An update for 2017 CiteScore™ data has just been released, based on citation data in the Scopus® database as of October 2018. The CiteScores reflect citation activity in 2017 for articles published in 2014‒2016. Please note that the list below includes journals assigned a CiteScore in this year’s release. For a full list of journals indexed in Scopus, please see our journal list.

CiteScore Data for MDPI Journals (October 2018 Update)

We are delighted to announce that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is now a participant of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). Authors funded by the BMGF can enjoy discounts on the APC, while the funder covers the costs of eligible articles centrally. BMGF also has access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information as well as Grant ID details for easy identification and additional transparency.

We hope that funded authors find the programme beneficial and we are happy to offer our IOAP to other funders that need a streamlined workflow of compliance checking and APC coverage. 

To claim their discount, BMGF funded authors should choose the particular funder and add their Grant ID upon online submission of their manuscript.

For any questions about the BMGF agreement, please contact the funder at support@chronos-oa.com or the MDPI IOAP team at ioap@mdpi.com.

What is Polymers?

Polymers: Design, Function and Application (PDFA) is a conference series dedicated to bring together scientists and leaders from different areas to discuss important recent developments and ideas of cutting-edge research at the interface of design/function or function/application of polymers .

The First Polymers conference was held in 2018 in Barcelona, Spain. With its focus on function- and application-driven polymer research, this conference addressed the development and testing of the next generation of polymeric materials with previously unrivaled properties for advanced applications. You can find a brief summary of the first edition here.

Please note that the follow-on editions will not be restrained to the topics discussed in previous editions and, therefore, new and different topics within the polymers field are sought.

Important Dates

The Polymers conference is organized every two years. The Polymers Steering Committee is accepting EoIs to organize editions from 2020 onwards.

Facts

Bidders must have the facility to organize and host a three-day symposium for 200–300 participants including:

• Easy access to the symposium venue and the capability to offer a wide range of services, such as catering, WLAN and internet services, organization of social events.
• Ability to cover all costs with registration fees and sponsoring.

Expression of Interest Instructions

1. EoI must be submitted to EoI@mdpi.com by 30 November 2018
2. The length of the application should not exceed two A4 pages and should include:
   • Name(s) of the bidder(s), contact details and a short biography
   • Name of the planned venue (city and infrastructure)
   • Proposed dates for the conference
   • Proposed topics for the conference

Recently, it was announced that a group of European funders supported 10 principles that will help to expand open access, known as Plan S. MDPI warmly welcomes this move as a step towards achieving more open and accessible communication of research across all disciplines. Some aspects remain to be clarified, however the details given so far match the aims and values that MDPI has held over the past two decades.

We believe that open access publishers should be active participants in discussions around Plan S, particularly regarding potential new business models and practical aspects of implementation. MDPI supports APCs as a transparent unit of payment for article publishing, however we are committed to exploring other measures and recently signed the Jussieu Call. Sustainability is a key value for MDPI, and future funding models should have at their heart the sustainability of knowledge and research dissemination. Plan S provides an opportunity for funders and publishers to directly discuss funding of open access journals in ways that are beneficial to all parties involved.

MDPI will be attending 2018 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit, to be held in Boston, USA, 25–30 November 2018.

This conference is the key forum to present research to an interdisciplinary and international audience. It provides a window on the future of materials science and offers an opportunity for researchers—from students and postdoctoral fellows, to Nobel and Kavli Prize Laureates—to exchange technical information and network with colleagues.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Materials
• Polymers
• Energies
• Nanomaterials
• Metals
• Journal of Functional Biomaterials (JFB)
• Processes
• Sensors
• Sustainability
• C
• Journal of Manufacturing and Materials Processing (JMMP)
• Biomimetics
• Methods and Protocols (MPs)

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #123). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.mrs.org/fall2018

We are happy to announce the establishment of an Open Access (OA) agreement with Qatar National Library (QNL). QNL is committed to supporting and helping Qatar authors publish OA at no cost. Through this national agreement, QNL will cover the Article Processing Charges (APC) of manuscripts published by Qatar-based corresponding authors in MDPI journals.

Eligible corresponding authors affiliated with Qatar research centers and universities are prompted to choose QNL as part of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system. The program will be selected automatically if authors submit their papers using their institutional email and/or a computer registered with the institution’s IP range. QNL will then crosscheck the information and confirm the APC funding.

Qatar authors that have their APC covered by QNL are advised to include the following sentence in their acknowledgments: "The publication of this article was funded by Qatar National Library".

For more information, please visit Open Access at QNL or email the QNL Open Access team at openaccess@qnl.qa.

We are pleased to inform that Polymers received an updated Journal Impact Factor of 2.935 in the June 2018 release of the Journal Citation Reports®. The journal's 5-Year Impact Factor is 3.509. Polymers now ranks 19/87 (Q1) in the category 'Polymer Science.'

Overview of Citation Metrics:

• Journal Impact Factor, 2 yrs (2017): 2.935
• 5-Year Impact Factor (2017): 3.509
• CiteScore, 3 yrs (Scopus): 3.30
• SJR Scimago Journal Rank 2017(SJR): 0.852
• Source Normalized Impact 2017 (SNIP): 1.213

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Polymers:

We are pleased to report Polymers received a CiteScore of 3.30 for 2017. The metric reflects citation activity in 2017 in Scopus for papers published in the period 2014‒2016.

For the full details in the current CiteScore release, please see the journal's Source profile. To check the full list of MDPI journals receiving CiteScores, please see here.

The 2017 CiteScore™ data is available now, based on citation data in the Scopus® database. The current CiteScore reflects citation activity in 2017 for articles published in 2014‒2016. Please note that the list below includes journals assigned a CiteScore in this year’s release. For a full list of journals indexed in Scopus, please see our journal list.

Thirteen of our journals received a CiteScore which is in the top 10% of the distribution in at least one of the categories (marked with * in the table below), while a further 32 journals exhibit scores that are in the first quartile of the respective categories.

To access the full data for MDPI journals, please see here. More data can also be found in SJR Scimago Journal & Country Rank.

Unlike CiteScores and the widely used Journal Impact Factors, the Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) metrics are normalized in order to correct for differences in citation practices between scientific fields. Therefore, the SNIP allows direct comparison between journals specialized in different fields.

