere/Land–Atmosphere Interactions

As an EMB, you have the following responsibilities:

• Make decisions on whether a manuscript should be accepted or not based on the reports we collect.
• Serve as Editor of a Special Issue on a topic related to your research interests when it is convenient for you.
• Review manuscripts in your area of interest and when you are available.
• Recommend topics or appropriate conferences.
• Promote Atmosphere and increase its visibility in the related academic network.

If you are an active researcher in one of the aforementioned fields and are passionate about participating in the cutting-edge research in this field, please do not hesitate to contact us ([email protected]).

Atmosphere Editorial Office

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Scott Osprey has been appointed as the Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Climatology” of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). His term started in May 2020.

Dr. Scott Osprey

Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PU, UK

Website: https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/contacts/people/osprey

E-mail: [email protected]

Dr. Scott Osprey is a Senior Research Scientist from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and is currently based in the Department of Physics, University of Oxford, UK. He received his Physics degrees from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

His research interests include climate variability, predictability and prediction and the application of concepts from dynamical systems theory to climate variability. More specifically, he studies stratospheric variability and its associations with tropospheric weather and climate.

Amongst his numerous appointments and activities, he is a founding Coordinator of the WCRP-SPARC QBOi activity and is the Project Coordinator of Belmont Forum’s Globally Observed Teleconnections in Hierarchies of Atmospheric Models (GOTHAM) Project. He is lead author of the paper published in Science detailing the unprecedented disruption to the QBO in 2016.

The editorial team warmly welcomes Dr. Scott Osprey as the Editor-in-Chief of the “Climatology” section and looks forward to his contribution to the continued success of Atmosphere. For further information on the journal sections, please check here.

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

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Patricia K. Quinn has been appointed as the Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Aerosols” of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). Her term started in April 2020.

Dr. Patricia K. Quinn
Pacific Marine Environment Laboratories, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Seattle, WA 98115, USA
Website: https://cpaess.ucar.edu/cgc-host/dr-patricia-k-quinn
E-mail: [email protected]

Dr. Patricia K. Quinn received her Diploma from Reed College in 1982 and her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1988. She has been a Senior Research Scientist at the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory since 1993 and an Associate Professor at the University of Washington since 1998.

Her research interests are mainly focused on the radiative effects of aerosols and the effects of aerosols on air quality. Her recent publications are listed below:

• Quinn, P.K.; Bates, T.S.; Coffman, D.J.; Upchurch, L.; Johnson, J.E.; Moore, R.; Ziemba, L.; Bell, T.G.; Saltzman, E.S.; Graff, J.; and Behrenfeld, M.J. Seasonal variations in western North Atlantic remote marine aerosol properties. Geophys. Res. 2019, 124, doi:10.1029/2019JD031740.
• Quinn, P.K.; Coffman, D.J.; Johnson, J.E.; Upchurch, L.M.; Bates, T.S. Small fraction of marine cloud condensation nuclei made up of sea spray aerosol. Nature Geoscience, 2017, 10, 674–679, doi:10.1038/NGEO3003.
• Quinn, P.K.; Stohl, A.; Arnold, S.; Bernsten, T.; Christensen, J.; Eckhardt, S.; Herber, H.; Korsholm, U.; Langner, J.; Law, K. et al. Black Carbon and Ozone as Arctic Climate Forcers. Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP): Oslo, Norway, ISBN – 978-82-7971-092-9, 2016.
• Quinn, P.K.; Collins, D.B.; Grassian, V.H.; Prather, K.A.; Bates, T.S. Chemistry and related properties of freshly emitted sea spray aerosol. Rev. 2015, 115, 4383–4399.

Among her numerous appointments and activities, she received the NOAA Administrator Award in 2008; was named an AGU Fellow in 2010; received the U.S. Department of Commerce Bronze Medal Award in 2010; and was a Highly Cited Researcher (Clarivate Analytics) in 2016, 2017, and 2018. She is also Member of AAAR.

The editorial team warmly welcomes Dr. Patricia K. Quinn as the Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Aerosols” and looks forward to her contribution to the continued success of Atmosphere. For further information on the journal sections, please see here.

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.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Allison C. Aiken has been appointed as the Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Atmospheric Techniques, Instruments, and Modeling” of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). Her term started in March 2020.

Dr. Allison C. Aiken
Affiliation: Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
Website: https://www.lanl.gov/expertise/profiles/view/allison-aiken
E-mail: [email protected]

Dr. Allison C. Aiken received her Diploma from Furman University in 2002, and her Ph.D. from University of Colorado, Boulder, in 2008. She has been Senior Research Scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, NM, since 2018. She is one of the most highly cited authors in 2014.

