Announcements

We are pleased to announce that the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research (JTAER) will be published by MDPI from Volume 16, Issue 3 (2021). If you are interested in contributing to our journal and would like to acquire further credentials in the field of electronic commerce by serving on the JTAER team, please do not hesitate to get in touch about joining the Editorial Board. We are seeking team members from diverse backgrounds, such as Computer Science, Information Systems, Business, Law, and the Social Science, among others.

If you are interested in this position or know of potential candidates to recommend, please contact us by 30 June 2021.

JTAER (ISSN 0718-1876) is fully open access with a distinguished Editorial Board representing extensive academic expertise (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jtaer/editors). JTAER is covered by the Social Science Citation Index (Web of Science). The Impact Factor in 2019 was 1.906, and the 5-Year Impact Factor is 1.901. The 2019 Scopus CiteScore of JTAER is 3.4. For more information about JTAER, please visit https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jtaer.

As an Editorial Board Member, you would be responsible for:

(1) Pre-screening submissions and making decisions on whether they should be rejected or accepted for processing;

(2) Recommending timely topics and suggesting potential Guest Editors;

(3) Editing a Special Issue on a topic related to your research;

(4) Publishing one paper per year, free of charge, in open access;

(5) Identifying appropriate conferences for editors to attend;

(6) Promoting JTAER and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences.

To apply or request further information, please send your full academic CV and a short statement of interest to the JTAER Editorial Office ([email protected]).

We believe that through your expertise in combination with our rigorous editorial policies, we can produce a high-quality journal. We thank you in advance for your interest and look forward to collaborating with you.

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.

The OA Switchboard, supported by OASPA through a strategic partnership, aims to be a "neutral, independent intermediary enabling shared infrastructure, bringing transparency, efficiency and cost effectiveness to the open access ecosystem".

Its organizational structure ensures collective control by the involved funders, institutions and publishers alike. The OA Switchboard acts as an intermediary platform between institutions, funders and publishers enabling the action to send-and-receive a standardised message between them.

OA Switchboard is currently in its 'Pilot' phase and will officially enter the 'Launch' phase on 1 January 2021. Over the next two years, the organization will add to the functionality of the platform with open source solutions, to increase the transparency and remove administrative barriers in the transition to fully open access publishing.

MDPI will be one of the founding partners, along with the following other publishers: AboutScience, American Physiological Society, Berghahn Books, EDP Sciences, eLife, Hindawi, John Benjamins Publishing Company, JMIR Publications, Microbiology Society, PLOS, The Royal Society. Among the partnering institutions and consortia are the Max Planck Digital Library, the California Digital Library, CERN and Jisc.

During the pilot period, MDPI was one of the first publishers to implement customized solutions to help institutions keep track of publications and payments through OA Switchboard.

Contact: Aleksandra Cuculovic
MDPI Billing Manager, OA Switchboard 'Client Advisory Board' Member