Announcements

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high-quality academic publishing. Over 369,916 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2020. We are extremely appreciative of all those who made a contribution to the editorial process in this capacity. At the beginning of every year, journal editorial offices publish a list of all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year, the MDPI Top Reviewer Award was announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise and dedication, and their high-quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2020 MDPI Top Reviewer Award:

• Adriana Burlea-Schiopoiu;
• Alban Kuriqi;
• Álvaro González-Vila;
• Alessandro Alaimo;
• Alexey Beskopylny;
• Alexander Yu Churyumov;
• Alberto Fernández-Isabel;
• Andrea Mastinu;
• Antonios N. Papadopoulos;
• Anton Rassõlkin;
• Antonio Humberto Hamad Minervino;
• Arkadiusz Matwijczuk;
• Artur Słomka;
• Baojie He;
• Bartłomiej Potaniec;
• Bojan Đurin;
• Camilo Arturo Rodriguez Diaz;
• Carmelo Maria Musarella;
• Chiachung Chen;
• Chiman Kwan;
• Cristian Busu;
• Danil Pimenov;
• Dan-Cristian Dabija;
• Delfín Ortega-Sánchez;
• Demetrio Antonio Zema;
• Denis Butusov;
• Elena Lucchi;
• Gaurab Dutta;
• Livia Anastasiu;
• M. R. Safaei.

For more information about how to become a reviewer of MDPI journals, please see: www.mdpi.com/reviewers.

UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. In 2020 the SDG Publishers Compact was launched, aimed to inspire publishers and accelerate progress to achieve the 17 goals by 2030. Members of the programme are committed to support the publication of materials that will promote and inspire actions towards SDGs.

MDPI is an eager advocate of SDGs and has already been supporting the programme by creating Special Issues and publishing a series of books on SDGs prior to joining the Compact in 2021. MDPI's Sustainability Foundation initiated the World Sustainability Awards in 2016. We fully support UN's goals to promote sustainable actions that make the world a better place for all and, as part of its commitment, we will focus our actions on SDG10: Reduced Inequalities whilst promoting all 17 SDGs. For more details, please visit the programme’s website: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sdg-publishers-compact/.

Joining this initiative was a unanimous decision. MDPI has in its core values the dissemination of science for all, breaking the wall between research access and under-represented members of the scientific community and the general population. To support this initiative further and continue to support under-represented scientists, MDPI will take a series of actions that will be announced once ready.

The first action MDPI takes is to nominate Dr. Liliane Auwerter as the coordinator of the programme. Dr. Auwerter studied Environmental Process Technology (UTFPR, Brazil), obtained her MSc degree in Water and Environmental Engineering (University of Surrey, UK) and in 2020 completed her PhD in self-healing low-friction materials for water transport (Imperial College London, UK), always focusing on diverse scientific projects that would potentially bring sustainability to industrial processes. As a student in Brazil, she engaged in volunteering activities focused on environmental education and took part in the Millennial Development Goals meetings held at the university.

For more information, please contact:
Dr. Liliane Auwerter
Scientific Officer
liliane.auwerter@mdpi.com

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new Topical Section, “Clays and Engineered Mineral Materials”, to provide a specific venue for this field of research in Minerals (ISSN: 1996-1944). The section is led by Dr. Andrey G. Kalinichev (1. Université de Nantes, Nantes, France; 2. National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia) and covered topics include, but are not limited to:

• Various aspects related to the mineralogy, geochemistry, and genesis of natural clay materials and other associated industrial minerals;
• Experimental and theoretical research on the structure, properties, and applications of broadly described natural and engineered layered and nanoporous minerals, including clays, layered double hydroxides (LDHs), zeolites, cementitious phases, and other related mineral materials;
• Detailed characterization using various diffraction, scattering, and spectroscopic techniques (X-ray, neutron, NMR, IR, Raman, AFM, etc.), and multiscale computational modeling of clay properties;
• Diverse applications of clays and clay minerals in geological and technological settings, such as mineral weathering, geological disposal of chemical and radioactive wastes, geological carbon sequestration, exploration of conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon resources, catalysis, construction, healthcare products, etc.

We are now recruiting submissions for this Section (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/minerals/sections/Clays_Engineered_Mineral_Materials). You can submit your work directly via the following link: https://susy.mdpi.com/user/manuscripts/upload?journal=minerals. Submissions before 31 October 2021 may enjoy a CHF 200 discount on the article processing charge. Alternatively, if you are an active researcher in one of the aforementioned fields and are interested in joining the Editorial Board, please do not hesitate to get in touch (minerals@mdpi.com).

Please feel free to contact us with any questions. We look forward to collaborating with you.

Minerals Editorial Office

This serves to announce to our valued authors based in Japan that value-added tax, or consumption tax will now be imposed on article processing fees and other service fees for all papers submitted, or resubmitted (assigned new paper IDs), effective from 15 August 2021. The change is in accordance with the Japanese "Act for Partial Revision of the Income Tax Act and Other Acts" (Act No. 9 of 2015), which includes a revision of consumption taxation on cross-border supplies of services such as digital content distribution.

For additional information from the National Tax Agency please see here ("Cross-border supplies of electronic services").

Contact: Setsuko Nishihara, MDPI Tokyo

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