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

Encyclopedia is an online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as providing benchmark information for researchers and the general public interested in accurate and advanced knowledge on specific topics.

Comprehensive and Free Literature Database—Scilit

Scilit is a comprehensive, free database for scientists that uses a new method to collate data and index scientific material. Our crawlers extract the latest data from CrossRef and PubMed on a daily basis. This means that newly published articles are immediately added to Scilit.

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

Sciforum is an event planning platform that supports open science by offering the opportunity to host and participate in academic conferences. It provides an environment for scholarly exchange, discussion of topics of current interest, building of networks, and establishing collaborations.

Post Early Versions of Research Outputs—Preprints

Preprints is a platform dedicated to making early versions of research outputs permanently available and citable. We post original research articles and comprehensive reviews, and papers can be updated by authors at any time. Content on Preprints is not peer-reviewed, and feedback can be received from readers.

***

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

We are pleased to announce that Encyclopedia will be awarding five Outstanding Contributor Awards for researchers in 2020. The nominations and applications will be assessed by an Evaluation Committee consisting of senior scholars from the Encyclopedia Editorial Board.

Prize for Winners

1. An official certificate;
2. A cash award of 500 CHF or an MDPI discount voucher of 800 CHF.

Application Deadline

31 December, 2020 (Please send your application email with a list of all entries you contributed to our office before the deadline: [email protected])

Candidate Requirements

1. Have a Ph.D. degree;
2. Have more than three qualified entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020.

Evaluation Standards

1. Number of entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020;
2. Quality of entries online (including length, figure quality, and novelty);
3. Impact of entries (including the number of likes, discussion contents, views, and downloads).

If you are a researcher and have not yet contribute entries to Encyclopedia, please do not miss this chance to highlight your research results.

MDPI will be attending EGU in Vienna, Austria on 3–8 May 2020.

The EGU General Assembly 2020 will bring together geoscientists from all over the world to one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences. The EGU aims to provide a forum where scientists, especially early career researchers, can present their work and discuss their ideas with experts in all fields of geoscience.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• water
• Atmosphere
• Resources
• Climate
• Environments
• Geosciences
• Land
• Galaxies
• Data
• IJGI

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (#37) at Austria Centre Vienna (ACV). 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://egu2020.eu/

MDPI is pleased to announce the release of SciProfiles, its social network platform for researchers and scholars.

The purpose of SciProfiles is aligned with MDPI’s broad mission to accelerate discovery and innovation by facilitating immediate access to research results and to serve scholars and communities by providing opportunities for academic networking.

SciProfiles also ambitions to serve as a sustainable, transparent and community-driven research evaluation system aligned with the DORA principles (https://sfdora.org/). Through their scientific profiles, academics can highlight their contribution to research communities, and measure their impact on their field, beyond publication numbers and impact factors. SciProfiles is currently a beta version and will enrich to give researchers the possibility to highlight all of their contributions to science and their scientific communities as authors, reviewers, editors, conference organizers, conference panelists, conference keynote speakers, or even as lecturers or student mentors at their University.

The classic components of popular community social networks, including follower/following, classical metrics, endorsements and recommendations (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1690), comments (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1397) are or will be very soon highlighted in SciProfiles as open science contributions.

To help increase the impact and visibility of articles and their authors to an appropriate audience, the platform offers a NewsFeed that includes recommendations of relevant content based on interests, publication history, saved searches or colleagues’ recommendations.

SciProfiles’ avatars are now being integrated on several MDPI platforms, meaning that you will directly access researchers’ profiles from any of the MDPI platforms:

MDPI's journal publishing website: www.mdpi.com
MDPI's conference hosting and management website: www.sciforum.net
MDPI's pre-print website : www.preprints.org
MDPI's knowledge sharing website : www.encyclopedia.pub
MDPI's books store: www.mdpi.com/books
MDPI's literature database : www.scilit.net

SciProfiles aims to serve scientific communities at large. It can be embedded into third-party websites and also welcomes integration of data from third-parties.

Dr. Shu-Kun Lin: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/2
Dr. Franck Vazquez: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/FranckVazquez
Dr. Martyn Rittman: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/martynrittman

We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2019 MDPI Writing Prize. Entrants were asked to write on the theme "Judging research: How should research and researchers be evaluated and rewarded?" We received a large number of excellent essays from PhD students and postdocs, and the process of shortlisting and choosing winners was not an easy one. The winners demonstrated excellent writing skills alongside interesting and thought-provoking ideas.

As last year, we will begin the process of collating all entries into a book that will be available in open access format. Alongside promoting good writing skills, we see the prize as a way to promote the voices of early career researchers within broader debates and policy discussions.

Congratulations to all of the participants and especially the winners. The winners are:

1st Prize (500 CHF):
Albin Nilsson (National Centre for Nuclear Research, Warsaw, Poland)
[Read here]

2nd Prize (250 CHF):
Qi Zhang (Shandong University, Jinan, China)
[Read here]
Igor Ogashawara (Indiana University, Indianapolis, US)
[Read here]

3rd Prize (100 CHF):
Margaret Sivapragasam (Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Perak, Malaysia)
[Read here]
Arvind Sharma (The University of Queensland, Gatton, Australia)
[Read here]
Jose Flores-Guerrero (University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands)
[Read here]

The MDPI Writing Prize is an annual award supported by MDPI Author Services, which provides services including language editing, reformatting, plagiarism checks, and image editing.

MDPI is pleased to announce the release of a new functionality giving the possibility for researchers and scholars to endorse, and formally recommend articles to their colleagues.

MDPI was an early signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (https://sfdora.org/read/) which calls for improvement in how quality and impact of scholarly research outputs are evaluated, especially in moving beyond journal-based citation metrics (journal Impact Factor, Scopus Citescore, etc.).

