Announcements

The 2021 citation metrics have been officially released in Scopus!

We are pleased to announce that 182 MDPI journals are included, of which:

● 21 journals received their first CiteScore.
● 85% of journals increased their CiteScore from 2020.
● 155 journals (85%) ranked above average, in at least one category.

The following 65 MDPI journals (36%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category:

Source: 2021 CiteScores™ (Elsevier)

Recruiting Section Editors-in-Chief for Geosciences

Geosciences is recruiting Section Editors-in-Chief for the following two sections:

• "Climate";
• "Cryosphere".

Geosciences (ISSN 2076-3263) is an international and peer-reviewed open access journal which publishes original papers, rapid communications, technical notes, review articles, and discussions about all interdisciplinary aspects of the Earth and planetary sciences. It is abstracted and indexed by the Emerging Sources Citation Index (Web of Science) and Scopus (CiteScore in 2020: 3.4) in addition to other databases. For more information about Geosciences, please see the journal webpage: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/geosciences.

Section Editors-in-Chief are responsible for the following:

• Defining the aims and scope of the Section;
• Advising on the strategic development of the Section;
• Ensuring the quality of the published content;
• Nominating/inviting Guest Editors and optionally delegating to them the authority to make final acceptance decisions for submitted articles;
• Nominating/inviting contributors;
• Nominating and leading the Section Editorial Board;
• Promoting the journal at scientific conferences or through other venues.

To apply for this position, recommend potential candidates, or request further information, please contact the Geosciences Editorial Office (geosciences@mdpi.com) or Lionel Zheng (lionel.zheng@mdpi.com).

It is our great honor to congratulate the Editorial Board Members and Editors in MDPI's journals who have been distinguished as 2021 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate, according to Web of Science data. We herewith express our gratitude for the immense impact the named researchers continue to make on scientific progress and on our journals' development.

Clarivate's annual list of Highly Cited Researchers^TM identifies the most highly cited scientists for the past decade. Their impactful papers are among the top 1 per cent in the citation distribution of one or more of 22 fields analyzed in the "Essential Science Indicators", distinguishing them as hugely influential among their peers.

The full list of 2021 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed at the following webpage in the Web of Science^TM https://recognition.webofscience.com/awards/highly-cited/2021/.

--- Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) is a Clarivate product.

Academic editors play a crucial role in leading our journals and ensuring that each article undergoes a robust and timely peer-review. With the launch of Topics this year and addition of Topic Editors to our family of academic editors, we decided it would be a good time to restructure our academic boards, thus providing more clarity and support for each role. MDPI is pleased to announce the launch of a new position—Topical Advisory Panel Member, that will replace the previous position of Topics Board Member. The Topical Advisory Panel will be comprised of early career researchers eager to gain experience in editorial work.

The main responsibility of the new members of the Topical Advisory Panel is to regularly provide support to Guest Editors, Topic Editors, and Section Board Members. The responsibilities of the Topical Advisory Panel are available here: https://www.mdpi.com/editors.

Each year, the members’ performances are evaluated, and outstanding members are promoted to the Editorial Board by the Editor-in-Chief.

To qualify as a Topical Advisory Panel Member, applicants must:

• Have expertise and experience in the field related to the journal;
• Have received a Ph.D. in the last 10 years, approximately;
• Have at least 6-8 published papers in the last 5 years as first author or corresponding author;
• Currently hold an independent research position in academia or a government institute.

If you are interested in this role, please contact the editorial office by email.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Founded in 1996, MDPI was one of the first fully Open Access publisher. Over 25 years MDPI has grown to become the largest Open Access publisher globally, publishing over 160,000 articles across more than 350 journals in 2020. At the core, MDPI was founded in response to a pressing need of fast publication and inclusion. The scholar was set at the centre of the publication process for the first time. Acting as a service provider, rather than a product provider, MDPI exists to help scientists achive their objective to disseminate research results. At MDPI, we believe scientists deserve a better service from the publishing world.

