Announcements

In June of this year, MDPI will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its foundation. To mark this significant milestone, we have created a 25th Anniversary page on our website that evokes the development of our company over the past quarter-century.

MDPI has been a pioneer of Open Access publishing ever since the concept was first created.

In a wide-ranging interview, our CEO Delia Mihaila reflects on the company’s 25th anniversary and its contribution to the world of scientific publishing.

Delia considers how MDPI has evolved since starting life in 1996 as a visionary ‘project’ run out of an apartment in Basel, Switzerland, by Dr. Shu-Kun Lin. A chemist who was passionate about the long-term preservation of rare chemical sample, Dr. Lin was determined to help scholars publish their findings as quickly as possible and make their research results available to as wide a readership as possible worldwide. That determination remains unchanged 25 years later.

Today, MDPI is an international organization with over 4,000 employees based on three continents and in ten countries, and ranks among the world's top four academic publishers.

MDPI's mission is to accelerate access to new scientific research, delivering insight faster for researchers worldwide. Read more here about the company's remarkable success story and what the Open Access publishing model can offer the global scientific community.

We are pleased to announce that 29 new scholars were recently appointed as Editorial Board Members for the journal Membranes.

Prof. Dr. Kwang Jin Kim (University of Southern California, USA)
Prof. Dr. Seunghyeon Moon (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Korea)
Prof. Dr. Jonathan Soboloff (Temple University, USA)
Prof. Dr. Petros Samaras (International Hellenic University, Greece)
Prof. Dr. Gyula Vatai (Szent István University, Hungary)
Prof. Dr. Byung Joo Kim (Pusan National University, Korea)
Prof. Dr. Maxime Pontié (Angers University, France)
Prof. Dr. Shihe Yang (Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, China)
Prof. Dr. Udo Kragl (University of Rostock, Germany)
Prof. Dr. Fu Liu (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China)
Prof. Dr. Huanting Wang (Monash University, Australia)
Prof. Dr. Xiaomao Wang (Tsinghua University, China)
Dr. Carme Güell (Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain)
Prof. Dr. Dimitrios Stamatialis (University of Twente, The Netherlands)
Dr. Aaron Thornton (CSIRO Manufacturing, Australia)
Prof. Dr. Anastasios J. Karabelas (Centre for Research and Technology—Hellas (CERTH), Greece)
Prof. Dr. Zhaoxiang Zhong (Nanjing Tech University, China)
Prof. Dr. Karel Friess (University of Chemistry and Technology (UCT) Prague, Czech Republic)
Prof. Dr. Hong Wu (Tianjin University, China)
Prof. Dr. Rebecca Green (University of Reading, UK)
Prof. Dr. Zhi Wang (Tianjin University, China)
Dr. Dinis Reis Miranda (Erasmus University Medical Center, The Netherlands)
Prof. Dr. Gheorghe Benga (Romanian Academy, Romania)
Prof. Dr. Liyuan Deng (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway)
Dr. Byungchan Bae (Korea Institute of Energy Research, Korea)
Dr. Hyung Keun Lee (Korea Institute of Energy Research, Korea)
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Schuster (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria)
Dr. Alessandra Criscuoli (Institute on Membrane Technology (ITM-CNR), Italy)
Dr. Jean Chemin (Universités de Montpellier, France) 

We wish them every success in developing the journal. 

Further details about the Editorial Board can be found at:

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/membranes/editors.

At MDPI, we strive to make your online publication process seamless and efficient. To achieve this, our team is continuously developing tools and features to make the user experience useful and convenient.

As the number of academic papers continues to grow, so does the need to analyze and work with them on a large scale. This prompted us to design a new feature aimed at helping researchers find journals that are relevant to their publication by matching their abstract topic. In this regard, we designed a similarity model that automatically identifies the most suitable academic journals for your paper.

We are pleased to introduce Journal Selector, a new feature that measures similarity in academic contexts. By simply entering the title and/or abstract into our Journal Selector, the author will see a list of the most related scientific journals published by MDPI. This method helps authors select the correct journals for their papers, highlighting the time of publication and citability.

The methodology is known as representation learning, where words are represented as vectors in hyperspace. Representation helps us differentiate between different concepts within articles, and in turn, helps us identify similarities between them.

