Announcements

Conference: WASOG 2023

Organization: The World Association of Sarcoidosis and Other Granulomatous Disorders

Date: 19–21 June 2023

Place: Aula Medica, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Booth: #7

MDPI will be attending the WASOG 2023 conference, which will be held from 19 to 21 June 2023 at Aula Medica, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.

WASOG 2023 will offer a creative meeting ground for investigating how novel experimental, theoretical and computational approaches in Sarcoidosis and Interstitial Lung Diseases (ILDs) can improve our understanding of their underlying disease mechanisms. It aims to build an even stronger scientific bridge between different sectors, ultimately closing the knowledge gap and accelerating the development and spread of precision medicine in ILDs.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Biomedicines;
• Clinics and Practice;
• Diagnostics;
• Diseases;
• Genes;
• Healthcare;
• Hematology Reports;
• IJTM;
• JCM;
• Medicines;
• Reports.

Please reach out ([email protected]) if you plan on attending this conference. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you might have.

Conference: 60th European Renal Association (ERA) Congress

Date: 15–17 June 2023

Location: Milan, Italy

MDPI will be attending the 60th ERA Congress as an exhibitor; we welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest ideas with us.

This conference is being organized by the European Renal Association, and it will offer a clearly structured scientific program, combining presentations of cutting-edge research with a broad view of the currently most relevant fields in the prevention, detection, and treatment of kidney disease. At the conference, specialists will share knowledge on the clinical assessment and treatments of renal diseases to improve disease prevention and patients’ quality of life.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• JCM;
• JPM;
• Kidney and Dialysis;
• Diagnostics;
• Clinics and Practice;
• Uro;
• Cells;
• BioChem;
• Transplantology.

Conference: ATS (American Thoracic Society) Conference 2023
Date: 21–23 May 2023
Location: Washington DC, USA

MDPI will be attending ATS 2023 as an exhibitor; we welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest ideas with us.

This conference has been organized by the American Thoracic Society, and it will showcase the latest advances and discoveries in respiratory science, patient care and global respiratory health. At the conference, specialists will share and discuss the latest research and its applications to clinical, basic, and translational science in pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• JCM;
• Medicina;
• Clinics and Practice;
• JPM;
• Cancers;
• Medicines;
• Healthcare;
• Metabolites;
• Children;
• Brain Sciences.

If you are planning to attend this conference, please do not hesitate to talk with us online. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person at booth #2606, and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://conference.thoracic.org/.

As a leading open access publisher, MDPI provides scholars with a high-quality and rich academic exchange platform by continuously expanding into new and exciting research areas.

In December 2022, MDPI launched five new journals, covering multiple subjects such as life sciences, biology, medicine and pharmacology, social sciences and humanities. These new journals are being edited by established scholars across the world.

If you are interested in creating more open access journals with us to publish cutting-edge research, please send your journal proposal application to [email protected].

MDPI is pleased to announce that we now display the co-authors’ email addresses in addition to the corresponding author’s email address on the webpage of published papers, protected by Captcha. For more information about this change, please visit the journal’s instructions for authors page. 

We believe this change will facilitate academic discussions and advance our cause of open science and research. The corresponding authors are responsible for communicating with their co-authors and indicating in our system (https://susy.mdpi.com/) if co-authors would prefer for their email addresses not to be displayed.

On 9 February 2023, Clarivate, a global leader in providing trusted insights and analytics, added the Preprint Citation Index to the Web of Science platform, streamlining the research process by allowing researchers to locate and link to preprints alongside other trusted content in the database.

The Preprint Citation Index will act as a bridge to connect cutting-edge preprints with peer-reviewed journal articles published within the Web of Science Core Collection. Alerts can be easily set to monitor new research across several repositories and authors will also be able to include preprints on their Web of Science Research Profile to more accurately display their various research outputs.

As of its launch, the Preprint Citation Index will provide nearly two million preprints from various repositories, including MDPI’s own Preprints.org.

MDPI's Preprints Platform – Preprints.org

To advance Open Science and the fast dissemination of research, MDPI offers researchers a free multidisciplinary preprint platform. Preprints.org accepts submissions from all research areas and offers authors high visibility, permanent archiving, article-level Metrics and immediately citable content by assigning a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to all preprints.