The International Open Access Week (Open Access Week), founded by the SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Alliance and student partners in 2008, has been successfully running for 13 years. As an advocate and pioneer of open access publishing, MDPI actively responds to the call of International Open Access Week. This year’s theme of “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity” highlights the Recommendation’s call for equitable participation from all authors and readers.

For the last 25 years, MDPI has been committed to disseminating open research. Here is a video showing MDPI’s Commitment to Equity, Inclusion and Diversity for More than 25 Years.

International Open Access Week is an important opportunity to catalyze new conversations, create connections across and between communities that can facilitate this co-design, and advance progress in the building of more equitable foundations for opening knowledge—discussions and actions that need to be continued, year in and year out. MDPI has always aimed to provide professional and efficient publishing services to scholars around the world.

Our mission is to make scientific research accessible to everyone; this year, we interview and hold discussions with open science ambassadors on how to build an equal and inclusive environment for open science. Academic editors help us collaborate with more institutions to advocate for open access ideas.

Read our anniversary blog post: "Sharing 'Collective Human Knowledge': The Benefits of Open Access Publication"

Besides this, our scientific community is a key driver of our success and MDPI’s remarkable growth. Despite the pandemic, we have prepared online conferences and workshops to gather scholars from different communities.

The Basel Sustainable Publishing online forum provides an equal opportunity for stakeholders and researchers from multi-cultural environments to exchange ideas and eliminate barriers to participation.

Conference date: 25 October 2021, online
Conference website: https://bspf2021.sciforum.net/
Main topics: MDPI discusses the current dilemma of open access science from various perspectives such as governments, libraries, and publishers, and related measures on how to change the status quo of discrimination from a global perspective.

We aim to support equality, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications. We collaborate with universities and key laboratories and have scholarly communications with researchers, teachers, and students on open access workshops.

• 25 October 2021
  Energies journal and Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

• 28 October 2021
  Machines journal and State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong University

• 29 October 2021
  Processes journal and Beijing Institute of Technology

• 29 October 2021
  Coatings journal and Wuhan University of Technology

MDPI is committed to providing open access and high-quality publishing services for scholars and promoting rapid dissemination of academic achievements. We hope to promote the practices and policies of open access publishing and diversify the dissemination of academic achievements.

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high-quality academic publishing. Over 369,916 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2020. We are extremely appreciative of all those who made a contribution to the editorial process in this capacity. At the beginning of every year, journal editorial offices publish a list of all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year, the MDPI Top Reviewer Award was announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise and dedication, and their high-quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2020 MDPI Top Reviewer Award:

• Adriana Burlea-Schiopoiu;
• Alban Kuriqi;
• Álvaro González-Vila;
• Alessandro Alaimo;
• Alexey Beskopylny;
• Alexander Yu Churyumov;
• Alberto Fernández-Isabel;
• Andrea Mastinu;
• Antonios N. Papadopoulos;
• Anton Rassõlkin;
• Antonio Humberto Hamad Minervino;
• Arkadiusz Matwijczuk;
• Artur Słomka;
• Baojie He;
• Bartłomiej Potaniec;
• Bojan Đurin;
• Camilo Arturo Rodriguez Diaz;
• Carmelo Maria Musarella;
• Chiachung Chen;
• Chiman Kwan;
• Cristian Busu;
• Danil Pimenov;
• Dan-Cristian Dabija;
• Delfín Ortega-Sánchez;
• Demetrio Antonio Zema;
• Denis Butusov;
• Elena Lucchi;
• Gaurab Dutta;
• Livia Anastasiu;
• M. R. Safaei.

For more information about how to become a reviewer of MDPI journals, please see: www.mdpi.com/reviewers.

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

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

We are pleased to report that the CiteScore of Geosciences has increased to 3.4. It now ranks Q1 in the “General Earth and Planetary Sciences” category. For full details of the current CiteScore release, please refer to the journal’s Source profile (https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/21100284944).

This week we'd like to introduce you to Professor Károly Németh!

Károly Németh works as a Professor in Geology at the School of Agriculture and Environment, Massey University. His main research interests are monogenetic volcanism, volcano geology, natural disasters, geoheritage, geoconservation and geotourism.

