Announcements

Conference: The Fourth International Conference on Energy Storage Materials
Date: 13–16 April 2023

MDPI will be attending the Fourth International Conference on Energy Storage Materials as the exhibitor. With the theme of advanced energy storage materials and energy storage devices, this seminar invites well-known scholars and industry professionals from around the world to discuss the latest research progress and industrial development status and trends in advanced energy storage materials and devices from academic and industrial perspectives in order to promote the application process of energy storage materials and energy storage devices. The conference is held annually.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Batteries;
• Energies;

• Coatings;

• Sustainability;
• Materials;
• Electronics;
• Nanomaterials;
• Inorganics;
• Crystals;
• AppliedChem;
• Membranes;
• Electrochem;
• Applied Sciences;
• Metals;
• Molecules.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start a conversation with us at our booth: #9. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit http://www.icensm.ac.cn/eindex.html.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Coatings 2022 Best Paper Award. All the papers published in 2020 in Coatings (ISSN: 2079-6412) were considered for the award. After a thorough evaluation of the originality and significance of the papers, citations, and downloads, two winners were selected. The papers were selected after a thorough evaluation by the journal Award Committee led by the Editors-in-Chief, Dr. Alessandro Lavacchi and Prof. Dr. Wei Pan. We invited one of the winning teams for an interview and discussed their academic research stories and attitudes toward Open Access publishing.

The recipients of the Coatings 2022 Best Paper Award are as follows:

Review: “Introduction to Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation—An Overview of the Process and Applications”
by Frank Simchen, Maximilian Sieber, Alexander Kopp and Thomas Lampke
Coatings 2020, 10(7), 628; https://doi.org/10.3390/coatings10070628

Article: “First Insights into Photocatalytic Degradation of HDPE and LDPE Microplastics by a Mesoporous N–TiO₂ Coating: Effect of Size and Shape of Microplastics”
by Brenda Estefanía Llorente-García, Juan Manuel Hernández-López, Antonio Alberto Zaldívar-Cadena, Cristina Siligardi and Erika Iveth Cedillo-González
Coatings 2020, 10(7), 658; https://doi.org/10.3390/coatings10070658

Biographical statement of the winning team (article):

M.Sc. Llorente-García completed her master’s degree in sustainable processes in 2020 at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL, Mexico). Her thesis was based on the photocatalytic removal of microplastics from water using TiO₂-based materials.

Dr. Hernández-López is an Associate Professor of the Chemical Sciences Faculty of UANL. His research focuses on studying materials with industrial interest to improve their properties and to ensure their ability to eliminate emerging contaminants.

Dr. Zaldivar-Cadena is an Associate Professor of the Civil Engineering Faculty of UANL. His research focuses on hydrogen storage in metal alloys and bioreceptive cementing materials.

Dr. Siligardi is a Full Professor at the Department of Engineering "Enzo Ferrari" (DIEF) of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE, Italy). Her activity focuses on functional and structural ceramic materials. She was the coordinator of several international and national projects.

Dr. Cedillo-González is a researcher from the DIEF department of UNIMORE. Her research focuses on the multidisciplinary development of sustainable materials for the construction and environmental remediation of microplastic pollution. From 2017 to 2021, she served as an Associate Professor at UANL. She was the PI of two projects granted by the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology and the Mexican Ministry of Public Education.

1. What’s your current research and why did you choose this research field?
Our research currently focuses on materials science, with particular attention paid to the remediation of aquatic contamination by micro- and nanoplastics using photocatalytic processes. We chose that field because this kind of environmental pollution is already ubiquitous, and many remediation strategies can be designed from a materials science point of view.

2. Which research topics do you think are of particular interest to the research community in the coming years?
We consider that research topics of interest can be those related to the design of materials or new technologies with the lowest possible environmental impact. We also believe that designing materials that can directly or indirectly contribute to tackling climate change and water pollution can also be of interest.

3. Have you encountered any difficulties when you conducted the research? How did you overcome them?
The difficulties during this research were mainly related to the almost null availability of the scientific literature related to the topic (at the time the research was conducted). However, those difficulties allowed us to design our research from a materials science point of view. Thanks to this, the work was one of the first publications available in the field.

4. What qualities do you think young scientists need?
Scientific writing and grant proposal writing skills, project management, team leading and management, and critical thinking.

5. When and how did you first become acquainted with Coatings?
The story began in 2017, it was the first time our research group published a paper in this journal.

6. We are an Open Access journal. How do you think Open Access impacts the readers and authors?
As authors, we acknowledged that Open Access would allow our research to reach a wider audience. Indeed, Open Access allowed us to reach not only other scientists (at any carrier stage) but also other audiences that may not directly conduct research but perform science communication.

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.

Recently, Clarivate^TM revealed its 2022 list of Highly Cited Researchers™—individuals at universities, research institutes, and commercial organizations.

The scientists who were selected for this year’s list of Highly Cited Researchers have published highly cited papers in the 11-year period from January 2011 to December 2021, with citation frequencies in the top 1% of academic subjects and the same year of publication in the Web of Science^TM database. Based on Web of Science citation data, 6,938 researchers from across the globe, who have demonstrated a disproportionate level of significant and broad influence in their chosen field or fields over the last decade, have been awarded Highly Cited Researcher 2022 designations. The list is truly global, spanning 69 countries or regions, and spread across a diverse range of research sciences and social sciences.

According to statistics, Prof. Dr. Laifei Cheng (Northwestern Polytechnical University, China), the Editorial Board Member of Coatings (ISSN: 2079-6412), has been selected for the list of Highly Cited Researchers of Clarivate in 2022. Prof. Dr. Cheng is recognized for the high-quality scientific research achievements and outstanding contributions to professional fields. The Coatings journal office sincerely congratulates Prof. Dr. Cheng and hopes that he continues to have an academically productive relationship with the journal.

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 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.

MDPI will be attending the 14th National Surface Engineering Conference, held in Wuhan, China, from 11 to 13 November 2022. This conference aims to achieve an in-depth exchange of the latest research results in surface engineering and related disciplines and to discuss the frontier trends and future development trends of surface engineering research and engineering application. During this conference, MDPI will welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest ideas with us. 

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Lubricants;
• Applied Sciences;
• Surfaces;
• Polymers;
• Materials;
• QuBS;
• Coatings;
• Clean Technologies. 

If you plan on attending this conference, feel free to stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. 

For more information about the conference, please see the following link: http://bmgc2022.aconf.cn/index.html.

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 will be attending the 6th Micro-Nano Optical Technology and Application Conference (MOTA2022) in Nanjing, China, which will take place from 21 to 23 October 2022. The MOTA2022 is organized by the Chinese Society for Optical Engineering, aiming to build a communication platform between researchers and industrial application teams, as well as promote scientific research progress and the industrialization development of micro-nano optics.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Electronics (leading journal);
• Photonics (leading journal);
• Coatings;
• Sensors;
• Crystals;
• Journal of Imaging.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions that you may have.

For more information about the conference, please visit the following link: https://b2b.csoe.org.cn/meeting/MOTA2022.html.

The 2021 citation metrics have been released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), and we’re pleased to announce the following results for MDPI journals:

For more information on Impact Factors and what it means to index academic journals, please visit our related blog posts.

* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2022

Source: 2021 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ^TM (Clarivate, 2022)