During submission to any MDPI journal, authors have the option to share their research as a preprint. After an initial screening, the manuscript is available online in 48 hours or less. Once online, preprints can be downloaded, shared, commented on, and cited, providing authors maximum visibility.

We invite you to join the ranks of the over 100k researchers using Preprints.org and share your research.

For more information, please visit Preprints.org.

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

This program will enable early career researchers (who must hold a Ph.D. in a related field) to experience editing a Special Issue in MDPI journals, under the mentorship of our experienced Editorial Board Members or other experienced scientists. The mentor program will provide an excellent opportunity for early career scientists to gain editorial experience, and to cultivate their ability to edit scientific research.

The mentee’s responsibilities include:

• Proposing a Special Issue title and assisting the mentor in preparing a summary (around 200–400 words) and 3–10 keywords describing the background, importance, and goal of the Issue;
• Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
• Preparing a list of scholars who may be interested in the Issue and personally e-mailing invitations on behalf of Guest Editors;
• Writing an editorial for the online Special Issue together with the mentor.

The mentor’s responsibilities include:

• Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
• Performing editorial control of the Special Issue and quality control of the publications, both of which must be carried out in a timely manner;
• Providing suggestions to younger scholars if they have any doubts or concerns regarding submissions;
• Organizing video calls with young scholars and the Editorial Office regularly to discuss problems and improvement suggestions for the Special Issue;
• Making and submitting decisions regarding submissions with the assistance of mentees.

Certificates and awards:
After the Special Issue closes, the Editorial Office will provide official certificates for all the mentors and early career researchers.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Editorial Office of a journal you choose, and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail. The full list of MDPI journals is as follows: https://www.mdpi.com/about/journals.

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

MDPI has just become the first open access (OA) publisher to reach the milestone of one million articles published. That is one million articles freely available to all, to circulate and build upon! We are proud to share this special moment with the global scientific community.

This landmark has been reached thanks to the immeasurable support of more than 600,000 expert reviewers, 66,000 editorial board members and 6700 hard-working colleagues across MDPI’s global offices.

Within more than 25 years of publishing, our journals received 2.1 million manuscripts and generated 4.6 million peer review reports to get to one million papers published.

Reaching the milestone of one million articles published reinforces our mission to remove any existing barriers and to make scientific research accessible to all. Since its inception, MDPI’s goal has been to create reliable processes to make science open. This is a path towards facilitating the dissemination of novel insights in scientific communities.

Regular feedback from authors and reviewers shows that our service is greatly appreciated and needed. At the same time, the feedback helps us identify areas for further improvement.

As it stands, a significant share of published research findings remain closed access. More than half of the content published with the most well-known legacy publishers stays behind a paywall, and that is not including articles published in hybrid OA journals, or made available months or years after publication.

A new policy announced by the US administration in August 2022 requires that, as of January 2026, all US federally funded research be made freely and immediately available after publication. While the new policy does not mandate articles be published under an open access license, it is aligned with the open access movement in removing all barriers to research. Similarly, some of the most advanced research institutions in the world intend to have all funded research articles published in open access by 2025.

MDPI is proud to be the leading agent of the transition to open access.

"Thanks a Million" to all the contributors!

We are currently recruiting Editorial Board Members (EBMs) for MDPI journals indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) in Web of Science. In particular, we are looking for experts who are interested in aiding in the development of our journals and safeguarding the scientific quality of the published findings.

Journals currently listed in the ESCI will receive an Impact Factor in June 2023, according to the changes announced by Web of Science (Clarivate). Therefore, this is an excellent time to become an Editorial Board Member for one of these fast-developing journals.

If you are interested in sharing your expertise in one of the journals listed below, please send us an application using this link.

