Announcements

Academic editors play a crucial role in leading our journals and ensuring that each article undergoes a robust and timely peer-review. With the launch of Topics this year and addition of Topic Editors to our family of academic editors, we decided it would be a good time to restructure our academic boards, thus providing more clarity and support for each role. MDPI is pleased to announce the launch of a new position—Topical Advisory Panel Member, that will replace the previous position of Topics Board Member. The Topical Advisory Panel will be comprised of early career researchers eager to gain experience in editorial work.

The main responsibility of the new members of the Topical Advisory Panel is to regularly provide support to Guest Editors, Topic Editors, and Section Board Members. The responsibilities of the Topical Advisory Panel are available here: https://www.mdpi.com/editors.

Each year, the members’ performances are evaluated, and outstanding members are promoted to the Editorial Board by the Editor-in-Chief.

To qualify as a Topical Advisory Panel Member, applicants must:

• Have expertise and experience in the field related to the journal;
• Have received a Ph.D. in the last 10 years, approximately;
• Have at least 6-8 published papers in the last 5 years as first author or corresponding author;
• Currently hold an independent research position in academia or a government institute.

If you are interested in this role, please contact the editorial office by email.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. James A. Lutz and Dr. Natasha Ribeiro have been appointed Editors-in-Chief of Sections “Fire Science Models, Remote Sensing, and Data” and “Fire Research at the Science–Policy–Practitioner Interface”, respectively, in Fire (ISSN: 2571-6255).

	Name: Dr. James A. Lutz Affiliation: S. J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources, Utah State University, 5230 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-5230, USA Interests: forest ecology; community ecology; fire ecology; biogeography; climate change
	Name: Dr. Natasha Ribeiro Affiliation: Department of Forest Engineering, Faculty of Agronomy and Forest Engineering, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Avenida Julius Nyerere, Street. nr. 3453, Maputo, Mozambique Interests: conservation and forest restoration; fire ecology; evaluation and environmental impact assessments; forest biomass and carbon sequestration; remote sensing

The following is a short Q&A with Dr. James A. Lutz and Dr. Natasha Ribeiro, who shared their vision for the journal with us, as well as their views of the research area and open access publishing:

1. What appealed to you about Fire that made you want to take the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief? What does the future of this field of research look like?

Dr. Lutz: Fire is one of the principal processes in the earth system, and the relationships among fire, people, and human infrastructure are increasingly relevant to policy. Fire is becoming a relevant societal issue even outside those regions that traditionally experienced a frequent fire. I decided to join the Editorial Board of Fire to help increase the breadth of peer-reviewed literature in the field. So many aspects of fire research, operations, and management didn’t have a good fit with the older, established journals. I thought Fire could make a difference and increase the visibility of the science.

Dr. Ribeiro: My vision for this Section is to make scientific information available for the non-scientific community by publishing cutting-edge science to inform decision-making in fire management. Fire is a main driver of the southern African ecosystems, that's why Africa is called the fire continent. However, it has been poorly understood and considered a management tool. Nevertheless, it is considered a negative factor and many regulations and policies around fire have been wrongly designed to prohibit fires and poorly implemented. I also think that there is a need to enhance research around fire ecology and management and translate the results produced to inform policies and management. I think that given my experience in the southern Africa region it is my mission to contribute to conveying the message and being the Editor-in-Chief of this Section will open up the opportunity to make my contribution by creating a space to have experiences from around the world that can help places such as Southern Africa.

2. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?

Dr. Lutz: Open access is definitely a growing trend in science. Most scholars will continue to publish in both journals that are open-access and those that follow the subscription model, but when research has applications to land management and policy, there are real benefits to the open access model.

Dr. Ribeiro: This is very important to make information widely available for different audiences. In a globalized world, information should be accessed more freely and especially conveyed outside the academic/scientific world in order to bridge the gap between science and governance.

We warmly welcome Dr. James A. Lutz and Dr. Natasha Ribeiro as they start their roles as Section Editors-in-Chief, and we look forward to them leading Fire to achieve many more milestones.