Her main research activities include:

• Harnessing state-of-the-art aerosol and trace gas signatures for aerosol processes and national security;
• Development of revolutionary elemental analysis methods and their application to ambient aerosol sampling;
• Specializing in single-particle in situ aerosol measurements and their complex data analysis, including through mass spectrometry, photoacoustic spectroscopy, single-particle laser-induced incandescence, etc.;
• Over 15 years of expertise in the field and laboratory regarding online direct aerosol measurement;
• Managing the operations of ~40 aerosol and gas-phase instruments for the US DOE ARM Program;
• A decade of experience measuring aerosol optical properties (e.g., black carbon, brown carbon, and dust).

Amongst her numerous appointments and activities, she serves as Co-Chair of the User Executive Committee, Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM), and member of ARM-ASR Coordination Team (AACT), US DOE Office of Science, and also Board Member and Executive Committee Treasurer-elect in AAAR.

The editorial team warmly welcomes Dr. Allison C. Aiken as the Editor-in-Chief of the “Atmospheric Techniques, Instruments, and Modeling”, and looks forward to her contribution to the continued success of Atmosphere. For further information on the journal sections, please click here.

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 welcome the following recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Atmosphere:

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 EGU in Vienna, Austria on 3–8 May 2020.

The EGU General Assembly 2020 will bring together geoscientists from all over the world to one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences. The EGU aims to provide a forum where scientists, especially early career researchers, can present their work and discuss their ideas with experts in all fields of geoscience.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• water
• Atmosphere
• Resources
• Climate
• Environments
• Geosciences
• Land
• Galaxies
• Data
• IJGI

We were deeply shocked and saddened to learn that Dr. Robert W. Talbot, Editor-in-Chief of Atmosphere, passed away on 2 February 2020, following a two-year battle with cancer.

Dr. Talbot pioneered high-accuracy measurements of atmospheric nitric acid and mercury from aircraft and served in leadership roles in several major air quality field campaigns around the globe. He was also the founding director of the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences at University of Houston, and created a state-of-the-art laboratory facility for mercury and methane. He led three Special Issues over the years:

• Atmospheric Mercury
• Atmospheric Methane
• 10th Anniversary of Atmosphere: Air Quality

The editorial team of the journal Atmosphere remembers Dr. Talbot for his outstandingly successful editorship from 2014, raising the standing of the journal significantly, thereby supporting the careers of many in the community and advancing our knowledge of the atmosphere. He will be greatly missed by many friends, colleagues, former students, and the authors whose papers he read, appreciated, and promoted as Editor-in-Chief. His death is a loss to the academic community as well as a personal loss to anyone who has come into contact with him.

We offer our condolences to his wife, children, family, friends, and colleagues.

Atmosphere Editorial Office

MDPI will be attending the IGARSS 2020, to be held in Hawaii, USA, 19–24 July 2020

Hosted by the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, the 2020 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 2020) will be held Sunday, 19 July through Friday, 24 July, 2020 at the Hilton Waikoloa Village in Waikoloa, Hawaii, USA. The main theme of the 2020 symposium is "Remote Sensing: Global Perspectives for Local Solutions".

GARSS 2020 is offering unique perspectives, discussions, research, solutions, and an opportunity to network in a beautiful environment.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

Remote Sensing

Atmosphere

Land

Sustainability

Drones

IJGI

Sensors

Geosciences

Hydrology

Applied Sciences

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

MDPI will be attending AGU Fall Meeting 2019 in San Francisco, USA, 9–13 December.

AGU Fall Meeting is the largest international Earth and space science meeting in the world. After two dynamic meetings in New Orleans and Washington, D.C., they return to the Moscone Centre in San Francisco.

This year’s meeting will prepare you for what’s ahead: rapid developments in our science, new approaches to observing our Earth and beyond, the introduction of new data streams, growing demand for accessible science, the expansion of convergent science, and more. AGU will celebrate the past and inspire the future by bringing together the people, the imagination, and the science that will ignite our next hundred years to make our planet safer, cleaner, and more sustainable.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Atmosphere
• Climate
• Geosciences
• Hydrology
• IJGI
• Resources
• Remote Sensing
• Water

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (#1248). 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.agu.org/Fall-Meeting.

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.

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.

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 will be attending the EMS Annual Meeting 2019. The conference aims at fostering exchange and cross-fertilization of ideas in the meteorological, climatological, and related communities. Facilitating interactions, integration, and engagement of science, applications, and actors is our core objective. The session program highlights these goals and offers many opportunities for enhancing collaboration across the entire weather and climate enterprise (public, private, academic, users, and NGOs) to benefit societies in Europe and worldwide. The following MDPI journals will be represented:

Atmosphere

Geosciences

Sustainability

Climate

Water

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #1). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit:

We are pleased to inform that Atmosphere received an updated Journal Impact Factor of 2.046 in the recent release of the Journal Citation Reports®. The journal's 5-Year Impact Factor is 2.253. Atmosphere now ranks 45/86 (Q3) in the category 'Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences'.

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Atmosphere:

Source: data according to Journal Citation Reports®, 2018 release, a Clarivate Analytics product; and Scopus journal metrics.

In addition to MDPI journals who received updated CiteScores for 2018, the titles listed below were added in Scopus recently and therefore received a first CiteScore in May 2019, based on last year's citation activity in the database.

