Announcements

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. George A. O'Doherty has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the “Biological and Natural Products” Section in Chemistry (ISSN: 2624-8549).

Born in Kilkenny, Ireland, the son of two organic chemists, he grew into the family business. He received his B.S. degree from RPI working with Professor Alan R. Cutler. After earning his Ph.D. with Professor Leo A. Paquette at OSU, he pursued postdoctoral studies with Professor Barry M. Trost and then Anthony G. M. Barrett. His independent career began at the University of Minnesota. In 2002, he moved to West Virginia University. He moved again in 2010, to Northeastern University, where he has been ever since. His laboratory is interested in the asymmetric synthesis and study of biologically important carbohydrate and natural products, with the aim of exploring their stereochemical structure–activity relationship.

Name: Prof. Dr. George A. O'Doherty

Email: G.ODoherty@northeastern.edu

Affiliation: College of Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA

Interests: organic synthesis; carbohydrate synthesis; natural product synthesis; asymmetric synthesis; medicinal chemistry; natural product medicinal chemistry

Homepage: https://www.northeastern.edu/odoherty/about/

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. José Antonio Odriozola has been appointed as Section Editor-in-Chief of the “Catalysis” Section in Chemistry (ISSN: 2624-8549).

José A. Odriozola obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1981 in the field of catalysis. In 1997, he obtained his current position of Full Professor in the Department of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Sevilla. His research interest is the study of catalysts and catalytic reactions, within operando methods being the focus of his research interests from electrons to reactors. He has more than 350 peer-reviewed publications in the fields of catalysis and chemical engineering, with more than 10,600 citations and an h-index of 56 (Google Academic). He is a referee for most catalytic and chemical engineering journals and has been Editor of three Special Issues and Co-Editor of two books, “Engineering Solutions for CO₂ Conversion” (Wiley) and “Heterogeneous Catalysis for Energy Applications” (Royal Society of Chemistry). Since the late 1980s, he has been studying the nature of adsorbed surface species during reactions, developing a mechanism for the selective catalytic reduction of NOx, and further pioneering the use of in operando Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Fourier Transform Spectroscopy for the understanding of catalytic reactions. In 1995, structured catalysts have been added to his research interests. The study of metal alloy oxidation and their reactivity with rare earth elements set the background for understanding the behavior of structured catalysts and the influence of the metal alloy on the activity and selectivity of wash-coated catalysts, ending with the development of wall-coated microchannel reactors for hydrogen cleanup and Fischer–Tropsch reactions. In the last few years, his studies have focused on the application of catalysts and structured reactors to recent environmental challenges, CO₂ abatement, and bio-based processes, combining the design of active sites with the tailoring of Au/TiO₂ interfaces for the reverse water-gas-shift reaction or Au/Zr(Ce)O₂ interfaces for the oxidation of HMF to FDCA, as well as for heat and mass transport in structured microchannel reactors.

Name: Prof. Dr. José A. Odriozola
Email: odrio@us.es
Affiliation: Department of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Sevilla, Calle Profesor García González, s/n, 41012 Sevilla, Spain.
Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Sevilla, Centro Mixto Universidad de Sevilla-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Av. Américo Vespucio 49, 41092 Sevilla, Spain.
Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, University of Surrey, Guildford Surrey GU2 7XH, United Kingdom.
Interests: structured catalysts and reactors in operando spectroscopies; heterogeneous catalysis for energy and environmental applications
Homepage: https://surfcat.icms.us-csic.es/

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Luis R. Domingo has been appointed as Section Editor-in-Chief of the “Theoretical Chemistry” Section in Chemistry (ISSN: 2624-8549).

Luis R. Domingo obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1987 in the field of organic synthesis. In 2010, he obtained his current position of Full Professor in the Department of Organic Chemistry at the University of Valencia. His research interest is the study of organic chemical reactivity using quantum chemical procedures based on the analysis of electron density. He has more than 340 peer-reviewed publications in the field of Theoretical Organic Chemistry, with more than 13,400 citations and h-index 55 (Google Academic). He is a referee for most organic and multidisciplinary chemical journals, having reviewed more than 600 articles, and he has been Editor of eight Special Issues. In 2014, he was named Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2009, he proposed the mechanism of polar Diels–Alder reactions, against the “pericyclic mechanism”, and, in 2019, he established the relationship between the structure and reactivity of the three atom components participating in [3+2] cycloaddition reactions, proposing four different reaction mechanisms. He has developed several reactivity indices within the Conceptual Density Functional Theory (CDFT), such as the nucleophilicity N index, and the electrophilic and nucleophilic Parr functions, allowing the study of polar organic reactions. In 2014, he proposed the global electron density transfer (GEDT) as one of the main factors controlling polar reactions. After 20 years working in the field of Theoretical Organic Chemistry, in 2016, he proposed a new reactivity theory named Molecular Electron Density Theory (MEDT) based on the analysis of the changes of the electron density along with an organic chemical reaction, revealing that established theories based on molecular orbital analyses, such as the Frontier Molecular Orbital (FMO) theory, are today entirely outdated.

Name: Prof. Dr. Luis R. Domingo
Email: domingo@utopia.uv.es
Affiliation: Department of Organic Chemistry, University of Valencia, Dr. Moliner 50, Burjassot, 46100 Valencia, Spain
Interests: chemical organic reactivity; molecular electron density theory; conceptual density functional theory applied to the organic chemistry; topology of the electron density
Homepage: https://www.luisrdomingo.com

We are pleased to announce that the journal Chemistry (ISSN 2624-8549) has been accepted for inclusion in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) in the Web of Science Core Collection! We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all authors, reviewers, and editors who have contributed to the journal and made this achievement possible.

Chemistry (ISSN 2624-8549) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal that presents the latest research on all aspects of chemistry. Submission to first decision is usually completed within 14 days, and acceptance to publication within 6.3 days.

To make the most of this opportunity, we would like to invite you to make a submission to Chemistry. If you have a paper on any topic within the scope of the journal, please feel free to submit it https://www.mdpi.com/journal/chemistry.

We look forward to working with you in the future.

Chemistry Editorial Office

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.

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)

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.