Announcements

Machines (ISSN 2075-1702) is recruiting volunteer reviewers. The main responsibility of the reviewers is to regularly provide timely, high-quality reports on the submitted manuscripts. The responsibilities of the reviewers are available at https://www.mdpi.com/reviewers.

Peer review is an essential part in the publication process, ensuring that Machines maintains high quality standards for its published papers. We are striving to recognize the efforts of reviewers.

When reviewing for Machines you will:

• Receive a discount voucher code entitling you to a reduction in the article processing charge (APC) of a future submission to any MDPI journal. Vouchers are linked to your email address and can be applied online at submission or any time before acceptance. Note that vouchers cannot be used after an invoice has been issued. If your article is rejected, the voucher can be reused for your next submission;
• Receive a personalized reviewer certificate;
• Be included in the journal’s annual acknowledgment of reviewers;
• Be considered for the journal’s outstanding reviewer award;
• Build your profile on Publons and have your reviewing activity automatically added for participating journals. Publons profiles can also be integrated with ORCID.

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.

Machines (ISSN 2075-1702) will support and be attending the IMECE 2021 as a bronze sponsor. The conference will be held in virtual form and will take place from 1 to 5 November, 2021.

Meanwhile, Machines will be awarding three Best Student Paper Awards for the contributions on advanced manufacturing (submitted under topics 2-(1-17), 3-3, 4-16, 13-10 and 17-2) in ASME IMECE 2021. The top three winners will receive the following prizes:

• First Place: USD 500 and a 100% Article Processing Charge (APC) waiver;
• Second Place: USD 300 and a voucher for CHF 800;
• Third Place: USD 200 and a voucher for CHF 800.

All winners will receive an acknowledgment certificate and their achievements will be announced at IMECE (the time is to be confirmed in the final program). In addition, a voucher for CHF 300 will be granted for selected excellent papers. Please note that all the vouchers are only valid for the winner’s next submission in Machines. Detailed information can be found at https://event.asme.org/IMECE/Student-Programs/Best-Student-Paper-Competitions.

The International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) is ASME's largest research and development conference. It is focused primarily on mechanical engineering, but encompasses perspectives from many engineering disciplines.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start an online conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have. For more information, please visit: https://event.asme.org/IMECE/Sponsor-Exhibit/Bronze-Sponsors/MDPI.

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.

The Annual Conference for the Society of Chinese Mechanical Engineering Biomanufacturing Division and the International Symposium on Bio-Manufacturing (ACBD-ISBM2023) will be held from 17 to 19 March 2023, in Beijing, China. The conference is organized by the Society of Chinese Mechanical Engineering Biomanufacturing Division, Beihang University, and co-organized by Tsinghua University, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, and Southeast University.

Symposia：

• Biomanufacturing and Regenerative Medicine;
• Bio-Bionic Manufacturing and Planting/Interventional Devices;
• Biosensor and Flexible Electronics Manufacturing;
• Multi-Scale Biomimetic Manufacturing;
• Micromanipulation and Minimally Invasive Instruments.
• Biological Modeling and Bio-3D Printing;
• Tissue and Organ Chip;
• Innovative Medical Devices and Biomaterials.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Bioengineering;
• Life
• Actuators;
• Applied Sciences;
• Biomimetics;
• Inventions;
• ASI;
• Machines.

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

The 2020 citation metrics have been officially released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR)!

We are pleased to announce that 85 MDPI journals are included, of which:

• 10 journals received their first impact factor
• 96% of journals increased their impact factor from 2019
• 32 journals (38%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category

* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2021

Source: 2020 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ® (Clarivate, 2021)

Machines is recruiting Editorial Board Members for the following three new Sections:

- Electrical Machines and Drives;

- Micro/Nano Electromechanical Systems (MEMS/NEMS);

- Turbomachinery.

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

1) Promoting this new Section on your social media or among your acquaintances;

2) Supervising the quality of the papers in this Section (when we have new submissions in the Section);

3) Acting as a/recommending a Guest Editor for a Special Issue on a topic related to your research interests;

4) Providing conference/society cooperation recommendations.

Machines (ISSN 2571-8789) is an open access, international journal on machinery, manufacturing, and engineering. It was launched in 2013 and has been indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)—Web of Science, Scopus, and Inspec and will receive its first Impact Factor in June 2021. Its CiteScore is 4.5 (Scopus), which equals rank 136/596 (Q1) in the Mechanical Engineering, 78/336 (Q1) Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, 20/111 (Q1) Control and Optimization, and 12/69 (Q1) Computer Science (miscellaneous).

As we provide a low-cost publishing service in open access format, we, unfortunately, cannot pay our Editor Members an honorarium. The term of the membership is two years and after that period it can be renewed.

To apply for this position, please send your full academic CV and a short cover letter that details your interest and enthusiasm for the position to machines@mdpi.com.

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Dan Zhang has been appointed the Section Editor-in-Chief of the “Automation Systems” Section of Machines (ISSN 2075-1702).

Prof. Dr. Dan Zhang received his Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Laval University in June 2000. He is a Kaneff Professor and the Tier 1 York Research Chair in advanced robotics and mechatronics with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Lassonde School of Engineering, York University. His research interests include robotics and mechatronics, high-performance parallel robotic machine development, micro/nanomanipulation, and MEMS devices, and rehabilitation robots and rescue robots. He has served as a member of Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Grant Selection Committee. He is a registered Professional Engineer of Canada; a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE), the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME); a Senior Member of the SME and IEEE.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Dan Zhang in his role as our Section Editor-in-Chief, and we look forward to him leading Machines to achieve more milestones.

Prof. Dr. Dan Zhang
Email: dzhang99@yorku.ca
Affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Lassonde School of Engineering, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada
Homepage: mech.lassonde.yorku.ca/dan-zhang/
Interests: robotics and mechatronics; high-performance parallel robotic machine development; sustainable/green manufacturing systems; micro/nanomanipulation and MEMS devices (sensors); micro mobile robots and control of multi-robot cooperation; intelligent servo control system for the MEMS-based high-performance micro-robot; web-based remote manipulation; rehabilitation robot and rescue robot