Announcements

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative—the MDPI Special Issue Mentor Program.

This program will enable early career researchers (who must hold a Ph.D. in a related field) to experience editing a Special Issue in MDPI journals, under the mentorship of our experienced Editorial Board Members or other experienced scientists. The mentor program will provide an excellent opportunity for early career scientists to gain editorial experience, and to cultivate their ability to edit scientific research.

The mentee’s responsibilities include:

• Proposing a Special Issue title and assisting the mentor in preparing a summary (around 200–400 words) and 3–10 keywords describing the background, importance, and goal of the Issue;
• Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
• Preparing a list of scholars who may be interested in the Issue and personally e-mailing invitations on behalf of Guest Editors;
• Writing an editorial for the online Special Issue together with the mentor.

The mentor’s responsibilities include:

• Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
• Performing editorial control of the Special Issue and quality control of the publications, both of which must be carried out in a timely manner;
• Providing suggestions to younger scholars if they have any doubts or concerns regarding submissions;
• Organizing video calls with young scholars and the Editorial Office regularly to discuss problems and improvement suggestions for the Special Issue;
• Making and submitting decisions regarding submissions with the assistance of mentees.

Certificates and awards:
After the Special Issue closes, the Editorial Office will provide official certificates for all the mentors and early career researchers.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Editorial Office of a journal you choose, and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail. The full list of MDPI journals is as follows: https://www.mdpi.com/about/journals.

In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, we will continue to welcome all Special Issue proposals focusing on hot research topics.

MDPI has just become the first open access (OA) publisher to reach the milestone of one million articles published. That is one million articles freely available to all, to circulate and build upon! We are proud to share this special moment with the global scientific community.

This landmark has been reached thanks to the immeasurable support of more than 600,000 expert reviewers, 66,000 editorial board members and 6700 hard-working colleagues across MDPI’s global offices.

Within more than 25 years of publishing, our journals received 2.1 million manuscripts and generated 4.6 million peer review reports to get to one million papers published.

Reaching the milestone of one million articles published reinforces our mission to remove any existing barriers and to make scientific research accessible to all. Since its inception, MDPI’s goal has been to create reliable processes to make science open. This is a path towards facilitating the dissemination of novel insights in scientific communities.

Regular feedback from authors and reviewers shows that our service is greatly appreciated and needed. At the same time, the feedback helps us identify areas for further improvement.

As it stands, a significant share of published research findings remain closed access. More than half of the content published with the most well-known legacy publishers stays behind a paywall, and that is not including articles published in hybrid OA journals, or made available months or years after publication.

A new policy announced by the US administration in August 2022 requires that, as of January 2026, all US federally funded research be made freely and immediately available after publication. While the new policy does not mandate articles be published under an open access license, it is aligned with the open access movement in removing all barriers to research. Similarly, some of the most advanced research institutions in the world intend to have all funded research articles published in open access by 2025.

MDPI is proud to be the leading agent of the transition to open access.

"Thanks a Million" to all the contributors!

Microorganisms (ISSN: 2076-2607, IF: 4.926) is an international, peer-reviewed, and open access journal that provides an advanced forum for studies related to prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms, viruses, and prions.

We are now recruiting Guest Editors for this journal. If you are an active researcher in the field and passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to contact us at microorganisms@mdpi.com.

The responsibilities of Guest Editors include the following:

• Defining the aims and scopes of Special Issues;
• Carrying out prechecks and making final decisions as to whether a paper is acceptable (according to the review reports);
• Providing potential author lists and inviting high-quality contributions.

The benefits for Guest Editors include the following:

• A discount for publication in your Special Issue;
• A certificate in recognition of your role as a Guest Editor of Microorganisms;
• A book that could be published if more than ten papers are published in the Special Issue;
• Consideration as a Microorganisms Editorial Board Member candidate if the Special Issue is successful.

It is our pleasure to receive applications from leading experts in the aforementioned academic fields. We welcome and encourage you to apply.

You can submit your application directly via the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/microorganisms.

If you have any questions before or after applying, please do not hesitate to contact us at microorganisms@mdpi.com.

We are pleased to announce that the website of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation has been revamped! For the past couple of months, our UX UI team and front-end developers have been working hard to launch the website in time for the opening of the Sustainability Awards nominations.

