Announcements

1. “Positioning Positive Energy Districts in European Cities”
Oscar Lindholm et al.
Buildings 2021, 11(1), 19; 10.3390/buildings11010019
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/11/1/19

2. “Differentiating Digital Twin from Digital Shadow: Elucidating a Paradigm Shift to Expedite a Smart, Sustainable Built Environment“
Samad M. E. Sepasgozar
Buildings 2021, 11(4), 151; 10.3390/buildings11040151
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/11/4/151

3. “Assessment of Cloud Computing Success Factors for Sustainable Construction Industry: The Case of Nigeria”
Ayodeji Emmanuel Oke et al.
Buildings 2021, 11(2), 36; 10.3390/buildings11020036
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/11/2/36

4. “IEA EBC Annex83 Positive Energy Districts“
Åsa Hedman et al.
Buildings 2021, 11(3), 130; 10.3390/buildings11030130
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/11/3/130

5. “Combating Urban Heat Island Effect—A Review of Reflective Pavements and Tree Shading Strategies”
V. R. Sankar Cheela et al.
Buildings 2021, 11(3), 93; 10.3390/buildings11030093
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/11/3/93

6. “Practical Implementation of Structural Health Monitoring in Multi-Story Buildings”
Arvindan Sivasuriyan et al.
Buildings 2021, 11(6), 263; 10.3390/buildings11060263
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/11/6/263

7. “BIM-Based Energy Analysis and Sustainability Assessment—Application to Portuguese Buildings”
José Pedro Carvalho et al.
Buildings 2021, 11(6), 246; 10.3390/buildings11060246
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/11/6/246

8. “The Role of Blockchain Technology in Augmenting Supply Chain Resilience to Cybercrime”
Aya Bayramova et al.
Buildings 2021, 11(7), 283; 10.3390/buildings11070283
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/11/7/283

9. “Compressive Strength Prediction via Gene Expression Programming (GEP) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for Concrete Containing RCA”
Ayaz Ahmad et al.
Buildings 2021, 11(8), 324; 10.3390/buildings11080324
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/11/8/324

10. “Post Occupancy Evaluation of School Refurbishment Projects: Multiple Case Study in the UK”
Hamad Ahmed et al.
Buildings 2021, 11(4), 169; 10.3390/buildings11040169
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/11/4/169

After extended research and evaluation, the Buildings Editorial Office would like to announce that effective from the first issue of 2022, a single blind peer-review procedure will be used for all manuscripts submitted to Buildings. With the introduction of this change, we aim to align Buildings with the majority of the journals in the field, and to make the process more beneficial for the scholars.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Buildings, so we would like to take this opportunity to thank all the anonymous reviewers who contribute to the peer-review process. Their voluntary contributions, based on their experiences in the field, help us to maintain a high standard in our published papers and underpins our editorial process.

Detailed information can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/buildings/instructions#editorial_procedure.

We are pleased to announce that the following experts have been appointed Section Associate Editors of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309).

Prof. Dr. Derek Clements-Croome has been appointed Associate Editor of the Section “Architectural Design, Urban Science, and Real Estate”.

Prof. Dr. Shi-Jie Cao has been appointed Associate Editor of the Section “Building Energy, Physics, Environment, and Systems”.

Prof. Dr. Bjorn Birgisson has been appointed Associate Editor of the Section “Building Materials, and Repair & Renovation”.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Derek Clements-Croome, Prof. Dr. Shi-Jie Cao, and Prof. Dr. Bjorn Birgisson in taking up their roles as Section Associate Editors and look forward to them leading Buildings to achieve more milestones.

Buildings Editorial Office

It is our pleasure to announce a new feature of Buildings (ISSN: 2075-5309), called "Editor's Choice Articles", which highlights outstanding papers that have been published in the journal. These papers are selected by the editors, and include original articles that contain important and impactful findings, as well as review articles that are excellently written. With this feature, readers can expect timely and useful highlights of recent articles in the journal, and deserving authors will receive more attention for their excellent contributions. We hope that this feature will enhance your reading pleasure and experience with Buildings.

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
liliane.auwerter@mdpi.com

We are pleased to announce that 16 new scholars have recently been appointed Editorial Board Members of the journal Buildings (ISSN: 2075-5309):

Dr. Andy Wright (De Montfort University, UK);
Dr. John Mander (Texas A & M University, USA);
Prof. Dr. Chi-Ming Lai (National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan);
Prof. Antonio Michele Tralli (University of Ferrara, Italy);
Prof. Dr. Roberto Realfonzo (University of Salerno, Italy);
Dr. Baolong Wang (Tsinghua University, China);
Prof. Dr. Ruth Dalton (Lancaster University, UK);
Dr. Andrew Whyte (Curtin University, Australia);
Prof. Dr. Bo Yang (Chongqing University, China);
Dr. Nan Li (Tsinghua University, China);
Dr. Bo Xia (Queensland University of Technology, Australia);
Prof. Dr. Žiga Turk (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia);
Prof. Dr. Becky P.Y. Loo (The University of Hong Kong, China);
Dr. Frederic Bosche (University of Edinburgh, UK);
Prof. Dr. Christopher Yu-Hang Chao (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China);
Prof. Dr. You-Fu Yang (Dalian University of Technology, China).

We wish them every success in both their research and development of the journal.

Further details about the Editorial Board can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/buildings/editors.