Recently, it was announced that a group of European funders supported 10 principles that will help to expand open access, known as Plan S. MDPI warmly welcomes this move as a step towards achieving more open and accessible communication of research across all disciplines. Some aspects remain to be clarified, however the details given so far match the aims and values that MDPI has held over the past two decades.

We believe that open access publishers should be active participants in discussions around Plan S, particularly regarding potential new business models and practical aspects of implementation. MDPI supports APCs as a transparent unit of payment for article publishing, however we are committed to exploring other measures and recently signed the Jussieu Call. Sustainability is a key value for MDPI, and future funding models should have at their heart the sustainability of knowledge and research dissemination. Plan S provides an opportunity for funders and publishers to directly discuss funding of open access journals in ways that are beneficial to all parties involved.

MDPI will be represented at IMECE 2018 in Pittsburgh, USA, from 9–15 November 2018.

ASME's International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) is the largest interdisciplinary mechanical engineering conference in the world. IMECE plays a significant role in stimulating innovation from basic discovery to translational application. It fosters new collaborations that engage stakeholders and partners not only from academia, but also from national laboratories, industry, research settings, and funding bodies.

The following MDPI open access journals will be represented:

• Energies
• Safety
• Technologies
• Materials
• Lubricants 
• Machines
• Nanomaterials
• IJTPP
• Designs
• Fluids

If you are planning to attend this conference, please stop by our booth #202. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person, and will be happy to answer any questions you may have regarding open access publishing or our journals. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.asme.org/events/imece

MDPI will be attending 2018 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit, to be held in Boston, USA, 25–30 November 2018.

This conference is the key forum to present research to an interdisciplinary and international audience. It provides a window on the future of materials science and offers an opportunity for researchers—from students and postdoctoral fellows, to Nobel and Kavli Prize Laureates—to exchange technical information and network with colleagues.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Materials
• Polymers
• Energies
• Nanomaterials
• Metals
• Journal of Functional Biomaterials (JFB)
• Processes
• Sensors
• Sustainability
• C
• Journal of Manufacturing and Materials Processing (JMMP)
• Biomimetics
• Methods and Protocols (MPs)

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #123). 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://www.mrs.org/fall2018

We are happy to announce the establishment of an Open Access (OA) agreement with Qatar National Library (QNL). QNL is committed to supporting and helping Qatar authors publish OA at no cost. Through this national agreement, QNL will cover the Article Processing Charges (APC) of manuscripts published by Qatar-based corresponding authors in MDPI journals.

Eligible corresponding authors affiliated with Qatar research centers and universities are prompted to choose QNL as part of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system. The program will be selected automatically if authors submit their papers using their institutional email and/or a computer registered with the institution’s IP range. QNL will then crosscheck the information and confirm the APC funding.

Qatar authors that have their APC covered by QNL are advised to include the following sentence in their acknowledgments: "The publication of this article was funded by Qatar National Library".

For more information, please visit Open Access at QNL or email the QNL Open Access team at openaccess@qnl.qa.

MDPI will be represented at Solaris 2018 in Chengdu, China, from 3–31 August 2018.

The Solaris conference network provides a platform for the meeting of professionals researching the areas of solar radiation, daylighting, solar energy conversion systems, and efficient energy use in built environments. The main aim of this conference is the presentation of the state-of-the-art in solar energy and building energy research, as well as to establish close contact amongst researchers, facilitating the dissemination of their research outcomes and encouraging professional collaboration.

The MDPI open access journal Energies will be represented.

If you are planning to attend this conference, please stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person, and will be happy to answer any questions you may have regarding open access publishing or our journals. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.solaris2018.com/

Our editorial team will be attending the XXVI Ibero-American Catalysis Congress (CICat 2018) in Coimbra, Portugal, 9–14 September 2018

As a result of the biannual meetings held since 1968, the Ibero-American Federation of Catalysis Societies (FISoCat), the Portuguese Society of Chemistry (SPQ) and the University of Coimbra, have the pleasure of organizing the XXVI Ibero-American Catalysis Congress (CICat 2018).

As in previous editions, this event aims to be a meeting point for the Ibero-American community working in Catalysis and in all its different areas of scientific knowledge. The 2018 CICat has a symbolic historical importance, for reaching 50 years since the beginning of this series of Encounters. Participants of CICat 2018 are also invited to visit the city of Coimbra, as well as its historic center and the University of Coimbra (UNESCO World Heritage Site).

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

Catalysts
Processes
Energies
Symmetry
Applied Sciences
Sustainability
Materials

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth near the Lobby Coffee Break). 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://cicat2018.eventos.chemistry.pt/?setLn=es.

We are pleased to inform that Energies received an updated Journal Impact Factor of 2.676 in the June 2018 release of the Journal Citation Reports®. The journal's 5-Year Impact Factor is 3.045. Energies now ranks 48/97 (Q2) in the category 'Energy & Fuels.'

Overview of Citation Metrics:

• Journal Impact Factor, 2 yrs (2017): 2.676
• 5-Year Impact Factor (2017): 3.045
• CiteScore, 3 yrs (Scopus): 3.11
• SJR Scimago Journal Rank 2017 (SJR): 0.670
• Source Normalized Impact 2017 (SNIP): 1.340

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Energies :

MDPI will be attending the 8th Tokyo Conference on Advanced Catalytic Science and Technology (TOCAT8), to be held in Yokohama, Japan, 5–10 August 2018.

Catalysis Society of Japan will organize this meeting as a continuation of TOCAT (1990), TOCAT2 (1994), TOCAT3 (1998), TOCAT4 (2002), TOCAT5 (2006), TOCAT6/APCAT5 (2010), and TOCAT7 (2014). The past seven TOCAT conferences have earned a good reputation as a new series of international conferences on catalysis that has significantly filled the gap between research and technology in catalysis. Stimulating closer ties between academia and industry and encouraging young researchers in the field of catalysis are the central concept of this conference. This conference should greatly contribute to exchanging new ideas and technologies and promoting developments of new outstanding catalysts and systems under the scope that catalysis is a highly and eagerly demanded technology in industries and for sustainable society and drives innovation in many other fields.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

Catalysts
Processes
Energies
Molecules
Materials

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #8). 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://www.shokubai.org/tocat8/index.html.

Meet us at the 23rd International Congress of Chemical and Process Engineering (CHISA 2018) and 21st Conference on Process Integration, Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction (PRES 2018) in Prague, Czech Republic, from 25–29 August 2018.

MDPI will be represented at the CHISA 2018 jointly held with PRES 2018 in Prague, Czech Republic, from 25–29 August 2018.

CHISA 2018 and PRES 2018 will offer you many interdisciplinary connections and cover a range of important topics with focus on addressing global challenges in energy, water, pollution, and sustainability using classical chemical engineering approaches, enhanced by many interdisciplinary collaborations.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Energies
• Processes
• Separations
• Fluids
• Catalysts
• Membranes
• Chemengineering
• Clean Technologies

If you are also attending these two conferences, please stop by our booth at the Clarion Congress Hotel Prague. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have regarding open access publishing or our journals. For more information about the conferences, please visit http://2018.chisa.cz/.

MDPI will be represented at SET 2018 in Wuhan, China, from 21–23 August 2018.

