Announcements

The 13th Asian-European International Conference on Plasma Surface Engineering (AEPSE2021) will be held on 26–30 September 2021, in BEXCO, Busan, Republic of Korea!

The AEPSE conference has attracted continually growing interest as a globally significant open forum for scientists and engineers focused on plasma and related aspects in Asia and Europe as well as other regions. The first AEPSE meeting was held in 1997 in Seoul, Korea.

AEPSE2021 is jointly organized by the Asian Joint Committee for Applied Plasma Science and Engineering (AJC-APSE) and The Korean Institute of Surface Engineering (KISE) in collaboration with the European Joint Committee on Plasma and Ion Surface Engineering (EJC/PISE).

From the global viewpoint of recent industrial paradigm change, AEPSE2021 will establish a forum for new topics such as healthcare, new functional materials, biomedicine, agriculture, etc., for the empowerment of plasma technology in the global society as well as fundamental to advanced industrial application of plasma.

The major topics covered in AEPSE2021 will include (1) Fundamental of applied plasmas and films; (2) Applied plasma sources and processes; (4) Functional films, coatings, materials, and devices; (5) Applications in nano, energy, and environment; (6) Bio, healthcare, and agriculture; and (7) Industrial applications and emerging technologies.

Four special topical workshops are also being organized as part of the conference:

• Plasma Healthcare: Status and Future Vision
• Progress and Perspective of Plasma Farming Technology
• Plasma Catalysis; Fundamental and Application Perspective
• Advanced Dry and Wet Surface Processes

For more detailed information, please visit the website: www.aepse.org.

On behalf of the organizing committee, we would like to cordially invite you to participate in AEPSE2021.

Warm regards,

Wonho Choe
Chair of AEPSE2021

Secretariat Office of AEPSE2021
3F, Dong-il Bldg, 27 Dogok-ro 3-gil
Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06253, Republic of Korea
Email: aepse2021@gmail.com

Coatings has established two new sections: “Surface Engineering for Energy Harvesting, Conversion, and Storage” and “Functional Polymer Coatings and Films”. You are welcome to submit manuscripts related to energy-related surface engineering, as well as functional polymer coatings and films.

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.

MDPI will be attending the China Materials Conference and Exhibition 2020, Qingdao, Shandong, China, November 19–21, 2020.

CMC's 19th annual meeting is the premier venue for the presentation in the field of materials sciences, where one can learn from experts, forge collaborations with peers, explore new tools and technologies, and advance their career.

The purpose of the conference is to build an exchange platform for experts, scholars, professors, scientific and technological workers, relevant government management departments and leaders, entrepreneurs, and related personnel, engaged in the scientific research, development, and industrialization of new materials in China to exchange and share the latest materials research achievements, in order to achieve the purpose of mutual promotion and common improvement.

There are many outstanding people in the committee of the meeting, such as Professor Boyun Huang and Academician Lian Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Professor Bingbo Wei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, etc. The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Coatings (leading journal);
• Materials;
• Crystals;
• Energies;
• Molecules;
• Metals;
• Nanomaterials;
• Polymers.
• Actuators
• Sustainability
• Membranes
• Technologies
• Gels
• ASI

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth C13). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: http://cmc2020.medcon.net.cn/cn/web/index/

MDPI will be attending the 4th Micro-Nano Optics Technology and Application Exchange Conference (MOTA2020), Chengdu, September 26–28, 2020.

MOTA2020 is organized by the Chinese Society for Optical Engineering, which combines the national defense and industrial applications to build a large platform for the industrial chain. The aim is to build a seamless docking platform for scientific and technical personnel engaged in related research in China and industrial application teams to form a joint force to promote the rapid technological development of micro-nano optics itself and its industrial development.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Energies (leading journal)
• Photonics
• Nanomaterials
• Coatings
• Sensors
• Clean Technologies
• Safety
• Micromachines

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth "Journal Energies"). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://b2b.csoe.org.cn/meeting/MOTA2020.html.

Dear Colleagues,

The Coatings Editorial Board and Editorial Team would like to gratefully acknowledge the time and energy given by reviewers in assessing the manuscripts submitted to the journal. With their great support, many interesting papers of high quality have been published in Coatings, and a quick peer review process is maintained. In order to acknowledge our reviewers, the editorial team has dedicated an award to reviewers in gratitude for their exceptional dedication in reviewing manuscripts for Coatings.

The following three referees will be awarded the “Coatings 2019 Outstanding Reviewers” prize on the basis of the quantity, timeliness, and quality of their reviews in 2019. Each of them will receive 500 CHF and a certificate for their outstanding review work. We are very pleased to acknowledge the following referees:

Leszek Łatka
Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Poland;

Hannes Rijckaert
Ghent University, Belgium;

Andrey V. Bondarev
Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic.

We are happy to announce that Professor Noam Eliaz from Tel-Aviv University, an Editorial Board Member of Materials, Corrosion and Materials Degradation and Coatings, has been elected to the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), USA, as a Senior Member. This award is for Dr. Eliaz’s “success in patents, licensing, and commercialization”, “technologies that have brought, or aspire to bring, real impact on the welfare of society”, and “contributions to the innovation ecosystem” at Tel-Aviv University, recognizing Prof. Eliaz “as a rising leader and inventor” in his field.