Announcements

The 2022 citation metrics have been released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), and we’re pleased to announce the following results for MDPI journals:

We are thrilled to announce that 90% of our ranked MDPI journals, specifically 86 out of 96 (captured in the table below), are performing above average in Q1 or Q2. This year, Clarivate has expanded its Impact Factor (IF) awards to include journals in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), providing greater transparency for the full set of journals indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection. As a result, 111 of MDPI journals have received their first IF in 2023, with 37 journals surpassing an IF of 3.0. In total, 208 MDPI journals have been honored with an IF.

Clarivate explains that by "expanding the coverage but holding to highly selective standards, the [Impact Factor] is now a reliable indicator of trustworthiness, as well as a measure of scholarly impact, at the journal level."

Please visit our blog post where we discuss the release of the latest citation metrics with our Indexing Manager, Dr. Constanze Schelhorn, to find out what's different this time around and how to make use of different metrics available.

Note: The Journal of Personalized Medicine's Impact Factor was omitted in the original release and will be assigned separately. Please find the data on the journal webpage in due course.

Source: 2022 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ^TM (Clarivate, 2023)

The International Day of Human Space Flight commemorates the first manned space flight by the Soviet citizen Yuri Gagarin on 12 April 1961. This day was declared the International Day of Human Space Flight in 2011 by the United Nations General Assembly resolution, to celebrate the beginning of the human space age. It reaffirms the important contribution of space science and technology in achieving sustainable development goals and increasing the well-being of countries and people, as well as ensuring the realization of their aspiration to preserve outer space for peaceful purposes. 

In the course of human exploration of space, we have established many remarkable achievements and breakthrough milestones:

• In 1957, the first human-made Earth satellite, Sputnik I, was launched into outer space;
• In 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth;
• In 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot upon the surface of the Moon;
• In 1996, the first spacecraft in human history successfully landed on Mars;
• In 1998, the International Space Station, a 16-nation international space program, launched for the first time;
• In 2009, the Kepler space telescope was launched, which has helped humans find thousands of exoplanets;
• In 2015, SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket and recovered the first stage. 

To further explore the information about space on the 2023 International Day of Human Space Flight, we have gathered academic research from several journals on the topic of space flight, all of which are open access, enabling practitioners, policymakers and people around the world to access and share up-to-date scientific knowledge. 

Let us celebrate the International Day of Human Space Flight together.

The ORIGIN Space Instrument for Detecting Biosignatures and Habitability Indicators on a Venus Life Finder Mission Aerospace 2022, 9(6), 312; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9060312
Venus Life Finder Missions Motivation and Summary Aerospace 2022, 9(7), 385; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9070385
Theoretical and Observational Constraints on Lunar Orbital Evolution in the Three-Body Earth-Moon-Sun System Astronomy 2022, 1(2), 58-83; https://doi.org/10.3390/astronomy1020007
Energetic Neutral Atom (ENA) Imaging Simulation of the Distant Planetary Magnetosphere and ENA Emission Discussion of the Solar Wind Astronomy 2022, 1(3), 235-245; https://doi.org/10.3390/astronomy1030013
Revisiting Fractional Cosmology Fractal Fract. 2023, 7(2), 149; https://doi.org/10.3390/fractalfract7020149
Special Issue: Orbit Determination Methods for Space Missions and Applications to the Exploration of the Solar System	Special Issue: Feature Papers in the Astronomical Sciences

Whirl Tower Demonstration of an SMA Blade Twist System Actuators 2022, 11(6), 141; https://doi.org/10.3390/act11060141
A Tutorial and Review on Flight Control Co-Simulation Using Matlab/Simulink and Flight Simulators Automation 2022, 3(3), 486-510; https://doi.org/10.3390/automation3030025
Reconfigurable Fault-Tolerant Control for Spacecraft Formation Flying Based on Iterative Learning Algorithms Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(5), 2485; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12052485
Wilderness Search for Lost Persons Using a Multimodal Aerial-Terrestrial Robot Team Robotics 2022, 11(3), 64; https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics11030064
Special Issue: Advances in CubeSat Sails and Tethers	Special Issue: Aerospace Mechanisms and Actuation
Special Issue: Advanced Fault Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Control Technology of Spacecraft	Special Issue: Smart Sensors and Devices: Recent Advances and Applications

