Announcements

We are pleased to announce that the website of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation has been revamped! For the past couple of months, our UX UI team and front-end developers have been working hard to launch the website in time for the opening of the Sustainability Awards nominations.

The website is not the only thing that has had a remodeling. Indeed, the format of the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award (ESLA) has been updated. ESLA is now a competition open to individual researchers or start-ups founded by researchers under the age of 35. Nominee applications will go through 2 rounds of selection until the final 3 are decided. The finalists will then be invited to give pitch presentations during the Award Ceremony to win either first place (10,000 USD) or runner-up (2 x 5000 USD).

The World Sustainability Award, on the other hand, remains the same: a total prize money of 100,000 USD is up for grabs by senior individual researchers or groups of researchers from the international research community.

Nominations for both the World Sustainability Award and the Emerging Sustainability Leader award are now open! Check out our new website for more information on how to nominate.

MDPI will be attending the 17th International Conference on Waste Management and Technology (ICWMT17), held in Sanya, China, from 19 to 22 November 2022. The theme of this year’s conference is “Synergizing the Reduction of Pollution and Carbon Emission”. Throughout the conference, prominent researchers and government officials will give keynote speeches on pressing issues of solid waste management. ICWMT17 provides an excellent opportunity for participants from industry and academia to keep up to date with the latest trends in solid waste management.

During this conference, MDPI will welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest views as well as research with us.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Sustainability (leading journal);
• Environments;
• IJERPH;
• Atmosphere;
• Buildings;
• Resources;
• Smart Cities;
• Sustainable Chemistry;
• Pollutants;
• Microplastics.

If you plan on attending this conference, feel free to stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions that you may have.

For more information about the conference, please see the following link: http://www.bcrc.cn/icwmt/.

Peer Review Week began 19 September 2022 under the theme of “Research Integrity: Creating and Supporting Trust in Research”. Through various blog articles, podcast, and webinar, we discussed this crucial subject throughout the week, celebrating the essential role peer review plays in maintaining research quality.

To begin, we held a Webinar on the topic. Professor Peter W. Choate and Dr. Emmanuel Obeng-Gyasi joined Dr. Ioana Craciun, one of MDPI’s scientific officers, for an in-depth discussion.

We invite you to view the event recording:

During the week, the MDPI Blog in a series articles highlighted how good Peer Review safeguards research integrity. The following topics were covered:

• Peer Review Week 2022
• Research Integrity
• What We’ve Learned About Peer Review Reports
• 4 Steps to the Perfect Peer Review Report
• How to Write the Perfect Peer Review Report: An Interview
• Inviting Great Peer Reviewers

In a new edition of Insight Faster, an MDPI podcast, we were delighted to talk to the co-chairs of the Peer Review Week committee, Jayashree Rajagopalan (Senior Manager of Global Community Engagement for CACTUS) and Danielle Padula (Head of Marketing and Community Development at Scholastica) to get their take on this year’s event and its related topics.

You can find the Podcast here.

We hope you enjoy the contents!

Toxics (ISSN: 2305-6304) will be attending the 17th Persistent Organic Pollutants Forum and Chemical Environmental Safety Conference as an exhibitor. This meeting will be held in Qingdao, China, from 8 to 10 December 2022.

The Persistent Organic Pollutants Forum and Chemical Environmental Safety Conference (hereinafter referred to as the "POPs Forum") was initiated by the Persistent Organic Pollutants Research Center of Tsinghua University in 2006, and cooperated with the Office of the National Coordination Group for the Implementation of the Stockholm Convention of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. A series of annual meetings cosponsored by the Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences and the Persistent Organic Pollutants Professional Committee have been successfully held for 16 sessions by 2021. The POPs Forum has become a forum for academia, management, and industry in the field of POPs in China to brainstorm and contemplate countermeasures, review the international trends in POPs compliance and China's progress, discuss POPs research hotspots and development trends, and showcase high-tech and advanced products for POPs analysis and control, as well as high-level communication platforms.

The 17th POPs Forum focuses on "new pollutant treatment", and invites domestic as well as foreign experts from various fields of government, industry, academia, and research to discuss and exchange information together.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Toxics (leading);
• Water;
• JoX;
• IJERPH;
• Pollutants.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start a conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference and our booth, please visit the following link: https://popsforum2022.scievent.com/.

A range of MDPI journals will be attending the 11th National Conference on Environmental Chemistry as an exhibitor. This meeting will be held in Harbin, China, from 25 to 29 July 2022.

