Announcements

We are pleased to announce that Micromachines has passed the milestone of having published 3000 papers since its inception in 2010. Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X) is an open access journal published monthly online by MDPI, covering all aspects of micro/nanoscaled structures, materials, devices, systems, and their applications. It is now covered in the Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science) and Scopus. With a 2018 Impact Factor of 2.426, it is ranked 55/94 (Q3) in Nanoscience & Nanotechnology and 25/61 (Q2) in Instruments & Instrumentation.

Our sincere thanks go to the Editors-in-Chief of Micromachines: Prof. Dr. Nam-Trung Nguyen, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Remzi Dokmeci, Prof. Dr. Aiqun Liu, and Prof. Dr. Joost Lötters. Our gratitude extends to all the Editorial Board Members and the 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.

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

Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X, impact factor 2.426) is launching a new Section “Engineering and Technology” which will cover the following topics:

-Micro/nanofabrication and manufacturing: deposition, lithography, patterning, etching, surface micromachining, bulk micromachining, laser fabrication, biofabrication, 3D printing, self-assembly, etc.;

-Design and optimization principles of micro- and nanosystems;

-Micro/nanosystems and advanced technologies for engineering applications: resources engineering, civil engineering, advanced manufacturing engineering, environmental engineering, bioengineering, electronic systems (including electrical circuits and devices, transistors, capacitors, inductors, resistors, diodes, insulators, and conductors), engineering, etc.

The following Special Issues of this section are currently open for submissions:

• Future Wearable and Implants (Deadline: 30 August 2020)
• 3D Printing of MEMS Technology (Deadline: 31 August 2020)
• Networks-On-Chip Again on the Rise: From Emerging Applications to Emerging Technologies (Deadline: 18 October 2020)
• Micro/Nanodevices and Their Tribology (Deadline: 31 October 2020)
• Optofluidic Microlasers (Deadline: 31 October 2020)
• Miniature Optoelectronic Resonators and Oscillators (Deadline: 31 December 2020)
• Soft Tooling—Polymer Additive Manufacturing Applied to Injection Moulding Process Chains (Deadline: 15 February 2021)
• MEMS Force Sensor (Deadline: 15 March 2021)
• Metal Oxide Gas Sensors: Fundamentals and Applications (Deadline: 15 July 2021)

Micromachines is a peer-reviewed open access journal on the science and technology of small structures, devices, and systems, published monthly online by MDPI.

Benefits of publishing in Micromachines:

-Impact Factor 2.426 (2018 Journal Citation Reports@)

-Rapid Publication: Manuscripts are peer-reviewed, and a first decision provided to authors approximately 13.5 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 1.9 days (median values for papers published in this journal in the second half of 2019)

-Coverage by Leading Indexing Services: SCIE—Science Citation Index Expanded (Clarivate Analytics), Compendex (EI), PubMed (NLM), Scopus (Elsevier)

-Open Access: Unlimited and free access for readers

-No Copyright Constraints: Retain copyright of your work and free use of your article

-No Space Constraints, No Extra Space or Color Charges: No restriction on the length of the papers, number of figures, or use of color

-Discounts for Exceptional and Professional Service: The article processing charge (APC) for each accepted paper is 1600 CHF. You may be entitled to a discount if you have previously received a discount code.

If you are interested in publishing a paper, please feel free to contact us (micromachines@mdpi.com) or you may submit your paper directly here. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.

We look forward to collaborating with you.

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.

Micromachines established the Best Paper Award to recognize its best published papers in Volume 9 (between 21 December 2017 and 19 December 2018). Nominations are selected by the Editorial Office of Micromachines based on the review reports. All research articles and review papers published in Volume 9 are eligible for consideration.

