Announcements

Land (ISSN: 2073-445X) is an international and cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal of land system science, landscape, soil–sediment–water systems, urban study, land–climate interactions, water–energy–land–food (WELF) nexus, biodiversity research and health nexus, land modelling and data processing, ecosystem services, and multifunctionality and sustainability etc., published monthly online by MDPI. It is the only open access journal covering all aspects of land science, indexed within Scopus, SSCI (Web of Science), AGRICOLA, AGRIS, GeoRef, RePEc, and many other databases. Land has received an increased CiteScore (2020 Scopus data) of 3.0, and its 2020 Impact Factor is 3.398.

Land’s new Section “Land, Biodiversity, and Human Wellbeing” is now recruiting Editorial Board Members. This Section will highlight the land–biodiversity–human wellbeing nexus with respect to its trends, compromises, and controversies. You can find more information on the Section webpage: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land/sections/land_biodiversity_human_wellbeing.

The main responsibilities of Section Editorial Board Members are as follows:

• Pre-screening and making decisions on new submissions related to the journal Section;
• Assisting in editing a Special Issue on a topic related to the Section (or supervising Special Issues related to your research field);
• Providing input or feedback regarding journal policies;
• Helping to promote the journal among their peers or at conferences;
• Attending board meetings to develop journal development strategies;
• Reviewing manuscripts.

This position is open to active experts who are passionate about this field. To apply for the position, recommend potential candidates, or request further information, please do not hesitate to contact the Land Editorial Office (land@mdpi.com) or Erin Li (erin.li@mdpi.com).

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Sean Sloan has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the newly established Section “Land, Biodiversity, and Human Wellbeing” in Land (ISSN 2073-445X, IF 3.398).

Dr. Sean Sloan is a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in the Human Dimensions of Sustainability and Resilience and Professor of Geography at Vancouver Island University, Canada. His research interests encompass emergent trends to land management/change in the Global South, particularly with respect to the human dimensions of forest change, wildfires, and agriculture. Formally, Dr. Sloan was a Research Fellow at James Cook University, Australia, where his research extended to biological conservation amidst rapid road infrastructure development and related land exploitation.

The following is a short Q&A with Dr. Sean Sloan, who shared his vision for the Section with us, as well as his views of the research area:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief?

In my view, Land has served as a niche outlet for exploratory research often produced by emergent scholars, including junior scientists, those in the Global South, and/or other typically under-represented demographics. When carefully vetted and cultivated, studies from such scholars can often be visionary and exciting. I have always enjoyed bringing out the best of such studies. I now look forward to doing so formally as Section Editor-in-Chief.

2. What is your vision for the Section?

While cliché, it is true that we live in unprecedented times in many respects, in degree if not in kind. The impacts of unfolding land-change dynamics are arguably more cumulative than ever, or at least felt more widely in terms of individual and societal wellbeing, broadly defined. This Section, therefore, seeks to compile scientific studies and informed commentaries on the implications of land change and/or related biodiversity fluxes for human wellbeing, as with respect to physical, mental, and spiritual health but also notions of social and environmental security, resilience, prosperity, and peace.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?

To date, the field has been both piecemeal (e.g., local case studies) or all-encompassing (e.g., global meta-analyses). Each approach has struggled to explicitly highlight and/or generalise the “connective tissue” between actual land management, actual biodiversity change, and actual human wellbeing. The promise of the field, and this Section, is in doing just this.

4. What do you think of the development of Open Access in the publishing field?

I have always held Open Access publication as necessary for a globalized world in which much scientific research is publicly funded, but where access to educational resources including publications remains highly uneven. The Open Access model provides unparalleled access to scientific knowledge amongst scholars and practitioners, particularly in the Global South, where journal subscriptions are very limited. Ultimately, the model contributes to greater knowledge dissemination and related applications, perhaps especially where they are most needed. In short, the model is both scientifically utilitarian and publicly virtuous.

5. Who should contribute to this Section, and what can readers expect?

Contributions are welcome from all keen observers of the nexus of land management, biodiversity, and human wellbeing. These include professional scientists but also informed practitioners of land management, conservation, health, etc., as well as stakeholders dealing with changes to this nexus.