With the theme, Sustainable Energy Technologies for Eco Cities and Environment, this conference will primarily focus on discussion topics such as energy storage for the age of renewables; research, innovation and commercialization in sustainable energy technologies; integrating planning and policy, architecture, engineering and economics; energy and environment; engineering thermophysics; and systemic change for cities.

The MDPI open access journal Energies will be represented.

If you are also attending this conference, please stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have regarding open access publishing or our journals. For more information about the conference, please visit: http://set2018.org/

MDPI will be attending the IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition, to be held in Tokyo, Japan, 16–21 September 2018.

The IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition is the global event for water professionals covering the full water cycle. As the Congress rotates through cities and countries each event has an extra emphasis on issues of specific interest to the region. The 2018 edition taking place in Tokyo will have as key focus the digital economy, megacities, diffusion of innovation, disaster resilience and sustainability.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Water
• Sustainability
• Energies
• Hydrology
• Membranes

We are pleased to report Energies received a CiteScore of 3.11 for 2017. The metric reflects citation activity in 2017 in Scopus for papers published in the period 2014‒2016.

For the full details in the current CiteScore release, please see the journal's Source profile. To check the full list of MDPI journals receiving CiteScores, please see here.

The updated CiteScore™ data is available now, based on citation data in the Scopus® database. The current CiteScore reflects citation activity in 2017 for articles published in 2014‒2016. Please note that the list below includes journals assigned a CiteScore in this year’s release. For a full list of journals indexed in Scopus, please see our journal list.

Thirteen of our journals received a CiteScore which is in the top 10% of the distribution in at least one of the categories (marked with * in the table below), while a further 32 journals exhibit scores that are in the first quartile of the respective categories.

To access the full data for MDPI journals, please see here. More data can also be found in SJR Scimago Journal & Country Rank.

Unlike CiteScores and the widely used Journal Impact Factors, the Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) metrics are normalized in order to correct for differences in citation practices between scientific fields. Therefore, the SNIP allows direct comparison between journals specialized in different fields.

According to 2017 data, MDPI publishes six journals with an average citation impact, or SNIP, in excess of 1.500. These journals are Biomolecules, Cancers, Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM), Marine Drugs, Remote Sensing and Sensors (see the last column in the table below).

CiteScore Data for MDPI Journals

Meet us at the ECOS 2018—The 31st International Conference on Efficiency, Cost, Optimization, Simulation and Environmental Impact of Energy Systems, from 17–22 June, in Guimarães, Portugal.

Focused on the fundamentals of thermodynamics, economics and environment analysis of all forms of energy conversion, this conference has a special session designed to transmit the view of industrial partners on energy management and conversion technologies, exchanging their experiences with the academic community. During this session, which is entitled “Industrial Challenge”, several energy intensive companies have been invited to participate, in order to establish a link between what the industry sees as the biggest challenges that can be studied and improved by the academic community.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Energies
• Resources
• Building
• Batteries
• Clean Technology

If you are also attending this conference, please stop by our booth at Vila Flor Palace. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have regarding open access publishing or our journals. For more information about the conference, please visit: http://www.ecos2018.org/

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 will be attending the RFG 2018, to be held in Vancouver Convention Center, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 16–21 June 2018. It is the first international conference dedicated to the availability of resources needed to sustain future generations. The conference will examine the critical natural resources that have led to the development of the human race over the last 10,000 years, and remain fundamental to our existence—energy, minerals and water. This is a unique opportunity to participate in a conference with implications for a sustainable future. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Resources
Water
Energies
Minerals
Sustainability
Environments

This year, 2018, we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of Energies. To acknowledge authors’ continued support, we are pleased to announce the “10th Anniversary Best Paper Awards”. The winners were selected based on the total number of cites from web of science until 1 January 2018. The author(s) of the awarded papers will be recognized with a certificate and an offer to publish a paper free of charge in Energies.

Our winners and their papers are listed as follows:

Patrick Linke, Athanasios I. Papadopoulos and Panos Seferlis
Systematic Methods for Working Fluid Selection and the Design, Integration and Control of Organic Rankine Cycles – A Review

Elisha R. Frederiks, Karen Stenner and Elizabeth V. Hobman
The Socio-Demographic and Psychological Predictors of Residential Energy Consumption: A Comprehensive Review

Yulong Li, Xun Shi, Dudi Ren, Jikun Chen and Lidong Chen
Investigation of the Anisotropic Thermoelectric Properties of Oriented Polycrystalline SnSe

Siraj Sabihuddin, Aristides E. Kiprakis and Markus Mueller
A Numerical and Graphical Review of Energy Storage Technologies

Saeed Sepasi, Leon R. Roose and Marc M. Matsuura
Extended Kalman Filter with a Fuzzy Method for Accurate Battery Pack State of Charge Estimation

Enrico Fabrizio and Valentina Monetti
Methodologies and Advancements in the Calibration of Building Energy Models

Liuzhang Ouyang, Miaolian Ma, Minghong Huang, Ruoming Duan, Hui Wang, Lixian Sun and Min Zhu
Enhanced Hydrogen Generation Properties of MgH2-Based Hydrides by Breaking the Magnesium Hydroxide Passivation Layer

Andrea Alaimo, Antonio Esposito, Antonio Messineo, Calogero Orlando and Davide Tumino
3D CFD Analysis of a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

Sean Michael Scully and Johann Orlygsson
Recent Advances in Second Generation Ethanol Production by Thermophilic Bacteria

Pierre Tchakoua, René Wamkeue, Mohand Ouhrouche, Fouad Slaoui-Hasnaoui, Tommy Andy Tameghe and Gabriel Ekemb
Wind Turbine Condition Monitoring: State-of-the-Art Review, New Trends, and Future Challenges

Aime Hilaire Tchapda and Sarma V. Pisupati
A Review of Thermal Co-Conversion of Coal and Biomass/Waste

José F. Herbert-Acero, Oliver Probst, Pierre-Elouan Réthoré, Gunner Chr. Larsen and Krystel K. Castillo-Villar
A Review of Methodological Approaches for the Design and Optimization of Wind Farms

Xuezhe Wei, Zhenshi Wang and Haifeng Dai
A Critical Review of Wireless Power Transfer via Strongly Coupled Magnetic Resonances

Shengjin Tang, Chuanqiang Yu, Xue Wang, Xiaosong Guo and Xiaosheng Si
Remaining Useful Life Prediction of Lithium-Ion Batteries Based on the Wiener Process with Measurement Error

Hao Liang and Weihua Zhuang
Stochastic Modeling and Optimization in a Microgrid: A Survey

Yuei-An Liou and Sanjib Kumar Kar
Evapotranspiration Estimation with Remote Sensing and Various Surface Energy Balance Algorithms-A Review

John J. Milledge, Benjamin Smith, Philip W. Dyer and Patricia Harvey
Macroalgae-Derived Biofuel: A Review of Methods of Energy Extraction from Seaweed Biomass

Theodore Dickerson and Juan Soria
Catalytic Fast Pyrolysis: A Review

Ankita Juneja, Ruben Michael Ceballos and Ganti S. Murthy
Effects of Environmental Factors and Nutrient Availability on the Biochemical Composition of Algae for Biofuels Production: A Review

