Announcements

We are pleased to announce the results of the first MDPI Writing Prize. We received a large number of entries from across the globe on the theme of “The Global Benefits of Open Research”. It was a pleasure to read so many original, well-researched and well-presented ideas, and the final choice was not an easy one. We are pleased to announce that the winners are as follows:

1st prize (500 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Edmond Sanganyado, Shantou University, China

2nd prizes (250 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Kamala T. Rajahgopal, Asia e University, Malaysia
Yin Zhixuan, Qingdao University of Technology, China

3rd prizes (100 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Alexandra Ticea, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Romania
Ankur Sarker, University of Virginia, USA
Daniel Attoye, United Arab Emirates University, UAE

Congratulations to all of them! The winning entries can be downloaded by clicking on the names above. A compilation of all entries will soon be available as an open access book.

The writing prize is sponsored by the MDPI English editing service.

We would like to send warm wishes from the Editor-in-Chief of Entropy and look to the future. Acknowledgement of our past achievements provides the strongest stimulus for future endeavor.

As the journal Entropy enters its 20th year, one cannot help but reflect not only on how far the journal has come, but also on how far the field has come. I have been Editor-in-Chief of Entropy for the past six years, which is roughly one-third of the lifetime of the journal. While my predecessors did an excellent job in establishing the journal, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to help it grow. On my arrival in 2012, Entropy had an impact factor of 1.183. This last year, 2017, the impact factor reached a respectable 1.821 and it promises to break 2.0 in the next year or so, as Entropy continues its rapid growth.

I have been an active member of the MaxEnt (Bayesian Inference and Maximum Entropy Methods in Science and Engineering) community since I first attended the MaxEnt 1997 workshop over twenty years ago, just before the birth of the journal Entropy. My MaxEnt colleagues had long been concerned about the fact that there were few precious journals that would entertain their research papers for publication. Historically, the MaxEnt community has been known for being about a decade or so ahead of its time. While this is an exciting position to be in, it is extremely difficult from a pragmatic perspective, since it is common for the scientific community to undervalue or, worse, to misunderstand our work. We continue to encounter some of these difficulties at Entropy, since it is still frequent for the scientific community to think of entropy as a thermodynamic quantity rather than a tool for making inferences. Fortunately, as the journal continues to grow, the number of those who understand entropy grows.

I was delighted to take the helm of Entropy in 2012. I had access to a large circle of excellent scientists who had much to contribute and could profit from a growing journal with a scope to accommodate their work! Contribute they did. But I was astonished to discover so many other people out there who were applying entropic concepts to their problems. I was, and still am, excited to learn of new applications and advances and I am grateful that Entropy is in an excellent and respected position to present and showcase them.

— Prof. Dr. Kevin Knuth
Editor-in-Chief of Entropy

To celebrate the recent milestones, we have established a few Special Issues to look back over 20 years of outstanding accomplishments and to highlight innovative frontier research perspectives. We encourage you to keep an eye on the publications in these Special Issues and hope you consider them as a venue for publishing your latest work.

• "20th Anniversary of Entropy - Approximate and Sample Entropy" (guest editor: Prof. Dr. Roberto Hornero)
• "20th Anniversary of Entropy - Recent Advances in Entropy and Information-Theoretic Concepts and Their Applications" (guest editor: Prof. Dr. Raúl Alcaraz Martínez)

At MDPI, we always want to keep you up to date. Even for already published articles, some corrections or minor changes may occur. To prevent you from missing any updates, from now on you will be able to access the latest version of any manuscript by clicking on the “check for updates” logo that you can find in the PDF file, even if you have saved the file on your computer.

We are proud to announce that MDPI is now a member of UKSG, the UK´s largest scholarly communications community. Through UKSG, different stakeholders share their knowledge and experience in order to improve the knowledge and information environment for researchers. UKSG´s members include universities, publishers, content providers, intermediaries, and other similar organisations. Members participate in discussions and events on issues around scholarly communications.

The UKSG Annual Conference and Exhibition is a flagship initiative from the UKSG and one of the most stimulating events in the scholarly communications calendar. It is held annually and attracts a large number of delegates. More information is available at https://www.uksg.org/events/annualconference

MDPI is delighted to be a part of this active community and we look forward to making our own contribution. We will continue to support organisations and initiatives that boost collaboration and vision within scholarly communication.

