Announcements

With the first issue released in June 2023, five new MDPI journals disseminating multi-disciplinary science are due to launch, which will cover the subjects of medicine & pharmacology, biology and physical sciences.

The newly launched journals will be overseen by professional Editorial Board Members and Editors to ensure an accurate and rapid publication, rigorous peer review and broad visibility.

Please feel free to browse and discover more about the new journals below.

Journal	Founding Editor-in-Chief	Journal topics (selected)
	Prof. Dr. Jun Ma, Peking University, China| Editorial | view inaugural issue	growth and development; diet and nutrients; school health promotion policies and practices; child health and care; adolescent health and wellbeing | view journal scope | submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Bernd Rehm, Griffith University, Australia | Editorial | view inaugural issue	DNA and gene synthesis; synthetic transcription factors; protein engineering; viral engineering; metabolic engineering | view journal scope | submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Varsha Gandhi, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA | Editorial | view inaugural issue	lymphatics; cancers associated with lymphocytes and lymphoblasts; lymphatic tissues; lymphoma; lymphoid leukemia | view journal scope | submit an article
	Dr. Bradley Turner, University of Melbourne, Australia | Editorial | view inaugural issue	multiple sclerosis; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; primary lateral sclerosis; atherosclerosis; systemic sclerosis | view journal scope | submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Clemens Burda, Case Western Reserve University, USA | Editorial | view inaugural issue	Gamma ray, X-ray, and UV–Vis spectroscopies; NIR/mid-infrared/Raman spectroscopy; microwave and THz spectroscopy; high-resolution gas-phase atomic, molecular, and cluster spectroscopy; MS, NMR, and EPR spectroscopy | view journal scope | submit an article

We wish to thank everyone who has supported the development of open access publishing. You are welcome to submit an application to the New Journal Committee (newjournal-committee@mdpi.com) if you would like to create more new journals.

We are pleased to announce the winner of the Best Presentation Award, which Instruments (ISSN: 2410-390X) sponsored at the 15th Workshop of the European Cyclotron Network (CYCLEUR 2023), held from 22 to 23 June 2023, Bucharest, Romania. Congratulations Silvia-Diana Cocioabă!

“Cyclotron production of ⁶⁴Cu and ⁸⁹Zr using solid targets” by Silvia-Diana Cocioabă
The evolution of nuclear medicine has boosted the development of medical radioisotopes and radiopharmaceuticals production, with the help of which, quantitative images are acquired. These allow for the calculation of the quantities of radioactive material needed to efficiently and safely administer to patients for diagnosis and/or treatment.

At the Radiopharmaceutical Research Center (CCR) within IFIN-HH, emerging medical radioisotopes are produced, aimed at optimizing the production processes of radiopharmaceutical drugs, thus bringing together international interest in the development of nuclear medicine on a modern basis. The variable energy TR-19 (ACSI) cyclotron and ALCEO solid target irradiation and radiochemical processing system were used for radiometals production.

⁶⁴Cu is of particular interest due to its “triple” emissions of Auger electrons, β⁺ (17.86%) and β⁻ (39.03%). ⁶⁴Cu can be used as an imaging and/or theragnostic radioisotope in different types of cancer and also for various diseases including arteriosclerosis and Alzheimer's disease.

PET imaging with ⁸⁹Zr-based agents has been a dynamic field of research, and radiopharmaceuticals based on ⁸⁹Zr-labeled antibodies are intended for use in the early detection, screening and monitoring of malignant tumors, such as breast, prostate, ovarian and intestinal cancer.

In this talk, I presented our group’s results regarding the production of the two above-mentioned radioisotopes. The processes involve the irradiation of ^natY foils and electrodeposited ⁶⁴Ni targets, respectively, via ⁸⁹Y(p,n)⁸⁹Zr and ⁶⁴Ni(p,n)⁶⁴Cu nuclear reactions. Irradiations were conducted on a fully automated solid target irradiation system. The irradiated targets were dissolved and processed to obtain pharmaceutical-grade products. The results were in good agreement with the simulations and prove that the processes of pharmaceutical-grade production of radiometals and radiopharmaceuticals can be successfully carried out at the Radiopharmaceutical Research Centre (CCR).

We are pleased to announce the winner of the Best Presentation Award that Instruments (ISSN: 2410-390X) sponsored at the ASAPP 2023—Advances in Space AstroParticle Physics: Frontier technologies for particle measurements in space Conference, held on 19–23 June 2023, Perugia, Italy. Congratulations Luis Fariña Alonso!

“Gamma-ray performance of the HERD trigger system” by Luis Fariña Alonso
The High Energy cosmic-Radiation Detection (HERD) facility has been proposed as one of the main experiments on board the China Space Station. HERD is scheduled to be installed around 2027, and to operate for at least 10 years. Its main stated scientific goals are the study of the cosmic ray spectrum and composition up to the ~PeV energy range, indirect dark matter detection, and all-sky gamma-ray observation in the 100 MeV–100 GeV energy range.