Investigation of UAV Detection by Different Solid-State Marine Radars Electronics 2022, 11(16), 2502; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11162502
Edge Machine Learning for the Automated Decision and Visual Computing of the Robots, IoT Embedded Devices or UAV-Drones Electronics 2022, 11(21), 3507; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11213507
Autonomous Tracking of ShenZhou Reentry Capsules Based on Heterogeneous UAV Swarms Drones 2023, 7(1), 20; https://doi.org/10.3390/drones7010020
A Human-Detection Method Based on YOLOv5 and Transfer Learning Using Thermal Image Data from UAV Perspective for Surveillance System Drones 2022, 6(10), 290; https://doi.org/10.3390/drones6100290
Multi-UAV Conflict Resolution with Graph Convolutional Reinforcement Learning Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(2), 610; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12020610
Special Issue: Control and Applications of Intelligent Unmanned Aerial Vehicle	Special Issue: Navigation, Control and Mission Planning Advances for Safe, Efficient and Autonomous Drones

Mathematics (ISSN: 2227-7390) be attending the 13th AIMS Conference on Dynamical Systems, Differential Equations and Applications, which will occur from May 31 to June 4 2023 at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, USA. The goals of the meeting include a cross-fertilization of ideas from different application areas and increased communication between the mathematicians who develop dynamical systems techniques and the applied scientists who use them.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Mathematics;
• Axioms;
• Symmetry;
• Fractal Fract;
• Dynamics;
• AppliedMath;
• Computation;
• Systems.

We are pleased to announce that 11 new scholars have been appointed as Editorial Board Members to the journal Fractal and Fractional (ISSN: 2504-3110):

Dr. Duarte Valério (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal);
Dr. Cristina I. Muresan (Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania);
Dr. Erick Ogam (LMA Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique, France);
Prof. Dr. Patrizia Pucci (Università degli Studi di Perugia, Italy);
Prof. Dr. Fawang Liu (Queensland University of Technology, Australia);
Prof. Dr. Pier Luigi Gentili (University of Perugia, Italy);
Prof. Dr. Vladimir Kulish (Czech Technical University, Czech Republic);
Prof. Dr. Alfredo Peris (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain);
Prof. Dr. Mauro Fabrizio (University of Bologna, Italy);
Prof. Dr. Kaj Nyström (Uppsala University, Sweden);
Prof. Dr. Alicia Cordero (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain).

Mathematics plays an indispensable role in shaping the world we inhabit, propelling scientific breakthroughs and technological advancements, and fostering social and economic progress. This year's theme, "Mathematics for Everyone", underscores the universal and all-encompassing nature of mathematics, and its potential to positively impact individuals from all walks of life and diverse backgrounds.

We are confident that the prestigious Mathematics subject journals in MDPI, including AppliedMath, Axioms, Computation, Fractal and Fractional, Games, MCA, Stats and Symmetry, will offer ideal communication platforms to enhance scientific collaboration in line with the International Day of Mathematics theme. Let us harness the full potential of these platforms to propel Mathematics to new heights of development and innovation.

MDPI International Day of Mathematics Webinar 2023 14 Mar 2023, 10:00 (CET) Session 1: 10:00 am–12:00 pm CET Session 2: 14:30 pm–16:30 pm CET Free to register for the two Sessions. Recordings will be available on Sciforum shortly afterwards.

As a leading open access publisher, MDPI provides scholars with a high-quality and rich academic exchange platform by continuously expanding into new and exciting research areas.

In December 2022, MDPI launched five new journals, covering multiple subjects such as life sciences, biology, medicine and pharmacology, social sciences and humanities. These new journals are being edited by established scholars across the world.

If you are interested in creating more open access journals with us to publish cutting-edge research, please send your journal proposal application to newjournal-committee@mdpi.com.

