Announcements

The 2021 citation metrics have been released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), and we’re pleased to announce the following results for MDPI journals:

For more information on Impact Factors and what it means to index academic journals, please visit our related blog posts.

* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2022

Source: 2021 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ^TM (Clarivate, 2022)

The 2021 citation metrics have been officially released in Scopus!

We are pleased to announce that 182 MDPI journals are included, of which:

● 21 journals received their first CiteScore.
● 85% of journals increased their CiteScore from 2020.
● 155 journals (85%) ranked above average, in at least one category.

The following 65 MDPI journals (36%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category:

Source: 2021 CiteScores™ (Elsevier)

We are pleased to announce that Entropy (ISSN: 1099-4300) has received an increased CiteScore of 4.4 in the latest released 2021 CiteScore™ values, published by Elsevier in June 2022. Entropy now ranks 10/77 (Q1) in “Mathematical Physics”, 17/63 (Q2) in “Physics and Astronomy”, 235/708 (Q2) in “Electrical and Electronic Engineering”, and 117/353 (Q2) in “Information Systems”. For full details of the current CiteScore release, please see the journal's Source profile: https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/13715.

We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all the authors, reviewers, and editors who have contributed to the journal and enabled this next big step.

We are pleased to announce that Entropy (ISSN: 1099-4300) is now inviting nominations for the Entropy 2022 Young Investigator Award. This prize will be given to one young investigator in recognition of their excellence in the field of entropy and information theory. All nominations will be assessed by an Award Evaluation Committee led by the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Kevin H. Knuth.

The prize:

• CHF 2000;
• Option to publish one paper free of charge in Entropy after peer review before the end of December 2023;
• A certificate.

Eligibility and requirements:

• Must have a PhD degree;
• Must be below 40 years of age by 31 December 2022;
• Must have produced ground-breaking research and made a significant contribution to the advancement of entropy and information theory;
• Must be nominated by senior scientists.

List of documents for nomination:

• Detailed curriculum vitae, including an updated publication list and a list of the researcher’s own research grants;
• Birth certificate or other proof of age;
• Scanned copy of doctorate certificate;
• Signed nomination letters from two established senior scientists.

Schedule:
Nomination deadline: 28 September 2022
Winner announcement: 23 November 2022

How to submit nominations?
The nominations must be submitted online
(https://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/awards/submit/1703).

Entropy Editorial Office

We are pleased to announce the launch of a project entitled "Editor's Choice Articles" in Entropy (ISSN: 1099-4300). The list of high-quality and interesting papers that were specifically recommended by our Editorial Board Members can be found at the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/editors_choice. We have selected 16 of these papers to display here. The paper list is as follows:

• “High-Entropy Alloys for Advanced Nuclear Applications”
  Ed J. Pickering, Alexander W. Carruthers, Paul J. Barron, Simon C. Middleburgh, David E. J. Armstrong and Amy S. Gandy
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/1/98

• “Applications of Distributed-Order Fractional Operators: A Review”
  Wei Ding, Sansit Patnaik, Sai Sidhardh and Fabio Semperlotti
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/1/110

• “The Entropy Universe”
  Maria Ribeiro, Teresa Henriques, Luísa Castro, André Souto, Luís Antunes, Cristina Costa-Santos and Andreia Teixeira
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/2/222

• “Deep Task-Based Quantization”
  Nir Shlezinger and Yonina C. Eldar
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/1/104

• “Global Sensitivity Analysis Based on Entropy: From Differential Entropy to Alternative Measures”
  Zdeněk Kala
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/6/778

• “Information Theory for Agents in Artificial Intelligence, Psychology, and Economics”
  Michael S. Harré
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/3/310

• “Mechanism Integrated Information”
  Leonardo S. Barbosa, William Marshall, Larissa Albantakis and Giulio Tononi
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/3/362

• “Information Geometric Theory in the Prediction of Abrupt Changes in System Dynamics”
  Adrian-Josue Guel-Cortez and Eun-jin Kim
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/6/694

• “The Principle of Covariance and the Hamiltonian Formulation of General Relativity”
  Massimo Tessarotto and Claudio Cremaschini
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/2/215

• “Information Structures for Causally Explainable Decisions”
  Louis Anthony Cox, Jr.
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/5/601

