Announcements

MDPI will be represented at the ESA Annual Meeting 2018 which will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, 5–10 August 2018.

Extreme events, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, fires and storms, are exacerbated by human activities and challenge populations, communities and ecosystems, as well as our human health and living conditions. The ability of ecosystems to respond to these challenges depends on the integrity of resilience mechanisms that have been severely undermined by land-use practices that increase effects of extreme conditions. Past civilizations, such as the Maya and Mesopotamians, apparently exacerbated the droughts (that caused their demise) through deforestation and agricultural practices similar to our own. Clearly, the sustainability of ecosystem services and human well-being depends on ecosystem resilience to extreme events.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Forests
• Land
• IJERPH
• Water
• Environments
• Fire
• Sustainability
• Safety
• Agronomy
• Social Science
• Climate

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #208). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have regarding open access publishing or our journals. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://esa.org/neworleans/

We are pleased to announce the results of the first MDPI Writing Prize. We received a large number of entries from across the globe on the theme of “The Global Benefits of Open Research”. It was a pleasure to read so many original, well-researched and well-presented ideas, and the final choice was not an easy one. We are pleased to announce that the winners are as follows:

1st prize (500 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Edmond Sanganyado, Shantou University, China

2nd prizes (250 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Kamala T. Rajahgopal, Asia e University, Malaysia
Yin Zhixuan, Qingdao University of Technology, China

3rd prizes (100 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Alexandra Ticea, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Romania
Ankur Sarker, University of Virginia, USA
Daniel Attoye, United Arab Emirates University, UAE

Congratulations to all of them! The winning entries can be downloaded by clicking on the names above. A compilation of all entries will soon be available as an open access book.

The writing prize is sponsored by the MDPI English editing service.

Location: Vancouver Convention Center, Vancouver, Canada
Date: 11–14 November 2018

We will be attending the 2018 ESA, ESC, and ESBC Joint Annual Meeting (Entomology 2018) in Vancouver, Canada from November 11 to 14, 2018. The Entomological Society of America (ESA) is the largest organization serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and individuals in related disciplines from around the world. This Annual Meeting offers unique opportunities to share your research, gain exposure, and collaborate across border and across these three Societies. Connect with over 3,000 scientists and researchers from around the globe over the four science-filled days. Representatives of the following MDPI open access journals will attend:

Insects (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/insects)
Agriculture (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agriculture)  
Agronomy (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy)
Biology (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/biology)
Diversity (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/diversity)
Forests (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests)

If you are attending this conference, please stop by our booth (Booth #407). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have concerning open access publishing and our journals.

For more information about the conference, please visit:

https://www.entsoc.org/events/annual-meeting

We are pleased to announce that one of the winners of the 2018 Forests Graduate Student/Post-Doc Travel Awards is Ms. Monika Shea. Ms. Shea made a presentation at the US Regional Association of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (US-IALE) Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL, USA, April 8–12, 2018. She is a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA, studying the identification processes controlling vegetation in ecotones. The Chair of the US-IALE awards committee, Dr. Betty Kreakie presented Ms. Monika Shea with a certificate commemorating the award on 17 April 2018.

For more information about Forests Awards, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/awards

At MDPI, we always want to keep you up to date. Even for already published articles, some corrections or minor changes may occur. To prevent you from missing any updates, from now on you will be able to access the latest version of any manuscript by clicking on the “check for updates” logo that you can find in the PDF file, even if you have saved the file on your computer.

We are proud to announce that MDPI is now a member of UKSG, the UK´s largest scholarly communications community. Through UKSG, different stakeholders share their knowledge and experience in order to improve the knowledge and information environment for researchers. UKSG´s members include universities, publishers, content providers, intermediaries, and other similar organisations. Members participate in discussions and events on issues around scholarly communications.

The UKSG Annual Conference and Exhibition is a flagship initiative from the UKSG and one of the most stimulating events in the scholarly communications calendar. It is held annually and attracts a large number of delegates. More information is available at https://www.uksg.org/events/annualconference

MDPI is delighted to be a part of this active community and we look forward to making our own contribution. We will continue to support organisations and initiatives that boost collaboration and vision within scholarly communication.

More information about UKSG can be found at https://www.uksg.org/. The full membership list is available at: https://www.uksg.org/members.

We are pleased to announce that we have instituted a Section Editor-In-Chief structure to spread all submissions to four Sections:

Editor-In-Chief: Prof. Dr. Timothy Martin

Section Editor-In-Chief of 'Forest Ecology and Management': Dr. Libby Pinkard

Section Editor-In-Chief of Section 'Forest Ecophysiology and Biology': Dr. Timothy Martin

Section Editor-In-Chief of 'Forest Economics and Human Dimensions': Dr. Damian C. Adams

Section Editor-In-Chief of 'Forest Inventory, Quantitative Methods and Remote Sensing': Dr. David Verbyla

We are confident that the strong academic backgrounds and connections of the Editors will help continue to raise Forests' prestige and quality, while maintaining the efficiency of manuscript processing that Forests authors have come to expect.

Dr. Timothy A. Martin is a professor in the School of Forest Resources and Conservation at the University of Florida. He also serves as a Co-Director for the Forest Biology Research Cooperative. His research program focuses on the physiological mechanisms controlling productivity, carbon and water flux in trees and forests.

Dr. Libby Pinkard is a Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO Land and Water, and a Group Leader for Forest and landscape Processes and Risks. Her research focuses on tree physiology, climate change, environmental stress, forest management and pests and diseases.

Dr. Damian C. Adams is an associate professor in the School of Forest Resources and Conservation at the University of Florida. His research primarily focuses on understanding how people value ecosystem goods and services, the impact of attitudes and preferences on those values, and translating that information to inform policy decisions.

Dr. David Verbyla is a professor in the Department of Natural Resources Management at the University of Alaska. His broad research interest is in GIS technology for resource inventory and climate change studies, integrating remote sensing and GIS for regional analysis and support for spatial analysis using GIS.

The DORA initiative addresses the need for advanced approaches in the evaluation and measurement of the quality of scientific research outputs. It is a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines. MDPI proudly joins a list of more than 400 organizations around the world which support DORA’s recommendations for improving the way the quality of research results is evaluated.

More info can be found at http://www.ascb.org/dora/

We will be attending the General Assembly 2018 of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) (https://egu2018.eu/home.html). The EGU General Assembly 2018 will bring together geoscientists from all over the world to one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences. It aims to provide a forum where scientists, especially early career researchers, can present their work and discuss their ideas with experts in all fields of geoscience. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Remote Sensing
Geosciences
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information
Water
Animals
Atmosphere
Climate
Environments
Forests
Hydrology
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
Land
Minerals
Resources
Quaternary
Sensors

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #36). 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://egu2018.eu/home.html.

The competition is still open until end of March! Please check out the banner for more details: https://mdpi-res.com/data/english-prize.pdf