According to 2017 data, MDPI publishes six journals with an average citation impact, or SNIP, in excess of 1.500. These journals are Biomolecules, Cancers, Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM), Marine Drugs, Remote Sensing and Sensors (see the last column in the table below).

CiteScore Data for MDPI Journals

We are pleased to announce the results of the first MDPI Writing Prize. We received a large number of entries from across the globe on the theme of “The Global Benefits of Open Research”. It was a pleasure to read so many original, well-researched and well-presented ideas, and the final choice was not an easy one. We are pleased to announce that the winners are as follows:

1st prize (500 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Edmond Sanganyado, Shantou University, China

2nd prizes (250 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Kamala T. Rajahgopal, Asia e University, Malaysia
Yin Zhixuan, Qingdao University of Technology, China

3rd prizes (100 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Alexandra Ticea, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Romania
Ankur Sarker, University of Virginia, USA
Daniel Attoye, United Arab Emirates University, UAE

Congratulations to all of them! The winning entries can be downloaded by clicking on the names above. A compilation of all entries will soon be available as an open access book.

The writing prize is sponsored by the MDPI English editing service.

At MDPI, we always want to keep you up to date. Even for already published articles, some corrections or minor changes may occur. To prevent you from missing any updates, from now on you will be able to access the latest version of any manuscript by clicking on the “check for updates” logo that you can find in the PDF file, even if you have saved the file on your computer.

Congratulations to the journals Cancers, Diversity, Future Internet, Nutrients, Polymers, Pharmaceutics, Remote Sensing, Sustainability, Symmetry, Toxins and Water for publishing their 10th volume in 2018!

We would like to send warm wishes from the Editors-in-Chief of these journals and look to the future. Acknowledgement of our past achievements provides the strongest stimulus for future endeavor.

To date, the journal Cancers has published more than 1000 papers and will receive its first impact factor in June. This milestone could not be achieved without our readers, authors, peer reviewers, editors, and all the people working for the journal who, for years, have contributed their tremendous efforts.

— Prof. Dr. Samuel Mok
Editor-in-Chief of Cancers

Ten years is a long time but a short period for a new journal. When we started Diversity 10 years ago, we had hoped that a journal with such a broad coverage of topics would attract potential authors and good contributions. We are very satisfied that our vision became reality.
Today, Diversity is home to interesting studies on different aspects of diversity mainly in biology, ranging from systematics, phylogeny and evolution, to ecology, biodiversity and conservation issues. I am confident that the next 10 years will witness the further growth of Diversity both in quality and quantity.

— Prof. Dr. Michael Wink
Editor-in-Chief of Diversity

Ten years have passed from the foundation of the “Future Internet” MDPI journal. We have witnessed the positive evolution of our journal, with ever-increasing interest from potential authors. The increasing fundamental eco-systemic importance of the journal’s subjects has also had positive effects. Therefore, the journal is currently evolving to cope with the increasing interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary views.
Past achievements and future prospects give us reason to celebrate ten years since the journal’s foundation. We will also set up a commemorative Special Issue.

— Prof. Dr. Dino Giuli
Editor-in-Chief of Future Internet

It is with great pride that Nutrients enters its 10th year of publication. Through the hard work and dedication of its Editorial Board, journal staff, and individuals who have unselfishly given their time to peer-review manuscripts, the journal has grown to become a leading publisher of nutrition research. During this 10th Anniversary year of Nutrients, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all who have contributed to the journal during its first decade.

— Prof. Dr. Jonathan Buckley
Editor-in-Chief of Nutrients

I am pleased and honored to celebrate the first decade of Pharmaceutics, as the founding Editor-in-Chief. This is also an opportunity for me to thank our authors, readers, reviewers, and editorial board members for their continuous support. We will receive our first impact factor in June 2018, in recognition of the great efforts made in the past ten years. We shall strive to improve the journal in the next ten years.

— Prof. Dr. Yvonnne Perrie
Editor-in-Chief of Pharmaceutics

Since its foundation in 2009, Polymers has evolved into an internationally renowned and successful Open Access journal. The core concept, namely that Open Access publishing can stand for high-quality publications, is working well. On a daily basis, ever since the journal’s foundation, the editorial team and the editorial board dedicate themselves to ensuring a high-quality rigorous peer-review process: only 30 to 50% of the submissions will be published in Polymers. This strategy been complemented by, among other features, the increasing impact factor of Polymers, the most recent one being 3.364. On the occasion of Polymers’ 10th anniversary, we would like to thank all authors who have contributed to the success of the journal by submitting their high-quality research papers. We look forward to your continuous support and the continued growth of the journal in the next decade.

— Prof. Dr. Alexander Böker
Editor-in-Chief of Polymers

MDPI’s Open Access journal Remote Sensing is now one of the top international scientific journal 's in remote sensing science. Well known scientists in the subject, from all over the world, publish in it on a regular basis. It has an outstanding and dedicated editorial team, editorial office, and reviewers. We pride ourselves on publishing high-quality original scientific articles. Our goal remains to become # 1 Journal in Remote Sensing Science.

— Dr. Prasad S. Thenkabail
Editor-in-Chief of Remote Sensing

The tenth anniversary of Sustainability is a momentous milestone, and it has been a privilege for me to be a part of it as Editor-in-Chief. This anniversary demonstrates the growing interest in and recognition of the importance of sustainability. The journal has been able to showcase the many advances made over the last decade in the thinking, methods and applications surrounding sustainability. Recently, the content of the journal has reflected the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that was adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. Sustainability has had a notable impact and expects to have an even greater impact over its next decade through publishing research on new advances in sustainability and fostering critical discussion.

— Prof. Dr. Marc A. Rosen
Editor-in-Chief of Sustainability

Our journal Symmetry celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2018. During the last 10 years, the journal has become one of the leading journals among all multi-science journals. This shows the fundamental role played by the symmetries of nature in natural science. This also reflects the huge number of researchers whose work relates to symmetry. We hope to achieve even better results in the coming years.

