Announcements

The 2020 citation metrics have been officially released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR)!

We are pleased to announce that 85 MDPI journals are included, of which:

• 10 journals received their first impact factor
• 96% of journals increased their impact factor from 2019
• 32 journals (38%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category

* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2021

Source: 2020 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ® (Clarivate, 2021)

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Andrey G. Kalinichev has been appointed as Editor-in-Chief of Clays and Engineered Mineral Materials Section of Minerals (ISSN 2075-163X). His term started in May 2021.

Dr. Andrey G. Kalinichev studied thermophysics at the Odessa Technological Institute and received his PhD (1986) in chemical physics at the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he subsequently was the head of the Physical Research Laboratory at the Institute of Experimental Mineralogy in Chernogolovka. He was one of the first to employ classical atomistic computer simulations to solve geochemical and environmental problems, which remain his principal research interests. In the period from 1989 to 1991, Dr. Kalinichev was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship and worked at the Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie (Otto-Hahn-Institut), Mainz, Germany. He later served as a Research Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Michigan State University before being invited as a Director of Research to the Institut Mines-Télécom Atlantique in Nantes, France, where, for the last ten years, his research group has been focused on atomistic computational modeling of materials and processes related to geological disposal of radioactive waste. His research interests cover geochemistry, environmental materials chemistry, soil organic matter, structure, and properties of interfacial and confined fluids in clay, cement, and other nanostructured materials, the technologies of geological carbon sequestration and shale gas exploration, and structure and properties of supercritical fluids and their technological applications. Since 2017, he has also been the Chief Research Fellow of the International Laboratory for Supercomputer Atomistic Modelling and Multi-Scale Analysis at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. Dr. Kalinichev served as President of the Clay Minerals Society from 2019 to 2020.

The editorial team warmly welcomes Dr. Andrey G. Kalinichev as Editor-in-Chief of the “Clays and Engineered Mineral Materials” Section and looks forward to his contribution to the continued success of Minerals.

For further information on the journal sections, please click here.

MDPI Books recently released Book Builder, a new online tool to conveniently arrange, design and produce an eBook from any content published in MDPI journals. Book Builder offers two functions: on the one hand (1) Selections, available to every registered user of MDPI; on the other hand (2) Special Issue Reprints, which can be used exclusively by Guest Editors of Special Issues.

Selections

In just a matter of a few clicks, all users are now able to assemble books from MDPI articles and receive instantaneous feedback in the form of a fully produced and compiled book (PDF), which can be downloaded or ordered as print copy. Selections can include any paper published with MDPI, picking and combining content from different journals and special issues.

This way, the user may for example choose to compile an ebook focusing around a particular topic, or assemble articles from a group of others.

We invite you to make yourself familiar with the new tool! The Book Builder can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/books/book_builder.

Special Issue Reprints

The Book Builder allows Guest Editors of MDPI journals to create a reprint from a successfully completed Special Issue or Topical Collection in book format. If you are a Guest Editor for an MDPI journal, you can use the new tool  to create an PDF document which includes all articles published in the Special Issue as well as a book cover and table of contents.

For Special Issues containing a minimum of 5 articles, the Guest Editor can request its publication on the MDPI Book platform. Published reprints are assigned an ISBN and DOI.

In addition to the PDF copy of the Reprint Book, as a token of our gratitude, MDPI offers every Guest Editor one (1) complimentary print copy (via print-on-demand). All contributors benefit from a discount on orders of any additional print copies, to share with colleagues or libraries or others.

Why choose MDPI Books?

In line with our organization's values, MDPI Books publishes all content in open access, promoting the exchange of ideas and knowledge in a globalized world. MDPI Books encompasses all the benefits of open access—high availability and visibility, as well as wide and rapid dissemination. MDPI Books are distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License, meaning as an author you retain the copyright for your work. In addition, with MDPI Books you can complement the digital version of your work with a high-quality printed counterpart.