The Evaluation Committee consisted of 42 Editorial Board Members chaired by the Section Editor-in-Chief, Professor Ai-Qun Liu. Each paper nominated was examined carefully before the decision was made for the Micromachines Best Paper Award 2019. Congratulations to the authors of the three winning papers:

• Li, X.; Mou, F.; Guo, J.; Deng, Z.; Chen, C.; Xu, L.; Luo, M.; Guan, J. Hydrophobic Janus Foam Motors: Self-Propulsion and On-The-Fly Oil Absorption. Micromachines 2018, 9, 23; doi.org/10.3390/mi9010023. Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-666X/9/1/23
• Yoon, D.H.; Tanaka, D.; Sekiguchi, T.; Shoji, S. Size-Dependent and Property-Independent Passive Microdroplet Sorting by Droplet Transfer on Dot Rails. Micromachines 2018, 9, 513; doi.org/10.3390/mi9100513. Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-666X/9/10/513
• Stier, A.; Halekote, E.; Mark, A.; Qiao, S.; Yang, S.; Diller, K.; Lu, N. Stretchable Tattoo-Like Heater with On-Site Temperature Feedback Control. Micromachines 2018, 9, 170; doi.org/10.3390/mi9040170. Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-666X/9/4/170

In recognition of their accomplishments, each Best Paper Award winner will be given a certificate, a cash award of 500 CHF, and an opportunity to publish a paper in Micromachines free of charge (equivalent to 1600 CHF) in Open Access format after the standard peer-review process.

MDPI is pleased to announce the release of SciProfiles, its social network platform for researchers and scholars.

The purpose of SciProfiles is aligned with MDPI’s broad mission to accelerate discovery and innovation by facilitating immediate access to research results and to serve scholars and communities by providing opportunities for academic networking.

SciProfiles also ambitions to serve as a sustainable, transparent and community-driven research evaluation system aligned with the DORA principles (https://sfdora.org/). Through their scientific profiles, academics can highlight their contribution to research communities, and measure their impact on their field, beyond publication numbers and impact factors. SciProfiles is currently a beta version and will enrich to give researchers the possibility to highlight all of their contributions to science and their scientific communities as authors, reviewers, editors, conference organizers, conference panelists, conference keynote speakers, or even as lecturers or student mentors at their University.

The classic components of popular community social networks, including follower/following, classical metrics, endorsements and recommendations (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1690), comments (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1397) are or will be very soon highlighted in SciProfiles as open science contributions.

To help increase the impact and visibility of articles and their authors to an appropriate audience, the platform offers a NewsFeed that includes recommendations of relevant content based on interests, publication history, saved searches or colleagues’ recommendations.

SciProfiles’ avatars are now being integrated on several MDPI platforms, meaning that you will directly access researchers’ profiles from any of the MDPI platforms:

MDPI's journal publishing website: www.mdpi.com
MDPI's conference hosting and management website: www.sciforum.net
MDPI's pre-print website : www.preprints.org
MDPI's knowledge sharing website : www.encyclopedia.pub
MDPI's books store: www.mdpi.com/books
MDPI's literature database : www.scilit.com

SciProfiles aims to serve scientific communities at large. It can be embedded into third-party websites and also welcomes integration of data from third-parties.

Dr. Shu-Kun Lin: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/2
Dr. Franck Vazquez: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/FranckVazquez
Dr. Martyn Rittman: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/martynrittman

We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2019 MDPI Writing Prize. Entrants were asked to write on the theme "Judging research: How should research and researchers be evaluated and rewarded?" We received a large number of excellent essays from PhD students and postdocs, and the process of shortlisting and choosing winners was not an easy one. The winners demonstrated excellent writing skills alongside interesting and thought-provoking ideas.

As last year, we will begin the process of collating all entries into a book that will be available in open access format. Alongside promoting good writing skills, we see the prize as a way to promote the voices of early career researchers within broader debates and policy discussions.

Congratulations to all of the participants and especially the winners. The winners are:

1st Prize (500 CHF):
Albin Nilsson (National Centre for Nuclear Research, Warsaw, Poland)
[Read here]

2nd Prize (250 CHF):
Qi Zhang (Shandong University, Jinan, China)
[Read here]
Igor Ogashawara (Indiana University, Indianapolis, US)
[Read here]

3rd Prize (100 CHF):
Margaret Sivapragasam (Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Perak, Malaysia)
[Read here]
Arvind Sharma (The University of Queensland, Gatton, Australia)
[Read here]
Jose Flores-Guerrero (University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands)
[Read here]

The MDPI Writing Prize is an annual award supported by MDPI Author Services, which provides services including language editing, reformatting, plagiarism checks, and image editing.