Announcements

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

Molecules is recruiting Editorial Board Members for the following three new Sections:

- Electrochemistry;

- Chemical Biology;

- Nanochemistry.

The main responsibilities of the Section Editorial Board Members are as follows:

1) Promoting this new Section on your social media or among your acquaintances;

2) Supervising the quality of the papers in this Section (when we have new submissions to the Section);

3) Acting as a/recommending a Guest Editor for a Special Issue on a topic related to your research interests;

4) Providing conference/society cooperation recommendations.

Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049) is the leading international, peer-reviewed, open access journal of chemistry science. Molecules is published semimonthly online by MDPI. 2020 IF for Molecules was 4.411.

To apply for this position, please send your full academic CV and a short cover letter that details your interest and enthusiasm for the position to molecules@mdpi.com.

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)

Tu Youyou Award

Established in honor of Professor Tu Youyou, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for her key contributions to the discovery of Artemisinin, which is used as an antimalarial agent, the Tu Youyou Award is presented bienially to a researcher of any age who has made significant, high-impact contributions to natural product or medicinal chemistry research. Prof. Tu tested the toxicity of her new drug by taking it herself; she put herself in harm’s way in order to produce a compound that would go on to save the lives of millions. Molecules established the Tu Youyou Award in order to highlight and celebrate researchers who, like Tu Youyou, dedicate their lives in various ways to research that improves the lives of others. The Award is given for the originality of the nominee's research, the importance of the work, and the quality of publications. The winner receives 3000 CHF and an engraved plaque.

About 2020 winner

The winner of the Molecules 2020 Tu Youyou Award is

Prof. Mauro Maccarrone.

Mauro Maccarrone is a Professor and Chair of Biochemistry at the University of L'Aquila. He is also the Director of the Lipid Neurochemistry Laboratory at the European Centre for Brain Research (Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome). His group is comprised of four units, and they are highly integrated and have collaborated for more than 15 years (they are located at Tor Vergata University of Rome, University of Teramo, Santa Lucia Foundation, and Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome). Prof. Maccarrone’s research focuses on a novel class of lipid signalling molecules: the endocannabinoids, and resulted in numerous articles published in prestigious journals which have been cited many times. Most importantly, his work has great translational potential and has opened new avenues for the treatment of a number of diseases that altered endocannabinoid functions in a pathogenic capacity. This is an outstanding achievement in a scientific environment that is only becoming more competitive. Please join us in congratulating Prof. Mauro Maccarrone for his commitment and wish him the best in future endeavours. Let’s learn some more interesting facts while listening to the interview!

Contact: 
Dr. Agnieszka Witkowska
Scientific Officer—Chemistry
agnieszka.witkowska@mdpi.com

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Axel Klein has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the “Inorganic Chemistry” Section of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049).

Name: Axel Klein
Email: aklein2@uni-koeln.de
Affiliation: Universität zu Köln, Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Department für Chemie, Institut für Anorganische Chemie, Greinstraße 6, 50939 Köln, Germany
Homepage: https://klein.uni-koeln.de/
Research Keywords: transition metal complexes (including organometallic); platinum, palladium, nickel; copper; synthesis; electrochemistry; photophysics; spectroscopy; modelling of catalytic processes; precursors for CVD; ligand design; cytotoxic complexes; organic–inorganic perovskites; functionalisation of nanomaterials; electrochemistry

Prof. Dr. Axel Klein received his PhD in 1994 in Inorganic Chemistry and, since then, has worked in academic research focused on coordination chemistry. Today, his work spreads over various fields ranging from photochemistry and photophysics of complexes, organometallic catalysis, bioinorganic chemistry, and cytotoxic platinum complexes to organic–inorganic hybrid perovskites and the modification of nanomaterials, maintaining collaborations on all continents. Axel Klein holds a full professorship at the University of Cologne, Germany, and is the (co)author of more than 220 research papers, reviews, book chapters, and books. He is associate editor of numerous chemical journals, has provided over 500 reviews for journals, and is an active reviewer for several funding agencies (Humboldt, DFG, DAAD, NSF).

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Axel Klein in his role as Section Editor-in-Chief, and we look forward to his leading Molecules to achieving more milestones.

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)

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.

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)

Introduction

Michal Szostak received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas, which he completed under the supervision of Prof. Jeffrey Aubé. After postdoctoral stints at Princeton University with Prof. David MacMillan and at the University of Manchester with Prof. David Procter, he joined the faculty at Rutgers University. His research group is focused on the development of new catalytic methods based on transition-metal catalysis, amide bonds, N–C, O–C, C–H bond activation, Pd–NHC catalysis, and synthetic methodology. He is the author of over 180 peer-reviewed publications and Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section on Organometallic Chemistry in Molecules.

Main Fields of Interest

Synthetic organic, organometallic chemistry, catalysis, ligand design.

