Announcements

Conference: Joint Conference on Environmental Chemicals Japan 2023
Date: 30 May–2 June 2023
Location: Tokushima, Japan

MDPI will be attending the Joint Conference on Environmental Chemicals Japan 2023 as an exhibitor; we welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest ideas with us.

This conference is organized by the Japan Society of Endocrine Disruptors Research, the Japanese Society of Environmental Toxicology, and the Japan Society of Environmental Chemistry. The theme of the conference is “Beyond Disciplines to Solve Environmental Chemical Problems: Developing New Research from Diverse Perspectives”. At the conference, specialists will share and discuss the latest research on and applications of environmental and chemical substances to society.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Sustainability;
• Toxics;
• Minerals;
• Atmosphere;
• Environments;
• JoX.

As a leading open access publisher, MDPI provides scholars with a high-quality and rich academic exchange platform by continuously expanding into new and exciting research areas.

In December 2022, MDPI launched five new journals, covering multiple subjects such as life sciences, biology, medicine and pharmacology, social sciences and humanities. These new journals are being edited by established scholars across the world.

If you are interested in creating more open access journals with us to publish cutting-edge research, please send your journal proposal application to newjournal-committee@mdpi.com.

MDPI is pleased to announce that we now display the co-authors’ email addresses in addition to the corresponding author’s email address on the webpage of published papers, protected by Captcha. For more information about this change, please visit the journal’s instructions for authors page. 

We believe this change will facilitate academic discussions and advance our cause of open science and research. The corresponding authors are responsible for communicating with their co-authors and indicating in our system (https://susy.mdpi.com/) if co-authors would prefer for their email addresses not to be displayed.

On 9 February 2023, Clarivate, a global leader in providing trusted insights and analytics, added the Preprint Citation Index to the Web of Science platform, streamlining the research process by allowing researchers to locate and link to preprints alongside other trusted content in the database.

The Preprint Citation Index will act as a bridge to connect cutting-edge preprints with peer-reviewed journal articles published within the Web of Science Core Collection. Alerts can be easily set to monitor new research across several repositories and authors will also be able to include preprints on their Web of Science Research Profile to more accurately display their various research outputs.

As of its launch, the Preprint Citation Index will provide nearly two million preprints from various repositories, including MDPI’s own Preprints.org.

MDPI's Preprints Platform – Preprints.org

To advance Open Science and the fast dissemination of research, MDPI offers researchers a free multidisciplinary preprint platform. Preprints.org accepts submissions from all research areas and offers authors high visibility, permanent archiving, article-level Metrics and immediately citable content by assigning a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to all preprints.

During submission to any MDPI journal, authors have the option to share their research as a preprint. After an initial screening, the manuscript is available online in 48 hours or less. Once online, preprints can be downloaded, shared, commented on, and cited, providing authors maximum visibility.

We invite you to join the ranks of the over 100k researchers using Preprints.org and share your research.

For more information, please visit Preprints.org.

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!

Minerals (ISSN: 2075-163X) is now recruiting Editorial Board Members (EBMs) for the Section “Biomineralization and Biominerals”. We would like to invite active scientific researchers to become involved in our Section as Editorial Board Members. You can find out more about the existing Editorial Board Members by visiting the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/minerals/sectioneditors/Biomineralization_Biominerals.

Minerals is indexed by Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) with an Impact Factor of 2.818 (2021). The “Biomineralization and Biominerals” Section provides an advanced forum for studies related to all aspects of the structure and the composition of mineral and organic components of plants, fungi, algae, vertebrates and invertebrates. Our aim is to encourage scientists to publish their experimental and theoretical results in as much detail as possible. There is no restriction on the length of papers.

If you are interested or would like to recommend potential candidates or request further information, please send your resume to our Editorial Office (minerals@mdpi.com).

Minerals (ISSN: 2075-163X) is now recruiting Editorial Board Members (EBMs) for the Section “Mineral Exploration Methods and Applications”. We would like to invite active scientific researchers to become involved in our Section as Editorial Board Members. You can find out more about the existing Editorial Board Members by visiting the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/minerals/sectioneditors/Mineral_Exploration_Methods_Applications.

Minerals is indexed by Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) with an Impact Factor of 2.818 (2021). The “Mineral Exploration Methods and Applications” Section provides an advanced forum for studies related to all aspects of mineral resources, including geological, geophysical, geochemical methods, and satellite imagery. Our aim is to encourage scientists to publish their experimental and theoretical results in as much detail as possible. There is no restriction on the length of papers.

If you are interested or would like to recommend potential candidates or request further information, please send your resume to our Editorial Office (minerals@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.

Minerals (ISSN: 2075-163X) has launched the “Biomineralization and Biominerals” Section. Biominerals are natural organo-mineral biocomposites. There are unresolved questions about the factors that control their formation and growth in tests, shells, and skeletons, in addition to how some diseases modify their properties. The field covered by the “Biomineralization and Biominerals” Section extends from the structure to the composition of mineral and organic components of plants, fungi, algae, vertebrates, and invertebrates. Methods for characterization at the macro, micro, nano, and atomic levels of biominerals are included. Contributions from a broad community working on fundamental research and/or applications in biology, medicine, inspired biomaterials, evolution, diagenesis, etc., based on modern and ancient (fossil) biominerals, are expected.

We are pleased to invite you to read papers from the Editor’s Choice Articles in 2021. We have carefully curated a list of high-quality articles from the “Biomineralization and Biominerals” Section below:

“A Study of Thermal Stability of Hydroxyapatite”
by Natalia V. Bulina, Svetlana V. Makarova, Sergey G. Baev, Alexander A. Matvienko, Konstantin B. Gerasimov, Olga A. Logutenko and Vladimir S. Bystrov
Minerals 2021, 11(12), 1310; https://doi.org/10.3390/min11121310
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/11/12/1310

“Complex Biomineralization Pathways of the Belemnite Rostrum Cause Biased Paleotemperature Estimates”
by René Hoffmann, Benjamin J. Linzmeier, Kouki Kitajima, Gernot Nehrke, Martin Dietzel, Niels Jöns, Kevin Stevens and Adrian Immenhauser
Minerals 2021, 11(12), 1406; https://doi.org/10.3390/min11121406
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/11/12/1406

“First Report of Small Shelly Fossils from the Cambrian Miaolingian Limestones (Zhangxia and Hsuzhuang Formations) in Yiyang County, Henan Province of North China”
by Yazhou Hu, Lars E. Holmer, Yue Liang, Xiaolin Duan and Zhifei Zhang
Minerals 2021, 11(10), 1104; https://doi.org/10.3390/min11101104
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/11/10/1104

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the research groups that submitted these exceptional papers for their contributions to Minerals. We would appreciate it if you would circulate this document among your colleagues or through your network. Additionally, we look forward to our collaboration through the following means:

Submitting a manuscript:
You can submit your work directly via the following link: https://susy.mdpi.com/user/manuscripts/upload?journal=minerals.

Launching a Special Issue:
You can propose hot topics and edit a Special Issue together with a couple of outstanding experts via the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/minerals.

Joining the Editorial Board:
If you are an active researcher in the field of clays and engineered mineral materials, and are interested in joining the Editorial Board, please do not hesitate to get in touch (minerals@mdpi.com).

Minerals Editorial Office