Announcements

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 “Social Sciences & Humanities” category, who were selected amongst the extensive competition, and congratulate the authors for their outstanding scientific publications.

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

Administrative Sciences:

• “Entrepreneurship Education in a Multidisciplinary Environment: Evidence from an Entrepreneurship Programme Held in Turin”
  by Eleonora Fiore, Giuliano Sansone and Emilio Paolucci
  Adm. Sci. 2019, 9(1), 28; doi 10.3390/admsci9010028
• “A Systematic Mapping Study on Customer Loyalty and Brand Management”
  by Andrea Moretta Tartaglione, Ylenia Cavacece, Giuseppe Russo and Giuseppe Granata
  Adm. Sci. 2019, 9(1), 8; doi 10.3390/admsci9010008

Journal of Risk and Financial Management:

• “Refined Measures of Dynamic Connectedness based on Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregressions”
  by Nikolaos Antonakakis, Ioannis Chatziantoniou and David Gabauer
  J. Risk Financial Manag. 2020, 13(4), 84; doi 10.3390/jrfm13040084
• “Digitalization of the EU Economies and People at Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion”
  by Aleksy Kwilinski, Oleksandr Vyshnevskyi and Henryk Dzwigol
  J. Risk Financial Manag. 2020, 13(7), 142; doi 10.3390/jrfm13070142
• “Assessment of Bankruptcy Risk of Large Companies: European Countries Evolution Analysis”
  by Nicoleta Bărbuță-Mișu and Mara Madaleno
  J. Risk Financial Manag. 2020, 13(3), 58; doi 10.3390/jrfm13030058

Risks:

• “Nagging Predictors”
  by Ronald Richman and Mario V. Wüthrich
  Risks 2020, 8(3), 83; doi 10.3390/risks8030083
• “A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of Distance Driven on the Probability of Car Accidents”
  by Jean-Philippe Boucher and Roxane Turcotte
  Risks 2020, 8(3), 91; doi 10.3390/risks8030091
• “Financial Bubbles: A Study of Co-Explosivity in the Cryptocurrency Market”
  by Arianna Agosto and Alessia Cafferata
  Risks 2020, 8(2), 34; doi 10.3390/risks8020034
• “A Generative Adversarial Network Approach to Calibration of Local Stochastic Volatility Models”
  by Christa Cuchiero, Wahid Khosrawi and Josef Teichmann
  Risks 2020, 8(4), 101; doi 10.3390/risks8040101
• “Machine Learning in Least-Squares Monte Carlo Proxy Modeling of Life Insurance Companies”
  by Anne-Sophie Krah, Zoran Nikolić and Ralf Korn
  Risks 2020, 8(1), 21; doi 10.3390/risks8010021

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)

Following on from the International Day for Persons with Disabilities, which was held last week, I sat down with the Editor-in-Chief of MDPI’s Disabilities, Prof. Dr. Reinie Cordier, who is a professor of child mental health, welfare, and wellbeing at the University of Northumbria, to learn more about the journal. Here, he shares his expert opinion on the obstacles faced by persons with disabilities, in light of the pandemic.

What sparked your initial interest in your field of research?
I have worked clinically in the disability field for many years. This involved working with children with various mental health disabilities and, later on, also with adults with other forms of physical disabilities. Before I entered academia, I worked with people with disabilities as a therapist and as a manager of service. So, I would say it was then a natural flow to focus on the disability field in academia.

What do you believe is the importance of your research?
I think it is about creating awareness of the challenges that many people with disabilities face daily, and developing and promoting evidence through research to support policy changes within government departments, so that all the mechanisms are in place to better support people with disabilities living in communities.

The main theme of your research is the promotion of the social inclusion of children suffering from developmental disorders, developing evidence-based psychosocial interventions, and instrument development. Could you tell me a little bit more about this?
Children with developmental disabilities constitute a large heterogeneous group. They include children with autism; children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; children with conduct problems; and of course, those with acquired forms of disabilities, including psychologically acquired forms of disabilities, for instance, children who have experienced trauma and abuse and have developed mental health conditions as a result of this. A large part of the research that I do involves developing interventions that promote these children to acquire skills to develop friendships and, therefore, to be more socially included within their schools, in their daily lives, and within their communities. Very often, for some of these mental health conditions, such as autism, having social difficulties is inherent to the condition itself, so they need extra support and techniques to help them develop those skills that typically developing children would naturally develop by themselves in the natural course of life.

