Announcements

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

We are excited to welcome the following recognized researchers who recently joined the Editorial Board of JCDD (ISSN: 2308-3425):

Prof. Dr. Matteo Bertini, University of Ferrara, Italy;
Dr. Simon C. Body, Boston University School of Medicine, USA;
Dr. Simon D. Bamforth, Newcastle University, UK;
Prof. Dr. Yeon Hyeon Choe, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Korea;
Dr. Stefano Carugo, University of Milan, Italy;
Prof. Dr. Pierre Simon Jouk, CHU Grenoble Alpes, France;
Prof. Dr. Frans Leenen, University of Ottawa Heart Institute, Canada;
Dr. Roberto F. E. Pedretti, IRCCS MultiMedica, Italy;
Prof. Dr. David Sedmera, Charles University, Czech Republic;
Prof. Dr. Daniël De Wolf, Ghent University Hospital, Belgium;
Dr. Alessandro Zorzi, University of Padova, Italy;
Dr. Michael Lichtenauer, Paracelsus Medical University Salzburg, Austria;
Dr. Michele Di Mauro, Maastricht University Medical Centre (MUMC+), The Netherlands;
Prof. Dr. Paul R. Riley, University of Oxford, UK;
Dr. Sonia Stefanovic, Aix Marseille Université, France;
Dr. Zoltan Varga, Semmelweis University, Hungary;
Dr. Shunguang Wei, University of Iowa, USA;
Prof. Dr. David Sedmera, Charles University, Czech Republic.

Further details about the Editorial Board can be found at:

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jcdd/editors.

We are pleased to announce that the following researchers have been appointed as Associate Editors of JCDD (ISSN: 2308-3425):

We are confident that their academic backgrounds will help us to continue to raise the prestige and quality of JCDD. We look forward to their contributions to the journal. For more information about the Editorial Board, please visit https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jcdd/editors.

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

The 2020 citation metrics have been officially released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR)!

We are pleased to announce that 85 MDPI journals are included, of which:

• 10 journals received their first impact factor
• 96% of journals increased their impact factor from 2019
• 32 journals (38%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category

* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2021

Source: 2020 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ® (Clarivate, 2021)

MDPI Books recently released Book Builder, a new online tool to conveniently arrange, design and produce an eBook from any content published in MDPI journals. Book Builder offers two functions: on the one hand (1) Selections, available to every registered user of MDPI; on the other hand (2) Special Issue Reprints, which can be used exclusively by Guest Editors of Special Issues.

Selections

In just a matter of a few clicks, all users are now able to assemble books from MDPI articles and receive instantaneous feedback in the form of a fully produced and compiled book (PDF), which can be downloaded or ordered as print copy. Selections can include any paper published with MDPI, picking and combining content from different journals and special issues.

This way, the user may for example choose to compile an ebook focusing around a particular topic, or assemble articles from a group of others.

We invite you to make yourself familiar with the new tool! The Book Builder can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/books/book_builder.

Special Issue Reprints

The Book Builder allows Guest Editors of MDPI journals to create a reprint from a successfully completed Special Issue or Topical Collection in book format. If you are a Guest Editor for an MDPI journal, you can use the new tool  to create an PDF document which includes all articles published in the Special Issue as well as a book cover and table of contents.

For Special Issues containing a minimum of 5 articles, the Guest Editor can request its publication on the MDPI Book platform. Published reprints are assigned an ISBN and DOI.

In addition to the PDF copy of the Reprint Book, as a token of our gratitude, MDPI offers every Guest Editor one (1) complimentary print copy (via print-on-demand). All contributors benefit from a discount on orders of any additional print copies, to share with colleagues or libraries or others.

Why choose MDPI Books?

In line with our organization's values, MDPI Books publishes all content in open access, promoting the exchange of ideas and knowledge in a globalized world. MDPI Books encompasses all the benefits of open access—high availability and visibility, as well as wide and rapid dissemination. MDPI Books are distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License, meaning as an author you retain the copyright for your work. In addition, with MDPI Books you can complement the digital version of your work with a high-quality printed counterpart.

If you are interested in editing a book volume or series, or have a monograph manuscript to be considered for publication, please submit your proposal online and look at our Information for Authors.

Contact: Laura Wagner, MDPI Books Manager (email)

In June of this year, MDPI will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its foundation. To mark this significant milestone, we have created a 25th Anniversary page on our website that evokes the development of our company over the past quarter-century.

MDPI has been a pioneer of Open Access publishing ever since the concept was first created.

In a wide-ranging interview, our CEO Delia Mihaila reflects on the company’s 25th anniversary and its contribution to the world of scientific publishing.

