Announcements

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Lamberto Rondoni has been appointed as the Editor-in-Chief of the new section “Non-Equilibrium Phenomena” in Entropy.

Lamberto Rondoni is a full Professor of Mathematical Physics at the Politecnico di Torino in Italy and holds secondary appointments at Università di Torino and INFN (Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics). He works in statistical physics, particularly on the subjects of fluctuations at the nanoscale and general non-equilibrium systems. Statistical mechanics aims at describing the physical properties of a macroscopic system on the basis of the behavior of its microscopic constituents [1]. The most developed part of statistical physics concerns equilibrium situations, but the majority of assumptions employed for systems at equilibrium have limited application for out of equilibrium phenomena, and dedicated tools are required. Recent efforts led by a number of scientists including Lamberto Rondoni have unveiled exciting new and rigorous results, which are collectively known as fluctuation relations [2–5]. These represent one of the few general, accurate descriptions achieved so far in non-equilibrium systems, covering a wide variety of phenomena and observables. Furthermore, these developments have led to numerous results concerning the response of the widest class of systems to perturbations. Currently, research in this field is of particular interest in bio- and nanosciences and technology, as well as in soft sciences (socio-economic, media and communications, etc.) in which the notion of proper equilibrium cannot be established and in which stationary states are characterized by large fluctuations.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Lamberto Rondoni as the Editor-in-Chief of the section “Non-Equilibrium Phenomena”, and we look forward to Entropy achieving many milestones under his leadership. For further information on the journal section, please click:

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/sections/non-equilibrium_phenomena

References

1. Chandler, D.W. Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 1987.
2. Evans, D.J.; Searles, D.J. The fluctuation theorem. Adv. Phys. 2002, 51, 1529–1585.
3. Gallavotti, G.; Cohen, E.G.D. Dynamical ensembles in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. Phys. Rev. Lett. 1995, 74, 2694–2697.
4. Jarzynski, C. Nonequilibrium equality for free energy differences. Phys. Rev. Lett. 1997, 78, 2690–2693.
5. Marconi, U.M.B.; Puglisi, A.; Rondoni, L.; Vulpiani, A. Fluctuation-dissipation: Response theory in statistical physics. Phys. Rep. 2008, 461, 111–195.

We are pleased to announce the winner of the Best Poster Award, sponsored by Entropy for 45th Conference of the Middle European Cooperation in Statistical Physics (MECO45), held on 14–16 September 2020.

“Phase transitions in three-dimensional random anisotropy Heisenberg model: two case studies” by Maxym Dudka, Yurij Holovatch and Juan J. Ruiz-Lorenzo

The poster created by Maxym Dudka, Yurij Holovatch (Institute for Condensed Matter Physics, Lviv, Ukraine) and Juan J. Ruiz-Lorenzo (Extremadura University, Badajoz, Spain) concerns the study of ordering in random anisotropy magnets. Such magnets constitute a wide class of magnetic systems, with structural disorder described by a random anisotropy model that was introduced in the early 1970s by Harris, Plischke and Zuckermann. Despite extensive studies, the problem of the nature of a low-temperature phase of random anisotropy systems remains a very intriguing issue. While, for large values of local anisotropy strength, the majority of studies predict spin-glass, there is much discussion about ordering for small and moderate values of such strength. It appears that the answer to this question depends also on the local axis distribution. Analytical and numerical approaches predict an absence of the ferromagnetic order for uniform continuous distribution while preserving long-range order for discrete distribution, except in the numerical study, where second-order phase transition to long-range order was claimed for both kinds of distributions with the same correlation length critical exponent. We study phase transitions in the three-dimensional random anisotropy model with three-component order parameter by means of extensive Monte Carlo simulations, using the parallel tempering method for two different random anisotropy axis distributions and two different values of local anisotropy strength for each disorder distribution case. We observe clear signatures of the second order phase transition (paramagnetic–ferromagnetic) for both distributions, although extracted critical exponents support different collective behaviors for different random anisotropy axis distributions. Moreover, while we find strong evidence of universality for the case of the discrete disorder distribution, results for the uniform case do not present universality, showing the dependence of the critical exponents on the disorder strength, as well as on the lattice size, therefore questioning the nature of low-temperature state in the thermodynamic limit. The work was initiated within the FP7-PEOPLE, IRSES project SPIDER. Maxym Dudka acknowledges the financial support of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) on the final stage of the project.

