Announcements

MDPI will be attending the Conference on Complex Systems (CCS2022) in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, which will take place from 17 to 21 October 2022. The CCS is the largest and most important annual meeting of the international complex systems community. It comes under the auspices of the Complex Systems Society. This edition, organized by IFISC, takes place after previous events held in Lyon, Singapore, Thessaloniki, and Cancun.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Entropy;
• Fractal and Fractional;
• Symmetry;
• Mathematics;
• Dynamics;
• Algorithms;
• Systems;
• Informatics;
• MAKE;
• Information;
• Future Internet;
• Applied System Innovation;
• Data.

If you are 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 the following link: https://www.ccs2022.org/.

In order to acknowledge our reviewers, who so generously dedicate their time to reviewing papers and demonstrate diligence, professionalism, and timeliness when reviewing manuscripts, MDPI journals regularly offer outstanding reviewer awards to scholars who participate in the peer-review process.

We are proud to recognize this year’s winners in the “Physical Sciences” category for their outstanding contributions among extensive competition by presenting them with an Outstanding Reviewer Award.

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of the winners on their achievement. MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Entropy:

• Jim W. Kay, University of Glasgow, UK;
• Christophe Chesneau, University of Caen, France;
• Esteban Tlelo-Cuautle, Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE), Mexico;
• Dennis Dieks, Utrecht University, The Netherlands;
• Claudio Cremaschini, Silesian University in Opava, Czech Republic.

Photonics:

• Carlos A. F. Marques, University of Aveiro, Portugal;
• Tatiana Latychevskaia, Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland.

Universe:

• Amit Kashi, Ariel University, Israel;
• Dominik Elsaesser, Technical University of Dortmund, Germany;
• Isaac Tutusaus, Instituto de Ciencias del Espacio, Spain;
• Jose A.R. Cembranos, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain;
• Kazuharu Bamba, Fukushima University, Japan;
• Przemyslaw Malkiewicz, National Centre for Nuclear Research, Poland;
• Szymon Piotr Harabasz, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany;
• Theocharis Kosmas, University of Ioannina, Greece;
• Viktor Toth, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada;
• Vitor De Souza, Universidade de São Paulodisabled, Brazil.

We are proud to recognize the winners of MDPI’s 2021 Travel Awards in the “Physical Sciences” category for their outstanding presentations and to present them with the prize.

MDPI journals regularly offer travel awards to encourage talented junior scientists to present their latest research at academic conferences in specific fields, which helps to increase their influence.

The winners mentioned below were carefully selected by the journal editors based on an outline of their research and the work to be presented at an academic conference.

We would like to warmly congratulate the winners of this year’s Travel Awards and wish them the greatest success with their future research endeavors. MDPI will continue to enhance communication among scientists.

Galaxies:

• Mahdis Ghodrati, Yangzhou University, China;
• Sandra Etoka, University of Manchester, UK.

Instruments:

• Adriana Dias, University of London, UK.

Photonics:

• Aleksandrs Leitis, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland;
• Elena Losero, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland;
• Zhifeng Zhang, University of Pennsylvania, USA.

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

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

Entropy:

• “Classical (Local and Contextual) Probability Model for Bohm–Bell Type Experiments: No-Signaling as Independence of Random Variables”
  By Andrei Khrennikov and Alexander Alodjants
  Entropy 2019, 21(2), 157; doi 10.3390/e21020157
• “Nonlinear Information Bottleneck”
  By Artemy Kolchinsky, Brendan D. Tracey and David H. Wolpert
  Entropy 2019, 21(12), 1181; doi 10.3390/e21121181
• “Dynamic Maximum Entropy Reduction”
  By Václav Klika, Michal Pavelka, Petr Vágner and Miroslav Grmela
  Entropy 2019, 21(7), 715; doi 10.3390/e21070715
• “Topological Information Data Analysis”
  By Pierre Baudot, Monica Tapia, Daniel Bennequin and Jean-Marc Goaillard
  Entropy 2019, 21(9), 869; doi 10.3390/e21090869

Universe:

• “Nonsingular Black Holes in ƒ (R) Theories”
  By Gonzalo J. Olmo and Diego Rubiera-Garcia
  Universe 2015, 1(2), 173-185; doi 10.3390/universe1020173
• “Is It No Longer Necessary to Test Cosmologies with Type Ia Supernovae?”
  By Ram Gopal Vishwakarma and Jayant V. Narlikar
  Universe 2018, 4(6), 73; doi 10.3390/universe4060073
• “A Universe that Does Not Know the Time”
  By João Magueijo and Lee Smolin
  Universe 2019, 5(3), 84 ; doi 10.3390/universe5030084
• “Seeing Black Holes: From the Computer to the Telescope”
  By Jean-Pierre Luminet
  Universe 2018, 4(8), 86; doi 10.3390/universe4080086

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)

Dynamics (ISSN 2673-8716) is a peer-reviewed, open access journal covering the broad field of dynamic phenomena associated with physics and chemistry. It publishes highly detailed original articles, critical reviews, research notes, and short communications.

The responsibilities of Editorial Board Members include the following:

• Reviewing or making decisions for manuscripts in your research area;
• Editing a Special Issue on a topic related to your research;
• Giving feedback on the journal’s management;
• Nominating Guest Editor candidates for Special Issues and topics;
• Promoting our journal when attending conferences or workshops.

More details on the Editorial Board Members of Dynamics are available via the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/dynamics/editors.

If you are interested in this position or would like to recommend a candidate, please contact the Dynamics Editorial Office at dynamics@mdpi.com.

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.