Announcements

We are happy to announce that Professor Noam Eliaz from Tel-Aviv University, an Editorial Board Member of Materials, Corrosion and Materials Degradation and Coatings, has been elected to the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), USA, as a Senior Member. This award is for Dr. Eliaz’s “success in patents, licensing, and commercialization”, “technologies that have brought, or aspire to bring, real impact on the welfare of society”, and “contributions to the innovation ecosystem” at Tel-Aviv University, recognizing Prof. Eliaz “as a rising leader and inventor” in his field.

We are pleased to present a Q&A interview with Professor Maryam Tabrizian, Editor-in-Chief of Materials since 2011. 

To encourage academic exchange and communication, we are pleased to announce that the Materials Science First Poster Competition has now commenced. 

Topic: All aspects of Materials Science.

Date: 5 August to 5 September

Submit your poster: https://sciforum.net/conference/PCMS

Requirements:

1. The content of the poster can be a comprehensive presentation of your recent research results or a summary of the cutting-edge research in your field. However, all posters must be related to Materials Science.
2. No copyright issues with any elements in the poster.
3. The minimum size for images is 148 mm × 210 mm (horizontal × vertical) at 300 dpi.
4. Posters should be in gif/jpg/png/jpeg/bmp format and no larger than 4 MB.
5. The poster should be submitted to the system along with a valid link on Twitter about the poster before 5 September.
6. Applicants should be PhD students or researchers with a PhD degree in Materials Science or a related field.

Required Application Documents:

1. A caption with poster title and brief introduction.
2. An updated CV and a scanned copy of the applicant’s doctorate/student certificate.
3. A link corresponding to a relevant tweet about the poster on Twitter.

To register for the poster prize:

1. Register and submit via Sciforum.
2. Tweet about your poster with the title, #MaterialsPoster, and any other relevant subject hashtag(s).
3. Share your poster with as many as people as possible.
4. Discuss and answer questions from the community or committee members.
5. Win a prize if your poster is selected as the best!

Evaluation criteria:

1. Number of thumb up/retweets of each entry by 5 October (20% of the total score)
2. Voting results by poster committee (80% of the total score)

• Originality/Novelty
• Interest to the readers
• Rich in content and coherent
• Significance of content

Prize:

First Prize: 500 CHF and a 50% discount voucher;

Second Prize: 300 CHF and a 30% discount voucher each;

Third Prize: 200 CHF and a 20% discount voucher each;

Note: The voucher can be applied to manuscripts submitted to Materials before 31 August 2021.

The winners will be announced on the Materials website and on Twitter by end of October.

For any questions, please contact materials-marketing@mdpi.com.

We are delighted to announce the establishment of our Open Access agreement with Jisc Collections, which will allow UK institutions to benefit from access to article processing charge (APC) discounts and streamlined payment workflows.

All institutions participating in the agreement will also gain access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information for easy identification and additional transparency.

Eligible authors affiliated with the participating institutions are prompted to choose the corresponding Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system.

About Jisc

Jisc's vision is for the UK to be the most digitally advanced education and research nation in the world. At its heart is the super-fast national research and education network, Janet, with built-in cyber security protection.  Jisc also provides technology solutions for its members (colleges, universities and research centres) and customers (public sector bodies), helps members save time and money by negotiating sector-wide deals and provides advice and practical assistance on digital technology. Jisc is funded by the UK higher and further education and research funding bodies and member institutions.

For more information, contact helen.dobson@jisc.ac.uk.

About MDPI

MDPI is a publisher of fully peer-reviewed, Open Access journals with a focus on thorough and rapid editorial processing. Its aim is to ensure that high-quality research is verified and made available to the research community as quickly as possible. MDPI stands at the forefront of the Open Access movement, having launched its first online journal Molecules in 1996. Today, MDPI is a leader in Open Access publishing with over 250 journals across all research disciplines, and all content published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

For any questions about this agreement, please contact the MDPI IOAP team at ioap@mdpi.com.

MDPI has provided several Free Open Platforms that may help accelerate scientific exchange and provide support to academics during this particularly tough period. Thanks to our brilliant technical support, we are pleased to report that the first Materials webinar on Advances in Materials, Coatings and Corrosion Research is coming soon.

Date: Friday 22 May 2020 | 3 PM CEST/ 11 PM AEST/ 9 AM EDT

Duration: Maximum 1 hour 30 minutes

Webinar ID: 814-2687-4917

Register for Free Here: https://materials-1.sciforum.net/

Chair:

Speakers:

For any questions about the webinar, please send an email to webinars@mdpi.com.

Since 1996, MDPI has been committed to supporting the research community by providing the latest research freely available and making relevant and useful research available as quickly as possible. The world is current experiencing a pandemic of COVID-19, and researchers are working extremely hard to understand it and find a cure.

The values MDPI holds strongly are particularly important at the moment, and we will continue to publish relevant, peer-reviewed research as quickly as possible in open access format. This means that it will immediately be available for researchers, health professionals, and the general public to read, distribute, and reuse. We believe that scientific advancements will be crucial to overcoming this pandemic, and will do everything we can to support researchers working looking for solutions.

