Announcements

Machines (ISSN: 2571-8789) is now recruiting scientists to join the Editorial Board.

As an Editorial Board Member, you would have the following responsibilities:

• Promoting Machines on your social media or among your acquaintances;
• Supervising the quality of the papers of Machines (when we have new submissions that fit well with your expertise);
• Acting as/recommending a Guest Editor for a Special Issue on a topic related to your research interests;
• Providing conference/society cooperation recommendations;
• Providing suggestions or comments on journal development.

As an Editorial Board Member, you would have the following benefits:

• Publishing one paper free of charge in Machines per year, and also publishing extra papers with special discounts;
• Publishing one paper free of charge in your own Special Issue per year;
• Organizing or promoting your own conferences by using our platform SciForum (https://sciforum.net/conferences);
• A CHF 500–1000 travel grant will be offered to Editorial Board Members that make significant contributions to the journal;
• Recommending/inviting your colleagues to submit full research articles or review papers with special discounts.
  

Machines is an open access international journal on machinery, manufacturing and engineering. It was launched in 2013 and has been indexed in several main databases such as the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)-Web of Science, Scopus, and Inspec. Machines received a new IF of 2.899 from JCR in 2022, which equals a rank of 61/137 (Q2) in the “Engineering, Mechanical” category, as well as 127/276 (Q2) in the “Engineering, Electrical & Electronic” category.

If you are interested in joining the Editorial Board of Machines, please send your full academic CV and a short cover letter that details your interest and enthusiasm for the position to machines@mdpi.com.

Conference: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2023)

Date: 29 May–2 June 2023
Place: London, UK

Machines (ISSN: 2075-1702) will be attending ICRA 2023 as an exhibitor. This meeting will take place from 29 May to 2 June 2023 in London, UK.

The largest and most prestigious event of the year in the robotics and automation calendar, the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) will bring together the world's top academics, researchers, and industry representatives. With the conference taking place in the UK for the first time, London will provide the perfect backdrop to this world-class event.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Machines;
• Sensors;
• Actuators;
• Applied Sciences;
• Electronics;
• Robotics;
• Systems;
• JSAN;
• Technologies;
• Inventions;
• Designs;
• Drones;
• JMMP;
• Telecom;
• AI;
• Automation.

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.icra2023.org/.

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!

Recently, Clarivate^TM revealed its 2022 list of Highly Cited Researchers^TM—individuals at universities, research institutes and commercial organizations.

The scientists who were selected into this year’s list of Highly Cited Researchers have published highly cited papers in the 11-year period from January 2011 to December 2021, with citation frequency in the top 1% of academic subjects and the same year of publication in the Web of Science^TM database. Based on Web of Science Citation data, 6,938 researchers from across the globe who have demonstrated a disproportionate level of significant and broad influence in their chosen field or fields over the last decade have been awarded Highly Cited Researcher 2022 designations. The list is truly global, spanning 69 countries or regions and spread across a diverse range of research sciences and social sciences.

According to statistics, 5 members of the Editorial Board of Machines (ISSN: 2075-1702) have been selected into the list of Highly Cited Researchers of Clarivate in 2022. They are being recognized for their high-quality scientific research achievements and outstanding contributions to professional fields. The Machines journal office sincerely congratulates all elected Editorial Board Members and hopes that they continue to have an academically productive relationship with the journal.

We are pleased to announce that the website of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation has been revamped! For the past couple of months, our UX UI team and front-end developers have been working hard to launch the website in time for the opening of the Sustainability Awards nominations.

The website is not the only thing that has had a remodeling. Indeed, the format of the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award (ESLA) has been updated. ESLA is now a competition open to individual researchers or start-ups founded by researchers under the age of 35. Nominee applications will go through 2 rounds of selection until the final 3 are decided. The finalists will then be invited to give pitch presentations during the Award Ceremony to win either first place (10,000 USD) or runner-up (2 x 5000 USD).

The World Sustainability Award, on the other hand, remains the same: a total prize money of 100,000 USD is up for grabs by senior individual researchers or groups of researchers from the international research community.

Nominations for both the World Sustainability Award and the Emerging Sustainability Leader award are now open! Check out our new website for more information on how to nominate.

Stanford University has recently published an update of the list of the top 2% most widely cited scientists—the World’s Top 2% Scientists.

The time node of the statistical data of this list is from 1960 to 2022, and it is divided into two lists: "Lifetime Scientific Influence Ranking" and "2022 Annual Scientific Influence Ranking". The "Lifetime Scientific Influence Ranking" counts the comprehensive influence performance of scientists during their careers, and the "2022 Annual Influence Ranking" focuses on highlighting the academic influence of scientists in the previous year. This ranking, considered the most prestigious worldwide, is based on the bibliometric information contained in the Scopus database and includes more than 200,000 researchers from the more than 10 million scientists considered to be active worldwide, with 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields taken into account.