If you are interested in editing a book volume or series, or have a monograph manuscript to be considered for publication, please submit your proposal online and look at our Information for Authors.

Contact: Laura Wagner, MDPI Books Manager (email)

We are pleased to inform you that the open access journal Minerals (ISSN 2075-163X; CODEN: MBSIBI) is now covered in the "Geochemistry & Geophysics" category in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)—Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) as of April 2021.

Minerals (ISSN 2075-163X; CODEN: MBSIBI) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal of natural mineral systems, mineral resources, mining, and mineral processing. Minerals welcomes submissions that report basic and applied research in mineralogy. Research areas of traditional interest are mineral deposits, mining, mineral processing and environmental mineralogy. The journal footprint also includes novel uses of elemental and isotopic analyses of minerals for petrology, geochronology and thermochronology, thermobarometry, ore genesis and sedimentary provenance. Contributions are encouraged in emerging research areas such as applications of quantitative mineralogy to the oil and gas, manufacturing, forensic science, climate change, geohazard and health sectors.

We ask you to consider Minerals as the platform for publishing your work.

Sincerely,
Minerals Editorial Office
minerals@mdpi.com

In June of this year, MDPI will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its foundation. To mark this significant milestone, we have created a 25th Anniversary page on our website that evokes the development of our company over the past quarter-century.

MDPI has been a pioneer of Open Access publishing ever since the concept was first created.

In a wide-ranging interview, our CEO Delia Mihaila reflects on the company’s 25th anniversary and its contribution to the world of scientific publishing.

Delia considers how MDPI has evolved since starting life in 1996 as a visionary ‘project’ run out of an apartment in Basel, Switzerland, by Dr. Shu-Kun Lin. A chemist who was passionate about the long-term preservation of rare chemical sample, Dr. Lin was determined to help scholars publish their findings as quickly as possible and make their research results available to as wide a readership as possible worldwide. That determination remains unchanged 25 years later.

Today, MDPI is an international organization with over 4,000 employees based on three continents and in ten countries, and ranks among the world's top four academic publishers.

MDPI's mission is to accelerate access to new scientific research, delivering insight faster for researchers worldwide. Read more here about the company's remarkable success story and what the Open Access publishing model can offer the global scientific community.

• Gravity Concentration in Artisanal Gold Mining
  Marcello M. Veiga et al.
  Minerals 2020, 10(11), 1026; 10.3390/min10111026
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/10/11/1026
• Jigging: A Review of Fundamentals and Future Directions
  Weslei M. Ambrós
  Minerals 2020, 10(11), 998; 10.3390/min10110998
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/10/11/998
• Clay Minerals in Hydrothermal Systems
  Paolo Fulignati
  Minerals 2020, 10(10), 919; 10.3390/min10100919
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/10/10/919
• Carbonatite-Related REE Deposits: An Overview
  Zhen-Yu Wang et al.
  Minerals 2020, 10(11), 965; 10.3390/min10110965
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/10/11/965
• Mineralogy, Geochemistry and Genesis of Agate—A Review
  Jens Götze et al.
  Minerals 2020, 10(11), 1037; 10.3390/min10111037
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/10/11/1037
• New Apatite Fission-Track Data from the Murmansk Craton, NE Fennoscandia: An Echo of Hidden Thermotectonic Events
  Roman V. Veselovskiy et al.
  Minerals 2020, 10(12), 1095; 10.3390/min10121095
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/10/12/1095
• Impact of Paleosalinity, Paleoredox, Paleoproductivity/Preservation on the Organic Matter Enrichment in Black Shales from Triassic Turbidites of Semanggol Basin, Peninsular Malaysia
  Zulqarnain Sajid et al.
  Minerals 2020, 10(10), 915; 10.3390/min10100915
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/10/10/915
• SEM-Based Automated Mineralogy and Its Application in Geo- and Material Sciences
  Bernhard Schulz et al.
  Minerals 2020, 10(11), 1004; 10.3390/min10111004
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/10/11/1004
• Improved Geotechnical Behavior of an Expansive Soil Amended with Tire-Derived Aggregates Having Different Gradations
  Amin Soltani et al.
  Minerals 2020, 10(10), 923; 10.3390/min10100923
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/10/10/923
• Chemical Composition and Petrogenetic Implications of Eudialyte-Group Mineral in the Peralkaline Lovozero Complex, Kola Peninsula, Russia
  Lia Kogarko et al.
  Minerals 2020, 10(11), 1036; 10.3390/min10111036
  Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/10/11/1036