• “Ordinal Pattern Dependence in the Context of Long-Range Dependence”
  Ines Nüßgen and Alexander Schnurr
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/6/670

• “Information and Self-Organization II: Steady State and Phase Transition”
  Hermann Haken and Juval Portugali
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/6/707

• “Causality and Information Transfer Between the Solar Wind and the Magnetosphere–Ionosphere System”
  Pouya Manshour, Georgios Balasis, Giuseppe Consolini, Constantinos Papadimitriou and Milan Paluš
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/4/390

• “Why Do Big Data and Machine Learning Entail the Fractional Dynamics?”
  Haoyu Niu, YangQuan Chen and Bruce J. West
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/3/297

• “Beyond Causal Explanation: Einstein’s Principle Not Reichenbach’s”
  Michael Silberstein, William Mark Stuckey and Timothy McDevitt
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/1/114

• “Coupling between Blood Pressure and Subarachnoid Space Width Oscillations during Slow Breathing”
  Agnieszka Gruszecka, Magdalena K. Nuckowska, Monika Waskow, Jacek Kot, Pawel J. Winklewski, Wojciech Guminski, Andrzej F. Frydrychowski, Jerzy Wtorek, Adam Bujnowski, Piotr Lass, Tomislav Stankovski and Marcin Gruszecki
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/1/113

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the research groups that submitted these exceptional papers for their contributions to Entropy. We would appreciate it if you would circulate this document among your colleagues or through your network.

We are pleased to announce the two winners of the Best ECR Presentation Awards sponsored by Entropy (ISSN: 1099-4300) for the CNS*2021 Online Workshop on Methods of Information Theory in Computational Neuroscience held on 6 and 7 July 2021. Congratulations to the winners, Dr. Fleur Zeldenrust and Mr. Lucas Rudelt.

“Estimating Information Transfer In Vitro: Results from Barrel Cortex” by Fleur Zeldenrust

Understanding the relation between (sensory) stimuli and the activity of neurons (i.e., ‘the neural code’) lies at the heart of understanding the computational properties of the brain. However, quantifying the information between a stimulus and a spike train has proven to be challenging due to the limited life span of a cell in an in vitro setup. In 2017, in this workshop, I presented a new in vitro method to measure how much information a single neuron transfers from the input it receives to its output spike train. This method has the advantage that it is fast (~10 minutes) compared with traditional methods. This decrease in recording time is obtained by generating an input by an artificial neural network that responds to a randomly appearing and disappearing ‘sensory stimulus’: the hidden state. The low entropy of this hidden state allows for a fast estimate of transferred information. Using this method, we have now recorded over 850 trials in almost 300 inhibitory and excitatory neurons of the barrel cortex, using different pharmacological modulations (including dopamine, acetylcholine, and serotonin receptor agonists). Here, I presented the first conclusions of this large database of recordings and showed how this method can be extended to dynamic clamp and the effects this has on modeled neurons.

"Embedding Optimization Reveals Long-Lasting History Dependence in Neural Spiking Activity" by Lucas Rudelt

Information processing can leave distinct footprints on the statistics of neural spiking. For example, efficient coding minimizes statistical dependencies on spiking history, while temporal integration of information may require the maintenance of information over various timescales. To investigate these footprints, I presented an approach that quantifies history dependence within the spiking of a single neuron, using mutual information between the entire past and current spiking. Applying this approach to extracellular spike recordings, we found that both the strength and the timescale of history dependence showed striking differences between different neural systems. In conjunction with recent highly parallel spike recording techniques, this approach could yield valuable insights into how information processing is organized in the brain.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2022 Best Paper Award, which was sponsored by MDPI and Entropy (ISSN: 1099-4300). Each winner (corresponding author) will receive CHF 500 and the opportunity to publish a paper free of charge in Entropy in 2022.