Fire Editorial Office

In October 2021, The Pacific Fire Exchange (PFX) chose the “Fire Research at the Science–Policy–Practitioner Interface” Section in Fire (ISSN: 2571-6255) as its partner and became an affiliated society member.

The Pacific Fire Exchange (PFX) is a fire science and information communication project co-led by the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization and the University of Hawaii. The PFX is part of the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) regional exchange network of fifteen fire science consortia aimed at fostering a nationwide information exchange for fire-related challenges.

The project seeks to facilitate fire knowledge exchange and enable collaborative relationships among wildfire stakeholders in the Pacific. PFX supports members of the Pacific Island fire community including resource managers, fire responders, landowners, communities, government, non-profit, and higher education.

The project aims to meaningfully contribute towards reducing the threat of wildfire in the Pacific through the exchange of knowledge between scientists and managers and by supporting regionally relevant fire prevention and management collaborations. The project leverages the "best available" research to reduce fire management costs and protect natural, social, and cultural resources from wildfire devastation. Through information, training, and tools for Pacific wildfire mitigation activities, we aim to support:

• Easier access to information sources;
• Better and more comprehensive information;
• Improved technical assistance;
• Environment with more collaborative information transfer.

The Pacific Fire Exchange (PFX) is a fire science and information communication project whose functions are highly relevant to the scope of Fire. We look forward to collaborating with PFX and publishing state-of-the-art research from its members in this field.

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.

On September 22, 2021, the “Fire Science Data and Models” Section, which is led by Dr. James A. Lutz, was renamed “Fire Science Models, Remote Sensing, and Data” Section.

The main aim of the Section “Fire Science Models, Remote Sensing, and Data” is to introduce and describe datasets, models, equipment, and analytical methods used in fire science. If you are an active researcher in a possibly related field, such as technical descriptions of fire science data, sensor, equipment, approaches, and models, etc., please do not hesitate to get in touch about contributing to the Section as an Editorial Board Member, author or reviewer. We wish you all the best in your research and look forward to our future collaboration.

Fire Editorial Office

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 pleased to inform you that the journal Fire (ISSN 2571-6255) has been accepted for inclusion in the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (JUFO). Articles published from Volume 1 (2018) onwards will be indexed in the JUFO.

Fire has been publishing research on the science, policy, and technology of vegetation fires and how they interact with communities and the environment for more than three years.

At the same time, Fire continues to be covered in Scopus, where its CiteScore (3.7) corresponds to a ranking of 24/142 (2020) in the “Forestry” category and 17/88 (2020) in the “Safety Research” category.

To make the most of this opportunity, we would like to invite you to make submissions to Fire. If you have a paper on any topic within the scope of the journal, please feel free to submit here.

We look forward to working with you in the future.

Fire Editorial Office

The journal Fire (ISSN 2571-6255) is launching a new position—Topical Advisory Panel Member. The main responsibility of the new members of the Topical Advisory Panel is to regularly provide support to Guest Editors, Topic Editors, and Section Board Members. The responsibilities of the Topical Advisory Panel are available here: (https://www.mdpi.com/editors).

Fire is an international peer-reviewed open access journal about the science, policy, and technology of fires and how they interact with communities and the environment, broadly defined, published quarterly online by MDPI. Fire is covered in SCIE, Web of Science. The aims and scope of the journal can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/fire/about.

Each year, the members’ performance is evaluated, and outstanding members will be promoted to the Editorial Board by the Editor-in-Chief.

To qualify as a Topical Advisory Panel Member, applicants must:

• Have expertise and experience in the field related to the journal;
• Have received a Ph.D. in the last 10 years, approximately;
• Have at least 6-8 published papers in the last 5 years as first author or corresponding author;
• Currently hold an independent research position in academia or a government institute.

If you are interested in this role or if you have any recommendations, please feel free to contact us (fire@mdpi.com). We look forward to hearing from you soon.

For more information about Fire, please visit the website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/fire.

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