MDPI supports the establishment of article-level impact metrics, including citations, views, downloads, and Altmetric scores. These measures serve as an impact indicator for research articles on a case–by-case basis, assessing paper on its own merit. However, these metrics are also subjective and can give a biased picture of the article impact: they do not directly reflect the quality or the intrinsic scientific value of the article.

In our view, community engagement with publications based on community-driven metrics can help to overcome this limitation. We have therefore launched an option for scholars to endorse articles, indicating their own assessment of its content and making a recommendation to their community. This follows our implementation of the open source Hypothesis commenting tool, which has been available for all articles published by MDPI for over a year (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1397). Both endorsement and commenting are available for all previously published and forthcoming MDPI articles.

In addition to potentially serving as a sustainable solution to article assessment, endorsements will help scientific communities to identify the most relevant articles, independently of the journal in which it was published.

The code for the endorsing functionality, which relies on DOIs and ORCIDs, will be made available on GitHub with an open source license.

Dr. Shu-Kun Lin, President and Founder
Dr. Franck Vazquez, Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Martyn Rittman, Publishing Director

Encyclopedia is pleased to announce that certain well-prepared entries are eligible for a 100 CHF voucher, which can be used for paper publication in any journals in MDPI. We believe that your contribution would be a great help in keeping up with scientific developments. Do not miss the chance to publish with us. Please clink here to find the detailed guideline.

Encyclopedia is a free online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as provide a comprehensive record of scientific development. If you have any suggestions or questions, please feel free to contact us via [email protected].

We are pleased to announce that Preprints has passed the milestone of 10,000 posted preprints. We are delighted to have reached this after just over three years of operation. Our congratulations and thanks go to our authors and advisory board who have supported growth of the platform and been crucial to its operation.

You can find further details at https://www.preprints.org/announcement/show/37.

Last week, the DeepGreen initiative in Germany started into an advanced test phase with the publishing partners S. Karger AG, SAGE Publishing, MDPI, Frontiers and De Gruyter, as well as 27 universities from all over Germany, from Hamburg University of Applied Sciences to University of Konstanz.

DeepGreen aims at lowering the barriers for open access publishing by automatically delivering metadata and full text publications from participating publishers to authorized repositories at German universities.

In preparation for a later live operation, the advanced test phase serves to gain experience with extensive data deliveries from publishers and also handling different repository software (including OPUS4, DSpace, EPrints, MyCoRe). DeepGreen thereby acts as a sophisticated platform, receiving articles published by authors affiliated with German universities and depositing these articles to respective university repositories, based on the affiliation metadata. For more information about DeepGreen: https://deepgreen.kobv.de

Karger AG has been a close cooperation partner of the DeepGreen consortium since 2016. S. Karger has more than 80 subscription-based and around 20 open access journals covering a wide spectrum in health science. DeepGreen will assign S. Karger articles to authorized institutions on the legal basis of German alliance and national licenses.

SAGE Publishing  was founded by Sara Miller McCune in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE publishes more than 1,000 journals and over 600 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. Our growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne. SAGE Publishing has been a close cooperation partner of DeepGreen since 2016.

MDPI  is a scientific open access publisher and has been a partner of DeepGreen since 2017. MDPI comprises 205 peer-reviewed journals of various disciplines. All articles are published under a CC-BY license and are freely available without embargo period.

Frontiers  is a scientific open access publisher with 61 journals of over 600 academic disciplines. All articles are peer-reviewed and published freely available under CC-BY license.

De Gruyter  is an academic publisher with more than 700 subscription-based and open access journals of 29 disciplines. Articles provided by De Gruyter will be assigned to institutions with German alliance and national licenses.

There is promising communication with other publishers.

DeepGreen is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the consortium comprises six institutions: the Cooperative Library Network Berlin-Brandenburg, Bavarian State Library, Bavarian Library Network, University Library of the Technische Universität Berlin, University Library of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Helmholtz Open Science Coordination Office at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

If you would like to know in more detail which institutions take part in the advanced test phase of DeepGreen, you can find more information here.

The University of Basel and the MDPI Sustainability Foundation are organizing the First Basel Sustainable Publishing Forum on 9th September 2019.

The aim of this event is to provide background and perspectives on Plan S to Learned Societies, which have to make well-informed decisions to transition their journals to Open Access (OA).

The BSPF will bring together several representatives of Learned societies, Plan S architects as well as representatives from various publishers and publishing platforms. After getting the big picture from cOAlition S, panel discussions will allow to better understand the diverse challenges that Learned societies are facing to transition their journals to OA as well as to identify sustainable, implementable and scalable solutions for successful Open Access transition.

For program details and registration, please follow the link below:
https://sciforum.net/conference/SustainableSolutionsToOpenAccess

We are pleased to welcome more universities from Poland, Italy, Germany, Brazil and other parts of the world to MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). A warm welcome to the institutions listed below, who have joined the Program in February and March this year.

James Madison University (JMU), Harrisonburg	USA
Loughborough University	UK
Lublin University of Technology	Poland
Marquette University, Milwaukee	USA
Massey University, Palmerston North	New Zealand
Medical College of Wisconsin	USA
Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń	Poland
Poznań University of Life Sciences	Poland
Robert Koch-Institut, Berlin	Germany
Rothamsted Research, Harpenden	UK
Santa Clara University (SCU)	USA
Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau	Germany
University of Aveiro	Portugal
University of Brasília	Brazil
University of Duisburg-Essen	Germany
University of Greifswald	Germany
University of Molise	Italy
University of Naples Parthenope	Italy
University of São Paulo (USP) - São Carlos Institute of Physics	Brazil
University of Szczecin	Poland
University of Warmia and Mazury, Olsztyn	Poland
University West, Trollhättan	Sweden
UTP University of Science and Technology, Bydgoszcz	Poland
VTT - Technical Research Centre of Finland	Finland

Authors affiliated with these institutions can now enjoy a discount on the APC for papers accepted for publication in any MDPI journal. If you would like to learn more about our program, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap or email us at [email protected].

We are delighted to announce our participation in Jisc’s Publication Router project, as of March 2019.

