Announcements

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
atmosphere@mdpi.com

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.