Fernando Porté-Agel, Yu-Ting Wu and Chang-Hung Chen
A Numerical Study of the Effects of Wind Direction on Turbine Wakes and Power Losses in a Large Wind Farm

John Benemann
Microalgae for Biofuels and Animal Feeds

Muhammad Aminul Islam, Marie Magnusson, Richard J. Brown, Godwin A. Ayoko, Md. Nurun Nabi and Kirsten Heimann
Microalgal Species Selection for Biodiesel Production Based on Fuel Properties Derived from Fatty Acid Profiles

Dina Silva, Eugen Rusu and Carlos Guedes Soares
Evaluation of Various Technologies for Wave Energy Conversion in the Portuguese Nearshore

Ping Wang and Mehrdad Massoudi
Slag Behavior in Gasifiers. Part I: Influence of Coal Properties and Gasification Conditions

Zou Yuan, Liu Teng, Sun Fengchun and Huei Peng
Comparative Study of Dynamic Programming and Pontryagin's Minimum Principle on Energy Management for a Parallel Hybrid Electric Vehicle

Kalpesh K. Sharma, Holger Schuhmann and Peer M. Schenk
High Lipid Induction in Microalgae for Biodiesel Production

Mohammad I. Jahirul, Mohammad G. Rasul, Ashfaque Ahmed Chowdhury and Nanjappa Ashwath
Biofuels Production through Biomass Pyrolysis-A Technological Review

James Daniell, Michael Köpke and Séan Dennis Simpson
Commercial Biomass Syngas Fermentation

Sheng S. Zhang
Improved Cyclability of Liquid Electrolyte Lithium/Sulfur Batteries by Optimizing Electrolyte/Sulfur Ratio

Su Shiung Lam and Howard A. Chase
A Review on Waste to Energy Processes Using Microwave Pyrolysis

Klaus Wallmann, Elena Pinero, Ewa Burwicz, Matthias Haeckel, Christian Hensen, Andrew Dale and Lars
Ruepke
The Global Inventory of Methane Hydrate in Marine Sediments: A Theoretical Approach

Noshin Omar, Mohamed Daowd, Peter van den Bossche, Omar Hegazy, Jelle Smekens, Thierry Coosemans and Joeri van Mierlo
Rechargeable Energy Storage Systems for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles-Assessment of Electrical Characteristics

Fei Wang, Zengqiang Mi, Shi Su and Hongshan Zhao
Short-Term Solar Irradiance Forecasting Model Based on Artificial Neural Network Using Statistical Feature Parameters

Peter J. Schubel and Richard J. Crossley
Wind Turbine Blade Design

Karthik Rajendran, Solmaz Aslanzadeh and Mohammad J. Taherzadeh
Household Biogas Digesters-A Review

Byman Hamududu and Aanund Killingtveit
Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Global Hydropower

Martin Olofsson, Teresa Lamela, Emmelie Nilsson, Jean Pascal Bergé, Victória del Pino, Pauliina Uronen and
Catherine Legrand
Seasonal Variation of Lipids and Fatty Acids of the Microalgae Nannochloropsis oculata Grown in Outdoor Large-Scale Photobioreactors

Yu-Ting Wu and Fernando Porté-Agel
Atmospheric Turbulence Effects on Wind-Turbine Wakes: An LES Study

Adrian K. James, Ronald W. Thring, Steve Helle and Harpuneet S. Ghuman
Ash Management Review-Applications of Biomass Bottom Ash

Jon Van Wagenen, Tyler W. Miller, Sam Hobbs, Paul Hook, Braden Crowe and Michael Huesemann
Effects of Light and Temperature on Fatty Acid Production in Nannochloropsis Salina

Hai-Wen Li, Yigang Yan, Shin-ichi Orimo, Andreas Züttel andCraig M. Jensen
Recent Progress in Metal Borohydrides for Hydrogen Storage

Hongwen He, Rui Xiong and Jinxin Fan
Evaluation of Lithium-Ion Battery Equivalent Circuit Models for State of Charge Estimation by an Experimental Approach

Yinjiao Xing, Eden W. M. Ma, Kwok L. Tsui and Michael Pecht
Battery Management Systems in Electric and Hybrid Vehicles

Xuejun Shi, Yulong Wu, Huaifeng Yi, Guo Rui, Panpan Li, Mingde Yang and Gehua Wang
Selective Preparation of Furfural from Xylose over Sulfonic Acid Functionalized Mesoporous Sba-15 Materials

Leonardo P. Chamorro and Fernando Porté-Agel
Turbulent Flow Inside and Above a Wind Farm: A Wind-Tunnel Study

Judith M. Schicks, Erik Spangenberg, Ronny Giese, Bernd Steinhauer, Jens Klump and Manja Luzi
New Approaches for the Production of Hydrocarbons from Hydrate Bearing Sediments

Guoqing Xu, Weimin Li, Kun Xu and Zhibin Song
An Intelligent Regenerative Braking Strategy for Electric Vehicles

Robert A. Varin, Leszek Zbroniec, Marek Polanski and Jerzy Bystrzycki
A Review of Recent Advances on the Effects of Microstructural Refinement and Nano-Catalytic Additives on the Hydrogen Storage Properties of Metal and Complex Hydrides

Yong Zeng, Yanpeng Cai, Guohe Huang and Jing Dai
A Review on Optimization Modeling of Energy Systems Planning and GHG Emission Mitigation under Uncertainty

Karin Kandananond
Forecasting Electricity Demand in Thailand with an Artificial Neural Network Approach

Vladimir Alvarado and Eduardo Manrique
Enhanced Oil Recovery: An Update Review

Manfred Lenzen
Current State of Development of Electricity-Generating Technologies: A Literature Review

Eileen Hao Yu, Ulrike Krewer and Keith Scott
Principles and Materials Aspects of Direct Alkaline Alcohol Fuel Cells

Ashley E. Franks and Kelly P. Nevin
Microbial Fuel Cells, A Current Review

Ivan Ivanov, Tanja Vidaković-Koch and Kai Sundmacher
Recent Advances in Enzymatic Fuel Cells: Experiments and Modeling

Qiang Lu, Zhi-Fei Zhang, Chang-Qing Dong and Xi-Feng Zhu
Catalytic Upgrading of Biomass Fast Pyrolysis Vapors with Nano Metal Oxides: An Analytical Py-GC/MS Study

Xiaosong Hu, Fengchun Sun and Yuan Zou
Estimation of State of Charge of a Lithium-Ion Battery Pack for Electric Vehicles Using an Adaptive Luenberger Observer

Eileen Hao Yu and Keith Scott
Enzymatic Biofuel Cells-Fabrication of Enzyme Electrodes

Yuji Ohya and Takashi Karasudani
A Shrouded Wind Turbine Generating High Output Power with Wind-lens Technology

Kang Xu
Electrolytes and Interphasial Chemistry in Li Ion Devices

Ronald W. Breault
Gasification Processes Old and New: A Basic Review of the Major Technologies

Hengfu Shui, Zhenyi Cai and Chunbao Xu
Recent Advances in Direct Coal Liquefaction

Christopher D. Elvidge, Daniel Ziskin, Kimberly E. Baugh, Benjamin T. Tuttle, Tilottama Ghosh, Dee W.
Pack, Edward H. Erwin and Mikhail Zhizhin
A Fifteen Year Record of Global Natural Gas Flaring Derived from Satellite Data

Ajay Kumar, David D. Jones and Milford A. Hanna
Thermochemical Biomass Gasification: A Review of the Current Status of the Technology

Charles A. S. Hall, Stephen Balogh and David J.R. Murphy
What is the Minimum EROI that a Sustainable Society Must Have?