The Editorial Office of the journal will contact you once the application has been approved.
Editorial Board Members are responsible for academic decisions on manuscripts in their field of expertise, will edit Special Issues, and may be invited to review manuscripts. The initial term lasts for two years, after which it can be renewed, and entails the following:

• Prescreening and making decisions on new submissions related to your research interests;
• Setting up at least one Special Issue during your term on a topic related to your research interests (or supervising Special Issues related to your research field);
• Providing input or feedback regarding journal policies;
• Helping to promote the journal among your peers or at conferences;
• Attending Board meetings to suggest journal development strategies;
• Reviewing manuscripts.

Editorial Board Members are entitled to a full waiver on one publication per year in the journal that they serve and need to be experts in their fields.

The list of ESCI journals can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/about/journals/esci.

Please find the list of ESCI journals, categorized by subject, for which we are recruiting Editorial Board Members below.

We are pleased to announce that the website of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation has been revamped! For the past couple of months, our UX UI team and front-end developers have been working hard to launch the website in time for the opening of the Sustainability Awards nominations.

The website is not the only thing that has had a remodeling. Indeed, the format of the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award (ESLA) has been updated. ESLA is now a competition open to individual researchers or start-ups founded by researchers under the age of 35. Nominee applications will go through 2 rounds of selection until the final 3 are decided. The finalists will then be invited to give pitch presentations during the Award Ceremony to win either first place (10,000 USD) or runner-up (2 x 5000 USD).

The World Sustainability Award, on the other hand, remains the same: a total prize money of 100,000 USD is up for grabs by senior individual researchers or groups of researchers from the international research community.

Nominations for both the World Sustainability Award and the Emerging Sustainability Leader award are now open! Check out our new website for more information on how to nominate.

We are pleased to announce that Clinics and Practice (ISSN: 2039-7283) has been selected for coverage in the Scopus indexing database in November 2022.

Clinics and Practice is an open access journal that provides an advanced forum for studies related to clinical medicine. It publishes original articles, reviews, clinical reports, and communications, as well as Special Issues on particular subjects. Our journal welcomes contributions focusing on patients, procedures, and treatments with a particular emphasis on the clinical aspects. We encourage scientists to publish their results in as much detail as possible. Therefore, the journal has no restrictions regarding the length of papers.

To make the most of this opportunity, we would like to invite you to submit your research to the journal. If you have a paper concerning any topic within the scope of the journal, please feel free to submit it here.

We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all the authors, reviewers, and editors who have contributed to this journal and look forward to our continued collaboration.

Clinics and Practice Editorial Office

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Giustino Varrassi has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of Clinics and Practice (ISSN: 2039-7283). We look forward to his contribution to the continued success of the journal.

Prof. Dr. Giustino Varrassi has spent all his life serving public institutions, first at the University of Roma and then at the University of L'Aquila (Italy). He started his academic career as a researcher at Yeshiva University, at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York (USA). For a large part of his scientific life, his main interest has been pain medicine and also investigating the social aspects of pain in patients. In his retirement as Full Professor and Chairman of the Department of Anesthesia, he has re-discovered his old passion: publications and the diffusion of scientific information.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Giustino Varrassi, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views of the research area and open access publishing:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as its Editor-in-Chief?
I found Clinics and Practice a very appealing journal, covering all the aspects of medicine, and not only my specialty of anesthesia, intensive care and pain medicine. Undoubtedly, it has great potential for expansion, especially if managed by enthusiastic people working for an important publisher. So, with this hope, I accepted the kind, stimulating and challenging invitation.

2. What is your vision for the journal?
As I said, this journal should aim to present the science that is behind any clinical aspect of the medical practice, in the main interest of the patients. It should provide the most updated information that is able to help physicians to do better in their everyday activities.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?
Medicine evolves every day. The results are clearly shown by the significant increase in life expectancy, especially in the last decades. Many pathologies have been discovered and cured, including some of the most important genetic diseases. There is only one possible explanation for that: research and publication of the results of the research. Clinics and Practice will contribute to this process of evolution.

4. What do you think of the development of Open Access in the publishing field?
The importance of Open Access to science is of paramount importance. Science is a common propriety, without borders or limitations. Any publisher that has decided to implement Open Access in their journal should be applauded.