Entropy is offering three travel awards to sponsor PhD students to attend a relevant conference of their choice in 2020 or 2021. The three thematic areas for the three travel awards are:

Quantum Information

Entropy and Biology

Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Black Holes

The deadline for the Entropy 2020–2021 Travel Awards has been extended! You can apply for one of the awards by 1 November 2020. The winners will be announced on the Entropy website by 30 November 2020. For full details and how to apply, please click here.

Please note that applicants should select only one Entropy Travel Award when applying. Applicants selecting more than one award will automatically be disqualified from all awards. The chosen travel award should match the field and thematic area of their research and planned presentation.

We are pleased to announce the two winners of the Best ECR Presentation Awards sponsored by Entropy for the CNS*2020 Online Workshop on Methods of Information Theory in Computational Neuroscience held on 21–22 July 2020.

“A Differentiable Measure of Pointwise Shared Information” by Abdullah Makkeh

Partial information decomposition (PID) of the multivariate mutual information describes the distinct ways in which a set of source variables contains information about a target variable. The groundbreaking work of Williams and Beer has shown that this decomposition cannot be determined from classic information theory without making additional assumptions, and several candidate measures have been proposed, often drawing on principles from related fields such as decision theory. None of these measures is differentiable with respect to the underlying probability mass function. Here, we present a novel measure that draws only on the principle linking the local mutual information to exclusion of probability mass. This principle is foundational to the original definition of the mutual information by Fano. We reuse this principle to define a measure of shared information based on the shared exclusion of probability mass by the realizations of source variables. Our measure is differentiable and well defined for individual realizations of the random variables. Thus, it lends itself, for example, to local learning in artificial neural networks. We show that the measure can be interpreted as local mutual information with the help of an auxiliary variable. We also show that it has a meaningful Möbius inversion on a redundancy lattice and obeys a target chain rule. We provide an operational interpretation of the measure based on the decisions that an agent should take if only given the shared information.

“Multi-Target Information Decomposition and Applications to Integrated Information Theory” by Pedro Mediano

The partial information decomposition (PID) framework allows us to decompose the information that multiple source variables have about a single target variable. In its 10 years of existence, PID has spawned numerous theoretical and practical tools to help us understand and analyze information processing in complex systems. However, the asymmetric role of sources and targets in PID hinders its application in certain contexts, like studying information sharing in multiple processes evolving jointly over time. In this work, we developed a novel extension of the PID framework to the multi-target setting, which lends itself more naturally to the analysis of multivariate dynamical systems. This new decomposition is tightly linked with integrated information theory and gives us new analysis tools as well as a richer understanding of information processing in multivariate dynamical systems. Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.02297.

We are delighted to announce the establishment of our Open Access agreement with Jisc Collections, which will allow UK institutions to benefit from access to article processing charge (APC) discounts and streamlined payment workflows.

All institutions participating in the agreement will also gain access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information for easy identification and additional transparency.

Eligible authors affiliated with the participating institutions are prompted to choose the corresponding Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system.

About Jisc

Jisc's vision is for the UK to be the most digitally advanced education and research nation in the world. At its heart is the super-fast national research and education network, Janet, with built-in cyber security protection.  Jisc also provides technology solutions for its members (colleges, universities and research centres) and customers (public sector bodies), helps members save time and money by negotiating sector-wide deals and provides advice and practical assistance on digital technology. Jisc is funded by the UK higher and further education and research funding bodies and member institutions.

For more information, contact helen.dobson@jisc.ac.uk.

About MDPI

MDPI is a publisher of fully peer-reviewed, Open Access journals with a focus on thorough and rapid editorial processing. Its aim is to ensure that high-quality research is verified and made available to the research community as quickly as possible. MDPI stands at the forefront of the Open Access movement, having launched its first online journal Molecules in 1996. Today, MDPI is a leader in Open Access publishing with over 250 journals across all research disciplines, and all content published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

For any questions about this agreement, please contact the MDPI IOAP team at ioap@mdpi.com.

The updated citation metrics have been released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), published by Clarivate. The recent release of the JCR includes seventy-one MDPI titles. Out of these, 18 titles are newcomers, receiving a first Journal Impact Factor which is based on citation activity in 2019: Actuators, Agriculture, Biology, Biomedicines, Biosensors, Chemosensors, Children, Healthcare, Journal of Fungi, Journal of Personalized Medicine (JPM), Land, Life, Magnetochemistry, Membranes, Pharmaceuticals, Photonics, Separations and Toxics.