Publications Router is a Jisc service that automatically sends notifications about research articles to institutions' systems such as their repositories or CRISs, since May 2015. Through this agreement, MDPI will provide Jisc with daily feeds and information regarding published articles, which will be gathered by their system and delivered to institutions also registered to this service. Nearly all of our articles are published within 15 days of acceptance, so institutions will receive them quite promptly.

The feed will include the full text of the published version of record, with no embargo, so the articles can be exposed immediately for public view. They are accompanied by rich metadata, including confirmation of the immediate CC BY licence, minimising the need for any manual intervention or checking.

For more information about Publications Router, you may contact Jisc’s central helpdesk at [email protected]. For any queries about MDPI’s institutional agreements and collaborations, you may get in touch with MDPI’s Institutional Engagement team at [email protected], which would be very happy to hear from further UK institutions.

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high quality academic publishing. Over 97,000 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2018. We are extremely appreciative of all those who made a contribution to the editorial process in this capacity. At the beginning of every year, journal editorial offices publish a list all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year the “MDPI Top Reviewer Awards” are announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise, dedication, high quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2018 MDPI Top Reviewer Awards:

• Ali Behnood
• Andrea Pezzuolo
• Angela Gorgoglione
• Anna D'Auria
• Antonio D'Andrea
• Azhar Abbas
• Bogdan Zagajewski
• Chunhui Chen
• Dominika Głąbska
• Dominika Guzek
• Dragan Pamucar
• Francisco J. G. Silva
• Frank Li
• Gianluca Serafini
• Gyorgy Szekely
• Haozhi Pan
• Helvi Heinonen-Tanski
• José Manuel Gómez-Soberón
• Kathy Lewis
• Klara Kosova
• Luis N. López De Lacalle
• M. Z. Naser
• Malwina Tytła
• Masoume Amirkhani
• Matteo Ghidelli
• Moretti Laura
• Petra Schneider
• Roberto Cerchione
• Spyros Papaefthymiou
• Ştefan Cristian Gherghina

Since 2010, MDPI has run its own online submission system. More recently, we have made the software, with accompanying publishing services, available to other publishers as JAMS (Journal and Article Management System). We are now delighted to announce the launch of JAMS Journals, a standardized platform for operating open access journals at low cost.

JAMS Journals provides a comprehensive service, including a shared submission website, journal websites hosted at a URL provided by the publisher, and a full production service. There is a small setup fee and the cost for each published paper is just a few hundred Swiss francs.

The platform demonstrates that running an open access journal can be straightforward and affordable. The JAMS Journals platform is suitable for

• small publishers or groups of scholars looking to launch their own journal;
• existing publishers or societies seeking to explore open access options;
• publishers looking to convert an existing subscription journal to open access.

JAMS journals launches with two journals from Canadian-based publisher Etcetera Publications:

• Canadian Journal of Pesticides & Pest Management (http://www.cjppm.ca)
• Nanotechnology in Agriculture, Food & Environment (http://www.nanoafe.ca)

Dr AJ Al-Rajab (President of Etcetera Publications) comments:

“In the past few months, we were working on our project to launch new open access scientific journals in the field of agricultural and environmental sciences. We decided to go with JAMS for this venture because of the high quality of their services, reasonable prices, professionalism and easy communication. Our portfolio is expected to grow rapidly during 2019 to include more titles covering different areas in agriculture and environment. MDPI earned already our complete satisfaction and we are looking for a long term cooperation.”

Alongside the new platform, we continue to provide flexible, tailored journal management solutions for existing publishers. For any questions or to request a quotation, contact Martyn Rittman ([email protected])

2018 was a great year for preprints, with increasing numbers of authors looking to make their papers available online before peer review. Along with other preprint servers, our platform Preprints.org  saw an increase in the uptake from authors, and more than double the number of announced papers compared to 2017. In fact, we recently passed two important milestones: 8000 preprints online and 30,000 authors. 

We believe that the whole research community has the opportunity to benefit from work being available online as early as possible. We thank and congratulate our authors for supporting us to make this goal a reality.

In 2019, we will be looking carefully at how to provide better value for authors, maintain efficiency while growing in size, and make sure we remain well-connected with the research community. 

If you want to participate, you can consider screening preprints or joining our advisory board. And, of course, posting your own work.

We are delighted to announce the establishment of our national Open Access agreement with the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Through this national agreement, the Austrian institutions listed below as well as FWF will cover the Article Processing Charges (APC) of manuscripts published by eligible corresponding or funded authors in MDPI journals as long as central funds are available.

All participating institutions have gained access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information as well as Funder and Grant ID details for easy identification and additional transparency. At the same time eligible authors are benefited from an APC discount which comes at no cost for the institutions.

Eligible corresponding 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. The program will be selected automatically if authors submit their papers using their institutional email address. To claim their discount, FWF funded authors should choose the particular funder and add their Grant ID upon online submission of their manuscript. The institutions will then crosscheck the information and confirm the APC funding.

Eligible authors that have their APC covered by their institution or funder are advised to include the following sentence in their acknowledgments: "Open Access Funding by the [name of the institution/funder]".

The full text of the agreement is openly available online at: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2536007

For any questions about the agreement, please contact the KEMÖ Consortium at [email protected], FWF at [email protected], or the MDPI IOAP team at [email protected]

The Austrian institutions participating in this agreement are:

• Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
• University for Continuing Education Krems
• University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna
• University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria
• University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien
• Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences
• International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
• Institute of Science and Technology Austria
• MCI Management Center Innsbruck
• University of Graz
• University of Linz
• University of Salzburg
• Graz University of Technology
• TU Wien
• University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna
• University of Vienna

This is our first collective agreement with a national library consortium, while the individual institutions around the world participating in our IOAP are now more than 500 - see details here: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap. We would be mostly interested in discussing about possible collaborations with other consortia, funders, and institutions in our mutual efforts to accelerate Open Access.