Dong Jin Ham and Jae Sung Lee
Transition Metal Carbides and Nitrides as Electrode Materials for Low Temperature Fuel Cells

Mengbo Ji and Zidong Wei
A Review of Water Management in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells

Veronica Arthurson
Closing the Global Energy and Nutrient Cycles through Application of Biogas Residue to Agricultural Land - Potential Benefits and Drawbacks

Nathan Gagnon, Charles A.S. Hall and Lysle Brinker
A Preliminary Investigation of Energy Return on Energy Investment for Global Oil and Gas Production

Cristina L. Archer and Ken Caldeira
Global Assessment of High-Altitude Wind Power

Katsuaki Tanabe
A Review of Ultrahigh Efficiency III-V Semiconductor Compound Solar Cells: Multijunction Tandem, Lower Dimensional, Photonic Up/Down Conversion and Plasmonic Nanometallic Structures

Massimiliano Cimenti and Josephine M. Hill
Direct Utilization of Liquid Fuels in SOFC for Portable Applications: Challenges for the Selection of Alternative Anodes

Zibin Zhang, Luanne Lohr, Cesar Escalante and Michael Wetzstein
Ethanol, Corn, and Soybean Price Relations in a Volatile Vehicle-Fuels Market

Albert Tarancón
Strategies for Lowering Solid Oxide Fuel Cells Operating Temperature

Arjun B. Chhetri, K. Chris Watts and M. Rafiqul Islam
Waste Cooking Oil as an Alternate Feedstock for Biodiesel Production

David Pimentel, Alison Marklein, Megan A. Toth, Marissa Karpoff, Gillian S. Paul, Robert McCormack, Joanna Kyriazis and Tim Krueger
Biofuel Impacts on World Food Supply: Use of Fossil Fuel, Land and Water Resources

Abiney L. Cardoso, Soraia Cristina Gonzaga Neves and Marcio J. Da Silva
Esterification of Oleic Acid for Biodiesel Production Catalyzed by SnCl2: A Kinetic Investigation

Energies Editorial Office
St. Alban-Anlage 66
CH-4052, Basel, Switzerland
energies@mdpi.com
www.mdpi.com/journal/energies

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.

MDPI will be represented at the EUBCE 2018 which will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, 14-18 May, 2018.

As the leading platform for the collection, exchange and dissemination of scientific and industrial know-how in the field of biomass, the EUBCE combines one of the largest biomass science and technology conferences with a high quality industry exhibition, attracting biomass professionals from around the globe. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Energies
Catalysts
Resources
Materials
ChemEngineering

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #H3). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have regarding open access publishing or our journals. For more information about the conference, please visit: http://www.eubce.com/

We will be attending the 20th annual Nanotech 2018 Conference & Expo (NANOTECH 2018), co-located with the TechConnect World Innovation Conference, Defense TechConnect Summit and Spring SBIR/STTR Conference. The event will attract more than 350 featured exhibitors and an expected crowd of more than 4000 attendees, including business executives, venture capitalists, politicians, s cientists and researchers from over 70 countries. Nanotech contains 38 symposiums and brings together specialists from a wide range of scientific fields, technology and business.

Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Sensors
Materials
Nanomaterials
Journal of Functional Biomaterials (JFB)
Journal of Imaging
Sustainability
Fluids
Photonics
Electronics
Catalysts
Applied Sciences
Inventions
Diagnostics
Cancers
Journal of Low Power Electronics and Applications (JLPEA)
Designs
Pharmaceuticals
C
Inorganics
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)
Machines
Pharmaceutics
Journal of Manufacturing and Materials Processing (JMMP)
Actuators
Robotics
Energies
Biosensors
Chemosensors
Membranes
Coatings
Micromachines

If you will also attend this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth # 317). 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://www.techconnectworld.com/Nanotech2018/

Conference Location:
Anaheim Convention Center,
800 W Katella Avenue
Anaheim CA 92802
USA

In 2018, we're celebrating Energies' 10th anniversary. To acknowledge our authors’ continued support, we are pleased to announce the introduction of a Best Paper Award for research and review articles published between 1 January and 31 December 2017. Based on a thorough evaluation by the journal award committee, three review papers and five research papers will receive an award.

Selection criteria:

The articles will be selected by the journal award committee according to the following criteria:

• Originality and significance;
• Citation and download rates in 2018;
• Data Source: Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics).

Prizes:

Winners (corresponding authors) will receive a certificate and an offer to publish a paper free of charge in Energies, after the normal peer-review procedure. Each winner will additionally receive a bonus based on the award class:

• First Award (one for a review paper and one for a research paper): 800 CHF each
• Second Award (one for a review paper and two for research papers): 500 CHF each
• Third Award (one for a review paper and two for research papers): 300 CHF each

The winners will be announced in early March 2019. For further details, please click here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies/awards/266/view

In 2018, we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of Energies. To acknowledge authors’ continued support, we are pleased to announce the establishment of a Best Paper Award for research and review articles published between 1 January and 31 December 2016. After a thorough evaluation by the journal award committee, three review papers and five research papers will be awarded.

Selection criteria

The articles will be selected by the journal award committee according to the following criteria:

• Originality and significance;
• Citation and download rates in 2018;
• Data Source: Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics).

Prize

Winners (corresponding author) will receive a certificate and an offer to publish a paper free of charge in Energies, after the normal peer-review procedure. Each winner will additionally receive a bonus based on the award class:

• First Award (one for a review paper and one for a research paper): 800 CHF each
• Second Award (one for a review paper and two for research papers): 500 CHF each
• Third Award (one for a review paper and two for research papers): 300 CHF each

The winners will be announced in early March 2019. For further details, please click here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies/awards/279/view

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 will be attending the 255th ACS National Meeting & Exposition. It is an interdisciplinary forum open to anyone with an interest in Chemistry and the related disciplines. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Agronomy
Applied Sciences
Beverages
Biomimetics
Biosensors
C
Catalysts
ChemEngineering
Chemosensors
Coatings
Energies
Environments
Fibers
Foods
Gels
Inorganics
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (JMSE)
Lubricants
Materials
Mathematics
Metals
Molecules
Nanomaterials
Polymers
Processes
Resources
Safety
Sensors
Separations
Sustainability
Symmetry
Toxins
Water

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #640). 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://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/meetings/national-meeting.html?sc=home_meetings_170818_mtg_NO18_od

The competition is still open until end of March! Please check out the banner for more details: https://www.mdpi.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. 

We will be attending the 147th TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition, which will be held in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, March 11–15, 2018, representing the following open access journals:

Metals
Materials
Coatings
Applied Sciences
Energies
Minerals
Fibers
JFB

Please come along to our booth (#322) to talk with our delegates about online publishing and our journals. We look forward to meeting you in person in Phoenix!

For more information on the conference, please visit:
http://www.tms.org/tms2018

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!