1. Can you briefly describe your research?

The major goal of my laboratory is fundamental reaction methodology development in synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry with a focus on N–C activation, amide bonds, cross-coupling, C–H activation, and NHC ligands, and their application to the synthesis of chemically relevant motifs. A particular interest is directed towards new organometallic synthetic strategies that permit ready access to metal electrophiles from ubiquitous carboxylic acid derivatives and highly active, well-defined metal catalysts for organic reactions of major significance to researchers working in both industrial and academic settings.

2. Can you share your career development story?

I have a broad background in synthetic organic chemistry with specific training and expertise in catalysis, nitrogen-heterocycles, carbonyl functional groups and organometallic cross-coupling chemistry. Initially, my laboratory has been focused on developing new synthetic methods based on transition-metal-catalysis for amide bond activation. This research avenue was inspired by the classical amide bond twisting in bridged lactams, which, as extraordinarily elegant as they are, have limited applications in organic synthesis. By applying concepts introduced by pioneers in bridged lactam chemistry, we have successfully developed the amide bond cross-coupling platform by N–C bond activation in common acyclic amides. Taking off from the amide bond research, my laboratory has moved on to establish new methods for cross-coupling of esters, carboxylic acids, mechanistic studies, functional-group-interconversion, decarbonylative coupling, C–H activation and later organometallic synthesis, ligand design and metal-NHC catalysis, which are among the main current goals.

3. What do you think of the future of our Organometallic Chemistry Section? What are the expectations you have for this section? What perspective do you think the section will bring to the related fields?

It is our hope that the section will reach the impact and readership level matching the most established journals in the field. As outlined in our editorial (https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/25/13/3038), statistical data of Molecules compare very favorably with the flagship journals in the field. The journal impact factor of 3.267 ranks Molecules as one of the highest among the organometallic journals. Furthermore, we have recently compared the statistical data for review articles in the section, which showed an excellent IF of 8.3 for reviews published in the Organometallic Chemistry Section of Molecules. The highly encouraging statistical data combined with open access publishing provide an attractive springboard for future developments. 

4. As a researcher in Organometallic Chemistry, what valuable suggestions would you like to share with young scholars in terms of research topic selection?

Organometallic research occupies a central place in chemistry. The most successful research is if others apply the developed concepts, catalysts, complexes, or reactions in their own studies. Organometallic processes that contribute to and enable scientific advances across disciplines have a potential to be the key driving force for chemical science.

Work–Life Balance

1. What got you interested in scientific research in the first place?

Chemistry research is exciting and extraordinarily rewarding. It is a field where everyone can find their niche and very quickly test their research hypothesis, experiment with a new idea, or try out a new approach. Few other disciplines offer such a quick transition from the conceptual design stage to the experimental testing, and ultimately, in select few cases, to real-life applications.

2. What attracted you to join the academic editor team of Molecules/MDPI?

With the advent of open access publishing, Molecules and MDPI have been steadily growing in recognition and influence among the chemistry community, and recently the journal celebrated its 25-year anniversary. There were some outstanding review articles published by the journal, which we had followed and resulted in expansion of our research portfolio. The journal impact factor compares very favorably with other open access journals and as one of the highest among the organometallic journals.

3. What do you think are the most important characteristics/personality for an editor?

One of the challenges is to ensure that the journal provides an attractive open access platform for disseminating highquality articles in the field. Organometallic research is extremely broad as a field, encompassing organometallic chemistry, organic and inorganic chemistry, as well as synthesis, catalysis, and applications. Our editors acknowledge these points and provide ample opportunities to the authors to disseminate their research through a variety of article types, platforms, and forums.

MDPI is proud to adopt the principles of the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) to support building equity, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications.

The C4DISC represents organizations and individuals working in scholarly communications and is focused on addressing issues of diversity and inclusion within the publishing industry.

MDPI’s Managing Editors encourage the Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors to appoint diverse expert Editorial Boards. This is also reflective in our multi-national and inclusive workplace. We are proud to create equal opportunities without regard to gender, ethnicity, geographic location, sexual orientation, age, disability, political beliefs, religion, or socio-economic status. There is no place for discrimination in our workplace and editors of MDPI journals are to uphold these principles in high regard.

Representatives from C4DISC meet monthly, and have started to implement initiatives to shed light and improve on the lack of diversity in scholarly communications. Some of the initiatives include developing a joint statement of principles; conducting market research; providing training resources, best practices, toolkits, and documentation for our collective memberships; and establishing outreach programs, curricula, events, and publications.

The Coalition is committed to:

• eliminating barriers to participation, extending equitable opportunities across all stakeholders, and ensuring that our practices and policies promote equitable treatment and do not allow, condone, or result in discrimination;
• creating and maintaining an environment that respects diverse traditions, heritages, and experiences;
• promoting diversity in all staff, volunteers, and audiences, including full participation in programs, policy formulation, and decision-making;
• raising awareness about career opportunities in our industries to groups who are currently underrepresented in the workforce;
• supporting our members in achieving diversity and inclusion within their organizations.