We warmly welcome Dr. Sean Sloan to his new role as Section Editor-in-Chief, and we look forward to his leading Land to many more milestones.

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Chuanrong (Cindy) Zhang has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the newly established Section “Land Innovations – Data and Machine Learning” in Land (ISSN 2073-445X, IF 3.398).

Prof. Dr. Chuanrong (Cindy) Zhang received the Ph.D. in geography from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in 2004. She is currently a professor at the Department of Geography & Center of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs. Prof. Dr. Zhang is a broadly trained geographer with substantive interests in geospatial technologies. Her research is interdisciplinary. In particular, her research concentrates on geographical information science (GIS), remote sensing, geo-spatial statistics, geocomputation, GIS cyberinfrastructure, and their applications in land-use/cover studies, climate change, managing disasters and natural resources, landscape ecology, environmental planning, as well as transportation studies. She has published articles in leading journals on GIS, geography, remote sensing, soil, and environmental studies. She has published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings since 2003. She published her monograph titled Geospatial Semantic Web as the first author with Springer in 2015. Her work has been supported by different prestigious agents such as the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. She has served as the committee chair or member for several international or national organizations in the geospatial community such as the AAG (Association of American Geographers), CPGIS (The International Association of Chinese Professionals in GIS), and UCGIS (University Consortium for Geographic Information Science). She received the UCGIS/ESRI (University Consortium for Geographic Information Science/Environmental Systems Research Institute) Junior Faculty Award in 2009 and became an NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) CyberGIS Fellow in 2014.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Chuanrong Zhang, who shared her vision for the Section with us as well as her views of the research area:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take on the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief?

Many of the central challenges of the 21st century are tied to our land. For example, receding glaciers, loss of species’ habitats, growing inequalities, resource depletion, population migration, rising disasters, and climate change. Land is the journal in which to publish important interdisciplinary research on land, which has the potential to contribute greatly to efforts to solve these challenges. The journal has gained more attention in various fields and has had a growing impact across the sciences in recent years. As a geographer, I have research interests in common with the journal. My recent research focuses on investigating new technologies in GIS, remote sensing, and spatial statistics to process, analyze, and represent geographical data, which match the aims and scope of the journal well.

2. What is your vision for the Section?

The “Land Innovations – Data and Machine Learning” Section includes, but is not limited to, frontiers of research in spatial data science for obtaining, processing, analyzing, harnessing, and visualizing social, economic, environmental, and other data related to Land. Geospatial artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques for dealing with spatial big data, including remotely sensed data and social media data, are particularly welcome.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?

The future of research on land data and machine learning is exciting. The future of research will move beyond proof-of-concept demonstrations and applications of big data and machine learning techniques. The future of research may involve investigations that draw on diverse perspectives and different types of data as well as emphasize integrated approaches and model-driven data analytics approaches, which are important in addressing many research problems and may promote large-scale collaborations.

4. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?

As the Internet has enabled low-cost distribution of digital content, the development of open access will probably gain increasing acceptance and become more popular in the future. More and more journals will become open access journals.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Chuanrong Zhang to her new role as Section Editor-in-Chief, and we look forward to her leading Land to many more milestones.

At the end of October 2021, the citation metrics of Journal Citation Reports (JCR, https://jcr.help.clarivate.com/Content/data-updates.htm) were updated, in order to fix the problems associated with missing material, as well as to fix other small errors. Based on the new metrics, Land received a new IF of 3.398, which is a slight increase from the previous IF of 3.395.

The newest journal ranking in the corresponding categories is shown below.

For more journal statistics, please visit https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land/stats.

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.

The Landscape Institute (LI) Awards 2021 online ceremony will be held on 25 November 2021, at 12 p.m. GMT.

The transformative power of landscape is extremely important in times of crisis. Following the success of the 2020 Landscape Institute Awards, the LI Awards 2021 will aim to celebrate the exceptional contributions of landscape designers, managers, planners, and researchers across the world.

For more information, please visit https://awards.landscapeinstitute.org/.

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