We used an advanced machine learning model to better capture the semantic meanings of words. This helps the algorithm make better predictions by leveraging scientific text representation. In turn, this ensures high precision, helping authors decide which journal they should submit their paper to.

The goal is to support authors to publish their work in the most suitable journal for their research, as fast as possible, accelerating their career progress.

Contact: Andrea Perlato, Head of Data Analytics, MDPI (email)

We hope to call upon your expertise as a reviewer to help maintain the quality and efficiency of Membranes.

We are particularly interested in recruiting reviewers in the below-listed fields related to membranes science. In recent decades, this area has attracted a lot of research interest and significant progress has been made. We welcome scholars with research experience in topics including, but not limited to, the following:

Membrane Preparation and Characterization
Fundamentals of Membrane Processes
Membrane Engineering and Applications
Membrane Modeling and Simulation
Membranes in Life Sciences

As a reviewer, you will receive the following benefits:

1. The Membranes Editorial Board will acknowledge all reviewers in its annual reviewer list through a publication/announcement in the "Acknowledgement to Reviewers of Membranes" editorial on the journal website.
2. Reviewer members who provide prompt, thorough, and rigorous peer-review reports will receive a voucher that can be applied to reduce the cost of their next publication in an MDPI journal.
3. Reviewers may be presented with the possibility of joining the Editorial Board of the journal (subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief).

We would greatly appreciate your support and if you are interested in this position, please submit your information at https://susy.mdpi.com/volunteer/journals/review.

Membranes is launching a new position—Topic Editor. The main responsibilities of Topic Editors are as follows:

1. Setting up at least one Special Issue (SI) within the first two years of the journal opening, and proposing a detailed strategy plan for the SI (including soliciting papers, promoting the SI, etc.);
2. Promoting the journal during conferences (adding 1–2 slides into your presentation, distributing flyers, recommending the journal to your colleagues, etc.);
3. Facilitating a collaboration between the journal and related institutions/societies/conferences, etc.;
4. Providing support for Special Issues on topics related to your expertise or when the Guest Editor(s) is/are not available, including SI promotion via social media, pre-checking new submissions, making decisions, giving advice on particular scientific cases, etc.

Benefits:

1. 50% discounts on the article processing charge (APC, 1800 CHF) for papers published in Membranes per year in the Special Issues you supervise, and special discounts on any additional papers from your group or by your invitation;
2. Travel grants per year if you lead a successful Special Issue and would like to promote it at conferences that you attend or organize;
3. Additional sponsorships for conferences organized by Topic Editors.

If you are interested in this role or if you have any suggestions, please feel free to contact us (membranes@mdpi.com).

For more information about Membranes, please visit the website:

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/membranes

It is our pleasure to welcome the following recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Membranes:

Prof. Dr. Akihiko Tanioka, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan

Prof. Dr. Kew-Ho Lee, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology, Korea

Prof. Dr. Marek Bryjak, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Poland

Prof. Dr. Michael Zharnikov, Heidelberg University, Germany

Prof. Dr. José Villalaín Boullón, Universitas “Miguel Hernández”, Spain

Prof. Dr. Bart Van der Bruggen, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Prof. Dr. César Valderrama, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)-BarcelonaTECH, Spain

Prof. Dr. Dimitrios Stamatialis, University of Twente, The Netherlands

Prof. Dr. Ivo F.J. Vankelecom, KU Leuven, Belgium

Prof. Dr. Michael Stoukides, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Prof. Dr. Yung Chang, Chung Yuan Christian University, Taiwan

Prof. Kamalesh K. Sirkar, New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA

Prof. Dr. Sangho Lee, Kookmin University, Korea

Prof. Dr. Eric Guibal, Institut Mines Telecom—Mines Ales, France

Prof. Dr. Hongyang Ma, Stony Brook University, USA

Dr. Mazeyar Parvinzadeh Gashti, Research and Development Laboratory, Canada

Prof. Dr. Moon-Sung Kang, Sangmyung University, Korea

Prof. Dr. Nidal Hilal, Swansea University, UK

MDPI is proud to adopt the principles of the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) to support building equity, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications.

The C4DISC represents organizations and individuals working in scholarly communications and is focused on addressing issues of diversity and inclusion within the publishing industry.