We are pleased to share that 87 Editorial Board Members from Machines (ISSN: 2075-1702) were featured in Stanford University World’s Top 2% Scientists list in 2022.

The latest Stanford rankings reflect the significant influence and research excellence of the scientists, who are committed to furthering their knowledge for the benefit of the world.

We would like to congratulate our Editorial Board Members on their excellent achievement and thank them for their immense contribution to the scientific progression and development of Machines.

MDPI will be attending the 2022 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference and Expo, Asia-Pacific (ITEC-AP 2022) in Haining, China, which will take place from 28 to 31 October 2022. The ITEC-AP 2022 is organized by Zhejiang University, and aims to provide a forum for sharing knowledge, experience, and ideas in electrical technologies for transportation. Technical sessions, tutorials, exhibitors, and industry activities are planned.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Electronics;
• Machines;
• Actuators;
• Future Transportation;
• Electricity;
• Smart Cities;
• Sustainability;
• Vehicles.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following link: https://www.itec-ap2022.com/.

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Yaguo Lei has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Machines Testing and Maintenance” in Machines (ISSN: 2075-1702).

Prof. Dr. Yaguo Lei received his B.E. degree and Ph.D. degree, both in mechanical engineering, from Xi’an Jiaotong University, P. R. China, in 2002 and 2007, respectively. He is currently a professor in mechanical engineering at the Xi’an Jiaotong University, P. R. China. He worked at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow and at the University of Alberta, Canada, as a postdoctoral research fellow. He is also a fellow of ASME, IET, and ISEAM; a senior member of IEEE; and a senior member of CMES, ORSC and CAA; and as an Associate Editor and Editorial Board Member of IEEE TIE, MSSP, NC&A, MST, etc. His research interests include health condition monitoring and intelligent maintenance, big-data-era intelligent fault diagnostics and prognostics, reliability evaluation and remaining useful life prediction, mechanical signal analysis and processing, and mechanical system dynamic modeling. He has pioneered many signal processing techniques and intelligent models for diagnosing mechanical faults. He has accomplished three monographies and published over 80 peer-reviewed papers on signal processing and fault diagnostics.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Yaguo Lei, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views of the research area and open access publishing:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take on the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief?
I have collaborated with the journal Machines for a long time. I have witnessed great development in the journal in the past years, including publication quality, academic impact, etc. The journal has been very much active in the publication of cutting-edge research works in its related fields. The published papers have significantly inspired researchers all over the world. The "Machines Testing and Maintenance" Section has become a remarkable source of the latest research in this field, which is one of the major research areas in my group. Therefore, I feel very much appreciative to be appointed Editor-in-Chief of this Section.

2. What is your vision for the journal?
Considering the great efforts of the journal in the past years, I believe the journal will surely be attracting increasing worldwide attention. At present, high-end machine-related technologies have been hot topics, and the applications of the related research works have achieved great success in real industries. Therefore, the journal will continue to gain interest in the future and lead research in related areas.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?
In recent years, machine big data have become available, and artificial intelligence technologies have experienced remarkable developments. In my opinion, this field of research will benefit more and more from big data and AI in the future, which enable us to learn underlying machine-related patterns that we did not know before. Big-data-driven machine testing and maintenance will be hot areas, as will the methodologies of integrating both machine big data and physical knowledge.

4. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?
Open access is certainly a future trend in the publishing field. The knowledge produced by scholars all over the world is supposed to be extensively shared to further promote research. The traditional subscription mode has certain limitations in scientific communications. However, as a well-established approach to publication, the traditional way cannot be entirely replaced in the near future, and it will possibly take a long time for everyone to gradually accept this new and beneficial publishing mode.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Yaguo Lei as he starts his new role as Section Editor-in-Chief, and we look forward to him leading Machines to achieve many more milestones.

Peer Review Week began 19 September 2022 under the theme of “Research Integrity: Creating and Supporting Trust in Research”. Through various blog articles, podcast, and webinar, we discussed this crucial subject throughout the week, celebrating the essential role peer review plays in maintaining research quality.

To begin, we held a Webinar on the topic. Professor Peter W. Choate and Dr. Emmanuel Obeng-Gyasi joined Dr. Ioana Craciun, one of MDPI’s scientific officers, for an in-depth discussion.

We invite you to view the event recording:

During the week, the MDPI Blog in a series articles highlighted how good Peer Review safeguards research integrity. The following topics were covered:

• Peer Review Week 2022
• Research Integrity
• What We’ve Learned About Peer Review Reports
• 4 Steps to the Perfect Peer Review Report
• How to Write the Perfect Peer Review Report: An Interview
• Inviting Great Peer Reviewers

In a new edition of Insight Faster, an MDPI podcast, we were delighted to talk to the co-chairs of the Peer Review Week committee, Jayashree Rajagopalan (Senior Manager of Global Community Engagement for CACTUS) and Danielle Padula (Head of Marketing and Community Development at Scholastica) to get their take on this year’s event and its related topics.

You can find the Podcast here.

We hope you enjoy the contents!