In 2001, Professor Németh received his first Ph.D. degree in Geology from the University of Otago, Dunedin and his second in Environmental Science from the University of West Hungary in 2003. Here, he described the volcanic geoheritage and geotourism potential of the Plio-Pleistocene monogenetic volcanic fields of the Western Pannonian Basin in Central Europe.

During his PostDoc research, Professor Németh spent 3 years exploring mafic volcanism in the Vanuatu Volcanic Arc, before becoming a permanent research officer at the Massey University’s Volcanic Risk Solutions research group. This role later developed into a lecturer position, where he has teaching duties mostly in geology and geological mapping.

Alongside his work at Massey University, Károly Németh is an adjunct senior researcher at the Institute of Earth Physics and Space Sciences at Sopron, Hungary, and he spent a full year as an Associate Professor at King Abdulaziz University’s Geohazard Research Center, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

During his 20 years in research, Professor Németh has conducted geological studies all over the world, including but not limited to, New Zealand, Central Europe, South America and East Asia, where he developed strong research links with esteemed international institutions. Working alongside global scholars, he has published top scientific papers in leading peer-reviewed journals, magazines and books from every continent, even Antarctica!

Károly Németh has numerous publications on geoheritage and its geoconservation aspects (see his most recent publication here). Whilst working in geoheritage research, he helped establish the Commission on Volcanic Geoheritage and Protected Volcanic Landscapes, at the IAVCEI (International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior), where he was an elected executive committee member of the IAVCEI between 2011 and 2015.

Whilst Professor Németh is a research geologist focusing on problems in volcanic geology, in the past 10 years he has become a strong advocate for geoconservation. As he is a trained Montessori Teacher, with a pedagogical background, Károly Németh saw the value of Earth Sciences and geoeducation in tackling the challenges of planetary change that we face as humanity.

Now, as well as an active Editorial Board Member at Conservation MDPI, Professor Németh is also the current chair of the Geoconservation Trust Aotearoa, a non-profit organisation that promotes geoconservation activity in New Zealand and the SW Pacific.

We caught up with Professor Nemeth to gain some insight into the field of Conservation today!

What encouraged you to enter the field of Conservation?

"My own research on volcano geology made my strong interest in conservation. My research, particularly volcanic hazard related research, highlighted the importance of geoeducation in every level of the society to develop a resilience society against natural hazards and be ready to understand the Earth System. Such approach can help us to develop a sustainable society that learn to “live with the abiotic nature of Earth”. I have seen through my own research the rapid changes of the Earth’s surface and its geological heritage that vanishes in a fast speed. In this respect, I felt an urgent need to approach to the geological and geomorphological features and processes in a transdisciplinary way where a balance is find between the human society’s needs for natural resources and the respect and preservation of its abiotic heritage."

Which paper (if any) changed your outlook on the field of Conservation?

"I cant really point to a single paper, but can list several in the time of early 2000s when geoheritage research intensity increased and new research fields developed and evolved what we understand these days as geoconservation. I was particularly amazed of the fact how little has been done in the past decades to recognise, characterize and valorise the abiotic nature, and treat it as a natural stage where the biotic nature and human society operates. I was pretty much fascinated by the emergence of the concept of ecosystem services, and then when the same concept was applied to the abiotic nature and formed a concept of geosystem services. While I find these new approaches refreshing, I still think that a far more inclusive and transdisciplinary approach is needed to develop a fully functional and sustainable conservation strategy for geoheritage."

What advice would you give to young researchers/scientists looking to begin their career in Conservation?

"As being a trained geologist with significant research experiences to understand Planet Earth my recent venture to the field of geoheritage and geoconservation showed me the importance to actively look for the cross-discipline areas and be open alternative, sometimes unexpected tools and methods to sort things out. I think particularly in geoheritage and geoconservation research such transdisciplinary approach is the key to become an inter-connected researcher who would be able to identify and execute programs truly would make changes within conservation."

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Journal Contact: Conservation Editorial Office (email) (LinkedIn)
Follow Conservation on Twitter: Conservation_OA.