— Prof. Dr. Sergei D. Odintsov
Editor-in-Chief of Symmetry

It is my honor as Editor-in-Chief of Toxins to inaugurate the 10th anniversary of the journal’s inception. From the founding EIC, Professor Florian Lang and EIC Vernon Tesh and the many Section EICs and Editorial Board Members, the combined leadership of this effort to provide an outstanding vehicle for the dissemination of the results of high-quality scientific investigations and in-depth, insightful comprehensive reviews has resulted in the flagship journal of toxinology as we know it today. The publication metrics associated with Toxins support this claim by virtue of our increase in manuscript submissions and publications and annual citation rate of articles published in Toxins. Importantly, the impact factor for Toxins remains strong and representative of the significance of the science published in Toxins. As we progress in this anniversary year, we will celebrate the 10th anniversary with a continuation of our acclaimed travel award program for Post-Doctoral Fellows in the field of Toxinology as well as our soon to be announced “Toxins' 10th Anniversary Top Cited Researcher Award” program.
Thus, 2018 will be an exciting year, celebrating the 10th anniversary of Toxins, but also a year of looking forward for the best practices by which the journal can serve the toxinology community. With that in mind, please join us in celebrating the journal by submitting your work to Toxins and as always I welcome your suggestions for the improvement of “our” journal.

— Prof. Dr. Jay W. Fox
Editor-in-Chief of Toxins

Thank you to all the dedicated researchers, reviewers and editors who have made Water a success. The journal has become a popular outlet for cutting-edge research in the broad field of water science, technology, management and governance. The Open Access format has proven to be attractive, and authors highly value the quick handling of papers. After ten years, Water has become an established journal in the field.

— Prof. Dr. Arjen Y. Hoekstra
Editor-in-Chief of Water

To mark the anniversaries, we have established a Special Issue to look back over the previous decade of outstanding accomplishments and highlight innovative frontier research perspectives. We encourage you to keep an eye on the publications in this Special Issue and this journal, and hope you consider it as a venue for your future publications.

We are proud to announce that MDPI is now a member of UKSG, the UK´s largest scholarly communications community. Through UKSG, different stakeholders share their knowledge and experience in order to improve the knowledge and information environment for researchers. UKSG´s members include universities, publishers, content providers, intermediaries, and other similar organisations. Members participate in discussions and events on issues around scholarly communications.

The UKSG Annual Conference and Exhibition is a flagship initiative from the UKSG and one of the most stimulating events in the scholarly communications calendar. It is held annually and attracts a large number of delegates. More information is available at https://www.uksg.org/events/annualconference

MDPI is delighted to be a part of this active community and we look forward to making our own contribution. We will continue to support organisations and initiatives that boost collaboration and vision within scholarly communication.

More information about UKSG can be found at https://www.uksg.org/. The full membership list is available at: https://www.uksg.org/members.

MDPI will be attending the 2018 E-MRS Spring Meeting and Exhibit. The conference is a plenary session to provide an international forum for discussing recent advances in the field of materials science. It will consist of 29 parallel symposia with invited speakers, oral and poster presentations. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Applied Sciences
Biomimetics
Clean Technologies
Coatings
Journal of Manufacturing and Materials Processing (JMMP)
Materials
Metals
Nanomaterials
Polymers
Processes
Quantum Beam Science (QuBS)

The DORA initiative addresses the need for advanced approaches in the evaluation and measurement of the quality of scientific research outputs. It is a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines. MDPI proudly joins a list of more than 400 organizations around the world which support DORA’s recommendations for improving the way the quality of research results is evaluated.

More info can be found at http://www.ascb.org/dora/

We will be attending the 255th ACS National Meeting & Exposition. It is an interdisciplinary forum open to anyone with an interest in Chemistry and the related disciplines. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Agronomy
Applied Sciences
Beverages
Biomimetics
Biosensors
C
Catalysts
ChemEngineering
Chemosensors
Coatings
Energies
Environments
Fibers
Foods
Gels
Inorganics
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (JMSE)
Lubricants
Materials
Mathematics
Metals
Molecules
Nanomaterials
Polymers
Processes
Resources
Safety
Sensors
Separations
Sustainability
Symmetry
Toxins
Water

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #640). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/meetings/national-meeting.html?sc=home_meetings_170818_mtg_NO18_od

We will be attending the 2018 MRS Spring Meeting, which will be held in Phoenix, AZ, USA, 2 to 6 April 2018, representing the following open access journals:

Materials
Metals
Nanomaterials
Polymers
Coatings
Journal of Functional Biomaterials (JFB)
Quantum Beam Science (QuBS)
Biomimetics

Please come along to our booth to chat with our delegates about our journals. Our delegates will also answer any questions about online publishing and our journals. We look forward to meeting you in person in Phoenix!

For more information on the conference, please visit:
http://www.mrs.org/spring2018

The competition is still open until end of March! Please check out the banner for more details: https://www.mdpi.com/data/english-prize.pdf

We are delighted to announce that UCL Press has adopted MDPI's Journal Article & Management System, JAMS, including production services. JAMS is a modular, integrated editorial platform for academic publishers. It offers flexibility, ease-of-use, and is a fully integrated solution for the end-to-end management of scholarly journals. JAMS is based on the software used to publish MDPI’s portfolio of journals. 

Ian Caswell, UCL Press Journals Manager, says he is "excited to see UCL Press and MDPI partner together to implement the JAMS submission system for all UCL Press journals. The system offered a flexible, efficient and straightforward solution for our processes from author submission to ready for publication. I am grateful for the valuable experience and support MDPI have offered and look forward to developing our programme with an effective submission system in place.” Dr Martyn Rittman, MDPI’s Publishing Services Manager, adds, “We are proud to support one of the UK’s premier university presses in their publishing operation. This is an excellent way for us at MDPI to share our experience and knowledge, and benefit the research community beyond our own journals.”

JAMS combines services that are kept separate for many publishers. The entire editorial process, production and invoicing (e.g. for open access article processing charges) are fully integrated into a single platform. This allows for efficient, fast manuscript processing. For further information about JAMS, see https://www.mdpi.com/publishing_services. 

We are pleased to welcome new participants to MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), designed to help institutions manage the transition to the Open Access publishing model. Researchers affiliated with participating universites benefit from a 10% discount on the Article Processing Charges (APC) for any paper published in an MDPI journal, while the participating library or university incurs no basic fee for participating in the program.

