Announcements

At MDPI, we strive to make your online publication process seamless and efficient. To achieve this, our team is continuously developing tools and features to make the user experience useful and convenient.

As the number of academic papers continues to grow, so does the need to analyze and work with them on a large scale. This prompted us to design a new feature aimed at helping researchers find journals that are relevant to their publication by matching their abstract topic. In this regard, we designed a similarity model that automatically identifies the most suitable academic journals for your paper.

We are pleased to introduce Journal Selector, a new feature that measures similarity in academic contexts. By simply entering the title and/or abstract into our Journal Selector, the author will see a list of the most related scientific journals published by MDPI. This method helps authors select the correct journals for their papers, highlighting the time of publication and citability.

The methodology is known as representation learning, where words are represented as vectors in hyperspace. Representation helps us differentiate between different concepts within articles, and in turn, helps us identify similarities between them.

We used an advanced machine learning model to better capture the semantic meanings of words. This helps the algorithm make better predictions by leveraging scientific text representation. In turn, this ensures high precision, helping authors decide which journal they should submit their paper to.

The goal is to support authors to publish their work in the most suitable journal for their research, as fast as possible, accelerating their career progress.

Contact: Andrea Perlato, Head of Data Analytics, MDPI (email)

We are pleased to announce the two awardees for the 2021 Forests Graduate Student/Post-Doc Travel Awards, Ms. Pipiet Larasatie and Ms. Tania L. Maxwell.

 Each of them will receive the following:

–– CHF 600 (Swiss francs);
–– Opportunities to publish a paper with a 30% discount in 2021;
–– A certificate.

For more information about Forests awards, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/awards.

We are pleased to announce that the winners of the Forests 2020 Young Investigator Award are Dr. Rachael Nolan and Dr. Adriane Esquivel Muelbert.

Each of them will receive the following:

Prize for Winners:

– An official certificate
– 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs)
– Option to publish two papers, after peer review, in Forests with a 50% discount on the article processing charge.

For more information about Forests awards, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/awards.

We are pleased to announce that Forests is collaborating with the ForestDSS CoP and four units of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) on the Special Issue “Spatial Decision Support for Forest Management and Policy Formulation”. The IUFRO units in this collaboration are:

1. Uncertainty analysis, computational ecology, and decision support (Unit 4.03.00);
2. Characterization of uncertainty in forest modelling systems (Unit 4.03.01);
3. Machine learning and computational ecology (Unit 4.03.02);
4. Decision support systems and related information technologies for the sustainable management of forest systems (Unit 4.03.03);
5. Sustainable forest management scheduling (Unit 4.04.04).

Decision support systems for forest management have been steadily evolving since about 1980 in response to growing demand from forest managers for sophisticated analytical systems that can address the complexities of contemporary forest management issues such as adaptive management in the context of managing forest ecosystem sustainability, integrity, and resilience while ensuring the provision of ecosystem services. In this same time frame, there has also been a steady shift in emphasis from stand-level to landscape-level decision support systems, in part driven by the improved ecological understanding of, and appreciation for, the need to account for patterns and processes in forest management and planning.

Accordingly, we set up a 2021 Special Issue on spatial decision support systems and their application to state-of-the-art landscape solutions for forest management and policy formulation. In this initial call, manuscript proposals are invited for original research and review articles addressing:

• Contemporary, state-of-the art systems and their application, emphasizing spatial decision support for either forest management or policy formulation;
• Forward-looking (and perhaps more speculative) articles on how to advance spatial decision support technologies for forest management and policy formulation beyond the current state-of-the-art.

Spatial decision support technologies have evolved in numerous pathways, including knowledge-based, probabilistic, and linear programming systems, as well as combinations of these and other technologies, so articles addressing any of these areas are welcome.

More information about the current call and submission requirements can be found here:
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/special_issues/decision_support_forest_management_policy.

