Announcements

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 announce that Prof. Dr. Lei Shu has been appointed Editor-in-Chief for Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks (ISSN 2224-2708). He joined Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks in 2012 and has made a great contribution to our growth and development.

Lei Shu is currently a Professor with Nanjing Agricultural University, China, and a Lincoln Professor with the University of Lincoln, UK. He is also the Director of the NAU-Lincoln Joint Research Center of Intelligent Engineering. He was the vice-director of Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Petrochemical Equipment Fault Diagnosis, China, 2013–2017. He received the B.S. degree in computer science from South Central University for Nationalities, China, in 2002, the M.S. degree in computer engineering from Kyung Hee University, South Korea, in 2005, and the Ph.D. degree from the Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland, in 2010. During 2010 to 2012, he was a Specially Assigned Researcher with the Department of Multimedia Engineering, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University, Japan. He was a recipient of the 2014 Top Level Talents in Sailing Plan of Guangdong Province, China, the 2015 Outstanding Young Professor of Guangdong Province, the GLOBECOM 2010, ICC 2013, ComManTel 2014, WICON 2016, SigTelCom 2017 Best Paper Awards, the 2017, 2018 and 2020 IEEE Systems Journal Best Paper Awards, the 2017 Journal of Network and Computer Applications Best Research Paper Award, Outstanding Service Award of IUCC 2012, ComcomAP 2014, Outstanding Leadership Award of Healthcom 2017, the Outstanding Associate Editor Award of 2017, and the 2018 IEEE ACCESS.

He has published over 400 papers in related conferences, journals, and books in the areas of sensor networks and Internet of Things. His current H-index is 62 and i10-index is 244 in Google Scholar Citation (more than 13400 times). He is a senior member of IEEE, IEEE IES, IEEE ComSoc, a member of ACM.

Website: http://nljrc.njau.edu.cn/
Interests: agricultural Internet of things (IoTs); solar insecticidal lamps IoTs; photovoltaic agricultural IoTs; agricultural big data and equipment monitoring; green and wireless energy transfer; self-adaptive and dynamic control; dangerous area detection and urgent evacuation; industrial WSNs and fault diagnosis; WSNs with environmental energy harvesting; localization in duty-cycled and sparse WSNs; wireless/mobile multimedia sensor networks; geographic multi-path routing; cross-layer optimization in wireless sensor networks; duty-cycled sleep scheduling algorithms; wireless sensor networks simulator and testbed visualizer; sensory data management and sharing
Affiliation: 1. School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China; 2. School of Engineering, College of Science, University of Lincoln, Lincoln LN6 7TS, UK

He is serving as Chair of IEEE Industrial Electronics Society - TC on Cloud and Wireless Systems for Industrial Applications and Vice-Chair of IEEE Industrial Electronics Society - IEEE Nanjing Chapter, China. He served as the Vice-Chair for SIG on Energy Harvesting Communications. He served as Vice-Chair of CCF TC on Computer Applications, 2016–2018. He is now serving as Specialty Chief Editor of Frontiers in Plant Science-Sustainable and Intelligent Phytoprotection Section, and serving as associate editors for IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Network Magazine, IEEE Systems Journal, IEEE Access, IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, Sensors, Electronics, etc. He had once served as Founding Editor-in-Chief for EAI Endorsed Transactions on Industrial Networks and Intelligent Systems, and associate editors in these following journals: IEEE Communications Magazine, ACM/Springer Wireless Networks, Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technology, Journal of Network and Computer Applications, Security and Communication Networks, Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, International Journal of Communication Systems, KSII Transaction on Internet and Information Systems, International Journal of Sensor Networks, Ad Hoc & Sensor Wireless Networks, Journal of Internet Technology, Journal of Communications, IET Communications, IET Networks, and IET Wireless Sensor Systems.

He served as Co-chair for more than 60 various international conferences/workshops, e.g., IWCMC, ICC, ISCC, ICNC, Chinacom, Qshine, Collaboratecom, Healthcom, DependSys, INISCOM, WICON, WMNC, ISITC, ICNCC, IndustrialIoT, ITIA，CIOTI，NCCA，SCI，IECON, INDIN，ICIT，ISIE，DCOSS，GLOBECOM，ISCC，WFCS; TPC members of more than 200 conferences, e.g., ICDCS, DCOSS, MASS, ICC, Globecom, ICCCN, WCNC, ISCC. He has obtained more than 16 million RMB research grant since October 2012.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Lei Shu in his role as Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks and look forward to achieving further success under his lead.

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)

Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks (JSAN; ISSN 2224-2708) published its inaugural issue in 2012. It has become a fixture among the current scientific journals and has been covered by Emerging Sources Citation Index (Web of Science) and Scopus.

The topics covered by JSAN, sensor and actuator networks, are now more relevant than ever. Networked sensors and actuators form the backbone of the Internet of Things, and many applications are based on them, such as smart cities, smart environment and Industry 4.0. As important data providers, they will become much more significant in the emerging AI ecosystems.

