Announcements

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative, the Special Issue Mentor Program.

This program intends to provide an opportunity for early career scientists to enhance their editing, networking, and organizational skills, and to work closely with our journal to gain more editorial experience. Early career scientists who have novel ideas for new Climate Special Issues will act as Guest Editors under the mentorship of an experienced scientist; this mentor could be a member of the Editorial Board of Climate (ISSN 2225-1154) or from other well-established research institutes or laboratories. 

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Climate Editorial Office (climate@mdpi.com), and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail.

In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, Climate will continue to welcome all Special Issue proposals based on hot research topics.

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 (ecerph-4@mdpi.com).

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 

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.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 was awarded to Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi. One half of the prize was awarded jointly to Professor Manabe and Professor Hasselmann for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming, according to the Nobel Prize committee, while the other half of the prize went to Professor Parisi for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales. The three physicists contributed to the understanding of chaotic and apparently random phenomena.

 Manabe, Hasselmann, Parisi (from left to right) © Nobel Media

"The discoveries being recognised this year demonstrate that our knowledge about the climate rests on a solid scientific foundation, based on a rigorous analysis of observations. This year’s Laureates have all contributed to us gaining deeper insight into the properties and evolution of complex physical systems", said Thors Hans Hansson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

Manabe and Hasselman laid the foundations for the climate models used by scientists today. They were among the first to distinguish between climate phenomena on the one hand and random occurrences of the weather on the other hand, and to assess the impact of human activities on the climate from the beginning of the 20th century.

Parisi's novel studies involved identifying hidden patterns in disordered complex materials called spin glasses, a special type of metal alloy in which iron atoms, for example, are randomly mixed into a grid of copper atoms. He constructed a mathematical description of the apparently random behavior of spins. His findings not only impacted physics, but also mathematics, biology, neuroscience and machine learning, because these felds include problems which are related to so-called geometrical frustration.

We send our congratulations to the Nobel Laureates, especially to Giorgio Parisi, who was a one-time author in Entropy (with Juan J. Ruiz-Lorenzo et al.): “Spin Glasses in a Field Show a Phase Transition Varying the Distance among Real Replicas (and How to Exploit It to Find the Critical Line in a Field)”.

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

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

In April 2021, the American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP) became affiliated with Climate. As part of this collaboration, all members of ASAP will enjoy a discount on the article processing charge (APC) when submitting articles to the journals.

American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP) began in 2011 with the vision of building a home for people working on climate change adaptation where they could connect with each other, share information, and build on successes while moving away from approaches that are not working. ASAP was formed as a professional society that could help to bridge the geographic and sectoral gaps that naturally develop in any field—especially in the diverse, dynamic, and emerging field of climate adaptation. No longer would individuals be isolated working on their own to make a difference. No longer would the sectors be so fragmented in their approaches to building resilience. No longer would communities, regions, or states need to start from scratch to build and prioritize their strategies to increase climate resilience.

ASAP is a professional organization whose functions are highly relevant to the scope of Climate, especially the section "Climate Adaptation and Mitigation". We look forward to publishing state-of-the-art research from ASAP members and all the articles within this scope.