The website is not the only thing that has had a remodeling. Indeed, the format of the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award (ESLA) has been updated. ESLA is now a competition open to individual researchers or start-ups founded by researchers under the age of 35. Nominee applications will go through 2 rounds of selection until the final 3 are decided. The finalists will then be invited to give pitch presentations during the Award Ceremony to win either first place (10,000 USD) or runner-up (2 x 5000 USD).

The World Sustainability Award, on the other hand, remains the same: a total prize money of 100,000 USD is up for grabs by senior individual researchers or groups of researchers from the international research community.

Nominations for both the World Sustainability Award and the Emerging Sustainability Leader award are now open! Check out our new website for more information on how to nominate.

Stanford University recently published its updated list of the World’s Top 2% Scientists. The data, ranging from 1960 to 2022, are divided into two lists: the “Lifetime Scientific Influence Ranking” and the “2022 Annual Scientific Influence Ranking”. The “Lifetime Scientific Influence Ranking” presents the comprehensive influence of scientists during their careers, and the “2022 Annual Influence Ranking” highlights the academic influence of scientists in the previous year. This ranking, considered the most prestigious worldwide, is based on bibliometric information contained in the Scopus database and includes more than 200,000 of the more than 10 million active scientists worldwide, with 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields considered.

We are pleased to share that 156 Editorial Board Members from MDPI’s journal Microorganisms (IF: 4.926, ISSN: 2076-2607) were featured in Stanford University’s list of World’s Top 2% Scientists in 2022.

The latest Stanford rankings reflect the considerable influence and research excellence of scientists who are committed to furthering their knowledge for the benefit of the world.

We congratulate our Editorial Board Members on their excellent achievement and thank them for their immense contribution to the development of Microorganisms.

Peer Review Week began 19 September 2022 under the theme of “Research Integrity: Creating and Supporting Trust in Research”. Through various blog articles, podcast, and webinar, we discussed this crucial subject throughout the week, celebrating the essential role peer review plays in maintaining research quality.

To begin, we held a Webinar on the topic. Professor Peter W. Choate and Dr. Emmanuel Obeng-Gyasi joined Dr. Ioana Craciun, one of MDPI’s scientific officers, for an in-depth discussion.

We invite you to view the event recording:

During the week, the MDPI Blog in a series articles highlighted how good Peer Review safeguards research integrity. The following topics were covered:

• Peer Review Week 2022
• Research Integrity
• What We’ve Learned About Peer Review Reports
• 4 Steps to the Perfect Peer Review Report
• How to Write the Perfect Peer Review Report: An Interview
• Inviting Great Peer Reviewers

In a new edition of Insight Faster, an MDPI podcast, we were delighted to talk to the co-chairs of the Peer Review Week committee, Jayashree Rajagopalan (Senior Manager of Global Community Engagement for CACTUS) and Danielle Padula (Head of Marketing and Community Development at Scholastica) to get their take on this year’s event and its related topics.

You can find the Podcast here.

We hope you enjoy the contents!

Microorganisms (IF 4.926, ISSN: 2076-2607) is an online open-access journal that was first published in 2013. Microorganisms has published more than 7600 papers since its inception, and the journal has been indexed within Scopus (2021 CiteScore: 4.1), SCIE (Web of Science), PubMed, PMC, PubAg, CAPlus / SciFinder, AGRIS, and other databases. Microorganisms adheres to rigorous peer review and editorial processes and provides an advanced forum for studies related to prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms, viruses, and prions. Manuscripts are peer-reviewed, and a first decision is provided to authors approximately 15.3 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 2.7 days (median values for papers published in this journal in the first half of 2022). The Hellenic Society Mikrobiokosmos (MBK), the Spanish Society for Nitrogen Fixation (SEFIN), and the Society for Microbial Ecology and Disease (SOMED) are affiliated with Microorganisms, and their members receive a discount on the article processing charges.

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 currently recruiting Topical Advisory Panel Members for the journal Microorganisms (ISSN 2076-2607). The main responsibility of the new members of the Topical Advisory Panel is to regularly provide support to Guest Editors and Section Board Members. The responsibilities of the Topical Advisory Panel Members are available here: https://www.mdpi.com/editors.

Microorganisms is a peer-reviewed, open access journal, which provides an advanced forum for studies related to prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms, viruses, and prions and is published quarterly online by MDPI. Its website can be accessed at the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/microorganisms.

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

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

If you are interested in this position, please apply via the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/microorganisms/topical_advisory_panel_application, or send an email to the Editorial Office (microorganisms@mdpi.com) with your academic CV. We look forward to hearing from you.

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)