• No fee for participants and no obligation to prolong after the initial 12 months. The participants may withdraw from the programme at any time, and we will also keep it free for the library for as long as they continue in the programme.
• Authors affiliated with the university will receive a 10% discount on the APC.
• The institution is granted free access to the MDPI submission system and can receive free alerts of new submissions to our journals.
• By default, authors from the institution will continue to be invoiced directly unless the institution opts for central billing.
• Auto-archiving of papers into the institutions´ repository as long as it supports SWORD 1.3.

More details about the programme and a list of our current participant institutions can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap

Institutions which are interested to participate may do so online at: https://www.mdpi.com/ioap-form

The following North American universities have signed up to the IOAP program recently:

Connecticut College, USA
Emory University, USA
Florida International University, USA
Johns Hopkins University, USA
Mississippi State University, USA
Northeastern University, USA
Rice University, USA
University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada
University of Rhode Island, USA
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA
University of Toronto, Canada
University of Windsor, Canada
University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA
Wellesley College, USA
West Virginia University, USA

Many prestigious institutions from Europe and Asia have joined as well:

Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation, Malaysia
Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic
Gdansk University of Technology, Poland
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Newcastle University, UK
Northumbria University, UK
Southwest University, China
Technical University of Crete, Greece
University Malaya, Malaysia
University of Antwerp, Belgium
University of Cyprus, Cyprus
University of Manchester, UK
University of Reading, UK
University of Sussex, UK
University of Warwick, UK
West Pomeranian University of Technology Szczecin, Poland

We offer a warm welcome to the new participants!

In order to reward the academic community, especially young researchers, and enhance communication among scientists, MDPI journals regularly offer various awards to researchers in specific fields, for example, Young Investigator Awards, Travel Awards, Best Paper Awards, and Best Poster Awards, etc. The awardees range from PhD students to junior scientists.

Currently, the following 44 awards given by MDPI journals are accepting applications. Please click on the award title below to check whether you are eligible for it and start the application process.

The Jussieu Call aims to develop and implement alternative models to meet the aims of open science while promoting bibliodiversity. In particular it wishes to promote new business models for funding open access publication. It was drafted on the Jussieu campus in Paris by a group of French researchers and scientific publishing professionals.

MDPI supports scholarly communities and initiatives that innovate and further promote Open Access publishing. There is a need to explore different frameworks to fund open access in ways that ensure that excessive funds are not diverted from research towards publishing. Many fair funding models already exist, and they can be further developed and extended. These include institutional support, library contributions or subsidies, premium services, participatory funding, etc. For this reason, MDPI has signed up to the Jussieu call and welcomes its aims.

More information can be found at http://jussieucall.org/

The Society for Scholarly Publishing’s popular blog about topics in academic publishing, Scholarly Kitchen, recently interviewed MDPI’s CEO, Dr. Franck Vazquez. He shared some thoughts and information on the past and future of MDPI and open access publishing in general:

“In the long run, we aim to anchor MDPI in research communities. We recently developed and launched the preprint platform Preprints, revamped our free-to-use conference hosting platform Sciforum, and are working on other projects, such as Scilit, our bibliographic database.”

Read the full interview here.

We will be attending the 2017 MRS Fall Meeting which will be held in Boston, Massachusetts, from November 26–December 1, 2017, and representing the following open access journals:

Materials
Nanomaterials
Energies
Metals
Applied Sciences
Crystals
Minerals
Journal of Functional Biomaterials
Coatings
Robotics
Biosensors
Chemosensors
Polymers
Bioengineering

Please come along to our booth (booth number: #122) to chat with our delegates about our journals and hear about our travel awards offered to Postdocs and PhD students. Our delegates will also answer any questions about online publishing and our journals. We look forward to meeting you in person in Boston!

For more information on the conference, please visit:
www.mrs.org/fall2017

We are delighted to have welcomed 24 new participants to our Institutional Open Access Programme (IOAP) since the beginning of September this year. These are University libraries and Research Institutions located around the world; from the USA and Canada to the UK, and from Norway and Spain to Greece. Well respected Universities, such as the University of Denver, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the University of Arizona in the US, have signed up, while their researchers can now benefit from a 10% discount on the Article Processing Charges (APC) for any papers they publish in MDPI journals, at no cost for the library or the University.

We are more than happy to see the Open Access movement growing stronger and wider every day and we appreciate the vital role which librarians, repository managers, and other scholarly communications professionals play in the field. Our communication with and service to this community is, therefore, one of our principal priorities. The IOAP is our way to support academic and scientific Institutions as well as their scholars in managing, administrating, and publishing research in an Open Access world.

The IOAP set of free services, provided by MDPI to institutions that sign up, include:

• No fee for participants and no obligation to prolong after the initial 12 months. The participants may withdraw from the programme at any time, and we will also keep it free for the library for as long as they continue in the programme.
• Authors affiliated with the university will receive a 10% discount on the APC.
• The institution is granted free access to the MDPI submission system and can receive free alerts of new submissions to our journals.
• By default, authors from the institution will continue to be invoiced directly unless the institution opts for central billing.
• Auto-archiving of papers into the institutions´ repository as long as it supports SWORD 1.3.

More details about the programme and a list of our current participant institutions can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap

Institutions which are interested to participate may do so online at: https://www.mdpi.com/ioap-form

 The full list of the Institutions that signed up in September is as follows:

1. University of Denver, USA
2. University of Colorado Boulder, USA
3. University of Arizona, USA
4. Institute of Metrology of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina
5. Middlebury College, USA
6. Touro College, USA
7. University of New Orleans, USA
8. University of Leicester, UK
9. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
10. University of Strathclyde, UK
11. Cranfield University, UK
12. Hope College, USA
13. Oregon State University, USA
14. Drew University, USA
15. Swansea University, UK
16. University of South Florida, USA
17. University of Georgia, USA
18. Arizona State University, USA
19. University of Southern Mississippi, USA
20. Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada
21. Grinnell College, USA
22. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
23. University of Patras, Greece
24. Public University of Navarre, Spain

We are glad to announce that, on Friday 8 September 2017, the 1^st Molecules Medicinal Chemistry Symposium will be taking place in Barcelona at the School of Pharmacy and Food Sciences of the University of Barcelona, Spain.

