Announcements

MDPI will support, and be attend, the 2021 SAF National Convention as a silver-level sponsor. The conference will be held in virtual form and will take place from the 3^rd to the 6^th of November, 2021.

The 2021 SAF Convention will highlight the critical role played by forests in providing life-giving ecosystem services and serving as green infrastructure to our communities. The conference will be offering a variety of educational, networking, and business development opportunities while reigniting fan favorites like the SAFter Party; People, Policy, & Popcorn; and much more!

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Forests (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests);
• Remote Sensing (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing).

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start an online conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have. For more information about the conference and our virtual booth, please visit: https://safstage.evareg.com/exhibitor/mdpi-forests.

Forests (ISSN 1999-4907) is an international and cross-disciplinary scholarly journal of forestry and forest ecology. It has been covered by leading indexing services, including the SCIE (Web of Science), Scopus, Ei Compendex, etc. The 2020 Impact Factor was 2.633. The aims and scope of the journal can be found at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/about.

The Forests editorial team is pleased to announce this open call for Special Issue proposals, which offers a group of authors the opportunity to work on an interconnected set of papers on an innovative topic. We are soliciting high-quality proposals that will be evaluated in a continuous selection process throughout the year.

Proposals for a Special Issue should have a well-articulated unifying topic and reflect on an international level, the best work in a particular research area (either an established or an important emerging area), in which future investigations may be propelled by the publication of a set of novel research papers. Hence, an international group of Guest Editors and a few high-quality planned papers are always encouraged when it comes to proposals.

Proposals for Special Issues must be sent to the Editorial Office (forests@mdpi.com) or be sent via the website: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/forests.

Information to be provided in a proposal:

• A 200–400-word summary that clearly states the significance, novelty, technical advancement, and adherence to the scope of the journal of the proposed topic;
• 6–10 keywords on the topic;
• A brief resume of the proposed Guest Editors, together with their information (title, name, email, affiliation, personal website, keywords of interests);
• A proposed submission deadline (a Special Issue will usually be open for submissions for 6–8 months);
• A list of at least 20 potential contributors or a list of 8 planned papers.

As a Guest Editor, you would be responsible for:

• Inviting papers from your peers to be published in this Special Issue and taking advantage of the high publicity of the open access, rapid, high-quality peer-review process, and immediate publication after acceptance;
• Checking the suitability of abstracts/manuscripts submitted to the Special Issue;
• Making pre-check decisions regarding whether to send a new submission to peer review;
• Making final decisions regarding whether to accept or reject a paper based on peer-review outcomes.

As a Guest Editor, you would have the following privileges:

• A recognition certificate as a Guest Editor of Forests;
• Publishing one paper free of charge in your Special Issue;
• Inviting high-quality papers to be published in your Special Issue free of charge or with certain discounts;
• If the Special Issue is successful, with at least 5 accepted manuscripts after full peer review, we can make it into a printed book.

Editorial Office’s role:

The Editorial Office will set up the Special Issue website, arrange promotional material, assist with invitations to contribute papers, and take care of the administrative tasks associated with peer review, including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and arranging professional production before publication.

Please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office (forests@mdpi.com) if you are interested and would like further details and clarifications.

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

Forests Editorial Office

Since it was established, “Editor’s Choice” has always been welcomed by researchers. Our Editors-in-Chief have selected many papers to display here. All of them have proven to be particularly interesting to authors or otherwise important to the field.

Recently, the Editorial Office selected the following papers among the most downloaded publications from Volume 12, Issues 4–6.

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

If you want to learn more about the contributions published in “Editor’s Choice”, please read here: (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/editors_choice).

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)

We are pleased to announce the new Section “Forest Health” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/sections/forest_health) in the journal Forests. Prof. Dr. Young-Seuk Park is serving as the Section Editor-in-Chief.

Section Information

The Section “Forest Health” publishes original research and full-length review articles describing research on all aspects of forest health. Examples of areas covered in the Section “Forest Health” include but are not limited to: 

• Physiological and genetic interactions between trees and harmful biotic impacts;
• Resistance and resilience mechanisms;
• Biological and applied aspects of tree diseases;
• Biology, ecology, and control of forest tree insects;
• Diagnosis, monitoring, and assessment of forest pathogen and insects;
• Impacts of forest pathogens and insects on forests;
• Impacts of disturbances, such as pollution and climate change, on forest trees and forest ecosystems;
• Methodology of forest insect and disease surveys;
• Population dynamics of forest insects;
• Forest health assessment;
• Alien invasive species;
• Social dimensions of forest health;
• Integrated management of forest defoliating insects and pathogens;
• Quantitative approaches, including statistical, mathematics, and computer technology. 

In particular, we welcome contributions by early career researchers. We also invite senior scientists to serve as Guest Editors of new Special Issues on a single and particular theme of significant and/or growing importance.

Editor’s Choice articles are based on recommendations by our Editors-in-Chief. Since it was first established, “Editor’s Choice” has always been welcomed by researchers. Our Editors-in-Chief have selected many papers to display here. All of them are particularly interesting to authors or otherwise important in this field.

Recently, the Editorial Office selected the following papers, which are among the most downloaded publications from Volume 12, Issues 1–3. The following is the paper list.

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

If you want to learn more about the contributions published in “Editor’s Choice”, please read here (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/editors_choice).

We are pleased to announce that Forests (ISSN 1999-4907) has a new CiteScore of 3.3, ranking 34th out of 142 journals (Q1) in the category “Forestry”. We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all authors, reviewers, and editors who have contributed to the journal.

Forests is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal that presents the latest research on all aspects of forestry and forest ecology. Submission to the first decision is usually completed within 16.7 days, and acceptance to publication within 2.7 days, on average.

To make the most of this opportunity, we would like to invite you to make a submission to Forests. If you have a paper on any topic within the scope of the journal, please feel free to submit it here (https://susy.mdpi.com/user/manuscripts/upload).

We look forward to working with you in the future.

Forests Editorial Office

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.