Announcements

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Arun K. Bhunia has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158).

Name: Prof. Dr. Arun K. Bhunia
Email: bhunia@purdue.edu
Affiliation: Department of Food Science, Department of Comparative Pathobiology (Courtesy), Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
Interests: microbiology, pathogenesis, host–pathogen interaction, nanobiotechnology, food safety
Homepage: https://ag.purdue.edu/foodsci/Pages/Profile.aspx?strAlias=bhunia&intDirDeptID=14; https://sciprofiles.com/profile/92909.

Prof. Dr. Arun K. Bhunia received his Bachelor of Veterinary Science (B.V.Sc.) degree in India; his Ph.D. from the University of Wyoming, USA; and his postdoctoral training from the University of Arkansas, USA. He is a Professor of Food Microbiology at the Department of Food Science and is affiliated with the Department of Comparative Pathobiology at the Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology, and Infectious Disease (PI4D), and the Purdue University Life Science program (PULSe). He is Chair of the Interdepartmental Food Science Graduate Program. His expertise covers microbial pathogenesis (host–pathogen interaction), probiotic bioengineering, and foodborne pathogen detection. To date, he has co-authored more than 190 peer-reviewed research publications, two textbooks (Fundamental Food Microbiology and Foodborne Microbial Pathogens—Mechanisms and Pathogenesis), he has edited four books, and delivered over 148 lectures. He teaches graduate-level courses on foodborne pathogens and the mechanisms of pathogenesis, microbial foodborne pathogen detection techniques, and intestinal microbiology and immunology. He served on the USDA National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF; 2013–2017) and has received the Purdue Agriculture Research Award (2003), Purdue Faculty Scholar (2005), Purdue Team Award (2006), IFT R&D Award (2009), Outstanding Graduate Educator Award at Purdue (2013), High-End Foreign Experts Recruitment Program (China) fellowship (2014–2016), Fulbright Specialist (2016–2021), and Maurice Weber Laboratorian Award from IAFP (2017).

With these achievements, we are confident that Foods will thrive under Prof. Dr. Bhunia’s leadership. We warmly welcome him as our new Editor-in-Chief.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Arun K. Bhunia:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as its Editor-in-Chief?

The journal Foods has gained significant recognition as a platform for open access publication among food scientists since its inception in 2012. Serving as a Section Editor-in-Chief for “Food Microbiology” and as Guest Editor for several special topics for the past several years, I witnessed its enormous growth and the quality of articles it was able to attract in all areas of food science. The opportunity to serve as an Editor-in-Chief is a great honor and together with our outstanding editorial board members, I am looking forward to shaping the future of this journal to cater effectively and efficiently to our science community.

2. What is your vision for the journal?

To make Foods a leading open-access journal platform for publication of high quality and high-impact research articles from all areas of food science.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?

The field of food science is highly interdisciplinary. Besides embracing fundamental and molecular research to study the science of food, researchers are at the forefront of addressing sustainability, food security, alternative proteins, food quality, and food safety issues. Big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things (IoT) will be the leading powerful tools to reshape the field of food science in coming years.

4. What do you think of the development of Open Access in the publishing field?

Open Access has opened up the door for scientists from all across the globe to share their research data free of charge, leveling the playing field to benefit all.

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

MDPI will be attending the 11th International Conference on Food Science, which will take place in Nanjing, China, from 20^th to 21^st November 2021. For more information about the conference, please visit: http://www.spkx.net.cn/CN/news/news45.shtml.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Foods (leading journal)
• Nutrients (leading journal)
• Processes
• Molecules

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.

We would like to invite you to join the Reviewer Board (RB) of Foods (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/foods).

Reviewer Board Members of Foods will experience the following benefits:

1. The Foods Editorial Board will acknowledge all Reviewer Board Members in its annual reviewer list, which is published in the “Acknowledgement to Reviewers of Foods” editorial and announced on the journal website;
2. Reviewers who provide timely, thorough, and rigorous peer review reports will receive a voucher that can be applied toward their next publication in any MDPI journal;
3. The Foods Editorial Board will present special recognition certificates to “Exceptional Reviewer Board Members” to thank them for their outstanding reviewing work;
4. Reviewer Board Members may be presented with the possibility to join the Editorial Board of the journal (subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief).

If you are interested in joining, please click on the link below to apply:
https://susy.mdpi.com/volunteer_reviewer_info/update.

If you have any other questions, please contact the Foods Editorial Office (foods@mdpi.com). We look forward to hearing from you.

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Katrina Campbell has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the “Food Systems” Section in Foods (ISSN 2304-8158).

