Announcements

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)

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself to the readers?

My name is Junsuk Rho, I am currently a Mu-Eun-Jae endowed chair Associate Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), South Korea.

2. What does your current research involve, and why did you choose this research field?

My research is focused on developing novel nanophotonic materials and devices based on fundamental physics and experimental studies of deep sub-wavelength light-matter interactions. Specifically, I am working on metamaterials, plasmonics, photonic crystals, topological photonics. Recently, the wavelength regime has expanded to longer wavelengths, such as acoustic and elastic frequencies. I saw the news that an invisibility cloak may be creating through the application of metamaterials. This is the reason why I want to study this for my Ph.D. Such metamaterials will be able to realize invisibility cloaks, super-resolution imaging, acoustic black holes, hologram displays and so on.

3. Which research topics do you think will be of particular interest to the research community in the coming years?

Quantum optics, flexible opto-electronics, photonic chips for diagnostics, and single-digit-nanometer fabrication to overcome the current semiconductor industry problems.

4. Have you ever encountered any difficulties when conducting research? If so, how did you overcome them?

Everyday... this is related to question number five. Have patience, persevere with the research until you make a breakthrough, try not to become depressed and frustrated with your research if things do not go as planned first time around.

5. What qualities do you think young scientists need?

Patience, a positive mind for failure (e.g., individuals who do not let the failure of experiments depress or frustrate them, but instead try the same thing the next day!), and people who keep up to date with the current scientific trends.

6. Micromachines is an Open Access journal. How do you think Open Access impacts the authors? 

Open access journals allow more readers to read the papers, which is extremely helpful in sharing the result with different communities. However, with the limited funding (especially for junior researchers), it can sometimes become a burden. So, support for junior researchers is necessary. In terms of this, MDPI does a very good job in providing financial support and waiving fees for junior researchers.

Prof. Dr. Wei Gao, Editorial Board Member of Micromachines, has recently been recognized as a Clarivate Analytics 2020 Highly Cited Researcher. This corresponds to the top 1% of the most-cited researchers for that publication year.

Prof. Wei Gao received his B.S. degree from Huazhong University of Science & Technology in 2007, M.S. degree from Tsinghua University in 2009, and Ph.D. degree from University of California San Diego in 2014. He has been an Assistant Professor of Medical Engineering at Caltech since 2017.

Professor Gao’s primary research interest is the development of novel bioelectronic devices for personalized and precision medicine: wearable and flexible biosensors that can analyze various biomarkers in body fluids for real-time continuous health monitoring and early diagnosis, and synthetic micro/nanomachines for rapid drug delivery and precision surgery. His study include fundamental materials innovation as well as practical device and system-level applications in translational medicine.

Prof. Dr. Jingshan Luo, Editorial Board Member of Micromachines, has recently been recognized as a Clarivate Analytics 2020 Highly Cited Researcher. This corresponds to the top 1% of the most cited researchers for that publication year.

Prof. Jingshan Luo is a Full Professor and Vice Director of the Institute of Photoelectronic Thin Film Devices and Technology at Nankai University. He received his B.S. degree from Jilin University in 2010 and his Ph.D. degree from Nanyang Technological University in 2014. He went to École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland for postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Prof. Michael Grätzel, where he led the solar fuel subgroup. In 2018, he joined Nankai University.

Professor Luo has authored/co-authored 1 book chapter and more than 80 peer-reviewed publications in Science, Nature Energy, Nature Catalysis, and other journals in the field, which have garnered more than 12,000 literature citations and an h-index of 50 (Google Scholar). He is listed as one of 35 Innovators under 35 years old in China by the MIT Technology Review and 2018 and 2019 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate Analytics. He is a recipient of the Marie Curie Fellowship, the Clariant Cleantech Award (First Prize), the E-MRS Young Scientist Award, and the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad.

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.