We are pleased to announce the new platform Encyclopedia, which is an online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as providing benchmark information for researchers and the general public interested in accurate and advanced knowledge on specific topics.

We encourage authors of review articles to quote and adapt the content of their published papers to create Encyclopedia entries. You can create completely new entries on topics in which you have knowledge and expertise. There is no limit on the topics or research fields. All of science and the humanities are included. Each entry will be published directly after submission.

We also have prepared a DOI application function in Encyclopedia. Once a DOI application is approved, the entry website will announce the DOI number and a pdf version with DOI information will be automatically created.

We look forward to your contributions and hope you will make use of this service. Find more about the service at: https://encyclopedia.pub/

 

We are delighted to announce that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is now a participant of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). Authors funded by the BMGF can enjoy discounts on the APC, while the funder covers the costs of eligible articles centrally. BMGF also has access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information as well as Grant ID details for easy identification and additional transparency.

We hope that funded authors find the programme beneficial and we are happy to offer our IOAP to other funders that need a streamlined workflow of compliance checking and APC coverage. 

To claim their discount, BMGF funded authors should choose the particular funder and add their Grant ID upon online submission of their manuscript.

For any questions about the BMGF agreement, please contact the funder at [email protected] or the MDPI IOAP team at [email protected].

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.

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 [email protected].

MDPI will be attending the AGU 2018 Fall Meeting, to be held in Washington D.C, USA, 10‒14 December 2018.

The AGU 2018 Fall Meeting will mark another dynamic year of discovery in Earth and space science, serve as the advent of AGU’s Centennial year, and provide a special opportunity to share our science with world leaders in Washington, D.C. As the largest Earth and space science gathering in the world, the Fall Meeting places you in the center of a global community of scientists drawn from myriad fields of study whose work protects the health and welfare of people worldwide, spurs innovation, and informs decisions that are critical to the sustainability of the Earth.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Water
• Remote Sensing
• ISPRS International Journal of Geo-information
• Atmosphere
• Geosciences
• Resources
• Climate
• Environments

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth # 737). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may hace. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://fallmeeting.agu.org/2018/

