Announcements

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)

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)

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative, the Special Issue Mentor Program.

This program intends to provide an opportunity for early-career scientists to enhance their editing, networking and organizational skills, as well as to work closely with our journal to gain additional editorial experience. Early-career scientists who have novel ideas for new Drones Special Issues will act as Guest Editors, under the mentorship of an experienced scientist; this mentor could be a member of the Editorial Board of Drones (ISSN: 2504-446X), or from other well-established research institutes or laboratories.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Drones Editorial Office (drones@mdpi.com) and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail. You are also welcome to submit your Special Issue proposal via the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/drones.

In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, Drones will continue to welcome all Special Issue proposals based on hot research topics.

Conference name: 9th International Symposium on Sensor Science (I3S 2022)

Conference website: https://i3s2022warsaw.sciforum.net/

Date: 20–22 June 2022

Place: Warsaw, Poland

It is with great pleasure that we announce the 9th International Symposium on Sensor Science, to be held in Warsaw, Poland, from 20 to 22 June 2022.

Sensor technology has been shown to be suitable for applications in many important fields, including industrial applications, security medical diagnostics, and environmental monitoring. This international conference, supported by the Photonics Society of Poland, Warsaw University of Technology, as well as MDPI’s Sensors (ISSN: 1424-8220), will bring together scientists from different areas to discuss important recent developments in sensor technology. It will represent a great opportunity for an in-person meeting of an interdisciplinary community aiming to discuss important breakthroughs in sensor technology and its related fields.

The main topics of the conference include:

• Chemical sensors;
• Biosensors;
• Physical sensors;
• Optical/photonic sensors;
• Sensor applications;
• Specialty optical fibers for sensing;
• Materials, microfluidics, configurations and strategies for sensing;
• Distributed sensing in optical fibers;
• Amorphous materials for sensor applications.

We look forward to your participation in this exciting event.

Dr. Piotr Lesiak, Prof. Tomasz Woliński and Prof. Leszek Jaroszewicz
I3S 2022 Conference Chairs

Follow the conversation on Twitter with #I3S2022

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Yangquan Chen has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Drones in Agriculture and Forestry” in Drones (ISSN 2504-446X).

Prof. Dr. Yangquan Chen is a Full Professor at the School of Engineering, University of California, Merced. He was on the faculty of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. of the Utah State University, Logan, Utah from 2000 to 2012 where he was a tenured Associate Professor and the Director for the Center for Self-Organizing and Intelligent Systems (CSOIS) from 2004-2012. Prof. Dr. Chen has published many books, papers and patents. He served as the General Co-Chair for ICUAS 2014, 2017 and 2019 (International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems), and on the editorial board for journals such as IEEE Trans. on Control Systems Technology, ISA Trans., the ASME Journal of Dynamics Systems, Measurement and Control, IFAC journals of Control Engineering Practice as well as Mechatronics, Fractional Calculus and Applied Analysis, and Nonlinear Dynamics. He also serves as the Topical Editor-in-Chief in Field Robotics, International Journal of Advanced Robotics Systems (IJARS) and Intelligent Service Robotics. He serves as an Editorial Board Member of MDPI Applied Sciences and Sensors. His ISI Publon H-index is 67 with more than 19.6k citations, Google Scholar citation is 43.2k with H-index 91, H10-index 540. Prof. Dr. Chen was in the 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 Highly Cited Researchers list by Clarivate. He won Research of The Year awards from Utah State University (2012) and UC Merced (2020), respectively. In 2018, for his cumulative work in drones, Dr. Chen won "Senate Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Award" that recognizes a faculty member who has energetically and creatively applied his or her professional expertise and scholarship to benefit the local, regional, national or international community.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Yangquan Chen:

The main appeal is the nature of the journal that offers a centralized forum to disseminate all innovative research around drones, yet with a potential to maximize the visibility and impact of papers via open access. The Section “Drones Agriculture and Forestry” is a unique platform that focuses on agriculture and forestry, a major portion of all the drone applications. I had a vision of UAS-based “personal remote sensing” from 2005, now I add to this vision that drones are generators of big data and drones can be just edge devices that can do tiny machine learning with embedded AI. Drones can be used as both sensors and actuators, as a single agent or as a swarm.

We will seek advice from all board members with new ideas. All efforts should be impact-driven. Multidisciplinary research will be encouraged. Collaboration with major drone-related conferences will be established for sustaining Special Issues that publish peer-reviewed selected papers from the conferences.

3. As the Section Editor-in-Chief of Drones, how do you evaluate whether a paper is of general interest?
Each paper should follow some of these “i” words: informing, inspiring, innovative, instilling, impressing, and inviting (according to Bruce J. West). In order to attract general interest, papers should address if they belong to one of the following three categories: “First”, “Best” or “Different” (according to Richard Magin) and also check the following three questions: “So what?”, “Who cares?” and “Why you?”. Another very important question is “Are the presented results reproducible by peers?”.

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.

MDPI will be attending the 2021 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) from 7 to 11 December 2021, in Madrid, Spain.

With the theme “Connecting Cultures around the Globe”, this flagship conference of the IEEE Communications Society will feature a comprehensive, high-quality technical program, including 12 symposia, selected areas in communications tracking, and a variety of tutorials and workshops. IEEE GLOBECOM 2021 will also introduce an attractive industry program aimed at practitioners, with keynotes and panels from prominent research, industry and government leaders, business and industry panels, and vendor exhibits.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Sensors;
• Future Internet;
• Technologies;
• Drones;
• ASI.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth, B5. Our delegate looks forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://globecom2021.ieee-globecom.org/.

MDPI will be attending the 11^th International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation, which will be held from 29 November to 2 December 2021, in Lloret de Mar, Spain.

The conference will be focused on the following topics: algorithms for wireless sensor networks; applications of location awareness and context detection; benchmarking, assessment, evaluation, standards; health and wellness applications; human motion monitoring and modeling; indoor maps, indoor spatial data models and indoor mobile mapping, and 3D building models; indoor positioning, navigation, and tracking methods; innovative systems; location-based services and applications; privacy and security for ILS; robotics and UAV; seamless systems; self-contained sensors; user requirements for location-based systems; wearable and multi-sensor systems, etc.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Sensors (ISSN: 1424-8220);
• Remote Sensing (ISSN: 1424-8220);
• Drones (ISSN: 2504-446X);
• ASI (ISSN: 2571-5577);
• Systems (ISSN: 2079-8954).

If you are also attending this conference, please 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 visit: https://ipin-conference.org/2021/index.html.

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.