Announcements

We are pleased to announce that Condensed Matter (ISSN: 2410-3896) has received an increased CiteScore of 3.1 (an increase of 40.9% compared with the previous year) in the latest released 2021 CiteScore™ values, published by Elsevier in June 2022. For full details of the current CiteScore release, please see the journal’s source profile.

We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all the authors, editors, and reviewers for their contributions. We are grateful for their excellent work that has helped us to achieve this milestone!

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
liliane.auwerter@mdpi.com

We are pleased to announce that the Best Presentation Awards, sponsored by Condensed Matter for “Fluctuations and Highly Non Linear Phenomena in Superfluids and Superconductors 2021” (SuperFluctuations 2021), were granted to Dr. Jonas Bekaert and Dr. Tomohiro Hata. Congratulations!

• “Multigap Superconductivity and Topological States in Gallenene”
Dr. Jonas Bekaert, University of Antwerp

We investigated the electronic properties of gallenene, one of the newest elemental 2D materials, entirely composed of gallium. Using state-of-the-art ab initio calculations we revealed that several gallenene structures are superconducting through the electron-phonon coupling. One of these gallenene phases is isostructural with graphene, and as such, it is the structurally simplest 2D superconductor known to date. Moreover, superconductivity in this gallenene phase has a multigap nature, hosting distinct superconducting gaps associated with different Fermi sheets. Interestingly, we also found gallenene to host a Dirac-type band crossing among its excited states, with topologically non-trivial properties driven by spin-orbit coupling, opening the possibility for interplay with the superconducting state. Strikingly, the superconducting critical temperature of gallenene is in the range of 7 to 10 K, exceeding the critical temperature of bulk gallium from which it is exfoliated. Finally, we demonstrated that superconductivity in gallenene can be further enhanced, up to 18 K, through chemical functionalization with hydrogen.

• “Dissipation and Relaxation Dynamics of Mobile Magnetic Impurity with Rashba Type Spin-Orbit Coupling in an Ohmic Heat Bath”
Dr. Tomohiro Hata, Kochi University

Spin-orbit coupling (SOC) is a relativistic effect that involves spin and momentum and appears in various physical systems, for instance, condensed matter, nuclear matter, etc. It is known that SOC is the origin of many interesting phenomena; in particular, we focus on spin relaxation. In the present work, we try to describe spin relaxation through velocity dissipation by using a microscopic model with SOC. Specifically, we consider a single particle system with Rashba-type SOC that interacts with an infinite number of harmonic oscillators (Caldeira–Leggett type ohmic heat bath) and thus undergoes velocity dissipation. As a result of the numerical simulation, we observe that spin and momentum relaxations occur at the same time and that the strength of SOC is crucial for the direction of the momentum in the final state. Since the spin direction depends on the momentum one, we expect that one can control the spin orientation due to the SOC strength.

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

We are pleased to announce that the Best Presentation Awards, sponsored by Condensed Matter for “High Precision X-ray Measurements 2021”, were granted to Dr. Elette Engels, Dr. Ginevra Begani Provinciali and Dr. Bharat Mishra. Congratulations! 

Mastering Synchrotron Microbeams for Radiotherapy: Effective Cancer Treatment with Remarkable Healthy Tissue Tolerance

Elette Engels
University of Wollongong

This research explores the efficacy of the synchrotron X-rays that are collimated into microbeams for cancer treatment. We have shown that Synchrotron Microbeam Radiation Therapy (MRT) has the potential to rapidly treat otherwise resistant cancers while sparing normal tissue. Our work at the Imaging and Medical Beam Line (IMBL) of the Australian Synchrotron integrated state-of-the-art radiation detectors to translate MRT from the quality assurance stage to treating cancers in vitro and in vivo. With a focus on the challenging cancers of the brain and lung, we have determined that the surrounding organs at risk (including the brain, spinal cord, and heart) could tolerate microbeam doses in the range of 400–800 Gy remarkably well. We further showed that microbeams effectively increased the survival of rats with resistant brain cancer by over 220%. This work was performed in collaboration with Dr. Elisabeth Schültke, (Rostock University Medical Center, Germany), the Centre for Medical Radiation Physics, Australian Synchrotron, Illawarra Health, and Medical Research Institute, and Prince of Wales Hospital (Australia). 

High Sensitivity X-ray Phase Imaging System Based on a Hartmann Wavefront Sensor

Ginevra Begani Provinciali
Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée, CNRS, ENSTA Paris,Ecole Polytechnique IP Paris

We developed a new high-resolution 3D X-ray phase imaging system based on Hartmann wavefront sensing. The system provides high spatial sampling (20 μm without magnification) and high angular sensitivity (~100 nrad) over a 5 to 25 keV energy range. This setup has been coupled with tomography measurements to obtain a 3D reconstruction of the object. Remarkably, the X-ray Hartmann imaging system is capable of providing single-exposure quantitative measurements of both phase and amplitude without the need for any phase-retrieval procedure. Furthermore, to optimize the sensor design, we developed a 3D wave propagation model based on Fresnel propagator and partial coherent beams. 

Probing Electron Properties in ECR Plasmas using X-ray Bremsstrahlung and Fluorescence Emission

Bharat Mishra
INFN - LNS and Universita degli Studi di Catania

A quantitative analysis of X-ray emission from an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma was performed to probe the spatial properties of intermediate energy electrons. A series of measurements were taken by INFN-LNS and ATOMKI, capturing spatially and spectrally resolved X-ray maps, as well as volumetric emissions from argon plasma. Comparing the former with model-generated maps (involving space-resolved phenomenological electron energy distribution function and geometrical efficiency calculated using ray-tracing MC routine) furnished information on structural aspects of the plasma. Similarly, fitting a model composed of bremsstrahlung and fluorescence to the volumetric X-ray spectrum provided valuable insight into the density and temperature of confined and lost electrons. The latter can be fed back to existing electron kinetics models for simulating more relevant energies, consequently improving theoretical X-ray maps and establishing the method as an excellent indirect diagnostic tool for warm electrons, required for both fundamental and applied research in ECR plasmas.