Announcements

We are pleased to announce that Professor Nelson Tansu, the Editor-in-Chief of Photonics (ISSN 2304-6732; CODEN: PHOTC5; IF 2.140; www.mdpi.com/journal/photonics), has been appointed as the new Head of the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) and Professor in Quantum Electronics at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.

Professor Nelson Tansu is a US-based engineering scientist and inventor with an 18-year career in research excellence. Professor Tansu received his BS and PhD degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the United States, in 1998 and 2003, respectively. Professor Tansu is currently the Director of the Center for Photonics and Nanoelectronics, and the Daniel E. '39 and Patricia M. Smith Endowed Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Lehigh University. He is a Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors and has been a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher (2018).

Tansu has 18 US patents and has made important advances to the invention and innovation, fundamental sciences, and device technologies of semiconductors for energy efficiency and photonics. His research has been funded (with a total of US$13.39 million) by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Education (DoED), Department of Defense (DOD), and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the US. He has authored more than 155 refereed journals and 310 conference publications, and his work has been cited more than 8600 times.

Let us congratulate Professor Nelson Tansu, who will take up his new post at the University of Adelaide in January 2021. The School of EEE at the University of Adelaide is ranked 42nd in the world according to the 2020 Academic Ranking of World Universities, and 11th in the world in the 2021 US News and World Reports Best Global Universities Subject Ranking. We look forward to his continued success at the University of Adelaide.

The full news release by the University of Adelaide is available in the link below.

www.adelaide.edu.au/newsroom/news/list/2020/11/02/uni-adelaide-appoints-leading-engineering-scientist-as-head-of-school-of-electrical-and-electronic-engineering

MDPI will be attending the 4th Micro-Nano Optics Technology and Application Exchange Conference (MOTA2020), Chengdu, September 26–28, 2020.

MOTA2020 is organized by the Chinese Society for Optical Engineering, which combines the national defense and industrial applications to build a large platform for the industrial chain. The aim is to build a seamless docking platform for scientific and technical personnel engaged in related research in China and industrial application teams to form a joint force to promote the rapid technological development of micro-nano optics itself and its industrial development.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Energies (leading journal)
• Photonics
• Nanomaterials
• Coatings
• Sensors
• Clean Technologies
• Safety
• Micromachines

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth "Journal Energies"). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://b2b.csoe.org.cn/meeting/MOTA2020.html.

We are delighted to announce the establishment of our Open Access agreement with Jisc Collections, which will allow UK institutions to benefit from access to article processing charge (APC) discounts and streamlined payment workflows.

All institutions participating in the agreement will also gain access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information for easy identification and additional transparency.

Eligible authors affiliated with the participating institutions are prompted to choose the corresponding Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system.

About Jisc

Jisc's vision is for the UK to be the most digitally advanced education and research nation in the world. At its heart is the super-fast national research and education network, Janet, with built-in cyber security protection.  Jisc also provides technology solutions for its members (colleges, universities and research centres) and customers (public sector bodies), helps members save time and money by negotiating sector-wide deals and provides advice and practical assistance on digital technology. Jisc is funded by the UK higher and further education and research funding bodies and member institutions.

For more information, contact helen.dobson@jisc.ac.uk.

About MDPI

MDPI is a publisher of fully peer-reviewed, Open Access journals with a focus on thorough and rapid editorial processing. Its aim is to ensure that high-quality research is verified and made available to the research community as quickly as possible. MDPI stands at the forefront of the Open Access movement, having launched its first online journal Molecules in 1996. Today, MDPI is a leader in Open Access publishing with over 250 journals across all research disciplines, and all content published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

For any questions about this agreement, please contact the MDPI IOAP team at ioap@mdpi.com.

The updated citation metrics have been released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), published by Clarivate. The recent release of the JCR includes seventy-one MDPI titles. Out of these, 18 titles are newcomers, receiving a first Journal Impact Factor which is based on citation activity in 2019: Actuators, Agriculture, Biology, Biomedicines, Biosensors, Chemosensors, Children, Healthcare, Journal of Fungi, Journal of Personalized Medicine (JPM), Land, Life, Magnetochemistry, Membranes, Pharmaceuticals, Photonics, Separations and Toxics.

• Out of the previously listed journals, a total of 72 percent boast an increased Impact Factor.
• 25 journals are ranked among the top 25% of journals in at least one of the categories they are ranked for.
• Articles published in 2019 in MDPI journals account for approximately 17 percent of of articles published in gold Open Access journals covered in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).
  
  

First Impact Factors

Updated Impact Factors

The editors are pleased to inform that Photonics has received a first Impact Factor of 2.140, as published in the 2019 Edition of the Journal Citation Reports® (Clarivate), released just now. Photonics ranks 48th out of 97 (Q2) titles in the 'Optics' category.

Thank you to the authors, editorial board members and reviewers for their contribution in achieving this milestone for Photonics.

Since 1996, MDPI has been committed to supporting the research community by providing the latest research freely available and making relevant and useful research available as quickly as possible. The world is current experiencing a pandemic of COVID-19, and researchers are working extremely hard to understand it and find a cure.

The values MDPI holds strongly are particularly important at the moment, and we will continue to publish relevant, peer-reviewed research as quickly as possible in open access format. This means that it will immediately be available for researchers, health professionals, and the general public to read, distribute, and reuse. We believe that scientific advancements will be crucial to overcoming this pandemic, and will do everything we can to support researchers working looking for solutions.