HERD will feature a novel design in order to optimize its acceptance per weight. It is composed of a central 3D imaging calorimeter (CALO), surrounded on top and on its four lateral sides of its faces by complementary subdetectors, including the fiber tracking detector (FIT), the plastic scintillator detector (PSD), and the silicon charge detector (SCD). A transition radiation detector (TRD) is installed on one of its faces for calibration.

A dedicated trigger, dubbed the ultra-low-energy gamma-ray (ULEG) trigger, is required to enable the detection of energy gamma rays down to 100 MeV. The ULEG trigger design is based upon the search for energy deposition patterns on the FIT and PSD, compatible with the conversion of a gamma ray within the FIT volume, and resulting in enough FIT hits to allow for a good-quality gamma-ray direction reconstruction. We describe the current status of the design of the ULEG trigger system, and of its hardware implementation. We also characterize its performance in detecting gamma rays, as inferred from Monte Carlo studies.

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)

International Asteroid Day is observed annually on 30 June to mark the date of Earth’s largest asteroid impact in recorded history, the Siberia Tunguska event. It was established by the United Nations in 2016 to increase public awareness of the risk of an asteroid impact and to inform the public about crisis communication actions to be taken at the global level in the event of a credible NEO threat.

To further explore the related research on the 2023 International Asteroid Day, we have gathered open access academic articles on the topic of asteroids. We hope to share the up-to-date scientific knowledge in the field of asteroids with the world on this special day.

“Applied Trajectory Design for CubeSat Close-Proximity Operations around Asteroids: The Milani Case”
by Claudio Bottiglieri, Felice Piccolo, Carmine Giordano, Fabio Ferrari and Francesco Topputo
Aerospace 2023, 10(5), 464; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace10050464

“Fitting Power Spectrum of Scalar Perturbations for Primordial Black Hole Production during Inflation”
by Daniel Frolovsky and Sergei V. Ketov
Astronomy 2023, 2(1), 47-57; https://doi.org/10.3390/astronomy2010005

“Avoiding the “Great Filter”: A Projected Timeframe for Human Expansion Off-World”
by Jonathan H. Jiang, Philip E. Rosen and Kristen A. Fahy
Galaxies 2021, 9(3), 53; https://doi.org/10.3390/galaxies9030053

“History of the Terminal Cataclysm Paradigm: Epistemology of a Planetary Bombardment That Never (?) Happened”
by William K. Hartmann
Geosciences 2019, 9(7), 285; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences9070285

“Small All-Range Lidar for Asteroid and Comet Core Missions”
by Xiaoli Sun, Daniel R. Cremons, Erwan Mazarico, Guangning Yang, James B. Abshire, David E. Smith, Maria T. Zuber, Mark Storm, Nigel Martin, Jacob Hwang et al.
Sensors 2021, 21(9), 3081; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21093081

“Trajectories Derived from Periodic Orbits around the Lagrangian Point L1 and Lunar Swing-Bys: Application in Transfers to Near-Earth Asteroids”
by Rebeca S. Ribeiro, Cristiano F. de Melo and Antônio F. B. A. Prado
Symmetry 2022, 14(6), 1132; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym14061132

“Capture in Regime of a Trapped Motion with Further Inelastic Collision for Finite-Sized Asteroid in ER3BP”
by Sergey Ershkov, Dmytro Leshchenko and Alla Rachinskaya
Symmetry 2022, 14(8), 1548; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym14081548

“New Tools for the Optimized Follow-Up of Imminent Impactors”
by Maddalena Mochi and Giacomo Tommei
Universe 2021, 7(1), 10; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe7010010

“Near-Earth Asteroid Capture via Using Lunar Flyby plus Earth Aerobraking”
by Yirui Wang and Mingtao Li
Universe 2021, 7(9), 316; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe7090316

“Short-Term Consequences of Asteroid Impacts into the Ocean: A Portuguese Case Study”
by Renato H. Morais, Luís F. F. M. Santos, André R. R. Silva and Rui Melicio
Universe 2022, 8(5), 279; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe8050279

We are pleased to inform you that Instruments (ISSN: 2410-390X) has received an increased CiteScore of 2.7 according to the 2022 CiteScores™ (Elsevier) released in June 2023. Instruments now ranks Q2 in the "Instrumentation" category in the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR). To learn more about the statistics, please visit https://www.mdpi.com/journal/instruments/stats.

We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all the authors, reviewers, and editors who have supported us and contributed their time to the journal.

For more information or to submit to our journal, please visit the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/instruments.

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.