Our open-access journal Molecules is the sponsor of this one-day monographic symposium that will address the topic of Emerging Drug Discovery Approaches against Infectious Diseases. In this sense, our intention is to provide a forum for discussion from novel biological targets and resistance mechanisms to the design and synthesis of new structural classes or the implementation of innovative therapeutic approaches against bacterial, protozoan, viral, and fungal infections. The event will gather together over 70 experts in the field of medicinal chemistry from more than 15 countries and 3 continents, mostly from academia but also from pharmaceutical industry and product development partnerships, therefore offering a very interesting platform for international networking in this field.

For more information please access the following ling: http://sciforum.net/conference/MMCS2017

Following this event, Barcelona will also be hosting two more MDPI Conferences this year:

• The 5^th International Symposium on Sensor Science will be held on 27–29 September 2017 at the AXA Convention Centre in Barcelona, Spain.
  This event, sponsored by our journal Sensors, will address the recent developments made in the field of sensor technology. To properly do so, the event will be split into 5 different sessions, each one of them focussing on the following different aspects of the field: chemosensors, bio-inspired and bio-based strategies for sensing and fluidics, biosensors, sensors for structures, and sensors for applications.
  The registration to attend the event is open until 7 September 2017.
  For more information please access the following link: http://sciforum.net/conference/i3s2017Barcelona.

• The First International Conference on Symmetry will be held on 16–18 October 2017 at the Parc Cientific de Barcelona (PCB), Barcelona, Spain.
  This conference, sponsored by our journal Symmetry, is an excellent opportunity to attend an event where cutting-edge ideas and knowledge on symmetry will be presented and shared. During the three days of the conference, a variety of subjects ranging from fields such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science and biology will be brought together under the fundamental scientific phenomenon that is symmetry.
  The registration to attend the event is open until 25 September 2017.
  For more information please access the following link: http://sciforum.net/conference/symmetry2017

We are also pleased to announce that the following events will also be held in Barcelona in 2018:

• Viruses 2018 – Breakthroughs in Viral replication
  The event will take place at the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona, on 7–9 February 2018.
  Early bird: 24 November 2017
  Abstract submission: 31 October 3017
  Registration: 22 January 2018
  For more information please access: http://sciforum.net/conference/Viruses-2018
  
• Polymers: Design, Function and Application
  The event will take place at the Faculty of Geology of the University of Barcelona on 22–23 March 2018
  Early bird: 15 December 2017
  Abstract Submission: 22 November 2017
  Registration: 2 March 2018
  For more information please access: http://sciforum.net/conference/polymers-2018
  
• Entropy 2018: From Physics to Information Sciences and Geometry
  The event will take place at the Faculty of Geology of the University of Barcelona on 14–16 May 2018.
  Early Bird: 14 February 2018
  Abstract Submission: 16 January 2018
  Registration: 25 April 2018
  For more information please access: http://sciforum.net/conference/Entropy2018-1

Congratulations to the authors Javier Monroy and Javier Gonzalez-Jimenez from Universidad de Malaga, Spain, Victor Hernandez-Bennets, Han Fan and Achim Lilienthal from Örebro University, Sweden for publishing the 100,000th peer-reviewed article.

The article is published in the Chemical Sensors section of Sensors.

GADEN: A 3D Gas Dispersion Simulator for Mobile Robot Olfaction in Realistic Environments

Evermore pressing environmental concerns have led global actors and decision-makers to search for stricter emission monitoring approaches. As part of novel monitoring systems, robots with gas and environmental sensors are a promising solution. However, validation of such robotic inspectors is expensive, time consuming, and plagued by repeatability issues. In this article, we present GADEN (the short form for Gas Dispersion Simulator for Mobile Robot Olfaction in Realistic Environments), which combines gas dispersion and robotics simulation in a common framework. Developed under the widely used Robot Operating System (ROS), GADEN enables validation of sensing strategies with gas dispersion being simulated using computational fluid dynamics and filament dispersion theory. GADEN allows simulating complex, realistic, 3D environments for reproducible testing of robotic gas sensing algorithms. Through qualitative and quantitative evaluations, we show that GADEN is a versatile and user-friendly evaluation tool and emphasize its enormous potential for the mobile robot olfaction community.

Read the full article here: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/17/7/1479/htm

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Polymers:

The CiteScore, the new citation metric for journals covered in the Scopus® database, was released on 1 June 2017, reflecting the citation activity in 2016 for articles published during the three previous years. Please note that the list below does not contain all MDPI journals covered in Scopus. For the CiteScore to serve as a reliable metric at least three volumes of articles need to be indexed in Scopus; journals which have not met this criterion have been omitted here.

Ten MDPI journals received a CiteScore which is in the Top 10% of scores in at least one of the categories, while a further 21 journals exhibit scores that are in the first quartile of the respective categories.

CiteScore Data for MDPI Journals

We are pleased to announce that the Goethe University of Frankfurt, the Technical University of Hamburg (TU Hamburg-Harburg), as well as the Humboldt University of Berlin, in Germany, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce the Featured Journal of this Month— Nanomaterials.

Nanomaterials is an Open Access Nanoscience & Nanotechnology Journal, published monthly by MDPI. Since it was founded in 2011, 598 articles have been published, 65 of them cited 10 times or more (h-10 index). The current Impact Factor is 2.690, and the five-year impact factor is 3.176.

For more information, also check out our special issues, currently open for submissions and our MDPI-Blog.

As an open access publisher, we are keen to support openness and transparency in the research process. Citation data is very important for assessing the value of individual papers and the contribution of researchers. As such, we support the recently launched Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC). The initiative recognizes that citations should be freely available and machine-readable. By doing so, authors gain the maximum benefit from having their work cited.

MDPI now uploads citation data with metadata uploaded to Crossref when registering digital object identifiers (DOIs) for published papers. We are delighted to take this step to support a truly open research environment.

Getting high quality review reports is critical for any journal’s editorial process. At MDPI we have put in place several measures to motivate reviewers and reward them for their work. We are proud of the quality of reviewer reports we receive and grateful for the hours put in by active researchers from across the globe.