• Out of the previously listed journals, a total of 72 percent boast an increased Impact Factor.
• 25 journals are ranked among the top 25% of journals in at least one of the categories they are ranked for.
• Articles published in 2019 in MDPI journals account for approximately 17 percent of of articles published in gold Open Access journals covered in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).
  
  

First Impact Factors

Updated Impact Factors

Since 1996, MDPI has been committed to supporting the research community by providing the latest research freely available and making relevant and useful research available as quickly as possible. The world is current experiencing a pandemic of COVID-19, and researchers are working extremely hard to understand it and find a cure.

The values MDPI holds strongly are particularly important at the moment, and we will continue to publish relevant, peer-reviewed research as quickly as possible in open access format. This means that it will immediately be available for researchers, health professionals, and the general public to read, distribute, and reuse. We believe that scientific advancements will be crucial to overcoming this pandemic, and will do everything we can to support researchers working looking for solutions.

COVID-19 Academic Resources Center contains a variety of information related to COVID-19 available from MDPI, including journal articles, special issues, and preprints, among others.

For more information, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/covid-19

As a leading Open Access publisher, MDPI is committed to fostering open scientific exchange in all forms across all disciplines. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, many researchers have to stay at home and many academic conferences have been cancelled or postponed. In light of these changes, MDPI has adopted numerous initiatives that may help accelerate scientific exchange and provide support to the academics during this period.

Scholarly Community—Encyclopedia

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Comprehensive and Free Literature Database—Scilit

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Display Academic Achievements—SciProfiles

SciProfiles is an innovative social network for researchers and scholars that is developed by MDPI. In line with our broad mission, the purpose of SciProfiles is to accelerate discovery and innovation by facilitating immediate access to research results and providing opportunities for academic networking.

Organize and Participate in Conferences Online—Sciforum

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Post Early Versions of Research Outputs—Preprints

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MDPI remains committed to open science and open data and has signed a statement, along with more than thirty scholarly publishers, showing our intention to facilitate sharing of new research findings as early on as possible. The initiative sees publishers collectively removing barriers to new research, in the face of a global healthcare crisis.

The world is currently suffering from a global pandemic of the corona virus COVID-19. MDPI expresses its sympathies for all of those affected by the virus and stands in solidarity with medical staff and researchers treating patients and searching for scientific solutions.

MDPI has previously published papers covering corona viruses in addition to new papers on the current outbreak, see all papers here. In particular, Viruses has published a number of Special Issues and papers on the topic (see here, here, and here) as well as a forthcoming Special Issue.

Alongside journal articles, MDPI has been a strong supporter of preprints, which are increasingly being used to rapidly disseminate the latest research, and we run the preprint server Preprints.org. Our database of research articles, Scilit, is free to use and covers all publishers including preprint servers. New papers are often in search results within hours of publication and users can set up alerts for new papers.

Our main priority during this period has been the health and safety of staff, and we continue to allow staff to work at home and closely monitor the situation in all locations in which we work. Despite the restrictions, we continue to provide a full publication service and, by close collaboration with our editorial boards and making use our in-house teams, ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in publishing vital research. Fast and open publication has always been at the core of MDPI values and is now more important than ever.

We hope that a solution to the current situation will emerge soon. In the meantime, we will do our best to continue communicating vital research in all fields.

The advantages of the open access model of scientific publishing are being increasingly recognized in the scientific community. It allows new scientific evidence to be accessed from the moment of publication for free by anyone around the globe, boosting the impact of new research. In response, many funders, libraries and universities have been adopting new principles to accelerate the transition to open access.

Recently, “transformative agreements” have been negotiated between traditional publishers and various institutions. While increasing the number of open access papers, these agreements lack binding commitments to a full transition to open access, their conditions vary across different regions, and access is still limited for many users.

MDPI is a co-signatory of the recent position statement raising concerns about potential downsides of transformative agreements and how they may delay a full transition to open access. The statement highlights that these models “risk perpetuating current limitations on access, transparency and market competitiveness, while simultaneously facilitating excessive charges on the public purse”.

As a pioneering open access journal publisher, MDPI is the first to promote the importance of science being made available to everyone. Our peer-reviewed journals, covering diverse academic disciplines, are fully accessible to the public free of charge under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). This is why, along with other open access publishers, MDPI is a proud signatory of the position paper and is committed to contributing to the replacement of weak transitional agreements with “agreements with publishers that are already fully committed to open science and who offer full, immediate and transparent Open Access”.

Read the position paper here