Announcements

Fibers (ISSN 2079-6439) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes original articles, critical reviews, research notes and short communications on materials science and all other empirical and theoretical studies of fibers, providing a forum for the integration of fiber research across many disciplines.

The Fibers Editorial Team is pleased to announce this open call for Special Issue Proposals, which gives a group of authors the opportunity to work on an interconnected set of papers on an innovative topic. We would like to solicit high-quality proposals that will be evaluated in a competitive procedure on a rolling basis throughout the year.

Proposals within the scope of the journal are welcome. For more details, please see: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/fibers/about.

If you would like to propose a Special Issue topic for this journal, please click the following link, complete and submit the form. Our editors will get back to you shortly. https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/fibers.

The duties and benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Publishing both a review paper and a research paper free of charge in the Special Issue, and potential discount for additional papers you invite;
• Redefining the title and scope of this Special Issue;
• Circulating the Call for Papers for the Special Issue and inviting submissions;
• Making decisions on whether a manuscript can be accepted or not based on the reports we collect;
• Promoting the Special Issue and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences;
• If five or more papers are published in this Special Issue, we can make a Special Issue book and send a hard copy to each Guest Editor.

The Editorial Office will take care of setting up the Special Issue website; arranging the promotional materials; assisting with invitations to contribute papers; taking care of the rest of the administrative tasks associated with peer review, including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and professional production before publication.

Please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office (fibers@mdpi.com) for further details and clarifications.

We look forward to receiving your creative proposals.

Fibers Editorial Office

We are now recruiting Editorial Board Members (EBMs) for Fibers (ISSN 2079-6439, CiteScore: 4.6). If you are an active researcher in fiber-related fields and are passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to get in touch (fibers@mdpi.com). You can find more information on our homepage: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/fibers.

Benefits of Fibers Editorial Board Members include the following:

• Publishing both a review paper and a research paper free of charge per year in Fibers, and potential discount for additional papers you invite;
• Fibers will offer additional sponsorships for conferences organized by Editorial Board Members;
• Travel grants of 300-500 CHF per year for conferences that you attend or organize.

Editorial Board Members have the following responsibilities:

• Making decisions on whether a manuscript can be accepted or not, based on the reports we collect;
• Reviewing a small number of papers per year;
• Acting as a Guest Editor of a Special Issue on a topic related to your research interests;
• Promoting the journal Fibers and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences.

We believe that by combining our rigorous editorial policies with your expertise, we can build a high-quality journal. We thank you in advance for your interest, and we look forward to collaborating with you.

Fibers Editorial Office

Thank you for your continued support of the open access journal Fibers (ISSN 2079-6439, CiteScore: 4.6). We are pleased to share that Fibers has updated and announced the new journal scope.

The new scope mainly includes: natural fibers, man-made fibers, synthetic fibers and advanced technology related to fiber production and applications. For more details, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/fibers/about.

Thank you to the editors who have provided valuable comments throughout the process of updating the scope. If you are interested in our new scope, please do not hesitate to contact us. We welcome your contributions.

Fibers Editorial Office

Founded in 1996, MDPI was one of the first fully Open Access publisher. Over 25 years MDPI has grown to become the largest Open Access publisher globally, publishing over 160,000 articles across more than 350 journals in 2020. At the core, MDPI was founded in response to a pressing need of fast publication and inclusion. The scholar was set at the centre of the publication process for the first time. Acting as a service provider, rather than a product provider, MDPI exists to help scientists achive their objective to disseminate research results. At MDPI, we believe scientists deserve a better service from the publishing world.

The International Open Access Week (Open Access Week), founded by the SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Alliance and student partners in 2008, has been successfully running for 13 years. As an advocate and pioneer of open access publishing, MDPI actively responds to the call of International Open Access Week. This year’s theme of “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity” highlights the Recommendation’s call for equitable participation from all authors and readers.

For the last 25 years, MDPI has been committed to disseminating open research. Here is a video showing MDPI’s Commitment to Equity, Inclusion and Diversity for More than 25 Years.

International Open Access Week is an important opportunity to catalyze new conversations, create connections across and between communities that can facilitate this co-design, and advance progress in the building of more equitable foundations for opening knowledge—discussions and actions that need to be continued, year in and year out. MDPI has always aimed to provide professional and efficient publishing services to scholars around the world.

Our mission is to make scientific research accessible to everyone; this year, we interview and hold discussions with open science ambassadors on how to build an equal and inclusive environment for open science. Academic editors help us collaborate with more institutions to advocate for open access ideas.

Read our anniversary blog post: "Sharing 'Collective Human Knowledge': The Benefits of Open Access Publication"

Besides this, our scientific community is a key driver of our success and MDPI’s remarkable growth. Despite the pandemic, we have prepared online conferences and workshops to gather scholars from different communities.

The Basel Sustainable Publishing online forum provides an equal opportunity for stakeholders and researchers from multi-cultural environments to exchange ideas and eliminate barriers to participation.

Conference date: 25 October 2021, online
Conference website: https://bspf2021.sciforum.net/
Main topics: MDPI discusses the current dilemma of open access science from various perspectives such as governments, libraries, and publishers, and related measures on how to change the status quo of discrimination from a global perspective.

We aim to support equality, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications. We collaborate with universities and key laboratories and have scholarly communications with researchers, teachers, and students on open access workshops.