Prof. Dr. Katrina Campbell is a Professor of Food Security and Diagnostics within the Institute for Global Food Security, School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research focuses on the examination of food systems for the identification and recognition of known and emerging threats within the food supply chain from “environment to farm to fork to waste” and determining any consequential effects on plants, animals, and human health. A key element of this research is the development of (bio)analytical approaches that can be used for the rapid detection of natural toxins, chemical contaminants, and harmful organisms, as tools to enhance food safety and sustainability. These state-of-the-art scientific techniques and next generation biosensor tools as multiplex detection systems may create a new facet in rapid food safety monitoring and traceability for the benefit of plants, animals, and human health with an outlook on increasing food security.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Katrina Campbell in taking up her role as Section Editor-in-Chief and look forward to her leading Foods to achieve many more milestones.

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

The 2020 citation metrics have been officially released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR)!

We are pleased to announce that 85 MDPI journals are included, of which:

• 10 journals received their first impact factor
• 96% of journals increased their impact factor from 2019
• 32 journals (38%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category

* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2021

Source: 2020 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ® (Clarivate, 2021)

In order to better categorize papers published within the journal, Foods is looking to expand its Editorial Board to cover areas that need additional representation by the current team. If you are interested in serving as an Academic Editor on the Editorial Board or would like to recommend potential candidates, please reach out to us.

The main responsibilities and benefits of Editorial Board Members are as follows:

1. Prescreen submissions and make decisions on whether they should be rejected or accepted for processing, and suggest additional reviewers if necessary;
2. Review a couple of manuscripts per year;
3. Lead at least one Special Issue in your particular field of expertise every two years;
4. Suggest some interesting topics for the journal;
5. You may publish open access papers with discounts;
6. All Editorial Board Members have the chance to obtain sponsorship for the conferences that they organize or attend.

MDPI Books recently released Book Builder, a new online tool to conveniently arrange, design and produce an eBook from any content published in MDPI journals. Book Builder offers two functions: on the one hand (1) Selections, available to every registered user of MDPI; on the other hand (2) Special Issue Reprints, which can be used exclusively by Guest Editors of Special Issues.

Selections

In just a matter of a few clicks, all users are now able to assemble books from MDPI articles and receive instantaneous feedback in the form of a fully produced and compiled book (PDF), which can be downloaded or ordered as print copy. Selections can include any paper published with MDPI, picking and combining content from different journals and special issues.

This way, the user may for example choose to compile an ebook focusing around a particular topic, or assemble articles from a group of others.

We invite you to make yourself familiar with the new tool! The Book Builder can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/books/book_builder.

Special Issue Reprints

The Book Builder allows Guest Editors of MDPI journals to create a reprint from a successfully completed Special Issue or Topical Collection in book format. If you are a Guest Editor for an MDPI journal, you can use the new tool  to create an PDF document which includes all articles published in the Special Issue as well as a book cover and table of contents.

For Special Issues containing a minimum of 5 articles, the Guest Editor can request its publication on the MDPI Book platform. Published reprints are assigned an ISBN and DOI.

In addition to the PDF copy of the Reprint Book, as a token of our gratitude, MDPI offers every Guest Editor one (1) complimentary print copy (via print-on-demand). All contributors benefit from a discount on orders of any additional print copies, to share with colleagues or libraries or others.

Why choose MDPI Books?

In line with our organization's values, MDPI Books publishes all content in open access, promoting the exchange of ideas and knowledge in a globalized world. MDPI Books encompasses all the benefits of open access—high availability and visibility, as well as wide and rapid dissemination. MDPI Books are distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License, meaning as an author you retain the copyright for your work. In addition, with MDPI Books you can complement the digital version of your work with a high-quality printed counterpart.

If you are interested in editing a book volume or series, or have a monograph manuscript to be considered for publication, please submit your proposal online and look at our Information for Authors.

Contact: Laura Wagner, MDPI Books Manager (email)

In June of this year, MDPI will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its foundation. To mark this significant milestone, we have created a 25th Anniversary page on our website that evokes the development of our company over the past quarter-century.

MDPI has been a pioneer of Open Access publishing ever since the concept was first created.

In a wide-ranging interview, our CEO Delia Mihaila reflects on the company’s 25th anniversary and its contribution to the world of scientific publishing.

Delia considers how MDPI has evolved since starting life in 1996 as a visionary ‘project’ run out of an apartment in Basel, Switzerland, by Dr. Shu-Kun Lin. A chemist who was passionate about the long-term preservation of rare chemical sample, Dr. Lin was determined to help scholars publish their findings as quickly as possible and make their research results available to as wide a readership as possible worldwide. That determination remains unchanged 25 years later.

Today, MDPI is an international organization with over 4,000 employees based on three continents and in ten countries, and ranks among the world's top four academic publishers.

MDPI's mission is to accelerate access to new scientific research, delivering insight faster for researchers worldwide. Read more here about the company's remarkable success story and what the Open Access publishing model can offer the global scientific community.