The 2017 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

Journal	Rank (Quartile)	Category	Link	CiteScore 2017	2016	2015	SNIP 2017
Aerospace	43/116 (Q2)	• Aerospace Engineering	Link	1.23	-	-	1.152
Agriculture	69/309 (Q1) 91/398 (Q1) 78/255 (Q2)	• Agronomy and Crop Science • Plant Science • Food Science	Link	1.93	-	-	1.133
Agronomy	46/309 (Q1)	• Agronomy and Crop Science	Link	2.38	-	-	1.115
Algorithms	22/46 (Q2) 61/125 (Q2) 60/107 (Q3) 64/114 (Q3)	• Numerical Analysis • Computational Mathematics • Computational Theory and Mathematics • Theoretical Computer Science	Link	1.03	1.15	1.07	0.749
Animals	12/154 (Q1) * 48/367 (Q1)	• General Veterinary • Animal Science and Zoology	Link	2.02	1.46	1.66	1.099
Antibiotics	6/68 (Q1) * 62/263 (Q1) 55/230 (Q1) 31/108 (Q2) 47/134 (Q2) 139/398 (Q2)	• General Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics • Infectious Diseases • Pharmacology (medical) • Microbiology (medical) • Microbiology • Biochemistry	Link	2.85	1.65	-	0.975
Antibodies	43/143 (Q2) 61/164 (Q2) 85/189 (Q2)	• Drug Discovery • Immunology and Allergy • Immunology	Link	2.85	-	-	0.844
Antioxidants	23/119 (Q1) 35/169 (Q2) 100/398 (Q2) 119/367 (Q2) 102/264 (Q2)	• Clinical Biochemistry • Physiology • Biochemistry • Molecular Biology • Cell Biology	Link	3.42	-	-	1.361
Applied Sciences	48/270 (Q1) 15/66 (Q1) 31/116 (Q2) 18/53 (Q2) 151/434 (Q2) 186/535 (Q2)	• General Engineering • Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes • Instrumentation • Process Chemistry and Technology • General Materials Science • Computer Science Applications	Link	1.90	-	-	0.801
Biology	12/177 (Q1)* 32/186 (Q1) 10/40 (Q1)	• General Agricultural and Biological Sciences • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology • General Immunology and Microbiology	Link	3.48	3.02	2.78	0.961
Biomolecules	31/398 (Q1) * 41/367 (Q1)	• Biochemistry • Molecular Biology	Link	5.72	1.67	3.08	1.542
Biosensors	20/119 (Q1)	• Clinical Biochemistry	Link	3.59	2.83	2.37	1.122
Brain Sciences	47/111 (Q2)	• General Neuroscience	Link	2.56	-	-	0.695
Cancers	26/323 (Q1) * 23/191 (Q1)	• Oncology • Cancer Research	Link	5.82	5.02	4.07	1.567
Catalysts	32/151 (Q1) 21/46 (Q2)	• Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Catalysis	Link	3.23	3.44	3.45	0.954
Crystals	76/272 (Q2) 140/434 (Q2) 127/398 (Q2) 26/64 (Q2)	• General Chemical Engineering • General Materials Science • Condensed Matter Physics • Inorganic Chemistry	Link	1.97	1.89	1.47	0.745
Diagnostics	49/119 (Q2)	• Clinical Biochemistry	Link	2.43	-	-	0.788
Diversity	30/124 (Q1) 14/52 (Q2) 83/306 (Q2) 11/29 (Q2)	• Nature and Landscape Conservation • Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous) • Ecology • Ecological Modelling	Link	2.15	2.03	1.96	1.300
Electronics	109/644 (Q1) 26/148 (Q1) 42/224 (Q1) 50/259 (Q1) 23/96 (Q1)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Hardware and Architecture • Control and Systems Engineering • Computer Networks and Communications • Signal Processing	Link	2.97	-	-	1.227
Energies	6/73 (Q1) * 31/192 (Q1) 103/644 (Q1) 4/16 (Q1) 47/140 (Q2)	• Control and Optimization • Energy Engineering and Power Technology • Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Energy (miscellaneous) • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment	Link	3.11	2.50	2.87	1.340
Entropy	35/202 (Q1)	• General Physics and Astronomy	Link	2.41	1.87	1.99	1.189
Forests	17/129 (Q1)	• Forestry	Link	2.31	2.06	1.76	0.990
Future Internet	132/259 (Q3)	• Computer Networks and Communications	Link	1.25	-	-	-
Games	132/187 (Q3) 78/110 (Q3) 305/418 (Q3)	• Statistics and Probability • Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty • Applied Mathematics	Link	0.61	0.87	0.57	1.038
Genes	21/91 (Q1) 74/311 (Q1)	• Genetics (clinical) • Genetics	Link	3.49	3.62	3.18	0.374
Geosciences	32/182 (Q1)	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	1.97	1.67	1.29	0.856
Information	143/251 (Q3)	• Information Systems	Link	1.16	0.78	0.94	1.146
Insects	27/135 (Q1)	• Insect Science	Link	1.85	1.81	1.38	0.719
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	80/478 (Q1) 34/106 (Q2)	• Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health • Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis	Link	2.41	2.38	2.42	0.931
International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	7/69 (Q1) * 61/535 (Q1) 20/163 (Q1) 9/64 (Q1) 26/151 (Q1) 89/367 (Q2) 17/46 (Q2)	• Spectroscopy • Computer Science Applications • Organic Chemistry • Inorganic Chemistry • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Molecular Biology • Catalysis	Link	3.86	3.73	3.37	0.998
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJGI)	79/605 (Q1) 22/82 (Q2) 13/36 (Q2)	• Geography, Planning and Development • Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) • Computers in Earth Sciences	Link	2.10	1.62	1.52	1.062
Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM)	10/841 (Q1) *	• General Medicine	Link	7.07	-	-	1.535
Journal of Functional Biomaterials (JFB)	43/199 (Q1) 23/77 (Q2)	• Biomedical Engineering • Biomaterials	Link	3.47	-	-	1.344
Journal of Low Po- wer Electronics and Applications (JLPEA)	301/644 (Q2)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering	Link	1.12	0.98	0.83	0.367
Journal of Personalized Medicine (JPM)	54/189 (Q2)	• Medicine (miscellaneous)	Link	2.61	-	-	0.944
Land	50/124 (Q2) 129/306 (Q2) 36/65 (Q3)	• Nature and Landscape Conservation • Ecology • Global and Planetary Change	Link	1.44	-	-	0.658
Life	4/94 (Q1) * 70/561 (Q1) 40/186 (Q1) 20/80 (Q2)	• Palaeontology • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology • Space and Planetary Science	Link	3.16	2.95	1.68	0.935
Marine Drugs	17/146 (Q1)	• Drug Discovery	Link	4.58	3.83	3.66	1.537
Materials	83/434 (Q1)	• General Materials Science	Link	3.02	3.26	3.11	1.285
Membranes	5/18 (Q2) 15/53 (Q2) 4/10 (Q2)	• Chemical Engineering (miscellaneous) • Process Chemistry and Technology • Filtration and Separation	Link	2.69	2.19	2.95	0.880
Metabolites	47/209 (Q1) 103/398 (Q2) 127/367 (Q2)	• Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism • Biochemistry • Molecular Biology	Link	3.35	-	-	0.925
Metals	155/434 (Q2)	• General Materials Science	Link	1.87	-	-	0.955
Micromachines	105/554 (Q1) 154/644 (Q1) 64/224 (Q2)	• Mechanical Engineering • Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Control and Systems Engineering	Link	2.31	1.83	1.78	0.987
Minerals	33/175 (Q1) 45/208 (Q1)	• Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology • Geology	Link	2.21	2.13	1.77	1.149
Molecules	4/25 (Q1) 25/172 (Q1) 18/104 (Q1) 31/163 (Q1) 30/151 (Q1) 31/146 (Q1) 55/160 (Q2)	• Chemistry (miscellaneous) • Pharmaceutical Science • Analytical Chemistry • Organic Chemistry • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Drug Discovery • Molecular Medicine	Link	3.27	3.09	2.65	1.146
Nutrients	11/255 (Q1) * 9/112 (Q1) *	• Food Science • Nutrition and Dietetics	Link	4.35	4.29	4.07	1.403
Pathogens	38/263 (Q1) 20/108 (Q1) 9/40 (Q1) 40/164 (Q1) 110/367 (Q2)	• Infectious Diseases • Microbiology (medical) • General Immunology and Microbiology • Immunology and Allergy • Molecular Biology	Link	3.52	-	-	1.166
Pharmaceuticals	14/172 (Q1) * 33/160 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science • Molecular Medicine	Link	4.12	4.90	3.64	1.370
Pharmaceutics	21/172 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science	Link	3.68	3.83	2.68	1.092
Photonics	30/116 (Q1) 80/270 (Q2) 53/160 (Q2)	• Instrumentation • Radiology Nuclear Medicine and Imaging • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics	Link	1.96	-	-	0.817
Plants	73/561 (Q1) 48/389 (Q1) 44/306 (Q1)	• Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics • Plant Science • Ecology	Link	3.13	-	-	0.969
Polymers	17/142 (Q1) 63/359 (Q1)	• Polymers and Plastics • General Chemistry	Link	3.30	3.74	3.37	1.213
Religions	26/389 (Q1) *	• Religious Studies	Link	0.56	-	-	0.676
Remote Sensing	13/182 (Q1) *	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	4.03	3.56	3.76	1.559
Resources	19/142 (Q1) 39/261 (Q1)	• Nature and Landscape Conservation • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law	Link	2.69	-	-	1.387
Scientia Pharmaceutica	92/172 (Q3)	• Pharmaceutical Science	Link	0.86	-	-	0.513
Sensors	9/116 (Q1) * 25/160 (Q1) 100/644 (Q1) 19/104 (Q1) 113/398 (Q2)	• Instrumentation • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics • Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Analytical Chemistry • Biochemistry	Link	3.23	2.78	2.21	1.550
Social Sciences	81/213 (Q2)	• General Social Sciences	Link	0.60	-	-	0.445
Sustainability	61/605 (Q1) * 55/261 (Q1) 60/140 (Q2)	• Geography, Planning and Development • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment	Link	2.37	1.96	1.78	1.030
Symmetry	44/327 (Q1) 17/45 (Q2) 16/40 (Q2) 14/25 (Q2)	• General Mathematics • Computer Science (miscellaneous) • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous) • Chemistry (miscellaneous)	Link	1.32	1.12	0.95	0.802
Toxins	18/106 (Q1) 21/111 (Q1)	• Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis • Toxicology	Link	3.32	3.34	3.76	1.136
Vaccines	5/230 (Q1) * 13/263 (Q1) * 18/302 (Q1) * 11/146 (Q1) * 32/189 (Q1)	• Pharmacology (medical) • Infectious Diseases • Pharmacology • Drug Discovery • Immunology	Link	4.88	1.23	3.76	1.255
Viruses	29/263 (Q1) 16/68 (Q1)	• Virology • Infectious Diseases	Link	3.88	3.60	3.74	1.130
Water	66/605 (Q1) 37/191 (Q1) 43/199 (Q1) 193/398 (Q2)	• Geography, Planning and Development • Water Science and Technology • Aquatic Science • Biochemistry	Link	2.29	2.05	1.96	1.007