The winners, comprising one review article and four research articles, are:

Review article:

• “Thermodynamics in Ecology—An Introductory Review”
  by Søren Nors Nielsen, Felix Müller, Joao Carlos Marques, Simone Bastianoni and Sven Erik Jørgensen
  Entropy 2020, 22(8), 820; https://doi.org/10.3390/e22080820

Research articles:

• “The Role of Entropy in the Development of Economics”
  by Aleksander Jakimowicz
  Entropy 2020, 22(4), 452; https://doi.org/10.3390/e22040452

• “Large Deviations for Continuous Time Random Walks”
  by Wanli Wang, Eli Barkai and Stanislav Burov
  Entropy 2020, 22(6), 697; https://doi.org/10.3390/e22060697

• “Thermodynamics at Very Long Time and Space Scales”
  by Bjarne Andresen and Christopher Essex
  Entropy 2020, 22(10), 1090; https://doi.org/10.3390/e22101090

• “Geometric Optimisation of Quantum Thermodynamic Processes”
  by Paolo Abiuso, Harry J. D. Miller, Martí Perarnau-Llobet and Matteo Scandi
  Entropy 2020, 22(10), 1076; https://doi.org/10.3390/e22101076

We congratulate the winners on their accomplishments, and we would also like to take this opportunity to thank the research groups of the above papers for their contributions to Entropy, as well as the Award Committee for their efforts in the evaluation process.

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

This program intends to provide an opportunity for early-career scientists to enhance their editing, networking, and organizational skills and to work closely with our journal to gain more editorial experience.

Early-career scientists are being asked to propose ideas for new Entropy Special Issues. Early-career scientists would act as Guest Editors under the mentorship of an experienced scientist. This mentor could be a member of the Editorial Board of Entropy, or from other well-established research institutes or laboratories.

Early career scientists would have the following responsibilities:

• Providing a CV, including a list of publications;
• Proposing a Special Issue title and a short introduction;
• Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
• Writing an editorial for the online Special Issue;
• Reviewing and making decisions for submissions under the mentorship of our Editorial Board Members.

Mentor’s Responsibilities:

• Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
• Co-editing the Special Issue with younger scholars and performing quality control of the publications in the SI;
• Providing suggestions to younger scholars if they have doubts or concerns regarding submissions;
• Organizing video calls with young scholars and the office regularly to discuss problems and improvement suggestions for the Special Issue.

Certificates and Awards:

When the Special Issue is closed, the Editorial Office will provide official certificates for all the mentors. Younger scholars will be prioritized as candidates for Entropy Young Investigator Awards in future editions.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Entropy Editorial Office (entropy@mdpi.com), and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail.

In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, Entropy continues to welcome all Special Issue proposals based on hot research topics as usual.

Entropy Editorial Office

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2021 Outstanding Reviewer Awards, sponsored by MDPI and Entropy (ISSN: 1099-4300). The awards have been granted to five outstanding scholars in recognition of their excellent contributions to their reviewer process. These scholars have been awarded a prize of CHF 500 as well as a 50% discount towards the publication fee of one paper in 2022.

The award winners are:

Name: Jim W. Kay
Affiliation: School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Name: Christophe Chesneau
Affiliation: Department of Mathematics, University of Caen, 14000 Caen, France

Name: Esteban Tlelo-Cuautle
Affiliation: Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE), Puebla 72840, México

Name: Dr. Dennis Dieks
Affiliation: Freudenthal Instituut History and Philosophy of Science, Utrecht University, 3584 CC Utrecht, Netherlands

Name: Claudio Cremaschini
Affiliation: Research Center for Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, Institute of Physics, Silesian University in Opava, Bezrucovo nám.13, CZ-74601 Opava, Czech Republic

The selection process was incredibly difficult due to the high number of exceptional candidates. We appreciate every reviewer’s work in facilitating the review process and controlling the quality of manuscripts.

For more information about the Entropy awards, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/awards.

It is our great honor to congratulate the Editorial Board Members and Editors in MDPI's journals who have been distinguished as 2021 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate, according to Web of Science data. We herewith express our gratitude for the immense impact the named researchers continue to make on scientific progress and on our journals' development.

Clarivate's annual list of Highly Cited Researchers^TM identifies the most highly cited scientists for the past decade. Their impactful papers are among the top 1 per cent in the citation distribution of one or more of 22 fields analyzed in the "Essential Science Indicators", distinguishing them as hugely influential among their peers.

The full list of 2021 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed at the following webpage in the Web of Science^TM https://recognition.webofscience.com/awards/highly-cited/2021/.

--- Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) is a Clarivate product.