In order to reward the academic community, especially young researchers, and enhance communication among scientists, MDPI journals regularly offer various awards to researchers in specific fields, for example, Young Investigator Awards, Travel Awards, Best Paper Awards, and Best Poster Awards, etc. The awardees range from PhD students to junior scientists.

Currently, the following 44 awards given by MDPI journals are accepting applications. Please click on the award title below to check whether you are eligible for it and start the application process.

Energies, MDPI's open access energy research journal, has published more than 5'000 papers since its inception in 2008. Energies received an Impact Factor of 2.262 for 2016, which corresponds to rank 45/92 (Q2) in the JCR category 'Energy & Fuels'.

Energies' current CiteScore in Scopus is 2.50. The CiteScore is a ratio between the number of citations in 2016 to papers published 2013–2015 in the numerator and the number of papers published 2013–2015 in the denominator, drawn from Scopus data.

Our sincere thanks go to the Editor-in-Chief of Energies, Prof. Dr. Enrico Sciubba, as well as the Associate Editors-in-Chief, Prof. Dr Thomas E. Amidon and Prof. Dr. Paul Stewart, who ensure the continued significance of the journal.

The Jussieu Call aims to develop and implement alternative models to meet the aims of open science while promoting bibliodiversity. In particular it wishes to promote new business models for funding open access publication. It was drafted on the Jussieu campus in Paris by a group of French researchers and scientific publishing professionals.

MDPI supports scholarly communities and initiatives that innovate and further promote Open Access publishing. There is a need to explore different frameworks to fund open access in ways that ensure that excessive funds are not diverted from research towards publishing. Many fair funding models already exist, and they can be further developed and extended. These include institutional support, library contributions or subsidies, premium services, participatory funding, etc. For this reason, MDPI has signed up to the Jussieu call and welcomes its aims.

More information can be found at http://jussieucall.org/

The Society for Scholarly Publishing’s popular blog about topics in academic publishing, Scholarly Kitchen, recently interviewed MDPI’s CEO, Dr. Franck Vazquez. He shared some thoughts and information on the past and future of MDPI and open access publishing in general:

“In the long run, we aim to anchor MDPI in research communities. We recently developed and launched the preprint platform Preprints, revamped our free-to-use conference hosting platform Sciforum, and are working on other projects, such as Scilit, our bibliographic database.”

Read the full interview here.

We will be attending the 2017 MRS Fall Meeting which will be held in Boston, Massachusetts, from November 26–December 1, 2017, and representing the following open access journals:

Materials
Nanomaterials
Energies
Metals
Applied Sciences
Crystals
Minerals
Journal of Functional Biomaterials
Coatings
Robotics
Biosensors
Chemosensors
Polymers
Bioengineering

Please come along to our booth (booth number: #122) to chat with our delegates about our journals and hear about our travel awards offered to Postdocs and PhD students. Our delegates will also answer any questions about online publishing and our journals. We look forward to meeting you in person in Boston!

For more information on the conference, please visit:
www.mrs.org/fall2017

We are pleased to announce that Energies will be attending the ERSCP 2017 Conference (1–5 October 2017)

If you will also be attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth and meet our delegates.

Conference details:

ERSCP 2017
1–5 October 2017
Skiathos Palace Hotel
Koukounaries Bay, 37002 Skiathos, Greece

We are delighted to have welcomed 24 new participants to our Institutional Open Access Programme (IOAP) since the beginning of September this year. These are University libraries and Research Institutions located around the world; from the USA and Canada to the UK, and from Norway and Spain to Greece. Well respected Universities, such as the University of Denver, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the University of Arizona in the US, have signed up, while their researchers can now benefit from a 10% discount on the Article Processing Charges (APC) for any papers they publish in MDPI journals, at no cost for the library or the University.

We are more than happy to see the Open Access movement growing stronger and wider every day and we appreciate the vital role which librarians, repository managers, and other scholarly communications professionals play in the field. Our communication with and service to this community is, therefore, one of our principal priorities. The IOAP is our way to support academic and scientific Institutions as well as their scholars in managing, administrating, and publishing research in an Open Access world.

The IOAP set of free services, provided by MDPI to institutions that sign up, include:

• 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 full list of the Institutions that signed up in September is as follows:

1. University of Denver, USA
2. University of Colorado Boulder, USA
3. University of Arizona, USA
4. Institute of Metrology of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina
5. Middlebury College, USA
6. Touro College, USA
7. University of New Orleans, USA
8. University of Leicester, UK
9. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
10. University of Strathclyde, UK
11. Cranfield University, UK
12. Hope College, USA
13. Oregon State University, USA
14. Drew University, USA
15. Swansea University, UK
16. University of South Florida, USA
17. University of Georgia, USA
18. Arizona State University, USA
19. University of Southern Mississippi, USA
20. Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada
21. Grinnell College, USA
22. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
23. University of Patras, Greece
24. Public University of Navarre, Spain

We will be attending the SDEWES 2017 Conference, which takes place 4–8 October 2017, representing the open access journal Energies:

If you will also be attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth and meet our delegates.

Conference details:
SDEWES 2017
4–8 October 2017
Valamar Lacroma Dubrovnik Hotel
Iva Dulcica 34, 20 000 Dubrovnik, Croatia

Congratulations to the authors Javier Monroy and Javier Gonzalez-Jimenez from Universidad de Malaga, Spain, Victor Hernandez-Bennets, Han Fan and Achim Lilienthal from Örebro University, Sweden for publishing the 100,000th peer-reviewed article.

The article is published in the Chemical Sensors section of Sensors.

GADEN: A 3D Gas Dispersion Simulator for Mobile Robot Olfaction in Realistic Environments

Evermore pressing environmental concerns have led global actors and decision-makers to search for stricter emission monitoring approaches. As part of novel monitoring systems, robots with gas and environmental sensors are a promising solution. However, validation of such robotic inspectors is expensive, time consuming, and plagued by repeatability issues. In this article, we present GADEN (the short form for Gas Dispersion Simulator for Mobile Robot Olfaction in Realistic Environments), which combines gas dispersion and robotics simulation in a common framework. Developed under the widely used Robot Operating System (ROS), GADEN enables validation of sensing strategies with gas dispersion being simulated using computational fluid dynamics and filament dispersion theory. GADEN allows simulating complex, realistic, 3D environments for reproducible testing of robotic gas sensing algorithms. Through qualitative and quantitative evaluations, we show that GADEN is a versatile and user-friendly evaluation tool and emphasize its enormous potential for the mobile robot olfaction community.

Read the full article here: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/17/7/1479/htm

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Energies :

The CiteScore, the new citation metric for journals covered in the Scopus® database, was released on 1 June 2017, reflecting the citation activity in 2016 for articles published during the three previous years. Please note that the list below does not contain all MDPI journals covered in Scopus. For the CiteScore to serve as a reliable metric at least three volumes of articles need to be indexed in Scopus; journals which have not met this criterion have been omitted here.

Ten MDPI journals received a CiteScore which is in the Top 10% of scores in at least one of the categories, while a further 21 journals exhibit scores that are in the first quartile of the respective categories.