We wish Prof. Dr. Giustino Varrassi every success in his new position, and we look forward to his contributions to the journal.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Eduardo Bossone, Dr. Wisit Cheungpasitporn, Prof. Dr. Giustino Varrassi, Prof. Dr. Cristina A. Dehelean, Dr. Miran Sebestjen and Prof. Dr. Constantin Caruntu to the Editorial Board of Clinics and Practice (ISSN: 2039-7283), and we look forward to their contributions to the continued success of the journal.

Name: Prof. Dr. Eduardo Bossone
Affiliation: Division of Cardiology, Antonio Cardarelli Hospital, Naples, Italy
Interests: right heart pulmonary circulation UNIT; aorta diseases; takotsubo syndrome; heart failure

Name: Dr. Wisit Cheungpasitporn
Affiliation: Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, Department of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA
Interests: meta-analysis; acute kidney injury; clinical nephrology; kidney transplantation

Name: Prof. Dr. Giustino Varrassi
Affiliation: Paolo Procacci Foundation, Roma, Italy
Interests: pain medicine; pain assessment; pain management; acute pain; chronic pain; pain research; comorbidity; anesthesiology

Name: Prof. Dr. Cristina A. Dehelean
Affiliation: Department of Toxicology and Drug Industry, Faculty of Pharmacy, “Victor Babe?” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Timisoara, 2nd Eftimie Murgu Square, RO-300041 Timisoara, Romania
Interests: natural compounds; toxicity; experimental evaluations; efficacy; toxicology; pharmacy; drug; cancer cells

Name: Dr. Miran Sebestjen
Affiliations: 1. Advanced Heart Failure and Transplantation Center, Department of Cardiology, University Medical Center Ljubljana, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
2. Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Interests: endothelial dysfunction; vascular medicine; hypertension; endothelial function; atherosclerosis; cardiovascular medicine; cholesterol; endothelium; cardiology

Name: Prof. Dr. Constantin Caruntu
Affiliation: Department of Physiology, the “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 050474 Bucharest, Romania
Interests: physiology and physiopathology of the skin and oral mucosa; dermato-oncology; in vivo reflectance confocal microscopy

Peer Review Week began 19 September 2022 under the theme of “Research Integrity: Creating and Supporting Trust in Research”. Through various blog articles, podcast, and webinar, we discussed this crucial subject throughout the week, celebrating the essential role peer review plays in maintaining research quality.

To begin, we held a Webinar on the topic. Professor Peter W. Choate and Dr. Emmanuel Obeng-Gyasi joined Dr. Ioana Craciun, one of MDPI’s scientific officers, for an in-depth discussion.

We invite you to view the event recording:

During the week, the MDPI Blog in a series articles highlighted how good Peer Review safeguards research integrity. The following topics were covered:

• Peer Review Week 2022
• Research Integrity
• What We’ve Learned About Peer Review Reports
• 4 Steps to the Perfect Peer Review Report
• How to Write the Perfect Peer Review Report: An Interview
• Inviting Great Peer Reviewers

In a new edition of Insight Faster, an MDPI podcast, we were delighted to talk to the co-chairs of the Peer Review Week committee, Jayashree Rajagopalan (Senior Manager of Global Community Engagement for CACTUS) and Danielle Padula (Head of Marketing and Community Development at Scholastica) to get their take on this year’s event and its related topics.

You can find the Podcast here.

We hope you enjoy the contents!

MDPI’s Young Investigator Awards recognize promising junior researchers, acknowledge their contributions, and enhance communication among scientists. We are proud to present the winners for the year 2021 in the “Medicine & Pharmacology” category. The winners were selected by the journals’ editors.

We warmly congratulate the awarded young investigators for their outstanding contributions. MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Biomedicines:

• Jasper Fuk-Woo Chan, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong
• Mateusz Maciejczyk, Medical University of Bialystok, Poland

Current Oncology:

• Matteo Lambertini, University of Genova, Italy

Dentistry Journal:

• Helen Rogers, Newcastle University, UK

Healthcare:

• Amir Karami, University of South Carolina, USA

Journal of Clinical Medicine:

• Andrea Palermo, Campus Bio-Medico University, Italy

Journal of Personalized Medicine:

• Simone Di Franco, University of Palermo, Italy
• Catriona Hippman, University of Calgary, Canada

Medicina:

• Veeru Kasivisvanathan, University College London, UK
• Andrea Cortegiani, University of Palermo, Italy; University Hospital Policlinico Paolo Giaccone, Italy

Pharmaceutics:

• Qi Zhou, Purdue University, USA

We are proud to recognize the winners of MDPI’s 2021 Travel Awards in the “Medicine & Pharmacology” category for their outstanding presentations and to present them with the prize.