More information about UKSG can be found at https://www.uksg.org/. The full membership list is available at: https://www.uksg.org/members.

The DORA initiative addresses the need for advanced approaches in the evaluation and measurement of the quality of scientific research outputs. It is a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines. MDPI proudly joins a list of more than 400 organizations around the world which support DORA’s recommendations for improving the way the quality of research results is evaluated.

More info can be found at http://www.ascb.org/dora/

We are pleased to inform that ten MDPI journals (shown below) have been found suitable for inclusion in Scopus over the course of the past few months. As varied as the topical focus for these journals may be, their editorial teams do share a passion for serving research communities around the world.

The coverage in Scopus starts from 2017 volumes, with the articles expected to be indexed within the next few months.

The competition is still open until end of March! Please check out the banner for more details: https://mdpi-res.com/data/english-prize.pdf

We are delighted to announce that UCL Press has adopted MDPI's Journal Article & Management System, JAMS, including production services. JAMS is a modular, integrated editorial platform for academic publishers. It offers flexibility, ease-of-use, and is a fully integrated solution for the end-to-end management of scholarly journals. JAMS is based on the software used to publish MDPI’s portfolio of journals. 

Ian Caswell, UCL Press Journals Manager, says he is "excited to see UCL Press and MDPI partner together to implement the JAMS submission system for all UCL Press journals. The system offered a flexible, efficient and straightforward solution for our processes from author submission to ready for publication. I am grateful for the valuable experience and support MDPI have offered and look forward to developing our programme with an effective submission system in place.” Dr Martyn Rittman, MDPI’s Publishing Services Manager, adds, “We are proud to support one of the UK’s premier university presses in their publishing operation. This is an excellent way for us at MDPI to share our experience and knowledge, and benefit the research community beyond our own journals.”

JAMS combines services that are kept separate for many publishers. The entire editorial process, production and invoicing (e.g. for open access article processing charges) are fully integrated into a single platform. This allows for efficient, fast manuscript processing. For further information about JAMS, see https://www.mdpi.com/publishing_services. 

Symmetry
Algorithms
Computation
Mathematical and Computational Applications (MCA)
Mathematics
Universe
Axioms

If you are also attending this conference, please stop by our booth (Booth #L622). 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://jointmathematicsmeetings.org/jmm.

Conference Address:

San Diego Convention Center
111 West Harbor Drive
San Diego, CA 92101
USA

Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina
333 West Harbor Drive
San Diego, CA 92101
USA

We are pleased to welcome new participants to MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), designed to help institutions manage the transition to the Open Access publishing model. Researchers affiliated with participating universites benefit from a 10% discount on the Article Processing Charges (APC) for any paper published in an MDPI journal, while the participating library or university incurs no basic fee for participating in the program.

• No fee for participants and no obligation to prolong after the initial 12 months. The participants may withdraw from the programme at any time, and we will also keep it free for the library for as long as they continue in the programme.
• Authors affiliated with the university will receive a 10% discount on the APC.
• The institution is granted free access to the MDPI submission system and can receive free alerts of new submissions to our journals.
• By default, authors from the institution will continue to be invoiced directly unless the institution opts for central billing.
• Auto-archiving of papers into the institutions´ repository as long as it supports SWORD 1.3.

More details about the programme and a list of our current participant institutions can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap

Institutions which are interested to participate may do so online at: https://www.mdpi.com/ioap-form

The following North American universities have signed up to the IOAP program recently:

Connecticut College, USA
Emory University, USA
Florida International University, USA
Johns Hopkins University, USA
Mississippi State University, USA
Northeastern University, USA
Rice University, USA
University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada
University of Rhode Island, USA
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA
University of Toronto, Canada
University of Windsor, Canada
University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA
Wellesley College, USA
West Virginia University, USA

Many prestigious institutions from Europe and Asia have joined as well:

Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation, Malaysia
Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic
Gdansk University of Technology, Poland
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Newcastle University, UK
Northumbria University, UK
Southwest University, China
Technical University of Crete, Greece
University Malaya, Malaysia
University of Antwerp, Belgium
University of Cyprus, Cyprus
University of Manchester, UK
University of Reading, UK
University of Sussex, UK
University of Warwick, UK
West Pomeranian University of Technology Szczecin, Poland

We offer a warm welcome to the new participants!