Delia considers how MDPI has evolved since starting life in 1996 as a visionary ‘project’ run out of an apartment in Basel, Switzerland, by Dr. Shu-Kun Lin. A chemist who was passionate about the long-term preservation of rare chemical sample, Dr. Lin was determined to help scholars publish their findings as quickly as possible and make their research results available to as wide a readership as possible worldwide. That determination remains unchanged 25 years later.

Today, MDPI is an international organization with over 4,000 employees based on three continents and in ten countries, and ranks among the world's top four academic publishers.

MDPI's mission is to accelerate access to new scientific research, delivering insight faster for researchers worldwide. Read more here about the company's remarkable success story and what the Open Access publishing model can offer the global scientific community.

MDPI has provided several free open platforms that may help to accelerate scientific exchange and support academics during this particularly difficult period. Thanks to our brilliant technical support, we are pleased to report that the 1st Free Webinar on JCDD: Advances in Echocardiography for the Assessment of Mitral Valve Disease is coming soon.

Date and Time: 30 April 2021, 10:00 a.m. (CEST)

Webinar ID: 898 1196 4464

Duration: One hour

Register for Free Here: https://jcdd-1.sciforum.net/

Webinar Chair:

Dr. Nina Ajmone Marsan

Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands

Dr. Nina Ajmone Marsan is a Cardiologist. She specializes in non-invasive cardiovascular imaging and is currently working at the Leiden University Medical Center (the Netherlands), where she is a Senior Academic Researcher. Her main research topic is the clinical applications of imaging in cardiovascular disease, with special focus on valvular heart disease (particularly for patients referred for trans-catheter interventions), cardiomyopathies and systemic disease. She is also the Principal Investigator of translational research projects in mitral and aortic valve disease. She has more than 300 publications in peer-reviewed journals (h-index 42), and she has supervised 14 PhD students (6 completed and 8 ongoing). She was awarded with the research grant of ESC 2007, she has been FESC for scientific excellence since 2016, and she was awarded with the Women Transforming Leadership Program ESC grant of 2019. She is on the board of EACVI as Echo Councilor and is Chair of the Education Committee (2020–2022); she was in the EACVI Scientific Initiatives Committee (2018–2020), in the EACVI 2020 Congress Program Committee and she is now a mentor for the ESC and EACVI mentorship program. She is Associate Editor of the European Heart Journal and European Heart Journal Cardiovascular Imaging; she is on the Editorial Board of Heart and of the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography. She has been invited as a regular speaker to the main European and American international cardiology congresses and also to EACVI webinars, teaching courses and tutorials. She is the Director of the course “3D Echocardiography: Meet the Experts” (endorsed ESC).

Webinar Speakers:

Dr. Francesco Faletra

Istituto Cardiocentro Ticino, Switzerland

Dr. Francesco F. Faletra is the Director of the Cardiac Imaging Service of the Institute Cardiocentro Ticino, Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale in Lugano (Switzerland). The Cardiac Imaging Service comprises Echocardiography, Computed Tomography and Cardiac Magnetic Resonance. Dr. Faletra finished his medical schooling at the University of Catania (Italy) and his specialty in Cardiology at the University of Milan. He started his career as a young cardiologist at Centro De Gasperis Niguarda Hospital in Milan, where he completed his training in clinical, cat-lab and echocardiography. He continued his career as a Senior Cardiologist and Director of Echocardiography Service at the Niguarda Hospital until 2000, then he moved to Humanitas Hospital where he worked for 5 years as a Director of the Echocardiographic Laboratory. In 2005, he moved to the Cardiocentro Ticino, where he started as Director of Cardiac Imaging Service. In 2010, he participated for three months in work on cardiac magnetic resonance at Brompton Hospital in London. Doctor Faletra is the first author of more than 90 peer-reviewed papers and the principal editor of six books in English.

Dr. Mauro Pepi

University of Milan, Italy

Dr. Mauro Pepi is the Clinical Director of the Centro Cardiologico Monzino, IRCCS, Milan, Italy. He has authored 310 full-length publications in peer-reviewed journals. He is very deeply involved in educational and research activities, with studies in different fields of cardiovascular diseases (Echocardiography, Cardiomyopathies, Prosthetic Heart Valve Disease, Aortic Dissection, 3D Echocardiography, Cardiac CT, Cardiac MR, Artificial Intelligence). Mauro Pepi is author of 18 Book Chapters and 19 Guidelines or Recommendations (of the ESC or EACVI or ASE or SIECvi). He is President-Elect of the Italian Society of Echocardiography and Cardiovascular Imaging (October 2019). His h-index is 47.

Webinar Program

For any questions about the webinar, please send an email to jcdd.webinar@mdpi.com.