CiteScore Data for MDPI Journals

We will be attending the 25th North American Meeting (NAM) of the Catalysis Society, which takes place June 4-9, 2017, representing the following open access journals:

Catalysts

Metals

Nanomaterials

Molecules

Energies

Sustainability

Applied Sciences

Coatings

Magnetochemistry

Processes

C

Please come along to our stand, booth number #211, to talk to our delegates about our journals and travel awards you could apply. We also would like to invite you to our ‘Meet and Greet’ session at 12:00 pm on 7th June! Catalysts Professor Keith Hohn, the Editor-in-Chief of Catalysts, and the Editorial Board Member Professor Calvin Bartholomew will be there to answer your questions about the Open Access publishing.

Food and refreshments will be provided and we look forward to meeting you in person to answer your questions.

Conference address:

MDPI booth - number #211

25th North American Meeting of the Catalysis Society

June 4-9, 2017

Hyatt Regency Hotel and Convention Center, Denver, Colorado, USA

For more information on the conference, please visit
http://www.nam25.org/

We are pleased to announce that the Goethe University of Frankfurt, the Technical University of Hamburg (TU Hamburg-Harburg), as well as the Humboldt University of Berlin, in Germany, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce the Featured Journal of this Month— Nanomaterials.

Nanomaterials is an Open Access Nanoscience & Nanotechnology Journal, published monthly by MDPI. Since it was founded in 2011, 598 articles have been published, 65 of them cited 10 times or more (h-10 index). The current Impact Factor is 2.690, and the five-year impact factor is 3.176.

For more information, also check out our special issues, currently open for submissions and our MDPI-Blog.

As an open access publisher, we are keen to support openness and transparency in the research process. Citation data is very important for assessing the value of individual papers and the contribution of researchers. As such, we support the recently launched Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC). The initiative recognizes that citations should be freely available and machine-readable. By doing so, authors gain the maximum benefit from having their work cited.

MDPI now uploads citation data with metadata uploaded to Crossref when registering digital object identifiers (DOIs) for published papers. We are delighted to take this step to support a truly open research environment.

Getting high quality review reports is critical for any journal’s editorial process. At MDPI we have put in place several measures to motivate reviewers and reward them for their work. We are proud of the quality of reviewer reports we receive and grateful for the hours put in by active researchers from across the globe.

Reviewers of MDPI’s largest journals can get recognition via Publons, a website dedicated to rewarding peer reviewers. They have now taken this one step further and launched the Publons Reviewer Academy to help train reviewers to provide useful feedback. Through the academy, researchers can be trained and tutored in various aspects of how to provide structured feedback that will be of genuine help to editors and authors. We support this initiative and recommend it to potential MDPI reviewers, especially early career researchers. See the Publons announcement for further information.

More information on reviewing for MDPI, including how to volunteer as a reviewer, can be found here.

We are pleased to announce that the following universities have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, USA and the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia. Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

Preprints.org is a platform run by MDPI that allows authors to make early versions of manuscripts available before peer review has been completed.

One of the major benefits of putting a preprint online is to get feedback before journal submission. Until now, however, the feedback has been on a voluntary basis. Preprints is delighted to be the first preprint server to collaborate with Publons to acknowledge substantial comments as reviews and give commentators the opportunity to receive credit for their efforts. 

When you add a comment to any article, there is a check box to click for it to appear on Publons. If you have already linked your account it will be passed on automatically. If you don't already have a Publons account, you will be contacted soon afterwards with instructions on how to create one.

We appreciate the enthusiasm and cooperation of Publons in this project and expect it to be of great benefit to authors and commenters alike.

We are pleased to announce that our annual report for the year 2016 has now been published. 

It contains information regarding company and journal performance, conferences and other publishing services that we provided throughout 2016. 

To read the report in full or download a copy, please click here.

MDPI will be attending the 253rd American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition, which takes place 2–6 April 2017, representing the following open access journals:

Molecules
Materials
Energies
Nanomaterials
Catalysts
Applied Sciences
Batteries
Coatings
Metals 
Magnetochemistry
Marine Drugs
Processes
Pharmaceuticals
Symmetry

If you are planning to attend, please visit our booth (Number 1618) to talk to our delegates about our journals and open access publishing. Also feel free to attend our ‘Meet and Greet’ session at 12:30pm on 3 April with Dr. Derek J. McPhee, the Editor-in-Chief of our journal Molecules. Food and refreshments will be provided.  

Conference address:

MDPI - Booth 1618
253rd American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition
The Moscone Center, 747 Howard Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
USA

After the 20th anniversary of MDPI in 2016, we will reach another milestone this year and will publish the 100,000th peer-reviewed article in one of our 170+ open access journals.

We would like you to be part of this great achievement and so are offering to publish the 100,000th accepted paper free of charge.

To be in with a chance, select a journal in one of our 10 scientific subject areas and submit your paper.

Access the live tracker on published articles here.

We are delighted that Preprints now has 1000 papers online since its launch on 3 May 2016.

For more information, see the editorial here.

Earlier this week the Science Technology Park in Belgrade, Serbia was visited by Swiss Secretary of State Dr. Mauro Dell’Ambrogio, as well as Serbian Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government Ana Brnabic, State Secretary Dr. Vladimir Popovic and Mayor of Belgrade Mr. Siniša Mali.

During the visit to the STP they had a short presentation from MDPI’s CEO Dr. Franck Vazquez and IT Manager Mr. Miloš Čučulović, and further discussed important issues such as Open Access and Open education. Dr. Dell'Ambrogio said he was impressed with the potential for development and ideas for business.

For more information please see:

http://bit.ly/2kpIu7k and http://bit.ly/2kpUQfz

We are pleased to announce that the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, the University of Manitoba, Canada and the Technical University of Cartagena, Spain, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

The 6^th World Sustainability Forum is currently being held at the Cape Sun Hotel until 28 January 2017. 

The Forum will showcase the work of internationally renowned researchers and include more than 150 presentations. During the conference dinner, the World Sustainability Award, associated with a US$ 100,000 prize, will be announced, as well as the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award, associated with a US$ 10,000 prize. The prizes are sponsored by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation and Sustainability, an academic open access journal by MDPI.

Here are some pictures from the forum so far:

To see the full WSF2017 program and schedule, please see here: http://sciforum.net/conference/wsf-6/page/schedule

Cape Town will host the 6^th World Sustainability Forum at the Cape Sun Hotel on 27 and 28 January 2017. This prominent event, held for the first time in Africa, will include many illustrious South African and international experts, such as Her Excellency Graça Machel (Sustainable Development Advocate for the United Nations, Mozambique), Joyene Isaacs (HoD Agriculture Western Cape Government), Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University, USA), Max Bergman (SRaM, University of Basel), Mark New (Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of Cape Town), Frans Swanepoel (FutureAfrica, University of Pretoria) and Francis Petersen (Vice-Chancellor-designate, University of the Free State). The Forum will provide a stage for national and international debates on sustainability in South Africa, the African continent, and about international perspectives on sustainability. It brings together researchers and representatives from government and the business sector to discuss a wide-ranging set of issues associated with sustainability, including food security, water and energy scarcity, mining, poverty reduction, climate change, and urbanisation.

The next few decades will be marked by profound changes in the relationships between global economics, national societies, and the environment. We have entered what some call the Anthropocene, an age in which human activity dominates the climate and the environment. These changes will have numerous consequences on societies around the globe. South Africa and Africa will play a central role, for better or worse, in creating opportunities and risks during these changing times as Africa is profoundly influencing and being influenced by global developments.