We are pleased to announce that MDPI’s open access journal Forests is modifying the section name "Wood Science" to "Wood Science and Forest Products". With this change, Forests aspires to provide a worldwide medium for research into all aspects of wood science, including forests and plantations, wood components, and wood-based products. The section also publishes articles on non-wood products derived from forest resources, collectively described as non-timber forest products (NTFPs).

We invite you to visit the updated website to discover what is new!

We hope to call upon your expertise as a reviewer to help maintain the quality and efficiency of Forests.

We are particularly interested in recruiting reviewers in the following fields related to forests. In recent decades, this area has attracted a lot of research interest and significant progress has been made. We welcome scholars with research experience in topics including but not limited to the following:

• forest ecology, management, and restoration;
• forest economics and natural resource policy and planning;
• silvicultural systems;
• forest entomology and forest pathology;
• forest ecophysiology and biology;
• forest genetics, tree breeding, and biotechnology;
• climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation in forests;
• forest biomass, bioenergy, and carbon sequestration;
• forest engineering;
• tropical forests and management;
• forest inventory, quantitative methods, and remote sensing;
• forest soil management;
• forest simulation modeling;
• forest and nature-based recreation;
• wildland fire science and management;
• wood properties;
• human dimensions;
• urban forests.

We will extend the following benefits to reviewers:

1. The Forests Editorial Board will acknowledge all reviewers in its annual reviewer list through a publication/announcement in the “Acknowledgement to Reviewers of Forests” editorial on the journal website.
2. Reviewer members who provide prompt, thorough, rigorous peer-review reports will receive a voucher that can be applied to reduce the cost of their next publication in an MDPI journal.
3. We hold an “outstanding reviewer award” yearly to acknowledge our reviewers who so generously give their time to review papers for the journal. There would be a chance for you to receive this award. Please click here for more details: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/awards.pdf/0/pdf_42_2022_1_award.pdf.
4. Reviewers may be presented with the option to join the Editorial Board of the journal (subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief).

If you are interested in this work, please submit your information at https://susy.mdpi.com/volunteer/profile/edit.

We would greatly appreciate your support and hope you will join our team of reviewers!

Forests Editorial Office

We are pleased to announce that Forests (ISSN 1999-4907) was recently selected for indexing in the PaperChem (Elsevier) database:

https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/engineering-village?utm_source=eiorg&utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=301&utm_content=/%3f

We are pleased to announce the 2020 Outstanding Reviewer Awards of Forests. Following reviewers have been selected on the basis of the timeliness, quality, and speed of their review reports. They are:

Each of them will receive the following:
- CHF 500 (Swiss francs);
- Opportunities to publish papers (no quantity limit) with 50% discount in 2021;
- A certificate.

We thank them for their efforts in the review process. In addition, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the reviewers for their time and dedication in 2020.

For more information about Forests awards, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/awards.

We welcome the following recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Forests:

We wish them every success in developing the journal.

Further details concerning the Editorial Board can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/editors

In order to better categorize the papers published in the journal, the section “Genetics and Molecular Biology” has recently been established. We are now recruiting Editorial Board members for this new section (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/sections/genetics_molecular_biology).

If you are an active researcher in the field and are passionate about participating in cutting-edge research publications, please do not hesitate to contact us about joining the Editorial Board. As an Editorial Board member, you will have the following responsibilities:

• Make decisions on whether a manuscript can be accepted or not based on the reports we collect;
• Serving as the Editor of a Special Issue on a topic related to your research interests when it is convenient for you;
• Reviewing a number of manuscripts in your area of interest when you are available;
• Recommending topics or appropriate conferences;
• Promoting Forests and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences.

Editorial Board Members are entitled to publish one paper free of charge in Forests each year and apply for additional discounts for papers invited by you.

Further information about the Editorial Board may be found at https://www.mdpi.com/editors.

If you are interested in becoming an Editorial Board Member for Forests, please send us your full academic CV and a short cover letter that details your interest and enthusiasm for the position.

Forests Editorial Office