Announcements

The 2021 citation metrics have been released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), and we’re pleased to announce the following results for MDPI journals:

For more information on Impact Factors and what it means to index academic journals, please visit our related blog posts.

* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2022

Source: 2021 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ^TM (Clarivate, 2022)

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new project in Micromachines—the Special Issue Mentor Program.

This program intends to provide an opportunity for early career scientists to enhance their editing, networking, and organizational skills and to work closely with our journal to gain more editorial experience. Early career scientists who have novel ideas for new Special Issues to be published in Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X) will act as Guest Editors under the mentorship of an experienced scientist; this mentor could be a member of the Micromachines Editorial Board or from other well-established research institutes or laboratories, etc.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Micromachines Editorial Office (micromachines@mdpi.com), or submit the proposal at the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/micromachines, and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail. When the Special Issue is closed, our office will provide certificates to all of the mentors and to those who complete the program. Younger scholars will be prioritized as candidates for our journal award.

The 2021 citation metrics have been officially released in Scopus!

We are pleased to announce that 182 MDPI journals are included, of which:

● 21 journals received their first CiteScore.
● 85% of journals increased their CiteScore from 2020.
● 155 journals (85%) ranked above average, in at least one category.

The following 65 MDPI journals (36%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category:

Source: 2021 CiteScores™ (Elsevier)

We are pleased to announce that Micromachines (ISSN: 2072-666X) is now inviting nominations for the Micromachines 2022 Young Investigator Award. This prize will be given to one young investigator in recognition of his/her excellence in the field of micro/nano-scaled structures, materials, devices, and systems and their applications. All nominations will be assessed by an Evaluation Committee led by the Editor-in-Chief.

Prizes:

• CHF 2000;
• Option to publish one paper free of charge in Micromachines after peer review before the end of 2023;
• An engraved plaque. 

Eligibility and Requirements:

• Must have a Ph.D. degree;
• Must be below 35 years of age by 31 December 2022;
• Must have produced ground-breaking research and a significant contribution to the advancement of the research field;
• Must be nominated by senior scientists. 

List of Documents for Nomination:

• Detailed curriculum vitae, including an updated publication list and a list of the researcher’s own research grants;
• Birth certificate or other proof of age;
• Scanned copy of doctorate certificate;
• Signed nomination letters from two established senior scientists. 

Schedule:

• Open for nominations: 1 March 2022;
• Nomination deadline: 20 September 2022;
• Winner announcement: 31 December 2022. 

How to submit nominations?

Nominations must be submitted online at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/micromachines/awards/1733. Please do not hesitate to contact the Micromachines Editorial Office (micromachines@mdpi.com) with any questions you may have. We look forward to receiving your nominations.

Micromachines Editorial Office

MDPI would like to invite all recognized experts in the field of micromachines to attend the Micromachine Workshop | Current Trends of Inter-Disciplinary Technologies in Biomedical Applications. This series comprises some of the selected current trends of interdisciplinary technologies in biomedical and pre-clinical research. Presented by scientists and clinicians, we will showcase how diverse technology in nanoparticles, material science, biomedical implants, and photonics are presently being applied in preclinical and translational clinical research.

Workshop title: Current Trends of Inter-Disciplinary Technologies in Biomedical Applications
Date: 20/1/2022
Time: 4 p.m. (CST ASIA)
Register in advance for this webinar here.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information on how to join the webinar. The number of participants in the live session is limited, but the recording will be made available shortly afterwards. Registrations with academic institutional email addresses will be prioritized.

Workshop Chairperson

Name: Dr. Daniel Teh Boon Loong
Affiliation: Assistant Professor (Research), Department of Biochemistry and Bia-Echo Asia Center for Reproductive Longevity and Equality (ACRLE), Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore

Daniel Teh, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biochemistry, National University of Singapore and is affiliated with the Bia-Echo Asia Center for Reproductive Longevity and Equality (ACRLE). He is a 2020 Singapore’s National Medical Research Council Young Investigator Award recipient. The laboratory of Dr. Teh focuses on inter-disciplinary translational research of nanotechnology and material science in biomedical application. Dr. Teh was the first to discover the upconversion optical waveguide property in hydrogel, translating upconversion from a basic science concept to a medical-based implantable device. The technology is now being used as a wireless light delivery implantable device in photodynamic therapy to treat solid tumors in trials. He also devises nanoparticles for applications such as visualization probes in molecular and cellular processes in neurons. Most recently, he led his team to win the Best Teamwork Award in Singapore’s LeanLaunchpad Medtech Category 2020. He works closely with clinicians, biomedical engineers, and scientists.