The adoption of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in September 2015 was accompanied by what insiders considered an optimism they have not experienced in relation to UN resolutions before. The relative efficiency in the drafting, the lack of trenches between East and West, or between North and South, and the unanimity of support of the 193 countries speak volumes. In stark contrast, sustainability seems to go against a changing economic and political tide, where waves of nationalism and protectionism from some of the most powerful countries risk the wellbeing of the rest of the world. The 6^th World Sustainability Forum will enable fruitful exchanges, which sensitise South African and international communities to the global urgency and specifics of sustainability.

The Forum will showcase the work of internationally renowned researchers and include more than 150 presentations. During the conference dinner, the World Sustainability Award, associated with a US$ 100 000 prize, will be announced, as well as the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award, associated with a US$ 10 000 prize. The prizes are sponsored by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation and Sustainability, an academic open access journal by MDPI. The World Sustainability Forum is preceded by the Postgraduate Forum on Sustainability, which will introduce more than 100 young scholars from South Africa and the African continent to sustainability research. Both events are organized and sponsored by the University of Cape Town, the University of the Western Cape, the University of Basel, MDPI, and by the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

Contacts:

Scientific Matters: Prof Manfred Max Bergman, Social Research and Methodology Group (SRaM), University of Basel, Switzerland; Email:  max.bergman@unibas.ch

Press Accreditation and General Enquiries: Mr Matthias Burkhalter, MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland; Email: burkhalter@mdpi.com; Tel. +41 61 683 77 34 

Follow us on Twitter

#WSF2017SA

MDPI is now a proud supporter of the OA2020 Initiative.

Open Access 2020 is an international initiative that aims to induce the swift, smooth and scholarly-oriented transformation of today’s scholarly journals from subscription to open access publishing.

MDPI is participating in the upcoming Berlin13 conference in March 2017, where we are contributing to the initiative by aiding in the design of the roadmap which will make OA the default publishing model.

For more information please see here.

We are pleased to announce that the University of Texas at Arlington, USA, the Harbin Institute of Technology, China and TU Darmstadt, Germany, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

Season's greetings from everyone at MDPI!

We are pleased to announce that the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Germany and the University of California, Berkeley, USA, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

The Wellcome Trust has, for a number of years, required that the results of its funded projects are published in open access format. Recently it announced criteria that publishers must fulfil for publication fees to be paid by the Trust. MDPI is pleased to have been added to the list of compliant publishers.

Only publishers who have confirmed their compliance by 16 December 2016 will be eligible to receive payment of APCs by the Wellcome Trust as of 1 April 2017. For more information on the criteria and a full list of publishers that meet them, see here.

MDPI is currently attending the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting (12–16 December, 2016)

If you are also attending the conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #1147) and meet the representative editors.

Conference details:

2016 AGU Fall Meeting
12–16 December 2016
Moscone Center
747 Howard St
San Francisco, CA 94103, USA

We are pleased to announce that Purdue University, USA, the Universitat Politécnica de Valencia, Spain and the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

The deadline for the World Sustainability Award has been extended for one last time! You now have one more month to nominate an individual researcher, group or project! The final deadline for nominations will be December 15, 2016. 

For full details, please visit here.

We are pleased to announce that the University of Minnesota, USA, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

MDPI has become a member of the United Nations Global Compact to support corporate sustainability and have committed ourselves to the ten principles associated with the Compact.

Sustainability has always been at the core of MDPI’s values, starting with the collection and preservation of rare chemical samples that started in 1996 and led to the first journal, Molecules. Sustainability has become one of our flagship journals and we have supported and organized several conferences and events based on Sustainability, including the upcoming 6th World Sustainability Forum. As a global enterprise, we see it as our duty to promote responsible practices that will ensure a bright future for our planet. Given this, the choice to join the Global Compact was an easy one and we will do our utmost to fully implement it.

We are delighted to announce that MDPI has become a member of SPARC Europe, an organization that works for open scholarship in Europe, including support of open access publication.

As one of the few publishers to join SPARC Europe to date, MDPI looks forward to making a contribution that puts open scholarship on a positive and sustainable path. We fully support the goals of open scholarship that allow the largest number of people possible to benefit from work of researchers in all disciplines. We hope that our membership will enable us to work with other stakeholders to find the best possible solution.

The deadline for the World Sustainability Award has been extended! You now have until November 15, 2016 to nominate an individual researcher, group or project!

For full details, please visit here.

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We are pleased to announce that the Wuppertal Institut, Germany, the University of Girona, Spain and Central South University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

Meet us during International Open Access Week 2016! We will be presenting at various locations in Europe and China. 

To get involved and for full details see the complete list of events organised by MDPI here.

We are pleased to announce that the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain and Aalto University, Finland, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that the Iowa State University and the University of North Texas, USA, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

Meet MDPI during the Open Access Days held from 10-11 October 2016 at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. 

The two-day event will feature experts from the open access sector, scientists from all disciplines, publishing representatives and supporters of scientific research and communication from libraries as well as research institutes and funding institutions. Join us!

For more information about the event and to see the program, visit the event webpage.

We are pleased to announce that the University of Sevilla and the University of Alicante, Spain have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that the University of Delaware, USA, has joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from this university will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

As an open access publisher indebted to the work of our peer reviewers, we are proud to support Peer Review Week 2016. As part of the week's activities and to celebrate this year's theme "Recognition for Review", MDPI will host two webinars that anyone can join.

These webinars will explore the role and value of reviewers and the recognition they receive from a publishers perspective, with examples from MDPI's experience in publishing nearly 80,000 peer reviewed papers, along with evidence from reviewer surveys. It will also touch upon potential changes in how review is carried out and tips for early career researchers who want to be involved in the review process.

Details and links to join can be found below:

Wednesday September 21, 08:00 (CEST)

Friday September 23, 16:00 (CEST)

For more information about all the activites taking place, please visit the Peer Review Week website.

We are pleased to announce that Kansas State University and Northwestern Universty, USE, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that University College Cork, Ireland, has joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from this university will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that MDPI has now moved to a new permanent address:

MDPI AG
St. Alban Anlage 66
CH-4052 Basel
Postfach, CH-4020 Basel
Switzerland

Telephone and fax numbers remain unchanged.

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in August 2016:

• University of Texas at Austin, USA
• Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland
• University of Granada, Spain
• Compultense University of Madrid, Spain

Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in July 2016:

• Louisiana State University, USA
• Florida State University, USA
• Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland
• University of Rostock, Germany
• AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland
• Southeast University, China

Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

As of 20 August 2016, MDPI's new address in Basel will be:

MDPI AG
St. Alban-Anlage 66
CH-4052 Basel
Switzerland

Telephone and fax numbers remain unchanged.

St. Alban-Anlage 66 was built from 1947 to 1948 and initially the home of the "Bühler AG", a book printing business. 

From the 15-16 September, 2016, MDPI will run a course on Academic Publishing at the University of Basel.

In this two day workshop, MDPI will look in detail at the role performed by academic journal publishers and how they interact with academics. Ethical dimensions, what happens when problems occur and how the publisher coordinates all aspects of the submission process will also be covered. 

For more detailed information about the program, trainers and registration please visit the course webpage.