MDPI is pleased to announce that we now display the co-authors’ email addresses in addition to the corresponding author’s email address on the webpage of published papers, protected by Captcha. For more information about this change, please visit the journal’s instructions for authors page. 

We believe this change will facilitate academic discussions and advance our cause of open science and research. The corresponding authors are responsible for communicating with their co-authors and indicating in our system (https://susy.mdpi.com/) if co-authors would prefer for their email addresses not to be displayed.

On 9 February 2023, Clarivate, a global leader in providing trusted insights and analytics, added the Preprint Citation Index to the Web of Science platform, streamlining the research process by allowing researchers to locate and link to preprints alongside other trusted content in the database.

The Preprint Citation Index will act as a bridge to connect cutting-edge preprints with peer-reviewed journal articles published within the Web of Science Core Collection. Alerts can be easily set to monitor new research across several repositories and authors will also be able to include preprints on their Web of Science Research Profile to more accurately display their various research outputs.

As of its launch, the Preprint Citation Index will provide nearly two million preprints from various repositories, including MDPI’s own Preprints.org.

MDPI's Preprints Platform – Preprints.org

To advance Open Science and the fast dissemination of research, MDPI offers researchers a free multidisciplinary preprint platform. Preprints.org accepts submissions from all research areas and offers authors high visibility, permanent archiving, article-level Metrics and immediately citable content by assigning a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to all preprints.

During submission to any MDPI journal, authors have the option to share their research as a preprint. After an initial screening, the manuscript is available online in 48 hours or less. Once online, preprints can be downloaded, shared, commented on, and cited, providing authors maximum visibility.

We invite you to join the ranks of the over 100k researchers using Preprints.org and share your research.

For more information, please visit Preprints.org.

We are pleased to announce that 10 new scholars have been appointed Editorial Board Members for the journal Fractal and Fractional (ISSN: 2504-3110):

• Dr. Vicenç Méndez (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain);
• Dr. Nickolay Korabel (The University of Manchester, UK);
• Prof. Dr. Igor V. Pantić (University of Belgrade, Serbia);
• Prof. Dr. Santos Bravo Yuste (Universidad de Extremadura, Spain);
• Prof. Dr. Rodica Luca ("Gheorghe Asachi" Technical University of Iasi, Romania);
• Dr. Alexandra M. S. F. Galhano (Universidade Lusófona do Porto, Portugal);
• Dr. Christopher Angstmann (University of New South Wales, Australia);
• Prof. Dr. Wei-Shih Du (National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan);
• Dr. Alessandro Taloni (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy);
• Prof. Dr. Andreas Rauh (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany).

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative—the MDPI Special Issue Mentor Program.

This program will enable early career researchers (who must hold a Ph.D. in a related field) to experience editing a Special Issue in MDPI journals, under the mentorship of our experienced Editorial Board Members or other experienced scientists. The mentor program will provide an excellent opportunity for early career scientists to gain editorial experience, and to cultivate their ability to edit scientific research.

The mentee’s responsibilities include:

• Proposing a Special Issue title and assisting the mentor in preparing a summary (around 200–400 words) and 3–10 keywords describing the background, importance, and goal of the Issue;
• Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
• Preparing a list of scholars who may be interested in the Issue and personally e-mailing invitations on behalf of Guest Editors;
• Writing an editorial for the online Special Issue together with the mentor.

The mentor’s responsibilities include:

• Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
• Performing editorial control of the Special Issue and quality control of the publications, both of which must be carried out in a timely manner;
• Providing suggestions to younger scholars if they have any doubts or concerns regarding submissions;
• Organizing video calls with young scholars and the Editorial Office regularly to discuss problems and improvement suggestions for the Special Issue;
• Making and submitting decisions regarding submissions with the assistance of mentees.

Certificates and awards:
After the Special Issue closes, the Editorial Office will provide official certificates for all the mentors and early career researchers.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Editorial Office of a journal you choose, and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail. The full list of MDPI journals is as follows: https://www.mdpi.com/about/journals.

In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, we will continue to welcome all Special Issue proposals focusing on hot research topics.