MDPI will be represented at the ESA Annual Meeting 2018 which will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, 5–10 August 2018.

Extreme events, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, fires and storms, are exacerbated by human activities and challenge populations, communities and ecosystems, as well as our human health and living conditions. The ability of ecosystems to respond to these challenges depends on the integrity of resilience mechanisms that have been severely undermined by land-use practices that increase effects of extreme conditions. Past civilizations, such as the Maya and Mesopotamians, apparently exacerbated the droughts (that caused their demise) through deforestation and agricultural practices similar to our own. Clearly, the sustainability of ecosystem services and human well-being depends on ecosystem resilience to extreme events.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Forests
• Land
• IJERPH
• Water
• Environments
• Fire
• Sustainability
• Safety
• Agronomy
• Social Science
• Climate

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #208). 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: https://esa.org/neworleans/

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.

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

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #509). 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.rfg2018.org

We will be attending the JpGU Meeting 2018. JpGU is an academic union that encompasses all the Earth and Planetary Sciences disciplines and related fields, organizing annual meetings since 2005. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Geosciences
Water
Atmosphere
Minerals
Climate
Environments
Education Sciences
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #Pub13–14). 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.jpgu.org/meeting_e2018/.

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.

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

We will be attending the General Assembly 2018 of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) (https://egu2018.eu/home.html). The EGU General Assembly 2018 will bring together geoscientists from all over the world to one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences. It aims to provide a forum where scientists, especially early career researchers, can present their work and discuss their ideas with experts in all fields of geoscience. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Remote Sensing
Geosciences
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information
Water
Animals
Atmosphere
Climate
Environments
Forests
Hydrology
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
Land
Minerals
Resources
Quaternary
Sensors

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #36). 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://egu2018.eu/home.html.

 

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

Water is pleased to announce that on November 17, 2017, assistant editor Mary Sue Daoud and Water Editorial Board Member Prof. Dr. Michele Mossa (Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy) gave a joint presentation at the International Water Development Congress and Exhibition in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

After Ms. Daoud’s informative talk on MDPI and the journals Water, Resources, Membranes, Hydrology and Environments that sponsored the exhibition, Dr. Mossa presented his research entitled “The Role of Physical Models and Field Monitoring in Environmental and Maritime Hydraulics” to an attentive audience. In his PowerPoint presentation, Dr. Mossa shared photographs and videos of new innovations taking place at the University of Bari, including a 3D wave basin and an off-shore physical model basin. Additionally, he offered insights into the type of work they are doing and its importance to science today. Their presentations were well received and concluded with more people stopping at the MDPI booth to speak personally with our editors and Prof. Mossa and to express their interest in MDPI and Dr. Mossa’s work.

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.

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 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.

Subject	Journal	Award	Intended Awardee
Biology & Life Sciences	Animals	Travel Award 2018	PhD students or postdoctoral researchers
	Antioxidants	Travel Awards 2018	Postdoctoral researchers or PhD students
	Biology	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Forests	2019 Travel award	Postdocs or PhD students
	International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	Outstanding Contribution Awards 2018	Ground-breaking contribution in the fields of Molecular Biology, and Molecular Pathology
	Journal of Fungi (JoF)	Travel Awards 2018	PhD graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows
	Life	Travel Award 2018	PhD students or postdoctoral fellows
	Metabolites	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
	Pharmaceuticals	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
	Toxins	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows
	Viruses	Best Oral Presentation Award 2018	Viruses 2018 participants
	Viruses	Best Poster Award 2018	Viruses 2018 participants
	Water	2018 Young Investigator Award	Young investigators
Chemistry & Materials Science	Biomimetics	Travel Award 2018	Graduate Student or Postdoctoral Trainee / Research Associate
	Catalysts	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
	Chemosensors	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Entropy	Young Investigator Award 2018	Young investigators
	Fibers	2018 Travel award	Postdocs or PhD students
	Magnetochemistry	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs
	Materials	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Metals	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Minerals	Travel Awards 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Sensors	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Sensors	Outstanding Reviewer Awards 2017	Sensors' reviewers in 2017
	Sensors	Young Investigator Award 2018	Young investigators
	Technologies	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
Computer Science & Mathematics	Multimodal Technologies and Interaction (MTI)	Travel Awards 2018	Postdoctoral researchers or PhD students
	ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information(IJGI)	2018 Travel Award	Postdocs
	Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks (JSAN)	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
	Journal of Imaging	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
Engineering	Actuators	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Remote Sensing	Best Paper Awards 2019	Authors
	Machines	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Micromachines	Travel Awards 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Fluids	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
	ChemEngineering	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral researchers and PhD students
Environmental & Earth Sciences	Diversity	Travel Awards 2018	Postdoctoral fellows
	International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	Best Paper Award 2018	Authors who submit from 1 Nov 2017 to 31 Oct 2018
	Resources	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs or PhD students
	Geosciences	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
Physical Sciences & Astronomy	Galaxies	Travel Award 2018	Ph.D. students, postdoctoral fellows, or lecturers in cosmology or galaxies physics
	Applied Science	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs
Medicine & Pharmacology; Public Health & Healthcare	Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM)	2018 Travel Award	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Medicines	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs

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/ (archived here)

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 Sardinia Symposium 2017—16th International Waste Management and Landfill Symposium (http://www.sardiniasymposium.it/). The symposium will focus as per tradition on the advances of Waste Management science and technology, presenting case studies and discussing the main controversial subjects, sharing experiences among different countries, valuating social and economical balances. And it will be held in S. Margherita di Pula, Cagliari, Italy, from 2–6 October 2017, representing the following open access journals:

Sustainability (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability)
Reclycling (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/recycling)
Environments (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/environments)

Please come along to our booth (booth number: 8b) to chat with our delegates about our journals. Our delegates will also answer any questions about online publishing and our journals. We look forward to meeting you in person in Sardinia!

For more information on the Symposium, please visit:
http://www.sardiniasymposium.it/

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 discount on the article processing charge (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

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

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

Journal	Rank	Category	Link	CiteScore 2016	2015	2014
Algorithms	44/112 (Q2) 49/111 (Q2) 19/42 (Q2) 52/113 (Q2)	• Numerical Analysis • Computational Mathematics • Computational Theory and Mathematics • Theoretical Computer Science	Link	1.15	1.07	1.06
Animals	69/343 (Q1) 21/146 (Q1)	• Animal Science and Zoology • General Veterinary	Link	1.46	1.66	0.74
Biology	13/92 (Q1) 34/81 (Q1) 10/75 (Q1)	• General Agricultural and Biological Sciences • General Biochemistry, Gene- tics and Molecular Biology • General Immunology and Microbiology	Link	3.02	2.78	1.74
Biomolecules	234/382 (Q3) 260/353 (Q3)	• Biochemistry • Molecular Biology	Link	1.67	3.08	1.00
Biosensors	36/118 (Q2) 209/2156 (Q1)	• Clinical Biochemistry • General Medicine	Link	2.83	2.37	2.04
Cancers	29/196 (Q1) 27/321 (Q1)	• Cancer Research • Oncology	Link	5.02	4.07	2.31
Catalysts	18/44 (Q2) 27/144 (Q1)	• Catalysis • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry	Link	3.44	3.45	2.17
Crystals	70/270 (Q2) 25/64 (Q2) 118/398 (Q2) 131/424 (Q2)	• General Chemical Engineering • Inorganic Chemistry • Condensed Matter Physics • General Materials Science	Link	1.89	1.47	1.03
Diversity	10/41 (Q1) 9/25 (Q2) 76/291 (Q2) 24/109 (Q1)	• Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous) • Ecological Modelling • Ecology • Nature and Landscape Conservation	Link	2.03	1.96	1.82
Energies	-	-	Link	2.50	2.87	2.66
Entropy	51/198 (Q2)	• General Physics and Astronomy	Link	1.87	1.99	1.69
Forests	17/127 (Q1)	• Forestry	Link	2.06	1.76	1.84
Games	204/398 (Q3) 83/181 (Q2) 48/105 (Q2)	• Applied Mathematics • Statistics and Probability • Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty	Link	0.87	0.57	0.64
Genes	62/300 (Q1) 18/90 (Q1)	• Genetics • Genetics (clinical)	Link	3.62	3.18	1.33
Geosciences	36/169 (Q1)	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	1.67	1.29	1.13
Information	156/237 (Q3)	• Information Systems	Link	0.78	0.94	0.74
Insects	28/131 (Q1)	• Insect Science	Link	1.81	1.38	1.23
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	67/446 (Q1) 31/102 (Q2)	• Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health • Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis	Link	2.38	2.42	2.47
International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	23/157 (Q1) 8/64 (Q1) 90/353 (Q1) 22/144 (Q1) 16/44 (Q1) 8/62 (Q1)	• Organic Chemistry • Inorganic Chemistry • Molecular Biology • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Catalysis • Spectroscopy	Link	3.73	3.37	3.06
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information	12/29 (Q2) 28/79 (Q2) 96/587 (Q1)	• Computers in Earth Sciences • Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) • Geography, Planning and Development	Link	1.62	1.52	-
Journal of Low Power Electronic Applications (JLPEA)	301/645 (Q2)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering	Link	0.98	0.83	0.83
Life	65/525 (Q1) 36/186 (Q1) 5/92 (Q1) 20/80 (Q2)	• Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics • General Biochemistry, Gene- tics and Molecular Biology • Palaeontology • Space and Planetary Science	Link	2.95	1.68	1.20
Marine Drugs	18/145 (Q1)	• Drug Discovery	Link	3.83	3.66	3.59
Materials	63/424 (Q1)	• General Materials Science	Link	3.26	3.11	2.69
Membranes	103/424 (Q1)	• Materials Science	Link	2.19	2.95	2.42
Micromachines	173/645 (Q2) 69/211 (Q2) 113/526 (Q1)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Control and Systems Engineering • Mechanical Engineering	Link	1.83	1.78	2.10
Minerals	45/206 (Q1) 29/167 (Q1)	• Geology • Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology	Link	2.13	1.77	-
Molecules	32/157 (Q1)	• Organic Chemistry	Link	3.09	2.65	2.62
Nutrients	12/247 (Q1)	• Food Science	Link	4.29	4.07	3.78
Pharmaceuticals	8/168 (Q1) 21/158 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science • Molecular Medicine	Link	4.90	3.64	1.92
Pharmaceutics	19/168 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science	Link	3.83	2.68	2.46
Polymers	13/138 (Q1) 44/354 (Q1)	• Polymers and Plastics • General Chemistry	Link	3.74	3.37	4.10
Remote Sensing	13/169 (Q1)	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	3.56	3.76	3.23
Sensors	25/96 (Q2) 25/159 (Q1) 124/382 (Q2) 103/645 (Q1)	• Analytical Chemistry • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics • Biochemistry • Electrical and Electronic Engineering	Link	2.78	2.21	2.40
Sustainability	49/129 (Q2) 68/587 (Q1) 56/236 (Q1)	• Renewable Energy, Sustai-nability and the Environment • Geography, Planning and Development • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law	Link	1.96	1.78	1.52
Symmetry	17/42 (Q2) 49/111 (Q2)	• Numerical Analysis • Computational Mathematics	Link	1.12	0.95	1.02
Toxins	16/102 (Q1) 16/108 (Q1)	• Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis • Toxicology	Link	3.34	3.76	2.85
Vaccines	146/184 (Q4) 151/250 (Q3) 93/145 (Q3) 186/299 (Q3) 130/232 (Q3)	• Immunology • Infectious Diseases • Drug Discovery • Pharmacology • Pharmacology (medical)	Link	1.23	3.76	2.85
Viruses	15/68 (Q1) 34/250 (Q1)	• Virology • Infectious Diseases	Link	3.60	3.74	3.80
Water	33/184 (Q1) 48/195 (Q1) 62/587 (Q1) 198/382 (Q3)	• Water Science and Technology • Aquatic Science • Geography, Planning and Development • Biochemistry	Link	2.05	1.96	1.45