We are pleased to report the 2015 Journal Impact Factors in the latest Journal Citation Reports® Science Edition, published by Thomson Reuters in June 2016. Twenty out of 25 journals have seen an increase in their Impact Factor and two journals (Crystals and IJGI) received a first Impact Factor. Coatings was recently added to SCIE and will receive its first Impact Factor in next year’s JCR.

Updated Impact Factors for Journals in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)

Journals with First Impact Factors

We are pleased to inform you that the new Impact Factor of Energies has been released. According to the Journal Citation Reports®, published by Thomson Reuters in June 2016, the new Impact Factor is 2.077, and the 5-Year Impact Factor is 2.468.

Energies now ranks 43/88 (Q2) in the category ‘Energy & Fuels’. It ranks second highest among the Open Access journals in this category.

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Energies:

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in May 2016:

• Unversity of Bremen, Germany
• Koç University, Turkey
• International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria
• Jilin University, China
• Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in April and May 2016:

• KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
• South China University of Technology, China
• Beijing University of Technology, China
• Southern Medical University, China

Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

You may have noticed a new section that is now visible on our home page. This section is called "Latest Books" and showcases recent publications from MDPI Books, our book publishing service.

By clicking on the hyperlink "More Books" you will be taken to the MDPI Books Home Page. There you will find more information about the service, as well as the "Recent Publications" list. 

Clicking on any of the book images in this list will take you to detailed information about that book (shown below). Here you can also download a PDF version of the book, or order a hardcover printed copy.

For further information about the MDPI Books service, please visit the webpage or contact books@mdpi.com.

We are pleased to announce that the journals Axioms, Behavioral Sciences, Photonics, Separations and Toxics were recently accepted for inclusion in the newly launched Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) in Web of Science.

ESCI serves to highlight promising journals which are still under consideration for the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) or the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).

The Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index
(SSCI), and Web of Science™ (WoS) are Thomson Reuters products.

We are pleased to announce that the University of Winchester, UK, the Silesian University of Technology, Poland and Beijing Jiaotong University and Zhejiang University, China, have joined our Institutional Membership program. Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are excited to announce the opening of our new editorial office in Barcelona, Spain. The launch team is led by a Senior Editor and comprises further staff holding doctoral degrees with several years of research experience. The new editorial team will help us to get closer to European research communities and progress Sciforum, the platform to support the scientific community via conference hosting and other functions. They will also help spread the word about Open Access and meet academics at scientific events.

We are in the process of hiring more doctoral and masters graduates to join the editorial team and welcome applications via jobs@mdpi.com. For contact details about the office, see our contact page.

We are pleased to announce that the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) has signed an agreement with MDPI to support authors associated with the Max Planck Society (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft). As of 22 February 2016, corresponding authors will receive full funding from the MPDL for articles published in MDPI journals, with a 10% discount applied to the Article Processing Charges. Additional details can be found at our institutional membership page.

Founded in 1948, The Max Planck Society is one of Germany’s leading research organizations, and is currently made up of 83 institutes conducting basic research in natural sciences, life sciences, social sciences and humanities. 18 Nobel laureates have emerged from its ranks of scientists and the society has more than 15,000 publications in scientific journals each year.

We are pleased to announce that Wageningen University, the Netherlands, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain, the University of Zürich and ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and the University of Tübingen and Osnabrück University, Germany, have not only renewed their institutional memberships with MDPI after two years of successful cooperation, but have also increased the reduction of the article processing charges (APCs) for affiliated authors to 25%.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that Brock University, Cananda, and the University of Pisa, Italy, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 01 February 2016. 

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

MDPI is pleased to announce its newly established sponsorship of diss:kurs, an event coordinated by the University of Basel to support their doctorate program. For more information about the event and how to register, please visit the diss:kurs webpage.

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program as of 1 January 2016:

• Tsinghua University, China
• Chinese Society of Micro-Nano Technology (CSMNT)
• Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
• University of Ulm, Germany

Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that MDPI's open access journals Safety, Journal of Imaging, Fermentation, C-Journal of Carbon Research, Magnetochemistry, Batteries and Horticulturae released their first issue at the end of December 2015.

Season's greetings from everyone at MDPI!

We are pleased to announce that the University of Bern, Switzerland has not only renewed their institutional membership with MDPI after two years of successful cooperation, but also increased the reduction of the article processing charges (APCs) for affiliated authors to 25%.

We are pleased to announce that University of Ulm, Germany and Helmholtz Zentrum Munich, Germany has joined MDPI's institutional membership program:

Primary authors from the University of Ulm and Helmholtz Zentrum Munich will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 1 January 2016. Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that Virginia Tech has joined MDPI's institutional membership program. Authors from Virginia Tech will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 1 December 2015. Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that the following universities have joined MDPI's institutional membership program:

• Technical University of Denmark (as of 1 November 2015)
• University of North Florida, USA (as of 15 November 2015)

Primary authors from the Technical University of Denmark and the University of North Florida will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that the following universities have joined MDPI's institutional membership program:

University of Freiburg, Germany
University of Regensburg, Germany

Primary authors from the University of Freiburg and the University of Regensburg will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 1 October 2015 and 1 November 2015.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to report the 2014 Impact Factor for Energies. According to the 2015 release of the Journal Citation Reports® Science Edition (published by Thomson Reuters in June 2015), the updated Impact Factor for Energies is 2.072. It has risen from 1.602 in the previous year (+29%), as illustrated in the figure below. The 5-Year Impact Factor is 2.436. Energies now ranks 43/88 (Q2) in the category ‘Energy & Fuels’.

Evolution of the Energies Impact Factor:

Evolution of citations to Energies:

With the start of 2013, Energies is instituting an annual award to recognize outstanding papers related to scientific research, technology development, engineering, and the studies in policy and management that meet the aims, scope and high standards of this journal.

We are pleased to announce the “Energies Best Paper Award” for 2013. Nominations were solicited from the Editorial Board members, with all papers published in 2009 eligible for consideration.

Article Award:

1st prize

Christopher D. Elvidge, Daniel Ziskin, Kimberly E. Baugh, Benjamin T. Tuttle, Tilottama Ghosh, Dee W. Pack, Edward H. Erwin and Mikhail Zhizhin

A Fifteen Year Record of Global Natural Gas Flaring Derived from Satellite Data

2nd prize

Ugo Bardi and Alessandro Lavacchi

A Simple Interpretation of Hubbert’s Model of Resource Exploitation

Review Award:

1st prize

Dong Jin Ham and Jae Sung Lee

Transition Metal Carbides and Nitrides as Electrode Materials for Low Temperature Fuel Cells

For more details, please refer to Best Paper Award Editorial by Prof. Dr. Enrico Sciubba (Editor-in-Chief, Energies).

We are pleased to report that special issue "Wind Turbines" has been successfully closed. 16 papers have been published in this issue.

Professor Lance Manuel, one of the Guest Editors of this issue, says "The wide-ranging set of articles from authors all over the world reflects the growing importance of wind energy development and highlights notable research studies. The articles cover a comprehensive set of topics that deal with measurements, inflow characterization, array effects, design, reliability, control, and power for small and large wind turbines."

A new special issue on this topic is planned to be set up soon for the year 2013, aiming to further encourage scholars in this field to share their research results in a timely way.