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

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.

Pollutants (ISSN 2673-4672), a newly released journal published by MDPI, is recruiting Editorial Board Members whose research interests are related to chemical, biological, and physical compounds that lead to pollution, including impact assessment studies and corresponding remediation strategies to promote the scientific utilization and effective mitigation of pollutants. Please find more details at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/pollutants/sections.

We already have some highly renowned experts on our Editorial Board, and we are looking for more excellent scholars in this field to join us. If you are interested in this position or know of any potential candidates you would like to recommend, please contact the Pollutants Editorial Office (pollutants@mdpi.com).

The main responsibilities of Editorial Board Members are as follows:

• Pre-screening submissions and making decisions on whether a manuscript should be accepted or rejected for processing, as well as suggesting additional reviewers if necessary;
• Acting as Guest Editor of a Special Issue in your particular field of expertise, or recommending potential topics and Guest Editors;
• Promoting Pollutants and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences;
• Advising on the journal’s development.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Pollutants Editorial Office

Pollutants (ISSN 2673-4672) is an international, peer-reviewed open access journal focusing on contaminants that are introduced into the natural environment, beyond permitted limits, and cause measurable deleterious effects on air, water, soil, or living organisms. It publishes research articles, reviews, communications, technical notes, and other article types.

The Pollutants Editorial team is pleased to announce this open call for Special Issue proposals. A Special Issue gives a group of authors the possibility to work on an interconnected set of papers on an innovative topic. We would like to solicit high-quality proposals that fit within the scope of Pollutants. Proposals for a Special Issue should have a well-articulated unifying topic and reflect, at an international level, the best work in a particular research area, either a mature area or an important emerging area, in which future investigations may be boosted by the publication of a set of excellent papers. Hence, an international group of Guest Editors and a few high-quality planned papers are always encouraged in the proposals.

Please take into account that proposals for Special Issues should be sent by 30 June 2021 to the Editorial Office (pollutants@mdpi.com), who will forward them to the Editors of Pollutants for evaluation.

Scope of Pollutants:

• Chemical Pollutants

Chemical pollutants result from various human activities and include both organic and inorganic contaminants.

• Biological Pollutants

Biological pollutants are substances in our environment that come from living organisms.

• Physical Pollutants

Physical pollutants are characterized by their influence on the environment and its inhabitants caused by forces and operations of physics.

• Pollutant Monitoring

Pollutant monitoring includes the processes, activities, and methods that need to take place to characterize, monitor, and control the quality of environments and their inhabitants.

• Pollutant Removal

Pollutant removal is carried out using various technologies.

• Pollutant Control and Prevention

Control involves measures to limit the damage caused by pollutants. Prevention means avoiding or minimizing the production of pollutants before they are released into the environment.

Information to be provided in a proposal:

• A 100–200-word summary to rationally explain the significance, novelty, technical advancement, and adherence to the scope of the journal of the proposed topic;
• A few keywords on the topic;
• A plan for obtaining quality papers or a list of at least three planned papers;
• A brief resume of the proposed Guest Editors together with their information (title, name, email, affiliation, personal website, keywords of interests);
• A proposed submission deadline (we normally run a Special Issue for 6–8 months).

Role of the Guest Editor(s):

• Once the proposal is accepted, the Guest Editor (GE) will circulate the Call for Papers for the Special Issue and invite submissions.
• Each submission will undergo a formal peer-review process, after which we will ask the GE, the Editor in Chief, or a suitable Editorial Board Member to decide whether the paper is acceptable for publication in Pollutants.
• If 10 or more papers are published in this Special Issue, we can make a Special Issue book and send a hard copy to each Guest Editor.

Role of the Editorial Office

The Editorial Office will take care of setting up the Special Issue website; arranging promotional material; assisting with invitations to contribute papers; and completing administrative tasks associated with peer review, including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and professional production before publication.

Please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office if you are interested and would like further details or clarifications.

We look forward to receiving your creative proposals.

Pollutants Editorial Office

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)

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.

At MDPI we have slightly revised the layout for articles to be published in the 2021 Volume, starting at the end of December 2020. As of today, the article templates available for download on ‘Instructions for Authors’ pages have been updated.

The most noticeable change can be found on the first page of the article, where a left-hand column has been created to include the following front matter elements: (i) the recommended citation style for the article, (ii) the publishing history, (iii) as well as the Creative Commons Attribution license used (iv) a standard note regarding affiliations. At the same time, the extra spacing on the left means the authors’ affiliations are now more clearly set apart than before. Other front matter key elements such as journal logo, article type, article title, authors, abstract and keywords remain unchanged.

The blank column on the left runs through all pages in an article; as a result, the main text is slightly more condensed, which improve reader friendliness for smaller screens. Small figures/tables are aligned on the left with standard indenture, while large figures/tables are centered and covering the full width of the page. The revised layout was applied in the article pictured below, to serve as an example:

1) Information is displayed in the left information bar.

2) In the main text, there is a blank column on the left.

3) Small tables/figures are aligned on the left, large tables/figures are centered.

We are pleased to acknowledge that many academic editors who have made an impact on MDPI journals as editorial board members, editors-in-chief, or section editors, are recognized as 2020 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate.

Highly Cited Researchers highlights the top 1% of researchers, by citations, in one or more of the 22 fields used in Clarivate Analytics Essential Science Indicators. We offer our congratulations to 279 academic editors of MDPI journals who were recognized as the most influential scholars in their fields in 2020.

The full list of 2020 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed on https://recognition.webofsciencegroup.com/awards/highly-cited/2020/

--- Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) is a Clarivate product.

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Ali Elkamel
has been appointed as the Editor-in-Chief of Pollutants (ISSN 2673-4672).
His term started in September 2020.

Prof. Dr. Ali Elkamel
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada
Website: http://chemeng.uwaterloo.ca/aelkamel/

Ali Elkamel is a Professor of Chemical Engineering. He is also cross-appointed in Systems Design Engineering. Prof. Elkamel holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering and BSc in Mathematics from the Colorado School of Mines, MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Colorado-Boulder, and PhD in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University—West Lafayette, Indiana.

His specific research interests are in computer-aided modeling, optimization, and simulation with applications to energy production planning, carbon management, sustainable operations, and product design. Professor Elkamel is currently focusing on research projects related to gas production and processing, integration of renewable energy in oil and gas operations, and the utilization of data analytics (digitalization), machine learning, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve process and enterprise-wide efficiency and profitability.

The editorial team warmly welcomes Professor Ali Elkamel as the Editor-in-Chief and looks forward to his contribution to the continued success of Pollutants.