For almost all of the newly added MDPI titles, their CiteScore ranks in the upper 50% of the distribution (Q1 or Q2) in at least one of the research areas. The following titles rank in the top 25% cited journals based on CiteScore: Actuators; Biomedicines; Coatings; Cosmetics; Fermentation; Journal of Fungi; Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity; Nanomaterials; and Publications.

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

New CiteScore for MDPI Journals

In March 2019, the Italian Aerosol Society (IAS) became affiliated to Atmosphere. As part of this collaboration, all members of IAS enjoy a discount on the article processing charges (APC) when submitting articles to Atmosphere.

The Italian Aerosol Society (IAS) is a member of the European Aerosol Assembly (EEA) and gathers researchers, professionals, and students dealing with atmospheric aerosols science. The society includes people who believe that an exchange of information and experiences is the way to enhance individual and professional growth and a necessary condition for scientific progress within the community. They are also convinced that the complex field of atmospheric aerosols, with important scientific, health, and environmental implications (and therefore economic and social as well), requires contributions from the many diverse areas of expertise that represent "all the souls in the world of particulate matter".

IAS is a professional organization whose functions are highly relevant to the scope of Atmosphere. We look forward to collaborating with IAS and publishing state-of-the-art research from its members in this field.

We will attend the Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2019 (JpGU 2019). It will be held at the Makuhari Messe, International Convention Complex in Chiba, Japan, on 26–30 May 2019, and will be organized by the Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU). JpGU is an academic union that encompasses all the Earth and planetary sciences disciplines and related fields, and has been organizing annual meetings since 2005. JpGU 2019 will cover a wide range of Earth and planetary sciences, including space and planetary sciences, atmospheric and hydrospheric sciences, human geosciences, solid Earth sciences, and biogeosciences. The JpGU annual meeting provides participants with a good opportunity to become familiar with cutting-edge research and unique approaches to research objects within their own special field as well as beyond. Representatives of the following open-access journals will attend:

Minerals

Geosciences

Water

Atmosphere

Remote Sensing

Resources

Education Sciences

Climate

IJERPH

MDPI will be attending the 2019 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, to be held in Yokohama, Japan, 28 July – 2 August 2019.

This conference will be the 39th annual IGARSS symposium and will continue the excellent tradition of gathering world-class scientists, engineers and educators engaged in the fields of geoscience and remote sensing. We believe that the additional scientific themes of this event, focusing on 'Disasters and Environment' will allow the formation of an inspiring technical program.

IGARSS is recognized today as a premier event in remote sensing and provides an ideal forum for obtaining up-to-date information about the latest developments, exchanging ideas, identifying future trends in your research area and making contacts with the international remote sensing community. With intensive and careful planning underway we anticipate a technically outstanding and most pleasant symposium.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

Remote Sensing
IJGI
Sensors
Water
Geosciences
Atmosphere
Land
Forests
JMSE
Sustainability

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth # 30). 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://igarss2019.org/CallForSponsorsExhibitors.asp.

It is a pleasure to invite you to take part in the 2019 ISPRS Geospatial Week (GSW 2019). The ISPRS Geospatial Week (GSW) is a combination of workshops organised by about 30 ISPRS Working Groups active in areas of interest of ISPRS. It is convened by the University of Twente acting as local organiser, and led by George Vosselman as GSW Director.

The ISPRS Geospatial Week’s general goals are to: increase the possibility of communication between the different workshop communities within ISPRS and beyond; increase the continuous visibility of ISPRS on a yearly basis, together with the Congress and the Commission Symposia, thus leading to larger impact for ISPRS activities; gives Sustaining Members a more attractive opportunity to participate in ISPRS events. For more information about the conference, please visit https://www.gsw2019.org/.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

IJGI
Remote Sensing
Atmosphere
Drones
Infrastructures
Information
Journal of Imaging
Water
Urban Science

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.

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.

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 inform that Atmosphere received an updated Journal Impact Factor of 1.704 in the June 2018 release of the Journal Citation Reports®. The journal's 5-Year Impact Factor is 1.775. Atmosphere now ranks 57/86 (Q3) in the category 'Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences.'

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Atmosphere:

MDPI will be attending the AGU 2018 Fall Meeting, to be held in Washington D.C, USA, 10‒14 December 2018.

The AGU 2018 Fall Meeting will mark another dynamic year of discovery in Earth and space science, serve as the advent of AGU’s Centennial year, and provide a special opportunity to share our science with world leaders in Washington, D.C. As the largest Earth and space science gathering in the world, the Fall Meeting places you in the center of a global community of scientists drawn from myriad fields of study whose work protects the health and welfare of people worldwide, spurs innovation, and informs decisions that are critical to the sustainability of the Earth.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Water
• Remote Sensing
• ISPRS International Journal of Geo-information
• Atmosphere
• Geosciences
• Resources
• Climate
• Environments

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth # 737). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may hace. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://fallmeeting.agu.org/2018/

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