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.

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: https://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:  [email protected]

Press Accreditation and General Enquiries: Mr Matthias Burkhalter, MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland; Email: [email protected]; 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.

                           

We are pleased to announce that MDPI will be attending the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting (12–16 December, 2016) and representing the following open access journals:

Atmosphere
Water
Remote Sensing
Minerals
Sustainability
Climate
Land
Geosciences
Hydrology
Infrastructures
Resources
Entropy
Environments
Aerospace

If you are also attending this 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

 

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.

.

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)

Journal	2015 Impact Factor	Details	Category Rank
Applied Sciences	1.726	Link	83/163 (Q3) in ‘Chemistry, Multidisciplinary’; 129/271 (Q2) in ‘Materials Science, Multidisciplinary’; 64/145 (Q2) in ‘Physics, Applied’
Atmosphere	1.221	Link	66/84 (Q4) in ‘Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences’
Catalysts	2.964	Link	53/144 (Q2) in ‘Chemistry, Physical’
Energies	2.077	Link	43/88 (Q2) in ‘Energy & Fuels’
Entropy	1.743	Link	25/79 (Q2) in ‘Physics, Multidisciplinary’
Forests	1.583	Link	19/66 (Q2) in ‘Forestry’
Genes	3.242	Link	60/165 (Q2) in ‘Genetics & Heredity’
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	2.035	Link	101/225 (Q2) in ‘Environmental Sciences’
International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	3.257	Link	110/289 (Q2) in ‘Biochemistry & Molecular Biology’; 51/163 (Q2) in ‘Chemistry, Multidisciplinary’
Marine Drugs	3.345	Link	13/59 (Q1) in ‘Chemistry, Medicinal’
Materials	2.728	Link	63/271 (Q1) in ‘Materials Science, Multidisciplinary’
Metals	1.574	Link	18/73 (Q1) in ‘Metallurgy & Metallurgical Engineering’; 145/271 (Q3) in ‘Materials Science, Multidisciplinary’
Micromachines	1.295	Link	30/56 (Q3) in ‘Instruments & Instrumentation’ 63/83 (Q4) in ‘Nanoscience & Nanotechnology’
Minerals	1.468	Link	9/21 (Q2) in ‘Mining & Mineral Processing; 14/29 (Q2) in ‘Mineralogy’
Molecules	2.465	Link	24/59 (Q2) in ‘Chemistry, Organic’
Nanomaterials	2.690	Link	64/271 (Q1) in ‘Materials Science, Multidisciplinary’; 36/83 (Q2) in ‘Nanoscience & Nanotechnology’
Nutrients	3.759	Link	16/78 (Q1) in ‘Nutrition & Dietetics’
Polymers	2.944	Link	20/85 (Q1) in ‘Polymer Science’
Remote Sensing	3.036	Link	5/28 (Q1) in ‘Remote Sensing’
Sensors	2.033	Link	36/75 (Q2) in ‘Chemistry, Analytical’; 16/27 (Q3) in ‘Electrochemistry’; 12/56 (Q1) in ‘Instruments & Instrumentation’
Sustainability	1.343	Link	146/225 (Q3) in ‘Environmental Sciences’; 22/29 (Q4) in ‘Green & Sustainable Science & Technology’
Symmetry	0.841	Link	31/63 (Q2) in ‘Multidisciplinary Sciences’
Toxins	3.571	Link	16/89 (Q1) in ‘Toxicology’
Viruses	3.042	Link	14/33 (Q2) in ‘Virology’
Water	1.687	Link	33/85 (Q2) in ‘Water Resources’

Journals with First Impact Factors

Journal	2015 Impact Factor	Details	Category Rank
Crystals	2.075	Link	13/26 (Q2) in ‘Crystallography’
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information	0.651	Link	45/49 (Q4) in ‘Geography, Physical’; 26/28 (Q4) in ‘Remote Sensing’.

 

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 [email protected].

 

 

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 [email protected]. 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.