COVID-19 Academic Resources Center contains a variety of information related to COVID-19 available from MDPI, including journal articles, special issues, and preprints, among others.

For more information, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/covid-19

As a leading Open Access publisher, MDPI is committed to fostering open scientific exchange in all forms across all disciplines. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, many researchers have to stay at home and many academic conferences have been cancelled or postponed. In light of these changes, MDPI has adopted numerous initiatives that may help accelerate scientific exchange and provide support to the academics during this period.

Scholarly Community—Encyclopedia

Encyclopedia is an online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as providing benchmark information for researchers and the general public interested in accurate and advanced knowledge on specific topics.

Comprehensive and Free Literature Database—Scilit

Scilit is a comprehensive, free database for scientists that uses a new method to collate data and index scientific material. Our crawlers extract the latest data from CrossRef and PubMed on a daily basis. This means that newly published articles are immediately added to Scilit.

Display Academic Achievements—SciProfiles

SciProfiles is an innovative social network for researchers and scholars that is developed by MDPI. In line with our broad mission, the purpose of SciProfiles is to accelerate discovery and innovation by facilitating immediate access to research results and providing opportunities for academic networking.

Organize and Participate in Conferences Online—Sciforum

Sciforum is an event planning platform that supports open science by offering the opportunity to host and participate in academic conferences. It provides an environment for scholarly exchange, discussion of topics of current interest, building of networks, and establishing collaborations.

Post Early Versions of Research Outputs—Preprints

Preprints is a platform dedicated to making early versions of research outputs permanently available and citable. We post original research articles and comprehensive reviews, and papers can be updated by authors at any time. Content on Preprints is not peer-reviewed, and feedback can be received from readers.

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MDPI remains committed to open science and open data and has signed a statement, along with more than thirty scholarly publishers, showing our intention to facilitate sharing of new research findings as early on as possible. The initiative sees publishers collectively removing barriers to new research, in the face of a global healthcare crisis.

The world is currently suffering from a global pandemic of the corona virus COVID-19. MDPI expresses its sympathies for all of those affected by the virus and stands in solidarity with medical staff and researchers treating patients and searching for scientific solutions.

MDPI has previously published papers covering corona viruses in addition to new papers on the current outbreak, see all papers here. In particular, Viruses has published a number of Special Issues and papers on the topic (see here, here, and here) as well as a forthcoming Special Issue.

Alongside journal articles, MDPI has been a strong supporter of preprints, which are increasingly being used to rapidly disseminate the latest research, and we run the preprint server Preprints.org. Our database of research articles, Scilit, is free to use and covers all publishers including preprint servers. New papers are often in search results within hours of publication and users can set up alerts for new papers.

Our main priority during this period has been the health and safety of staff, and we continue to allow staff to work at home and closely monitor the situation in all locations in which we work. Despite the restrictions, we continue to provide a full publication service and, by close collaboration with our editorial boards and making use our in-house teams, ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in publishing vital research. Fast and open publication has always been at the core of MDPI values and is now more important than ever.

We hope that a solution to the current situation will emerge soon. In the meantime, we will do our best to continue communicating vital research in all fields.

The advantages of the open access model of scientific publishing are being increasingly recognized in the scientific community. It allows new scientific evidence to be accessed from the moment of publication for free by anyone around the globe, boosting the impact of new research. In response, many funders, libraries and universities have been adopting new principles to accelerate the transition to open access.

Recently, “transformative agreements” have been negotiated between traditional publishers and various institutions. While increasing the number of open access papers, these agreements lack binding commitments to a full transition to open access, their conditions vary across different regions, and access is still limited for many users.

MDPI is a co-signatory of the recent position statement raising concerns about potential downsides of transformative agreements and how they may delay a full transition to open access. The statement highlights that these models “risk perpetuating current limitations on access, transparency and market competitiveness, while simultaneously facilitating excessive charges on the public purse”.

As a pioneering open access journal publisher, MDPI is the first to promote the importance of science being made available to everyone. Our peer-reviewed journals, covering diverse academic disciplines, are fully accessible to the public free of charge under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). This is why, along with other open access publishers, MDPI is a proud signatory of the position paper and is committed to contributing to the replacement of weak transitional agreements with “agreements with publishers that are already fully committed to open science and who offer full, immediate and transparent Open Access”.

Read the position paper here

We are pleased to announce that Encyclopedia will be awarding five Outstanding Contributor Awards for researchers in 2020. The nominations and applications will be assessed by an Evaluation Committee consisting of senior scholars from the Encyclopedia Editorial Board.

Prize for Winners

1. An official certificate;
2. A cash award of 500 CHF or an MDPI discount voucher of 800 CHF.

Application Deadline

31 December, 2020 (Please send your application email with a list of all entries you contributed to our office before the deadline: office@encyclopedia.pub)

Candidate Requirements

1. Have a Ph.D. degree;
2. Have more than three qualified entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020.

Evaluation Standards

1. Number of entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020;
2. Quality of entries online (including length, figure quality, and novelty);
3. Impact of entries (including the number of likes, discussion contents, views, and downloads).

If you are a researcher and have not yet contribute entries to Encyclopedia, please do not miss this chance to highlight your research results.