MDPI journals regularly offer travel awards to encourage talented junior scientists to present their latest research at academic conferences in specific fields, which helps to increase their influence.

The winners mentioned below were carefully selected by the journal editors based on an outline of their research and the work to be presented at an academic conference.

We would like to warmly congratulate the Travel Awards winners for the year 2021 and wish them the greatest success with their future research endeavors. MDPI will continue to enhance communication among scientists.

Biomedicines:

• Soheil Saeedi, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Dentistry Journal:

• Shawn Alexander Hallett, University of Michigan, USA

Medicines:

• Claire Albert, Yale University, USA

Pharmaceuticals:

• Raquel Filipa da Costa Viveiros, NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal
• Patrick Jim Küppers, University Hospital Bonn, Germany

In order to acknowledge our reviewers, who so generously dedicate their time to reviewing papers, and demonstrate diligence, professionalism, and timeliness when reviewing manuscripts, MDPI journals regularly offer outstanding reviewer awards to scholars who participate in the peer-review process.

We are proud to recognize winners for the year 2021 in the “Medicine & Pharmacology” category for their outstanding contributions among extensive competition by presenting them with an Outstanding Reviewer Award.

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of the winners on their achievement. MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Cancers:

• Antonio G. Solimando, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy
• Chenghui Li, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, USA
• Joaquim Carreras, Tokai University, Japan
• Pierfrancesco Franco, University of Turin School of Medicine, Italy
• Laurentiu Pop, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA

Current Oncology:

• Margaret Fitch, University of Toronto, Canada
• Caroline Mariano, BC Cancer Agency, Canada; University of British Columbia, Canada

Healthcare:

• Naser Alsharairi, Griffith University, Australia
• Peter W. Choate, Mount Royal University, Canada
• Qin Xiang Ng, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Journal of Clinical Medicine:

• Giulio Francesco, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
• Sebastian Schnaubelt, Medical University of Vienna, Austria
• Olga Kislitsina, Northwestern University, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, USA

Journal of Personalized Medicine:

• Onofrio Laselva, University of Foggia, Italy
• Ping-Hsun Wu, Kaohsiung Medical University, Taiwan
• Vladimir Vladimirov, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA
• Mauro Giuffrè, University of Trieste, Italy

Medical Sciences:

• Erika Palmieri, National Cancer Institute at Frederick, USA

Tomography:

• Anjul Khadria, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA

The purpose of our Best Paper Awards is to promote and recognize the most impactful contributions published within MDPI journals.

The editors of each journal carefully selected reviews and research papers through a rigorous judging process based on criteria such as the scientific merit, overall impact, and the quality of presentation of the papers published in the journal last year.

We are honored to present the winners in the “Medicine & Pharmacology” category, who were selected amongst extensive competition, and congratulate the authors for their outstanding scientific publications.

MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Antibiotics:

• “Antimicrobial and Synergistic Effects of Commercial Piperine and Piperlongumine in Combination with Conventional Antimicrobials”

by Eunice Ego Mgbeahuruike, Milla Stålnacke, Heikki Vuorela and Yvonne Holm

Antibiotics 2019, 8(2), 55; doi:10.3390/antibiotics8020055

• “Antibiotic Discovery: Where Have We Come from, Where Do We Go?”

by Bernardo Ribeiro da Cunha, Luís P. Fonseca and Cecília R. C. Calado

Antibiotics 2019, 8(2), 45; doi:10.3390/antibiotics8020045

Dentistry Journal:

• “Regeneration of the Periodontal Apparatus in Aggressive Periodontitis Patients”

by Zvi Artzi, Shiran Sudri, Ori Platner and Avital Kozlovsky

Dent. J. 2019, 7(1), 29; doi:10.3390/dj7010029

• “Treatment of Peri-Implant Mucositis with Repeated Application of Chlorhexidine Chips or Gel during Supportive Therapy—A Randomized Clinical Trial”

by Philipp Sahrmann, Cyrill Bettschart, Daniel B. Wiedemeier, Ahmed Al-Majid, Thomas Attin and Patrick R. Schmidlin

Dent. J. 2019, 7(4), 115; doi:10.3390/dj7040115

Healthcare:

• “Two-Year Use of Care Robot Zora in Dutch Nursing Homes: An Evaluation Study”

by Chantal Huisman and Helianthe Kort

Healthcare 2019, 7(1), 31; doi:10.3390/healthcare7010031

• “The Interlinked Rising Epidemic of Insufficient Sleep and Diabetes Mellitus”

by Vijay Kumar Chattu, Soosanna Kumary Chattu, Deepa Burman, David Warren Spence and Seithikurippu R. Pandi-Perumal

Healthcare 2019, 7(1), 37; doi:10.3390/healthcare7010037

Journal of Clinical Medicine:

• “Periodontitis: A Multifaceted Disease of Tooth-Supporting Tissues”

by Eija Könönen, Mervi Gursoy and Ulvi Kahraman Gursoy

Clin. Med. 2019, 8(8), 1135; doi:10.3390/jcm8081135

• “The Immunomodulatory Functions of Mesenchymal Stromal/Stem Cells Mediated via Paracrine Activity”

by Yueyuan Zhou, Yusuke Yamamoto, Zhongdang Xiao and Takahiro Ochiya

Clin. Med. 2019, 8(7), 1025; doi:10.3390/jcm8071025

• “Optimizing Detection of Kidney Transplant Injury by Assessment of Donor-Derived Cell-Free DNA via Massively Multiplex PCR”

by Tara K. Sigdel, Felipe Acosta Archila, Tudor Constantin, Sarah A. Prins, Juliane Liberto, Izabella Damm, Parhom Towfighi, Samantha Navarro, Eser Kirkizlar, Zachary P. Demko, Allison Ryan, Styrmir Sigurjonsson, Reuben D. Sarwal, Szu-Chuan Hseish, Chitranon Chan-On, Bernhard Zimmermann, Paul R. Billings, Solomon Moshkevich and Minnie M. Sarwal

Clin. Med. 2019, 8(1), 19; doi:10.3390/jcm8010019

Medicina:

• “Tumor Microenvironment”

by Borros Arneth

Medicina 2020, 56(1), 15; doi: 10.3390/medicina56010015

• “Comparative Epidemiology and Resistance Trends of Common Urinary Pathogens in a Tertiary-Care Hospital: A 10-Year Surveillance Study”

by Márió Gajdács, Marianna Ábrók, Andrea Lázár, and Katalin Burián

Medicina 2019, 55(7), 356; doi: 10.3390/medicina55070356

Pharmaceutics:

• “3D Printed Pellets (Miniprintlets): A Novel, Multi-Drug, Controlled Release Platform Technology”

by Atheer Awad, Fabrizio Fina, Sarah J. Trenfield, Pavanesh Patel, Alvaro Goyanes, Simon Gaisford and Abdul W. Basit.

Pharmaceutics 2019, 11(4), 148; doi:10.3390/pharmaceutics11040148

• “Mathematical Modeling of Release Kinetics from Supramolecular Drug Delivery Systems”

by Constantin Mircioiu, Victor Voicu, Valentina Anuta, Andra Tudose, Christian Celia, Donatella Paolino, Massimo Fresta, Roxana Sandulovici and Ion Mircioiu

Pharmaceutics 2019, 11(3), 140; doi:10.3390/pharmaceutics11030140

The 2021 citation metrics have been officially released in Scopus!

We are pleased to announce that 182 MDPI journals are included, of which:

● 21 journals received their first CiteScore.
● 85% of journals increased their CiteScore from 2020.
● 155 journals (85%) ranked above average, in at least one category.

The following 65 MDPI journals (36%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category:

Source: 2021 CiteScores™ (Elsevier)

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]

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 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.