• 25 October 2021
  Energies journal and Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

• 28 October 2021
  Machines journal and State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong University

• 29 October 2021
  Processes journal and Beijing Institute of Technology

• 29 October 2021
  Coatings journal and Wuhan University of Technology

MDPI is committed to providing open access and high-quality publishing services for scholars and promoting rapid dissemination of academic achievements. We hope to promote the practices and policies of open access publishing and diversify the dissemination of academic achievements.

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high-quality academic publishing. Over 369,916 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2020. We are extremely appreciative of all those who made a contribution to the editorial process in this capacity. At the beginning of every year, journal editorial offices publish a list of all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year, the MDPI Top Reviewer Award was announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise and dedication, and their high-quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2020 MDPI Top Reviewer Award:

• Adriana Burlea-Schiopoiu;
• Alban Kuriqi;
• Álvaro González-Vila;
• Alessandro Alaimo;
• Alexey Beskopylny;
• Alexander Yu Churyumov;
• Alberto Fernández-Isabel;
• Andrea Mastinu;
• Antonios N. Papadopoulos;
• Anton Rassõlkin;
• Antonio Humberto Hamad Minervino;
• Arkadiusz Matwijczuk;
• Artur Słomka;
• Baojie He;
• Bartłomiej Potaniec;
• Bojan Đurin;
• Camilo Arturo Rodriguez Diaz;
• Carmelo Maria Musarella;
• Chiachung Chen;
• Chiman Kwan;
• Cristian Busu;
• Danil Pimenov;
• Dan-Cristian Dabija;
• Delfín Ortega-Sánchez;
• Demetrio Antonio Zema;
• Denis Butusov;
• Elena Lucchi;
• Gaurab Dutta;
• Livia Anastasiu;
• M. R. Safaei.

For more information about how to become a reviewer of MDPI journals, please see: www.mdpi.com/reviewers.

UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. In 2020 the SDG Publishers Compact was launched, aimed to inspire publishers and accelerate progress to achieve the 17 goals by 2030. Members of the programme are committed to support the publication of materials that will promote and inspire actions towards SDGs.

MDPI is an eager advocate of SDGs and has already been supporting the programme by creating Special Issues and publishing a series of books on SDGs prior to joining the Compact in 2021. MDPI's Sustainability Foundation initiated the World Sustainability Awards in 2016. We fully support UN's goals to promote sustainable actions that make the world a better place for all and, as part of its commitment, we will focus our actions on SDG10: Reduced Inequalities whilst promoting all 17 SDGs. For more details, please visit the programme’s website: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sdg-publishers-compact/.

Joining this initiative was a unanimous decision. MDPI has in its core values the dissemination of science for all, breaking the wall between research access and under-represented members of the scientific community and the general population. To support this initiative further and continue to support under-represented scientists, MDPI will take a series of actions that will be announced once ready.

The first action MDPI takes is to nominate Dr. Liliane Auwerter as the coordinator of the programme. Dr. Auwerter studied Environmental Process Technology (UTFPR, Brazil), obtained her MSc degree in Water and Environmental Engineering (University of Surrey, UK) and in 2020 completed her PhD in self-healing low-friction materials for water transport (Imperial College London, UK), always focusing on diverse scientific projects that would potentially bring sustainability to industrial processes. As a student in Brazil, she engaged in volunteering activities focused on environmental education and took part in the Millennial Development Goals meetings held at the university.

For more information, please contact:
Dr. Liliane Auwerter
Scientific Officer
liliane.auwerter@mdpi.com

We are very pleased to announce that the new CiteScore (Scopus) of Fibers has been released! It has increased from 2.7 to 4.6, ranking: 71/318 (Q1) in the "Civil and Structural Engineering" category.

We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all the authors, editors, and reviewers for their contributions. We are grateful for the excellent work that has helped us to achieve this great progress for Fibers! We look forward to your contributions to the journal.

Fibers Editorial Office

This serves to announce to our valued authors based in Japan that value-added tax, or consumption tax will now be imposed on article processing fees and other service fees for all papers submitted, or resubmitted (assigned new paper IDs), effective from 15 August 2021. The change is in accordance with the Japanese "Act for Partial Revision of the Income Tax Act and Other Acts" (Act No. 9 of 2015), which includes a revision of consumption taxation on cross-border supplies of services such as digital content distribution.

For additional information from the National Tax Agency please see here ("Cross-border supplies of electronic services").

Contact: Setsuko Nishihara, MDPI Tokyo

MDPI will be attending the 12th International Conference on Information Optics and Photonics (CIOP 2021), Xi’an, China, 23–26 July 2021.

CIOP, an annual conference with comprehensive topics on optics and photonics, was initiated in 2007 by Chinese Laser Press, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The 12th International Conference on Information Optics and Photonics (CIOP2021) will be held on 23–26 July 2021 in Xi'an, China.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Applied Sciences (leading journal);
• Electronics;
• Photonics;
• Fibers;
• Optics.

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.researching.cn/EN/EventMain/CIOP2021.

We are very pleased to announce that the new CiteScore (Scopus) of Fibers has been released! It has increased from 2.7 to 4.6, ranking: 71/318 (Q1) in "Civil and Structural Engineering" category.

We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all the authors, editors, and reviewers for their contributions. We are grateful for the excellent work that has helped us to achieve this great progress for Fibers!

More details can be seen here: https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/21100847432.