The year 2022 marks the 10th anniversary of JSAN. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the journal, we are currently organizing a Special Issue entitled "Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks: 10th Year Anniversary" to commemorate this important milestone. On the one hand, we want to look ahead and, therefore, invite submissions of original papers. On the other hand, it is also worth looking back: which technologies have particularly influenced the field, and which form the basis of many applications today? For this purpose, we also invite submissions of review articles. The submission deadline is 30 June 2022. You are welcome to submit your work at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jsan/special_issues/JSAN_10_Year.

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.

At MDPI, we strive to make your online publication process seamless and efficient. To achieve this, our team is continuously developing tools and features to make the user experience useful and convenient.

As the number of academic papers continues to grow, so does the need to analyze and work with them on a large scale. This prompted us to design a new feature aimed at helping researchers find journals that are relevant to their publication by matching their abstract topic. In this regard, we designed a similarity model that automatically identifies the most suitable academic journals for your paper.

We are pleased to introduce Journal Selector, a new feature that measures similarity in academic contexts. By simply entering the title and/or abstract into our Journal Selector, the author will see a list of the most related scientific journals published by MDPI. This method helps authors select the correct journals for their papers, highlighting the time of publication and citability.

The methodology is known as representation learning, where words are represented as vectors in hyperspace. Representation helps us differentiate between different concepts within articles, and in turn, helps us identify similarities between them.

We used an advanced machine learning model to better capture the semantic meanings of words. This helps the algorithm make better predictions by leveraging scientific text representation. In turn, this ensures high precision, helping authors decide which journal they should submit their paper to.

The goal is to support authors to publish their work in the most suitable journal for their research, as fast as possible, accelerating their career progress.

Contact: Andrea Perlato, Head of Data Analytics, MDPI (email)

MDPI is proud to adopt the principles of the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) to support building equity, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications.

The C4DISC represents organizations and individuals working in scholarly communications and is focused on addressing issues of diversity and inclusion within the publishing industry.

MDPI’s Managing Editors encourage the Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors to appoint diverse expert Editorial Boards. This is also reflective in our multi-national and inclusive workplace. We are proud to create equal opportunities without regard to gender, ethnicity, geographic location, sexual orientation, age, disability, political beliefs, religion, or socio-economic status. There is no place for discrimination in our workplace and editors of MDPI journals are to uphold these principles in high regard.

Representatives from C4DISC meet monthly, and have started to implement initiatives to shed light and improve on the lack of diversity in scholarly communications. Some of the initiatives include developing a joint statement of principles; conducting market research; providing training resources, best practices, toolkits, and documentation for our collective memberships; and establishing outreach programs, curricula, events, and publications.

The Coalition is committed to:

• eliminating barriers to participation, extending equitable opportunities across all stakeholders, and ensuring that our practices and policies promote equitable treatment and do not allow, condone, or result in discrimination;
• creating and maintaining an environment that respects diverse traditions, heritages, and experiences;
• promoting diversity in all staff, volunteers, and audiences, including full participation in programs, policy formulation, and decision-making;
• raising awareness about career opportunities in our industries to groups who are currently underrepresented in the workforce;
• supporting our members in achieving diversity and inclusion within their organizations.

At MDPI we have slightly revised the layout for articles to be published in the 2021 Volume, starting at the end of December 2020. As of today, the article templates available for download on ‘Instructions for Authors’ pages have been updated.

The most noticeable change can be found on the first page of the article, where a left-hand column has been created to include the following front matter elements: (i) the recommended citation style for the article, (ii) the publishing history, (iii) as well as the Creative Commons Attribution license used (iv) a standard note regarding affiliations. At the same time, the extra spacing on the left means the authors’ affiliations are now more clearly set apart than before. Other front matter key elements such as journal logo, article type, article title, authors, abstract and keywords remain unchanged.

The blank column on the left runs through all pages in an article; as a result, the main text is slightly more condensed, which improve reader friendliness for smaller screens. Small figures/tables are aligned on the left with standard indenture, while large figures/tables are centered and covering the full width of the page. The revised layout was applied in the article pictured below, to serve as an example:

1) Information is displayed in the left information bar.

2) In the main text, there is a blank column on the left.

3) Small tables/figures are aligned on the left, large tables/figures are centered.

We are pleased to acknowledge that many academic editors who have made an impact on MDPI journals as editorial board members, editors-in-chief, or section editors, are recognized as 2020 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate.

Highly Cited Researchers highlights the top 1% of researchers, by citations, in one or more of the 22 fields used in Clarivate Analytics Essential Science Indicators. We offer our congratulations to 279 academic editors of MDPI journals who were recognized as the most influential scholars in their fields in 2020.

The full list of 2020 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed on https://recognition.webofsciencegroup.com/awards/highly-cited/2020/

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