MDPI’s Managing Editors encourage the Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors to appoint diverse expert Editorial Boards. This is also reflective in our multi-national and inclusive workplace. We are proud to create equal opportunities without regard to gender, ethnicity, geographic location, sexual orientation, age, disability, political beliefs, religion, or socio-economic status. There is no place for discrimination in our workplace and editors of MDPI journals are to uphold these principles in high regard.

Representatives from C4DISC meet monthly, and have started to implement initiatives to shed light and improve on the lack of diversity in scholarly communications. Some of the initiatives include developing a joint statement of principles; conducting market research; providing training resources, best practices, toolkits, and documentation for our collective memberships; and establishing outreach programs, curricula, events, and publications.

The Coalition is committed to:

• eliminating barriers to participation, extending equitable opportunities across all stakeholders, and ensuring that our practices and policies promote equitable treatment and do not allow, condone, or result in discrimination;
• creating and maintaining an environment that respects diverse traditions, heritages, and experiences;
• promoting diversity in all staff, volunteers, and audiences, including full participation in programs, policy formulation, and decision-making;
• raising awareness about career opportunities in our industries to groups who are currently underrepresented in the workforce;
• supporting our members in achieving diversity and inclusion within their organizations.

We are pleased to announce that Membranes has passed the milestone of having published 1000 papers since its inception in 2011. On behalf of the editorial team, we would like to express our gratitude to the Editor-in-Chief of Membranes Prof. Dr. Spas D. Kolev, and Section Editors-in-Chief Prof. Dr. Shiro Suetsugu, Prof. Dr. Giulio C. Sarti, Prof. Dr. Benjamin S. Hsiao, Prof. Dr. Wojciech Kujawski, and Prof. Dr. Clàudia Fontàs. Our gratitude extends to all the Editorial Board Members, Topic Board members, and Guest Editors of Special Issues. Together, they have ensured the continued success of the journal through their hard work and diligence. In addition, we also acknowledge the many valuable publications from our authors and the important contribution of our dedicated reviewers. We wish to thank you all for your support, and we look forward to receiving more quality submissions from you in the future.

Membranes (ISSN 2077-0375) is an open-access journal published monthly online by MDPI, covering all aspects of science and technology of both biological and non-biological membranes. It is now covered in the Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science) and Scopus. With a 2019 Impact Factor of 3.094, it ranks 53th out of 143 (Q2) titles in the ‘’Engineering, Chemical’’, 129th of 314 (Q2) titles in the ‘’Materials Science, Multidisciplinary’’, and 23rd out of 89 (Q2) titles in the ‘’Polymer Science’’ categories.

At MDPI we have slightly revised the layout for articles to be published in the 2021 Volume, starting at the end of December 2020. As of today, the article templates available for download on ‘Instructions for Authors’ pages have been updated.

The most noticeable change can be found on the first page of the article, where a left-hand column has been created to include the following front matter elements: (i) the recommended citation style for the article, (ii) the publishing history, (iii) as well as the Creative Commons Attribution license used (iv) a standard note regarding affiliations. At the same time, the extra spacing on the left means the authors’ affiliations are now more clearly set apart than before. Other front matter key elements such as journal logo, article type, article title, authors, abstract and keywords remain unchanged.

The blank column on the left runs through all pages in an article; as a result, the main text is slightly more condensed, which improve reader friendliness for smaller screens. Small figures/tables are aligned on the left with standard indenture, while large figures/tables are centered and covering the full width of the page. The revised layout was applied in the article pictured below, to serve as an example:

1) Information is displayed in the left information bar.

2) In the main text, there is a blank column on the left.

3) Small tables/figures are aligned on the left, large tables/figures are centered.

We are pleased to acknowledge that many academic editors who have made an impact on MDPI journals as editorial board members, editors-in-chief, or section editors, are recognized as 2020 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate.

Highly Cited Researchers highlights the top 1% of researchers, by citations, in one or more of the 22 fields used in Clarivate Analytics Essential Science Indicators. We offer our congratulations to 279 academic editors of MDPI journals who were recognized as the most influential scholars in their fields in 2020.

The full list of 2020 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed on https://recognition.webofsciencegroup.com/awards/highly-cited/2020/

--- Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) is a Clarivate product.