The theme of this conference will be “Innovating Environmental Sciences, Low-Carbon Protecting Environment and Health”, which fully reflects the conference’s purpose of innovation, participation, cooperation, and foresight. More than 50 branches have been set up in the fields of interface process, toxicology and health, public health, environmental safety, pollution control, remediation technology, green and low-carbon, and environmental policy, and various well-known experts at home and abroad have been invited to produce conference and branch reports and deliver speeches. We invite experts in the field and environmental protection companies to participate in the exhibition, for which academic activities such as paper exhibitions, postgraduate forums, and Editor-in-Chief meetings have been organized.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Toxics (leading);
• Water (leading);
• Sustainability (leading);
• Applied Sciences;
• JoX;
• Nanomaterials;
• Soil Systems;
• Sustainable Chemistry;
• IJERPH;
• Pollutants;
• Environments.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start a conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have. For more information about the conference and our booth, please visit the following link: https://www.ncec2021.com/Home/Default.

MDPI’s Young Investigator Awards recognize promising junior researchers, acknowledge their contributions, and enhance communication among scientists. We are proud to present the winners for the year 2021 in the “Environmental & Earth Sciences” category. The winners were selected by the journals’ editors.

We warmly congratulate the awarded young investigators for their outstanding contributions. MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Atmosphere:

• Shaojie Song, Harvard University, USA

Clean Technologies:

• Francesco Galiano, Institute on Membrane Technology of the National Research Council, Italy

Energies:

• Qilin Wang, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
• Christopher H. T. Lee, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health:

• Grace Vincent, Central Queensland University, Australia

Minerals:

• Antony Burnham, Australian National University, Australia

Remote Sensing:

• Celso Henrique Leite Silva Junior, National Institute for Space Research – INPE, Brasil; Agricultural Engineering Department of the State University of Maranhão – UEMA, Brazil

Sustainability:

• Baojie He, Chongqing University, China

Water:

• Stefanos Giannakis, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain

In order to acknowledge our reviewers, who so generously dedicate their time to reviewing papers and demonstrate diligence, professionalism, and timeliness when reviewing manuscripts, MDPI journals regularly offer outstanding reviewer awards to scholars who participate in the peer-review process.

We are proud to recognize winners for the year 2021 in the “Environmental & Earth Sciences” category for their outstanding contributions among extensive competition by presenting them with an Outstanding Reviewer Award.

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all the winners on their achievement. MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Atmosphere:

• Hristo Chervenkov, National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, Bulgaria
• Jouni Räisänen, University of Helsinki, Finland

Climate:

• Piotr F. Borowski, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Poland

Energies:

• Elena Lucchi, Institute for Renewable Energy, Italy
• Marcin Dębowski, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland
• Miroslav Variny, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia
• Piotr F. Borowski, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Poland
• Vedran Mrzljak, University of Rijeka, Croatia

Forests:

• Tomasz Oszako, Forest Research Institute, Poland
• Stelian Alexandru Borz, Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania
• Maricar Aguilos, North Carolina State University, USA
• Narayan Bhusal, Seoul National University, South Korea

Geosciences:

• Dave Waters, University of Oxford, UK

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health:

• Anuli Njoku, Southern Connecticut State University, USA
• Haruna Musa Moda, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
• Jesús Molina-Mula, University of BalearicIsland, Spain
• Katharina Diehl, Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
• Katarzyna Tomaszek, Pedagogical University of Kracow, Poland
• Matteo Nioi, University of Cagliari, Italy
• Pablo A. Cantero-Garlito, Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, Spain
• Seoyong Kim, Ajou University, South Korea
• Andrzej Adamski, University of Information Technology and Management, Poland
• Adrian Curto, Faculty of Medicine, University of Salamanca, Spain
• Arkaitz Castañeda Babarro, University of Deusto, Spain
• Álvaro Francisco Lopes De Sousa, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
• Agata Gabryelska, Medical University of Lodz, Poland
• Ana Reyes Menéndez, Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain
• Bartosz Dalewski, Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, Poland
• Chong Chen, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan
• Carla Maria Batista Ferreira Pires, CBIOS-Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias-Escola de Ciências e Tecnologias da Saúde, Portugal
• Claudia Pisanu, University of Cagliari, Italy
• Emmanuel Obeng-Gyasi, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, USA
• Faisal F. Hakeem, King’s College London, UK
• Francisco Javier Fernández Carrasco, Punta de Europa Hospital, Spain
• Haewon Byeon, Inje University, South Korea
• HuiJun Chih, Curtin University, Australia
• Jerónimo Aragón Vela, University of Granada, Spain
• Joana Costa, University of Aveiro, Portugal,
• Joanne Lloyd, University of Wolverhampton, UK
• José Luis Romero-Bejar, University of Granada, Spain
• Laura Nathans, Human Development and Family Studies, Penn State Scranton, USA
• Mateusz Jankowski, Centre of Postgraduate Medical Education, Poland
• Matteo Riccò, Azienda USL-IRCCS di Reggio Emilia, Italy
• Nicola Döring, Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany
• Nora Suleiman-Martos, University of Granada, Spain
• Russell Kabir, Anglia Ruskin University, UK
• Roy McConkey, University of Ulster, UK
• Sunhee Kim, Ajou University, South Korea
• Sol García-Germán, Centro de Estudios e Investigación para la Gestión de Riesgos Agrarios y Medioambientalesdisabled, Spain
• Sebastian Rutkowski, Opole University of Technology, Poland
• Tamás Berki, University of Szeged, Hungary
• Terence Moriarty, University of Northern Iowa, USA
• Pedro Antonio Martín Cervantes, University of Almería, La Cañada de San Urbano, Spain

ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information:

• Lemenkova Polina, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
• Andrew Newton, Nottingham Trent University, UK
• Dennis Edler, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
• Lukáš Herman, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
• Marcela Bindzarova Gergelova, Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia

Land:

• Rahul Datta, Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic
• Dirk H.R. Spennemann, Charles Sturt University, Australia
• Raimundo Jimenez-Ballesta, (Retired recently) Autonoma University of Madrid, Spain

Remote Sensing:

• Veraldo Liesenberg, Santa Catarina State University, Brazil
• Yady Tatiana Solano-Correa, University of Cauca, Colombia
• Francesco Marinello, University of Padova, Italy
• Pedro Melo-Pinto, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal
• Ignacio Bosch, Universitat Politènica de València, Spain
• Juan Soria, University of Valencia, Spain
• Chiman Kwan, Signal Processing, Inc., USA
• Benoit Vozel, University of Rennes, France
• Giuseppe Casula, National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology Unit of Bologna, Italy
• Simone Cosoli, The University of Western Australia, Australia

Resources:

• Maria Economou-Eliopoulos, University of Athens, Greece

Toxics:

• Cynthia Rider, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, USA

We are proud to recognize the winners of MDPI’s 2021 Travel Awards in the “Environmental & Earth Sciences” category for their outstanding presentations and to present them with the prize.

MDPI journals regularly offer travel awards to encourage talented junior scientists to present their latest research at academic conferences in specific fields, which helps to increase their influence.

The winners mentioned below were carefully selected by the journal editors based on an outline of their research and the work to be presented at an academic conference.

We would like to warmly congratulate the Travel Awards winners for the year 2021 and wish them the greatest success with their future research endeavors. MDPI will continue to enhance communication among scientists.

Atmosphere:

• Charbel Harb, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech, USA
• Jibran Khan, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark

Climate:

• Agostino Niyonkuru Meroni, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
• Platon Patlakas, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Energies:

• Nnaemeka Vincent Emodi, University of Tasmania, Australia
• Irene Poza-Casado, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain

Forests:

• Pipiet Larasatie, Oregon State University, USA
• Tania L. Maxwell, French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), France

Hydrology:

• Georgia Papacharalampous, Roma Tre University, Italy
• Mattei Alexandra, University of Corsica, France

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health:

• Danila Azzolina, University of Eastern Piedmont, Italy
• Kelvin Fong, Yale University, USA
• Levi Frehlich, University of Calgary, Canada‎
• Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, Imperial College London, UK

ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information:

• Junghwan Kim, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
• Xuke Hu, Institute of Data Science, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany

Land:

• Álvaro Castilla Beltrán, University of La Laguna, Spain
• Lauren Nerfa, University of Hawaiʻi, USA

Remote Sensing:

• Amen Al-Yaari, Sorbonne University, France
• Meng Lu, Utrecht University, Netherlands

Resources:

• Alessandro Lenci, University of Bologna, Italy
• Evangelia Georgantzia, Liverpool John Moores University, UK

Sustainability:

• Sayyed Rasoul Khayyam Nekouei, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia
• Georgia A. Papacharalampous, Roma Tre University, Italy
• Raquel Filipa da Costa Viveiros, NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal
• Rajesh Pathak, South Dakota State University, USA

Water:

• Nnanake-Abasi Okon Offiong, University of Uyo, Nigeria
• Tonni Agustiono Kurniawan, Polytechnic of Health, Indonesia
• Shawna Andrea Foo, Arizona State University, USA

The purpose of our Best Paper Awards is to promote and recognize the most impactful contributions published within MDPI journals.

The editors of each journal carefully selected reviews and research papers through a rigorous judging process based on criteria such as the scientific merit, overall impact, and the quality of presentation of the papers published in the journal last year.

We are honored to present the winners in the subject areas of “Environmental & Earth Sciences”, who were selected amongst extensive competition, and congratulate the authors for their outstanding scientific publications.

MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Geosciences:

• “Distinguishing between Deep-Water Sediment Facies: Turbidites, Contourites and Hemipelagites”
  by Dorrik Stow and Zeinab Smillie
  Geosciences 2020, 10(2), 68. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences10020068
• “Review of Explosive Hydrovolcanism”
  by Károly Németh and Szabolcs Kósiks
  Geosciences 2020, 10(2), 44. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences10020044

Remote Sensing:

• “A Review on Deep Learning Techniques for 3D Sensed Data Classification”
  by David Griffiths and Jan Boehm
  Remote Sens. 2019, 11(12), 1499. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11121499
• “Satellite Remote Sensing of Precipitation and the Terrestrial Water Cycle in a Changing Climate”
  by Vincenzo Levizzani and Elsa Cattani
  Remote Sens. 2019, 11(19), 2301. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11192301
• “Evaluation of Different Machine Learning Methods and Deep-Learning Convolutional Neural Networks for Landslide Detection”
  by Omid Ghorbanzadeh, Thomas Blaschke, Khalil Gholamnia, Sansar Raj Meena, Dirk Tiede and Jagannath Aryal
  Remote Sens. 2019, 11(2), 196. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11020196
• “An Integrated View of Greenland Ice Sheet Mass Changes Based on Models and Satellite Observations”
  by Ruth Mottram, Sebastian B. Simonsen, Synne Høyer Svendsen, Valentina R. Barletta, Louise Sandberg Sørensen, Thomas Nagler, Jan Wuite, Andreas Groh, Martin Horwath, Job Rosier, Anne Solgaard, Christine S. Hvidberg and Rene Forsberg
  Remote Sens. 2019, 11(12), 1407. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11121407
• “UAV-Based High Resolution Thermal Imaging for Vegetation Monitoring, and Plant Phenotyping Using ICI 8640 P, FLIR Vue Pro R 640, and thermoMap Cameras”
  by Vasit Sagan, Maitiniyazi Maimaitijiang, Paheding Sidike, Kevin Eblimit, Kyle T. Peterson, Sean Hartling, Flavio Esposito, Kapil Khanal, Maria Newcomb, Duke Pauli, Rick Ward, Felix Fritschi, Nadia Shakoor and Todd Mockler
  Remote Sens. 2019, 11(3), 330. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11030330

Toxics:

• “A Review of Biomonitoring of Phthalate Exposures”
  by Wang, Yu, Hongkai Zhu and Kurunthachalam Kannan
  Toxics 2019, 7(2), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics7020021
• “Trace Element Uptake by Herbaceous Plants from the Soils at a Multiple Trace Element-Contaminated Site”
  by Nworie, Obinna E., Junhao Qin and Chuxia Lin
  Toxics 2019, 7(1), 3; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics7010003

Water:

• “Water Quality Indices: Challenges and Application Limits in the Literature”
  by Moez Kachroud, Fabienne Trolard, Mohamed Kefi, Sihem Jebari and Guilhem Bourrié
  Water 2019, 11(2), 361. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11020361
• “A Brief Review of Random Forests for Water Scientists and Practitioners and Their Recent History in Water Resources”
  by Hristos Tyralis, Georgia Papacharalampous and Andreas Langousis
  Water 2019, 11(5), 910. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11050910
• “The Use of Non-Conventional Water Resources as a Means of Adaptation to Drought and Climate Change in Semi-Arid Regions: South-Eastern Spain”
  by Álvaro-Francisco Morote, Jorge Olcina and María Hernández
  Water 2019, 11(1), 93. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11010093
• “Hydrological Effectiveness of an Extensive Green Roof in Mediterranean Climate” 
  by Stefania Anna Palermo, Michele Turco, Francesca Principato and Patrizia Piro
  Water 2019, 11(7), 1378. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11071378
• “Forecasting Groundwater Table in a Flood Prone Coastal City with Long Short-term Memory and Recurrent Neural Networks”
  by Benjamin D. Bowes, Jeffrey M. Sadler, Mohamed M. Morsy, Madhur Behl and Jonathan L. Goodall
  Water 2019, 11(5), 1098. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11051098
• “Effectiveness of Rainwater Harvesting Systems for Flood Reduction in Residential Urban Areas”
  by Gabriele Frenib and Lorena Liuzzo
  Water 2019, 11(7), 1389. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11071389

The 2021 citation metrics have been officially released in Scopus!

We are pleased to announce that 182 MDPI journals are included, of which:

● 21 journals received their first CiteScore.
● 85% of journals increased their CiteScore from 2020.
● 155 journals (85%) ranked above average, in at least one category.

The following 65 MDPI journals (36%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category:

Source: 2021 CiteScores™ (Elsevier)