Announcements

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.

We would like to congratulate Prof. Dr. Hualou Long, Advisory Board Member of Land (ISSN: 2073-445X), who has been elected to the prestigious Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences for his achievements in the fields of human geography focusing on land-use transition and rural restructuring. This is an award granted by the Academy of Social Sciences to leading academics, policymakers, and practitioners of the social sciences. New fellows are elected each year by the Academy of Social Sciences from among outstanding scholars in the UK and international humanities and social sciences.

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.

Conference: 2023 AAG Annual Meeting
Date: 23–27 April 2023
Location: Denver, USA

MDPI will be attending the 2023 AAG Annual Meeting as an exhibitor, and we welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest ideas with us.

This conference is organized by the American Association of Geographers (AAG). The theme of the meeting is “Toward More Just Geographies”. At the meeting, specialists will share and discuss the latest in research and applications in geography, sustainability, and GIScience.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Remote Sensing (leading journal);
• Sustainability (leading journal);
• IJGI;
• Hydrology;
• Land;
• Water;
• Earth;
• Atmosphere;
• IJERPH;
• Fire;
• Oceans;
• GeoHazards;
• Coasts;
• Geomatics.

Remote Sensing (ISSN: 2072-4292, IF: 5.349) publishes regular research papers, reviews, technical notes and communications covering all aspects of remote sensing science, from sensor design and validation/calibration to its application in geosciences, environmental sciences, ecology, and civil engineering. The aim is to publish novel/improved methods/approaches and/or algorithms of remote sensing to benefit the community, open to everyone in need of them.

Sustainability (ISSN: 2071-1050, IF: 3.889) encourages experts to publish their experimental, computational and theoretical research on sustainability. This encompasses topics related to social sciences, natural and applied science and engineering, in order to enable the application and development of sustainability.

If you are planning to attend this conference, please do not hesitate to start an online conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://www.aag.org/events/aag2023/.

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.

We are delighted to share with you 13 reprints of Special Issues published in 2022 in Land (ISSN: 2073-445X). They were selected by the Land Editorial Office, each with 10 or more articles published. You can read more reprints of the Special Issues published by Land here. If you are interested in editing a Special Issue, you are welcome to check out our new initiative—the Special Issue Mentor Program.

The articles below have been selected as 2022 Issue Cover Articles by the Editorial Office of Land (ISSN: 2073-445X). These articles came from multiple fields within the scope of Land and we hope they can provide insights and references for scholars in related fields.

As we reflect on the past year, the Editor-in-Chief Prof. Christine Fürst and all the staff from the Land Editorial Office extend great thanks to all who have contributed to the development of Land. We wish you all a joyful holiday season and a happy New Year filled with outstanding achievements. Let us welcome a few of our Editorial Board Members to express our gratitude and best wishes for the coming year.

Land (ISSN: 2073-445X, IF: 3.905) 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 modeling and data processing, ecosystem services, and multifunctionality and sustainability, etc., published monthly online by MDPI. The International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE), European Land-use Institute (ELI), Landscape Institute (LI), and Urban Land Institute (ULI) are affiliated with Land, and their members receive a discount on the Article Processing Charge.

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative—the MDPI Special Issue Mentor Program.

This program will enable early career researchers (who must hold a Ph.D. in a related field) to experience editing a Special Issue in MDPI journals, under the mentorship of our experienced Editorial Board Members or other experienced scientists. The mentor program will provide an excellent opportunity for early career scientists to gain editorial experience, and to cultivate their ability to edit scientific research.

The mentee’s responsibilities include:

• Proposing a Special Issue title and assisting the mentor in preparing a summary (around 200–400 words) and 3–10 keywords describing the background, importance, and goal of the Issue;
• Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
• Preparing a list of scholars who may be interested in the Issue and personally e-mailing invitations on behalf of Guest Editors;
• Writing an editorial for the online Special Issue together with the mentor.

The mentor’s responsibilities include:

• Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
• Performing editorial control of the Special Issue and quality control of the publications, both of which must be carried out in a timely manner;
• Providing suggestions to younger scholars if they have any doubts or concerns regarding submissions;
• Organizing video calls with young scholars and the Editorial Office regularly to discuss problems and improvement suggestions for the Special Issue;
• Making and submitting decisions regarding submissions with the assistance of mentees.

Certificates and awards:
After the Special Issue closes, the Editorial Office will provide official certificates for all the mentors and early career researchers.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Editorial Office of a journal you choose, and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail. The full list of MDPI journals is as follows: https://www.mdpi.com/about/journals.

In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, we will continue to welcome all Special Issue proposals focusing on hot research topics.

MDPI has just become the first open access (OA) publisher to reach the milestone of one million articles published. That is one million articles freely available to all, to circulate and build upon! We are proud to share this special moment with the global scientific community.

This landmark has been reached thanks to the immeasurable support of more than 600,000 expert reviewers, 66,000 editorial board members and 6700 hard-working colleagues across MDPI’s global offices.

Within more than 25 years of publishing, our journals received 2.1 million manuscripts and generated 4.6 million peer review reports to get to one million papers published.

Reaching the milestone of one million articles published reinforces our mission to remove any existing barriers and to make scientific research accessible to all. Since its inception, MDPI’s goal has been to create reliable processes to make science open. This is a path towards facilitating the dissemination of novel insights in scientific communities.

Regular feedback from authors and reviewers shows that our service is greatly appreciated and needed. At the same time, the feedback helps us identify areas for further improvement.

As it stands, a significant share of published research findings remain closed access. More than half of the content published with the most well-known legacy publishers stays behind a paywall, and that is not including articles published in hybrid OA journals, or made available months or years after publication.

A new policy announced by the US administration in August 2022 requires that, as of January 2026, all US federally funded research be made freely and immediately available after publication. While the new policy does not mandate articles be published under an open access license, it is aligned with the open access movement in removing all barriers to research. Similarly, some of the most advanced research institutions in the world intend to have all funded research articles published in open access by 2025.

MDPI is proud to be the leading agent of the transition to open access.

"Thanks a Million" to all the contributors!