Reviewers of MDPI’s largest journals can get recognition via Publons, a website dedicated to rewarding peer reviewers. They have now taken this one step further and launched the Publons Reviewer Academy to help train reviewers to provide useful feedback. Through the academy, researchers can be trained and tutored in various aspects of how to provide structured feedback that will be of genuine help to editors and authors. We support this initiative and recommend it to potential MDPI reviewers, especially early career researchers. See the Publons announcement for further information.

More information on reviewing for MDPI, including how to volunteer as a reviewer, can be found here.

We are pleased to announce that the following universities have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, USA and the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia. Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

Preprints.org is a platform run by MDPI that allows authors to make early versions of manuscripts available before peer review has been completed.

One of the major benefits of putting a preprint online is to get feedback before journal submission. Until now, however, the feedback has been on a voluntary basis. Preprints is delighted to be the first preprint server to collaborate with Publons to acknowledge substantial comments as reviews and give commentators the opportunity to receive credit for their efforts. 

When you add a comment to any article, there is a check box to click for it to appear on Publons. If you have already linked your account it will be passed on automatically. If you don't already have a Publons account, you will be contacted soon afterwards with instructions on how to create one.

We appreciate the enthusiasm and cooperation of Publons in this project and expect it to be of great benefit to authors and commenters alike.

We are pleased to announce that our annual report for the year 2016 has now been published. 

It contains information regarding company and journal performance, conferences and other publishing services that we provided throughout 2016. 

To read the report in full or download a copy, please click here.

After the 20th anniversary of MDPI in 2016, we will reach another milestone this year and will publish the 100,000th peer-reviewed article in one of our 170+ open access journals.

We would like you to be part of this great achievement and so are offering to publish the 100,000th accepted paper free of charge.

To be in with a chance, select a journal in one of our 10 scientific subject areas and submit your paper.

Access the live tracker on published articles here.

We are delighted that Preprints now has 1000 papers online since its launch on 3 May 2016.

For more information, see the editorial here.

Earlier this week the Science Technology Park in Belgrade, Serbia was visited by Swiss Secretary of State Dr. Mauro Dell’Ambrogio, as well as Serbian Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government Ana Brnabic, State Secretary Dr. Vladimir Popovic and Mayor of Belgrade Mr. Siniša Mali.

During the visit to the STP they had a short presentation from MDPI’s CEO Dr. Franck Vazquez and IT Manager Mr. Miloš Čučulović, and further discussed important issues such as Open Access and Open education. Dr. Dell'Ambrogio said he was impressed with the potential for development and ideas for business.

For more information please see:

http://bit.ly/2kpIu7k and http://bit.ly/2kpUQfz

We are pleased to announce that the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, the University of Manitoba, Canada and the Technical University of Cartagena, Spain, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

The 6^th World Sustainability Forum is currently being held at the Cape Sun Hotel until 28 January 2017. 

The Forum will showcase the work of internationally renowned researchers and include more than 150 presentations. During the conference dinner, the World Sustainability Award, associated with a US$ 100,000 prize, will be announced, as well as the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award, associated with a US$ 10,000 prize. The prizes are sponsored by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation and Sustainability, an academic open access journal by MDPI.

Here are some pictures from the forum so far:

To see the full WSF2017 program and schedule, please see here: http://sciforum.net/conference/wsf-6/page/schedule

Cape Town will host the 6^th World Sustainability Forum at the Cape Sun Hotel on 27 and 28 January 2017. This prominent event, held for the first time in Africa, will include many illustrious South African and international experts, such as Her Excellency Graça Machel (Sustainable Development Advocate for the United Nations, Mozambique), Joyene Isaacs (HoD Agriculture Western Cape Government), Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University, USA), Max Bergman (SRaM, University of Basel), Mark New (Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of Cape Town), Frans Swanepoel (FutureAfrica, University of Pretoria) and Francis Petersen (Vice-Chancellor-designate, University of the Free State). The Forum will provide a stage for national and international debates on sustainability in South Africa, the African continent, and about international perspectives on sustainability. It brings together researchers and representatives from government and the business sector to discuss a wide-ranging set of issues associated with sustainability, including food security, water and energy scarcity, mining, poverty reduction, climate change, and urbanisation.

The next few decades will be marked by profound changes in the relationships between global economics, national societies, and the environment. We have entered what some call the Anthropocene, an age in which human activity dominates the climate and the environment. These changes will have numerous consequences on societies around the globe. South Africa and Africa will play a central role, for better or worse, in creating opportunities and risks during these changing times as Africa is profoundly influencing and being influenced by global developments.

The adoption of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in September 2015 was accompanied by what insiders considered an optimism they have not experienced in relation to UN resolutions before. The relative efficiency in the drafting, the lack of trenches between East and West, or between North and South, and the unanimity of support of the 193 countries speak volumes. In stark contrast, sustainability seems to go against a changing economic and political tide, where waves of nationalism and protectionism from some of the most powerful countries risk the wellbeing of the rest of the world. The 6^th World Sustainability Forum will enable fruitful exchanges, which sensitise South African and international communities to the global urgency and specifics of sustainability.

The Forum will showcase the work of internationally renowned researchers and include more than 150 presentations. During the conference dinner, the World Sustainability Award, associated with a US$ 100 000 prize, will be announced, as well as the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award, associated with a US$ 10 000 prize. The prizes are sponsored by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation and Sustainability, an academic open access journal by MDPI. The World Sustainability Forum is preceded by the Postgraduate Forum on Sustainability, which will introduce more than 100 young scholars from South Africa and the African continent to sustainability research. Both events are organized and sponsored by the University of Cape Town, the University of the Western Cape, the University of Basel, MDPI, and by the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

Contacts:

Scientific Matters: Prof Manfred Max Bergman, Social Research and Methodology Group (SRaM), University of Basel, Switzerland; Email:  max.bergman@unibas.ch

Press Accreditation and General Enquiries: Mr Matthias Burkhalter, MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland; Email: burkhalter@mdpi.com; Tel. +41 61 683 77 34 

Follow us on Twitter

#WSF2017SA

MDPI is now a proud supporter of the OA2020 Initiative.

