Announcements

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.

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.

We are pleased to announce Dr. Junsuk Rho to be the winner of the Micromachines 2020 Young Investigator Award. The final decision was extremely difficult to make given the extraordinary number of high-quality nominations that were received. We would like to thank all the nominees from various fields of study for their participation and all the Award Committee members for their efforts in evaluating the many nominations.

After receiving his Ph.D. (2013) in Mechanical Engineering and Nanoscale Science & Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, Junsuk Rho worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Ugo Fano Fellow in the Nanoscience and Technology Division at Argonne National Laboratory. His research is focused on developing novel nanophotonic materials and devices based on fundamental physics and experimental studies of deep sub-wavelength light–matter interaction. Dr. Rho has published approximately 150 high-impact peer-reviewed journal papers and has also presented keynote and invited talks more than 250 times at world-leading institutes and international conferences/workshops. He also has 4 US patents and 26 Korean patents.

We congratulate the winner, Dr. Junsuk Rho, on his accomplishments. We wish him further success in his career.

For more information about Micromachines awards, please visit mdpi.com/journal/micromachines/awards.

We are pleased to announce that the following Editorial Board Members have been appointed as Section Associate Editors of Micromachines:

A: Physics

B: Biology and Biomedicine

C: Chemistry

D: Materials and Processing

E: Engineering and Technology

We are confident that their strong academic background will help in continuing to raise the prestige and quality of Micromachines while maintaining the efficiency of manuscript processing that Micromachines authors have come to expect. We look forward to their contributions to the journal. For more information about Editorial Board, please visit https://www.mdpi.com/journal/micromachines/editors.

Professor Dr. Jizhou Song, Editorial Board Member of Micromachines, has recently been recognized as a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher in 2019. This corresponds to being in the top 1% of the most cited researchers for that publication year.

Prof. Jizhou Song is from Department of Engineering Mechanics at Zhejiang University, China. He received his B.S. and M.E. degrees from University of Science and Technology of China in 2001 and 2004, and Ph.D. degree from University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, in 2007. He served as Assistant Professor at University of Miami before joining Zhejiang University in 2013. He has published over 120 peer-reviewed journal papers and received numerous awards, including the Provost Award from University of Miami (2009, 2010, 2012), the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities (2010), the Outstanding Young Scholar Award from Qiu Shi Science and Technologies Foundation (2014), and the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars (2016). Prof. Song was recently recognized as one of the Highly Cited Researchers in 2019 by the Web of Science. His current research interests include mechanics of stretchable electronics, mechanics of transfer printing, and thermomechanical behavior of materials.

MDPI will be attending the 4th Micro-Nano Optics Technology and Application Exchange Conference (MOTA2020), Chengdu, September 26–28, 2020.

MOTA2020 is organized by the Chinese Society for Optical Engineering, which combines the national defense and industrial applications to build a large platform for the industrial chain. The aim is to build a seamless docking platform for scientific and technical personnel engaged in related research in China and industrial application teams to form a joint force to promote the rapid technological development of micro-nano optics itself and its industrial development.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Energies (leading journal)
• Photonics
• Nanomaterials
• Coatings
• Sensors
• Clean Technologies
• Safety
• Micromachines

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth "Journal Energies"). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://b2b.csoe.org.cn/meeting/MOTA2020.html.

To acknowledge all those who have generously dedicated their time and effort to review manuscripts submitted to Micromachines in 2020, on behalf of the Editors-in-Chief, we are launching the Micromachines 2020 Outstanding Reviewer Awards. We have created this awards to recognize those who have exhibited dedication, professionalism, and timeliness when reviewing manuscripts. Anonymous peer reviewing helps ensure the quality and integrity of scholarly communication. The Micromachines Editorial Office is extremely grateful to reviewers for the time and energy that they dedicate to peer reviews.

What are the eligibility requirements for the “Micromachines 2020 Outstanding Reviewer Awards”?

All reviewers of Micromachines in 2020 will be considered automatically.

What are the evaluation standards?

The number of manuscript reviews, timeliness, quality of their reviews, and Publons record will be taken into consideration.

What will the winners receive?

There will be four awardees, and each will receive:

–A certificate;

–500 CHF (Swiss Francs).

When will the winners be announced?

The winners will be announced on the journal website at the end of March 2021.

How do you ensure you have a chance to win in the future?

For those of you who are experts in micromachines or a related field, and have not yet reviewed papers for Micromachines but would like to, you can easily register as a reviewer at https://susy.mdpi.com/volunteer/profile/edit.

We are pleased to announce that the Micromachines 2021—1st International Conference on Micromachines and Applications (ICMA-2021), chaired by Prof. Dr. Ion Stiharu, will be held at Sciforum (https://sciforum.net/conference/Micromachines2021) from 15 to 30 April, 2021.

These are some of the topics that we expect to cover:

1) Micromachines for scientific research
2) Microfluidic micromachines
3) Micromachines for bio-medical applications
4) Micromachines for bio-chemical applications
5) Micromachines for green energy
6) Micromachines for a clean environment
7) Micromachines for bio-sensing
8) Micromachines and wearable
9) General

The conference will be completely free of charge, both to attend and for scholars to upload and present their latest work on the conference platform. Accepted papers will be gathered in the proceedings of the conference. Selected extended versions of the papers will be published in the journal Micromachines with a discount of 20% on the article processing charge (ISSN 2072-666X; Impact Factor: 2.523, https://www.mdpi.com/journal/micromachines).

Important Dates

• Abstract Submission Deadline: 14 March, 2021
• Notification of Acceptance: 17 March, 2021
• Submission of Full Conference Presentation: 7 April, 2021
• Conference Date: 15–30 April, 2021

For more information on ICMA 2021, please visit the conference website (https://sciforum.net/conference/Micromachines2021) or contact us by email (icma2021@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.