COVID-19 Academic Resources Center contains a variety of information related to COVID-19 available from MDPI, including journal articles, special issues, and preprints, among others.

For more information, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/covid-19

As a leading Open Access publisher, MDPI is committed to fostering open scientific exchange in all forms across all disciplines. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, many researchers have to stay at home and many academic conferences have been cancelled or postponed. In light of these changes, MDPI has adopted numerous initiatives that may help accelerate scientific exchange and provide support to the academics during this period.

Scholarly Community—Encyclopedia

Encyclopedia is an online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as providing benchmark information for researchers and the general public interested in accurate and advanced knowledge on specific topics.

Comprehensive and Free Literature Database—Scilit

Scilit is a comprehensive, free database for scientists that uses a new method to collate data and index scientific material. Our crawlers extract the latest data from CrossRef and PubMed on a daily basis. This means that newly published articles are immediately added to Scilit.

Display Academic Achievements—SciProfiles

SciProfiles is an innovative social network for researchers and scholars that is developed by MDPI. In line with our broad mission, the purpose of SciProfiles is to accelerate discovery and innovation by facilitating immediate access to research results and providing opportunities for academic networking.

Organize and Participate in Conferences Online—Sciforum

Sciforum is an event planning platform that supports open science by offering the opportunity to host and participate in academic conferences. It provides an environment for scholarly exchange, discussion of topics of current interest, building of networks, and establishing collaborations.

Post Early Versions of Research Outputs—Preprints

Preprints is a platform dedicated to making early versions of research outputs permanently available and citable. We post original research articles and comprehensive reviews, and papers can be updated by authors at any time. Content on Preprints is not peer-reviewed, and feedback can be received from readers.

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MDPI remains committed to open science and open data and has signed a statement, along with more than thirty scholarly publishers, showing our intention to facilitate sharing of new research findings as early on as possible. The initiative sees publishers collectively removing barriers to new research, in the face of a global healthcare crisis.

Photonics is recruiting Section Editors-in-Chief for the following six new Sections:

• Biophotonics and Biomedical Optics
• Optical Communication, Information Processing, and Data Storage
• Optoelectronics and Optical Materials
• Lasers, Light Sources and Sensors
• Optical Interaction Science
• Classical Optics

Photonics publishes high impact fundamental research as well as applications of optics and photonics. The journal particularly welcomes both theoretical (simulation) and experimental research, and is covered by Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE - Web of Science), Inspec (IET), and Scopus. The first Impact Factor is expected in June 2020 (JCR - Clarivate Analytics). The Photonics website can be accessed here.

The Section Editor-in-Chief is responsible for:

• defining the Aims and Scope of the Section;
• advising on the strategic development of the Section;
• ensuring the quality of the published content;
• nominating/inviting Guest Editors and optionally delegating to them the authority to make final acceptance decisions for submitted articles;
• nominating/inviting contributors;
• nominating and leading the Section Editorial Board; and
• promoting the journal at scientific conferences or through other venues.

To apply for this position, recommend potential candidates, or request further information, please contact the Photonics Editorial Office (photonics@mdpi.com) before 30 June 2020.

The world is currently suffering from a global pandemic of the corona virus COVID-19. MDPI expresses its sympathies for all of those affected by the virus and stands in solidarity with medical staff and researchers treating patients and searching for scientific solutions.

MDPI has previously published papers covering corona viruses in addition to new papers on the current outbreak, see all papers here. In particular, Viruses has published a number of Special Issues and papers on the topic (see here, here, and here) as well as a forthcoming Special Issue.

Alongside journal articles, MDPI has been a strong supporter of preprints, which are increasingly being used to rapidly disseminate the latest research, and we run the preprint server Preprints.org. Our database of research articles, Scilit, is free to use and covers all publishers including preprint servers. New papers are often in search results within hours of publication and users can set up alerts for new papers.

Our main priority during this period has been the health and safety of staff, and we continue to allow staff to work at home and closely monitor the situation in all locations in which we work. Despite the restrictions, we continue to provide a full publication service and, by close collaboration with our editorial boards and making use our in-house teams, ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in publishing vital research. Fast and open publication has always been at the core of MDPI values and is now more important than ever.

We hope that a solution to the current situation will emerge soon. In the meantime, we will do our best to continue communicating vital research in all fields.

The advantages of the open access model of scientific publishing are being increasingly recognized in the scientific community. It allows new scientific evidence to be accessed from the moment of publication for free by anyone around the globe, boosting the impact of new research. In response, many funders, libraries and universities have been adopting new principles to accelerate the transition to open access.

Recently, “transformative agreements” have been negotiated between traditional publishers and various institutions. While increasing the number of open access papers, these agreements lack binding commitments to a full transition to open access, their conditions vary across different regions, and access is still limited for many users.

MDPI is a co-signatory of the recent position statement raising concerns about potential downsides of transformative agreements and how they may delay a full transition to open access. The statement highlights that these models “risk perpetuating current limitations on access, transparency and market competitiveness, while simultaneously facilitating excessive charges on the public purse”.

As a pioneering open access journal publisher, MDPI is the first to promote the importance of science being made available to everyone. Our peer-reviewed journals, covering diverse academic disciplines, are fully accessible to the public free of charge under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). This is why, along with other open access publishers, MDPI is a proud signatory of the position paper and is committed to contributing to the replacement of weak transitional agreements with “agreements with publishers that are already fully committed to open science and who offer full, immediate and transparent Open Access”.

Read the position paper here