In general, would you say that children with developmental disabilities are receiving the support they need?
I think there have been huge advancements in recent years. If I think back to 20 years ago, for instance, the support that was in place for children with autism was quite limited. Now, governments, at least governments in economically advanced countries, have invested considerable funds into providing support, not only to ensure early diagnosis but also for ongoing intervention. This is important because the earlier we can detect children with specific types of disabilities, the earlier we can intervene and provide support so that the impacts are not compounded by a late diagnosis. So, I think many countries, including the UK, have made great strides in improving the support for children with disabilities. Of course, there’s still a large amount of work to be done, and this is not to say that all the services that we have in place are fully adequate. There’s always room for improvement, but there has been much progress compared to what we had previously. But I also think that there have been great advancements in societies’ understanding of disabilities and, therefore, tolerance towards people with disabilities, whereby, because we’ve created greater awareness of what they involve and what the lived experiences are of people with disabilities, they are, to a much larger extent, socially included in their daily lives and accepted as equal members of society.

Another important focus of your research is on ensuring that people from different cultures and social strata are able to participate, remain engaged, are socially connected, and live healthy lives. Can you also tell me a bit more about this?
So, this speaks to the recognition that different people in different parts of society across the world are disadvantaged. For instance, I do research in Africa around children who are born HIV-positive and are developmentally impacted by this in terms of both their physical and cognitive development, as well as other aspects of development. Moreover, it speaks to how that impacts their daily lives and how we can improve this whilst also developing tolerance and acceptance within society, as there is still a lot of stigma associated with conditions like this within those communities. What I’m saying here is that there are areas in the world where, because of social disadvantage, people with disabilities are disproportionately disadvantaged because of the lack of resources and supports and, very often, a lack of policies by government departments in supporting those with disabilities. This is also the case in economically advanced countries, where different segments within our communities are disadvantaged. Very often, many forms of disabilities are invisible to the eye in the sense that, for instance, those who have experienced trauma and abuse might have developed mental health conditions—like post-traumatic stress disorder—or attachment difficulties, which impact them throughout life. So, we need to realize that we should have a particular focus on those who are vulnerable and look after them through our research, and this needs to translate into government policies and, in turn, changes to service provision and practices to improve outcomes for them.

What led you to become the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, and what have you learned about your field of expertise during this time?
I’ve always thought that journals within the field of disabilities were fragmented, with some journals having a very narrow focus; for example, some journals only focus on very specific disability types, whilst other forms of research in the field of disabilities, such as developing disability theory, did not have a particular home. So, for me, the new journal offered a unique opportunity to bring all of the research on disabilities together under one roof; furthermore, the journal has the support of a modern and progressive publishing house, which I think made it all the more attractive. Moreover, the journal has managed to attract world-class scholars to form the editorial board, which I think gives it esteem and legitimacy, and for me, the challenge of setting us off on the journey is what made it attractive to become the Editor-in-Chief. If I were to narrow it down to one thing in terms of what I’ve learned, it’s that, through interacting with scholars globally in the field of disabilities, there is enormous goodwill among academics and researchers to better the field, which I think is quite reassuring.

What have been the major advances in your field in recent years (and how have MDPI papers contributed)?
There are a few things that stand out. The first would be the recognition that disabilities are not only focused on the limitations that people experience, but the shift has been towards a focus on people’s potential and towards social inclusion in societies, which we did not have many years back, at least not to the same extent, and that people with disabilities can not only be productive members of society but can actually excel, and there are quite a number of examples of this. Regarding advances around disability theory, the way that we as a society think about disabilities as a construct and the way that people live and have lived experience with disability has shifted towards the construct of enablement, towards what we need to do to support people to live normal lives. And then, of course, there have been a lot of technological advancements in promoting functional independence for people with disabilities, for instance, in improving people’s mobility and mobility within their communities, their ability to communicate with others, and a range of advancements around technology that have helped people with disabilities live productive healthy lives. As the journal is still quite new, we are currently focusing on creating awareness of the journal, but we have already received quite a high number of high-quality papers, particularly around disability theory, which is also very reassuring.