Workshop Speakers

Name: Dr. Xinyi Su
Affiliation: Senior Principal Investigator, Divisional Director (IMCB, A*STAR), Asst. Professor, Research Director, Department of Ophthalmology (NUS) Consultant, Department of Ophthalmology (NUH) Clinician–Scientist, Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI)

Xinyi Su, MB BChir Ph.D., is an ophthalmologist and vitreoretinal surgeon at the National University Hospital of Singapore. She is the Divisional Director at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB, A*STAR) and Research Director of the Department of Ophthalmology (NUS). She runs a broad research program in retinal diseases as Senior Principal Investigator at the Translational Retinal Therapeutics Lab at IMCB and is a Clinician–Scientist at the Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI). Her research in retinal therapeutics has been published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, Advanced Materials, and Nature Communications, among others. She received the Asia Pacific Vitreo-retinal Society LDP Gold Medal Award in 2021, the Eye and Vision Health Distinguished Award in 2021, and the Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology SSO Young Ophthalmologist Award for two consecutive years, in 2019 and 2020. Dr. Su has a career total of >SGD 20 million in competitive research grants. She currently leads several translational research programs in developing biomaterials for retinal therapeutics and retinal stem cell regenerative therapy.

Name: Dr. Sanghoon Lee
Affiliation: DGIST (Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology)

Dr. Sanghoon Lee is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Robotics Engineering, Daegu Geongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST). He received his B.S. degree from the Department of Electronic Material Engineering at Kwangwoon University, Seoul, Korea, in 2009 and received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2013 and 2017, respectively. He was a research fellow at the Singapore Institute for Neurotechnology (SINAPSE) from 2017 to 2018. In 2018, he joined DGIST and is a director of the Neuro-Interfaced Robotics Lab. His research interests include neural interface-based neuroprosthetics and bioelectronic medicine, as well as neural devices and peripheral neuromodulation.

Name: Prof. Sze Y. Set
Affiliation: Associate Professor, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo, Japan; Visiting Associate, Cambridge Graphene Centre, Engineering Department, Cambridge University, UK; Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge University, UK

Prof. Sze Y. Set received a B.Eng. (first-class honors) and a Ph.D. from the University of Southampton, UK. He was awarded the JSPS postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1998. He joined a startup in Atlanta, Georgia, US, as a senior R&D engineer in 2000, and in 2005, he was appointed the CEO and CTO of a University of Tokyo startup to commercialize university technologies. In 2016, he was appointed as an associate professor at RCAST, the University of Tokyo.

Prof. Set’s research focuses on carbon nanotube photonics, ultrashort pulsed fiber lasers, ultrafast nonlinear optics, bio-photonics, optical communication, fiber optic sensing, and laser 3D imaging. He also teaches courses in university entrepreneurship. He was the first to demonstrate the use of a carbon-nanotube for laser mode-locking in 2003, and has contributed to 10 patents and over 200 academic publications in international journals and conferences. Prof. Set is a fellow of the OPTICA (Formerly OSA), the Deputy Committee Member of the Japan Society of Applied Physics (JSAP), and an Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics. Prof. Set was elected as a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge University in October 2022. He is currently affiliated to the Cambridge Graphene Centre, a world-leading center of excellence for research in graphene and related materials technologies.

This Micromachines workshop will bring together a group of multi-disciplinary researchers from all over the world to present and exchange breakthrough ideas on biomedical applications. We are pleased to provide this excellent opportunity to all brilliant researchers.

To find out more about the speakers and the program, please visit https://sciforum.net/event/CTIDTBA. We hope you can join us for this event.

Shun Li
MDPI Conference Secretariat

It is our great honor to congratulate the Editorial Board Members and Editors in MDPI's journals who have been distinguished as 2021 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate, according to Web of Science data. We herewith express our gratitude for the immense impact the named researchers continue to make on scientific progress and on our journals' development.

Clarivate's annual list of Highly Cited Researchers^TM identifies the most highly cited scientists for the past decade. Their impactful papers are among the top 1 per cent in the citation distribution of one or more of 22 fields analyzed in the "Essential Science Indicators", distinguishing them as hugely influential among their peers.

The full list of 2021 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed at the following webpage in the Web of Science^TM https://recognition.webofscience.com/awards/highly-cited/2021/.

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

Academic editors play a crucial role in leading our journals and ensuring that each article undergoes a robust and timely peer-review. With the launch of Topics this year and addition of Topic Editors to our family of academic editors, we decided it would be a good time to restructure our academic boards, thus providing more clarity and support for each role. MDPI is pleased to announce the launch of a new position—Topical Advisory Panel Member, that will replace the previous position of Topics Board Member. The Topical Advisory Panel will be comprised of early career researchers eager to gain experience in editorial work.

The main responsibility of the new members of the Topical Advisory Panel is to regularly provide support to Guest Editors, Topic Editors, and Section Board Members. The responsibilities of the Topical Advisory Panel are available here: https://www.mdpi.com/editors.

Each year, the members’ performances are evaluated, and outstanding members are promoted to the Editorial Board by the Editor-in-Chief.

To qualify as a Topical Advisory Panel Member, applicants must:

• Have expertise and experience in the field related to the journal;
• Have received a Ph.D. in the last 10 years, approximately;
• Have at least 6-8 published papers in the last 5 years as first author or corresponding author;
• Currently hold an independent research position in academia or a government institute.

If you are interested in this role, please contact the editorial office by email.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

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.

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.

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