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Antonio Simonetti has been appointed as Associate Editor of Minerals (ISSN 2075-163X). His term started in March 2021.

Dr. Simonetti is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana,USA. He is an isotope geochemist and geochronologist, conducting research for around 30 years in various Earth Sciences-related disciplines that include: characterizing the chemical and isotopic nature of Earth’s upper mantle via the investigation of alkaline and carbonatite complexes worldwide; U-Pb geochronological investigations of geological samples using laser ablation-(MC)-ICPMS techniques; developing novel techniques for the identification of chemical and isotopic forensic signatures within post-detonation materials and natural nuclear materials for source attribution purposes; and investigating the chemical and isotopic characteristics of fossilized remains within archaeological burial sites of interest, so as to provide insights into the migration patterns of ancient civilizations. To date, Dr. Simonetti has co-authored over 160 peer-reviewed journal publications.

The editorial team warmly welcomes Dr. Antonio Simonetti as Associate Editor and looks forward to his contribution to the continued success of Minerals.

For further information on the journal Minerals, please see here.

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)

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Zhiyong Gao has been appointed as Associate Editor-in-Chief of Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Section of Minerals (ISSN 2075-163X). His term started in February 2021.

Prof. Dr. Zhiyong Gao received his Ph.D. degree in Minerals Processing Engineering from Central South University (CSU), China in 2013, and now is professor and Vice Dean at the School of Minerals Processing and Bioengineering at CSU. His research interests include mineral flotation chemistry, flotation reagent design, and grinding media technology. The surface broken bond density (Db) index proposed by Prof. Dr. Zhiyong Gao has been widely accepted as a rapid way to study mineral surfaces and to assess their surface reactivity. This Db index has interestingly also been more widely recognized and applied in different areas, such as material science, crystal growth, geochemistry, and mineralogy. Prof. Dr. Zhiyong Gao’s research activities have also included extensive use of AFM and DFT on molecular recognition for the development of a series of novel collectors and reagent mixtures for improving separation selectivity when treating different minerals. Prof. Dr. Zhiyong Gao has developed a method to regulate crystal surface exposure and hence particle reactivity of different minerals by optimizing the grinding media parameters. Based on these fundamental studies, various new reagent schemes and grind technologies have been developed and utilized to optimize the currently used separation process and address key environmental and energy-related challenges in mineral processing. He has won the MEI Young Person’s Award, China–Australia Young Scientist Exchange Award, and Young Elite Scientists Award from the China Association for Science and Technology.

The editorial team warmly welcomes Prof. Dr. Zhiyong Gao as Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Section and looks forward to his contribution to the continued success of Minerals.

For further information on the journal sections, please click here.

In order to maintain high standards and to continue publishing high-quality papers in Minerals, we need professional and expert scientists to become reviewers. We are therefore recruiting scientists to join our reviewer board to provide professional comments for submissions that fall within the scope of Minerals, as well as to conduct timely and efficient reviews.

The benefits of joining the Reviewer Board of Minerals are as follows:

1. You can verify and showcase your peer review and editorial contributions to our journal;
2. Your published papers will receive priority during journal promotions.

Note that choosing to review papers for Minerals will not prevent you from reviewing manuscripts for other journals.

Join us in our effort to decrease our reviewing time and to improve the quality of published papers!

If you are interested in this role or if you have any suggestions, please feel free to contact us (minerals@mdpi.com).