Open Access 2020 is an international initiative that aims to induce the swift, smooth and scholarly-oriented transformation of today’s scholarly journals from subscription to open access publishing.

MDPI is participating in the upcoming Berlin13 conference in March 2017, where we are contributing to the initiative by aiding in the design of the roadmap which will make OA the default publishing model.

For more information please see here.

We are pleased to announce that the University of Texas at Arlington, USA, the Harbin Institute of Technology, China and TU Darmstadt, Germany, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

Season's greetings from everyone at MDPI!

We are pleased to announce that the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Germany and the University of California, Berkeley, USA, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

The Wellcome Trust has, for a number of years, required that the results of its funded projects are published in open access format. Recently it announced criteria that publishers must fulfil for publication fees to be paid by the Trust. MDPI is pleased to have been added to the list of compliant publishers.

Only publishers who have confirmed their compliance by 16 December 2016 will be eligible to receive payment of APCs by the Wellcome Trust as of 1 April 2017. For more information on the criteria and a full list of publishers that meet them, see here.

MDPI is currently attending the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting (12–16 December, 2016)

If you are also attending the conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #1147) and meet the representative editors.

Conference details:

2016 AGU Fall Meeting
12–16 December 2016
Moscone Center
747 Howard St
San Francisco, CA 94103, USA

We are pleased to announce that Purdue University, USA, the Universitat Politécnica de Valencia, Spain and the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

The deadline for the World Sustainability Award has been extended for one last time! You now have one more month to nominate an individual researcher, group or project! The final deadline for nominations will be December 15, 2016. 

For full details, please visit here.

We are pleased to announce that the University of Minnesota, USA, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

MDPI has become a member of the United Nations Global Compact to support corporate sustainability and have committed ourselves to the ten principles associated with the Compact.

Sustainability has always been at the core of MDPI’s values, starting with the collection and preservation of rare chemical samples that started in 1996 and led to the first journal, Molecules. Sustainability has become one of our flagship journals and we have supported and organized several conferences and events based on Sustainability, including the upcoming 6th World Sustainability Forum. As a global enterprise, we see it as our duty to promote responsible practices that will ensure a bright future for our planet. Given this, the choice to join the Global Compact was an easy one and we will do our utmost to fully implement it.

We are delighted to announce that MDPI has become a member of SPARC Europe, an organization that works for open scholarship in Europe, including support of open access publication.

As one of the few publishers to join SPARC Europe to date, MDPI looks forward to making a contribution that puts open scholarship on a positive and sustainable path. We fully support the goals of open scholarship that allow the largest number of people possible to benefit from work of researchers in all disciplines. We hope that our membership will enable us to work with other stakeholders to find the best possible solution.

The deadline for the World Sustainability Award has been extended! You now have until November 15, 2016 to nominate an individual researcher, group or project!

For full details, please visit here.

.

We are pleased to announce that the Wuppertal Institut, Germany, the University of Girona, Spain and Central South University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

Meet us during International Open Access Week 2016! We will be presenting at various locations in Europe and China. 

To get involved and for full details see the complete list of events organised by MDPI here.

We are pleased to announce that the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain and Aalto University, Finland, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that the Iowa State University and the University of North Texas, USA, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

Meet MDPI during the Open Access Days held from 10-11 October 2016 at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. 

The two-day event will feature experts from the open access sector, scientists from all disciplines, publishing representatives and supporters of scientific research and communication from libraries as well as research institutes and funding institutions. Join us!

For more information about the event and to see the program, visit the event webpage.

We are pleased to announce that the University of Sevilla and the University of Alicante, Spain have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that the University of Delaware, USA, has joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from this university will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

As an open access publisher indebted to the work of our peer reviewers, we are proud to support Peer Review Week 2016. As part of the week's activities and to celebrate this year's theme "Recognition for Review", MDPI will host two webinars that anyone can join.

These webinars will explore the role and value of reviewers and the recognition they receive from a publishers perspective, with examples from MDPI's experience in publishing nearly 80,000 peer reviewed papers, along with evidence from reviewer surveys. It will also touch upon potential changes in how review is carried out and tips for early career researchers who want to be involved in the review process.

Details and links to join can be found below:

Wednesday September 21, 08:00 (CEST)

Friday September 23, 16:00 (CEST)

For more information about all the activites taking place, please visit the Peer Review Week website.

We are pleased to announce that Kansas State University and Northwestern Universty, USE, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that University College Cork, Ireland, has joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from this university will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that MDPI has now moved to a new permanent address:

MDPI AG
St. Alban Anlage 66
CH-4052 Basel
Postfach, CH-4020 Basel
Switzerland

Telephone and fax numbers remain unchanged.

We are pleased to announce that MDPI will be attending the 252nd American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition (21-25 August, 2016) representing the following open access journals:

Molecules
Materials
Marine Drugs
IJMS
Polymers
Applied Sciences
Membranes
Metabolites
Pharmaceuticals
Biomolecules
Symmetry

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth 411) and meet our representatives.

Conference details:

ACS - American Chemical Society Fall Meeting 2016
21-25 August, 2016

Pennsylvania Convention Center
1101 Arch St
Philadelphia
PA 19107
USA

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in August 2016:

• University of Texas at Austin, USA
• Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland
• University of Granada, Spain
• Compultense University of Madrid, Spain

Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in July 2016:

• Louisiana State University, USA
• Florida State University, USA
• Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland
• University of Rostock, Germany
• AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland
• Southeast University, China

Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

As of 20 August 2016, MDPI's new address in Basel will be:

MDPI AG
St. Alban-Anlage 66
CH-4052 Basel
Switzerland

Telephone and fax numbers remain unchanged.

St. Alban-Anlage 66 was built from 1947 to 1948 and initially the home of the "Bühler AG", a book printing business. 

From the 15-16 September, 2016, MDPI will run a course on Academic Publishing at the University of Basel.

In this two day workshop, MDPI will look in detail at the role performed by academic journal publishers and how they interact with academics. Ethical dimensions, what happens when problems occur and how the publisher coordinates all aspects of the submission process will also be covered. 

For more detailed information about the program, trainers and registration please visit the course webpage.