Would you say that papers and Special Issues surrounding disability theory are particularly important at the moment?
I think so, because, for instance, one of our Special Issues, “Disability, Social Participation and COVID-19”,  has a particular focus on the impact of COVID-19 on people living with disabilities, because, of course, it did have a disproportionate effect on people with disabilities, more so than the rest of society, so focusing some of our research towards that is a really important aspect. One of our other Special Issues, “Inclusive Education: The Impact on Students with Disabilities Now and in the Future”, has a specific focus on social participation and inclusive educational practices, so there’s been a really big shift in recent years within schools to ensure that as many children with disabilities as possible are fully integrated into schools and get to experience all the aspects of school life. School life is not just about learning materials; it’s got to do with making friends, learning social skills, learning how to interact, dealing with conflict, extramural activities, all of which help to shape our children, and there’s a much greater focus on making sure that children with and without disabilities have all of those experiences in equal measure. 

How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected persons with disabilities?
I think COVID-19 has been tremendously detrimental to, and has had a disproportionate effect on, people with disabilities, for instance, in terms of service provision and having limited access to services. Particularly at the height of COVID-19, it was very difficult to access homes, and many social care facilities, and similarly disability care facilities, have been affected in terms of whole institutions being impacted by COVID-19; of course, this has had a huge impact on both mortality and morbidity among people with disabilities. Additionally, of course, people with disabilities very often have pre-existing physical and mental health vulnerabilities, and so if you add COVID-19 on top of that, it has a disproportionate impact. For instance, those who were immunocompromised prior to COVID-19 are particularly vulnerable to death from COVID-19, and we must consider the compounding impact that that has in terms of social isolation. Social isolation is a big problem for some people with disabilities in terms of integrating into society; not only that, but the lack of quality friendships that they can access and, of course, the lockdowns that we’ve had have compounded the impact of social isolation on people with disabilities around the world, and as with the rest of society, this has also had a detrimental impact on their mental health and overall wellbeing. I think, importantly, what people don’t realize and where we would like to create a lot more awareness is that COVID-19 in and of itself has led to disabilities, meaning that many people now live with long COVID, which means that they have disabilities that they did not have before: disabilities as a result of pulmonary problems, cardiac problems, problems with fatigue and, of course, problems surrounding mental health. So, there’s been a whole range of impacts on people who did not have disabilities prior to COVID-19 but now live with disabilities.

And would you say that this effect has been particularly exacerbated in certain countries?
Absolutely, so it would have had a much greater impact in countries that lack resources in comparison to countries that have access to an abundance of resources. So, certainly, disadvantaged communities would have been disproportionately affected, and we are also still working out how to treat some of the conditions resulting from long-lasting COVID, including fatigue. Dealing with “brain fog” has proven to be a really big challenge, because it doesn’t seem to be going away and, of course, this has had a huge impact on people in terms of their ability to continue working if they have jobs with high cognitive demand and are not able to focus or concentrate for long periods of time. This has had a detrimental impact on many people, which cuts across society, regardless of social strata.

The theme of this year’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities is “Not All Disabilities Are Visible”. What does this mean to you?
I think conventionally, and when I say conventionally, I mean maybe 20–30 years ago, a lot of the focus on disabilities and disability research has been on people with physical disabilities and not those with other forms of disabilities, putting people with disabilities that are not visible at an even greater disadvantage in terms of support. For me, this theme is about recognizing that there are many forms of disabilities, not just those that are visible to the eye—for instance, those with mental health disabilities and those with intellectual disabilities—and that these groups deserve an equal amount of support and attention.

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

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)