We are pleased to report the 2015 Journal Impact Factors in the latest Journal Citation Reports® Science Edition, published by Thomson Reuters in June 2016. Twenty out of 25 journals have seen an increase in their Impact Factor and two journals (Crystals and IJGI) received a first Impact Factor. Coatings was recently added to SCIE and will receive its first Impact Factor in next year’s JCR.

Updated Impact Factors for Journals in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)

Journals with First Impact Factors

Polymers has received a new Impact Factor of 2.944 for 2015 in the latest release of the Journal Citation Reports® Science Edition, published by Thomson Reuters in June 2016. The five-year Impact Factor is 3.867.

Polymers now ranks 20/85 (Q1) in the category ‘Polymer Science’ and thus remains the second ranked Open Access journal in the category.

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Polymers:

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in May 2016:

• Unversity of Bremen, Germany
• Koç University, Turkey
• International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria
• Jilin University, China
• Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in April and May 2016:

• KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
• South China University of Technology, China
• Beijing University of Technology, China
• Southern Medical University, China

Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

You may have noticed a new section that is now visible on our home page. This section is called "Latest Books" and showcases recent publications from MDPI Books, our book publishing service.

By clicking on the hyperlink "More Books" you will be taken to the MDPI Books Home Page. There you will find more information about the service, as well as the "Recent Publications" list. 

Clicking on any of the book images in this list will take you to detailed information about that book (shown below). Here you can also download a PDF version of the book, or order a hardcover printed copy.

For further information about the MDPI Books service, please visit the webpage or contact books@mdpi.com.

We are pleased to announce that the journals Axioms, Behavioral Sciences, Photonics, Separations and Toxics were recently accepted for inclusion in the newly launched Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) in Web of Science.

ESCI serves to highlight promising journals which are still under consideration for the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) or the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).

The Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index
(SSCI), and Web of Science™ (WoS) are Thomson Reuters products.

We are pleased to announce that the University of Winchester, UK, the Silesian University of Technology, Poland and Beijing Jiaotong University and Zhejiang University, China, have joined our Institutional Membership program. Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are excited to announce the opening of our new editorial office in Barcelona, Spain. The launch team is led by a Senior Editor and comprises further staff holding doctoral degrees with several years of research experience. The new editorial team will help us to get closer to European research communities and progress Sciforum, the platform to support the scientific community via conference hosting and other functions. They will also help spread the word about Open Access and meet academics at scientific events.

We are in the process of hiring more doctoral and masters graduates to join the editorial team and welcome applications via jobs@mdpi.com. For contact details about the office, see our contact page.

We are pleased to announce that the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) has signed an agreement with MDPI to support authors associated with the Max Planck Society (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft). As of 22 February 2016, corresponding authors will receive full funding from the MPDL for articles published in MDPI journals, with a 10% discount applied to the Article Processing Charges. Additional details can be found at our institutional membership page.

Founded in 1948, The Max Planck Society is one of Germany’s leading research organizations, and is currently made up of 83 institutes conducting basic research in natural sciences, life sciences, social sciences and humanities. 18 Nobel laureates have emerged from its ranks of scientists and the society has more than 15,000 publications in scientific journals each year.

We are pleased to announce that Wageningen University, the Netherlands, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain, the University of Zürich and ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and the University of Tübingen and Osnabrück University, Germany, have not only renewed their institutional memberships with MDPI after two years of successful cooperation, but have also increased the reduction of the article processing charges (APCs) for affiliated authors to 25%.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that Brock University, Cananda, and the University of Pisa, Italy, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 01 February 2016. 

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

MDPI is pleased to announce its newly established sponsorship of diss:kurs, an event coordinated by the University of Basel to support their doctorate program. For more information about the event and how to register, please visit the diss:kurs webpage.

We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program as of 1 January 2016:

• Tsinghua University, China
• Chinese Society of Micro-Nano Technology (CSMNT)
• Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
• University of Ulm, Germany

Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that MDPI's open access journals Safety, Journal of Imaging, Fermentation, C-Journal of Carbon Research, Magnetochemistry, Batteries and Horticulturae released their first issue at the end of December 2015.

Season's greetings from everyone at MDPI!

We are pleased to announce that the University of Bern, Switzerland has not only renewed their institutional membership with MDPI after two years of successful cooperation, but also increased the reduction of the article processing charges (APCs) for affiliated authors to 25%.

We are pleased to announce that University of Ulm, Germany and Helmholtz Zentrum Munich, Germany has joined MDPI's institutional membership program:

Primary authors from the University of Ulm and Helmholtz Zentrum Munich will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 1 January 2016. Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that Virginia Tech has joined MDPI's institutional membership program. Authors from Virginia Tech will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 1 December 2015. Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that the following universities have joined MDPI's institutional membership program:

• Technical University of Denmark (as of 1 November 2015)
• University of North Florida, USA (as of 15 November 2015)

Primary authors from the Technical University of Denmark and the University of North Florida will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to announce that the following universities have joined MDPI's institutional membership program:

University of Freiburg, Germany
University of Regensburg, Germany

Primary authors from the University of Freiburg and the University of Regensburg will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 1 October 2015 and 1 November 2015.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

We are pleased to report the 2014 Impact Factor for Polymers. According to the 2015 release of the Journal Citation Reports® Science Edition (published by Thomson Reuters in June 2015), the updated Impact Factor for Polymers is 3.681. It has risen from 2.505 in the previous year (+47%), as illustrated in the figure below. The 5-Year Impact Factor is 3.904. Polymers now ranks 13/82 (Q1) in the category ‘Polymer Science’.

Evolution of the Polymers Impact Factor:

Evolution of citations to Polymers:

We are pleased to announce that Polymers has been accepted for indexing in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) / Web of Science, the leading indexing database in natural sciences.

This means that the research you publish with Polymers is now more visible than ever. Polymers, which was launched in 2009 under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Alexander Böker, provides an interdisciplinary forum for publishing papers which advance the fields of (i) polymerization methods, (ii) theory, simulation, and modeling, (iii) understanding of new physical phenomena, (iv) advances in characterization techniques, and (v) harnessing of self-assembly and biological strategies for producing complex multifunctional structures.

Polymers is also included in Chemical Abstracts (CAS), COMPENDEX, INSPEC and a variety of other indexing databases and archives.