Announcements

The 6th China National Young Scholar Meeting on Combustion Research will be held in Hangzhou, China 21–23 May 2021. Approximately 600 delegates will attend and showcase their latest achievements in combustion research. The meeting aims to centralize young researchers in the combustion field and is focused mainly on the current research development in combustion science. Attendees will present their newest research by delivering presentations in their fields. Colloquium topics include laminar flame and chemical reaction kinetics, turbulent flame and numerical combustion, combustion in engines, solid combustion and combustion pollution, fire research, combustion diagnostics, and new combustion technology.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Processes;
• Fire;
• Applied Sciences;
• Energies;
• Fluids.

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

For more information about the conference, please visit: http://combustion2020.csp.escience.cn/dct/page/1.

MDPI Books recently released Book Builder, a new online tool to conveniently arrange, design and produce an eBook from any content published in MDPI journals. Book Builder offers two functions: on the one hand (1) Selections, available to every registered user of MDPI; on the other hand (2) Special Issue Reprints, which can be used exclusively by Guest Editors of Special Issues.

Selections

In just a matter of a few clicks, all users are now able to assemble books from MDPI articles and receive instantaneous feedback in the form of a fully produced and compiled book (PDF), which can be downloaded or ordered as print copy. Selections can include any paper published with MDPI, picking and combining content from different journals and special issues.

This way, the user may for example choose to compile an ebook focusing around a particular topic, or assemble articles from a group of others.

We invite you to make yourself familiar with the new tool! The Book Builder can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/books/book_builder.

Special Issue Reprints

The Book Builder allows Guest Editors of MDPI journals to create a reprint from a successfully completed Special Issue or Topical Collection in book format. If you are a Guest Editor for an MDPI journal, you can use the new tool  to create an PDF document which includes all articles published in the Special Issue as well as a book cover and table of contents.

For Special Issues containing a minimum of 5 articles, the Guest Editor can request its publication on the MDPI Book platform. Published reprints are assigned an ISBN and DOI.

In addition to the PDF copy of the Reprint Book, as a token of our gratitude, MDPI offers every Guest Editor one (1) complimentary print copy (via print-on-demand). All contributors benefit from a discount on orders of any additional print copies, to share with colleagues or libraries or others.

Why choose MDPI Books?

In line with our organization's values, MDPI Books publishes all content in open access, promoting the exchange of ideas and knowledge in a globalized world. MDPI Books encompasses all the benefits of open access—high availability and visibility, as well as wide and rapid dissemination. MDPI Books are distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License, meaning as an author you retain the copyright for your work. In addition, with MDPI Books you can complement the digital version of your work with a high-quality printed counterpart.

If you are interested in editing a book volume or series, or have a monograph manuscript to be considered for publication, please submit your proposal online and look at our Information for Authors.

Contact: Laura Wagner, MDPI Books Manager (email)

To further motivate the scholars who have had a good publication record in the last 3 years, we are pleased to announce that Processes will offer discounts/waivers to the scholars for their next submission to Processes. Please make a pre-submission request, providing your CV with the publication record to processes@mdpi.com for application. The final decision will be made by the journal office. The application deadline is 31 May 2021, and the submission deadline is 31 July 2021.

Processes (ISSN 2227-9717) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal on processes in chemistry, biology, materials, energy, environment, food, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and allied engineering fields published monthly online by MDPI. Processes is now indexed by SCIE (IF: 2.753), ranks 59/143 (Q2) in the category “Engineering, Chemical”.

For more detailed information, please click: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/processes.

In June of this year, MDPI will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its foundation. To mark this significant milestone, we have created a 25th Anniversary page on our website that evokes the development of our company over the past quarter-century.

MDPI has been a pioneer of Open Access publishing ever since the concept was first created.

In a wide-ranging interview, our CEO Delia Mihaila reflects on the company’s 25th anniversary and its contribution to the world of scientific publishing.

Delia considers how MDPI has evolved since starting life in 1996 as a visionary ‘project’ run out of an apartment in Basel, Switzerland, by Dr. Shu-Kun Lin. A chemist who was passionate about the long-term preservation of rare chemical sample, Dr. Lin was determined to help scholars publish their findings as quickly as possible and make their research results available to as wide a readership as possible worldwide. That determination remains unchanged 25 years later.

Today, MDPI is an international organization with over 4,000 employees based on three continents and in ten countries, and ranks among the world's top four academic publishers.

MDPI's mission is to accelerate access to new scientific research, delivering insight faster for researchers worldwide. Read more here about the company's remarkable success story and what the Open Access publishing model can offer the global scientific community.

The 3rd National Conference on Energy and Environmental Science and Technology will be held at Southwest University on April 23–26, 2021. The conference is hosted by the China Energy Society, Energy and Environment Committee of China Energy Society and Beijing Energy and Environment Society, undertaken by Southwest University, co-organized by Shenyang Normal University and Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology.

The theme of the conference is "Energy and Environmental Technology in the New Era". The conference will cover cutting-edge technology development and basic research in the fields of materials and catalysts for energy conversion and utilization, emission and control of environmental pollutants, biomass energy and chemicals. This special conference aims to encourage original innovation, enhance cutting-edge exchanges, and promote the integration of disciplines as well as technological progress.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Processes
• Applied Sciences
• Materials
• Sustainability

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

For more information about the conference, please visit: http://iee.swu.edu.cn.

To cover more research areas and attract more high-quality papers on processes in engineering fields, we are pleased to announce that the Aims and Scope of Processes have been modified. For more detailed information, please click https://www.mdpi.com/journal/processes/about.

Aims

Processes (ISSN 2227-9717) provides an advanced forum for process/system-related research in chemistry, biology, material, energy, environment, food, pharmaceutical, manufacturing and allied engineering fields. The journal publishes regular research papers, communications, letters, short notes and reviews. Our aim is to encourage researchers to publishexperimental, theoretical and computational results in as much detail as possible. There is no restriction on paper length or number of figures and tables.

Scope

• Chemical Systems:
  experimental, theoretical and computational research on process development and engineering; chemical and biochemical reaction processes; mass transfer, separation and purification processes; mixing, fluid processing and heat transfer systems
• Biological Systems:
  biotechnology; cell and molecular biology; life sciences
• Materials Processes:
  materials processing and degradation; processes in biomaterials, energy materials, porous materials, nanomaterials, catalytic materials, and corrosion
• Green Processes:
  environmental processes; biomass processes; new disruptive processes for high efficiency; CCUS processes; distributed production processes
• Pharmaceutical Processes:
  nanomedicine and nanotechnology; pharmaceutical technology, manufacturing and devices; drug delivery and controlled release; pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics; gene and cell therapy; drug targeting and design; biologics and biosimilars
• Food Processes:
  food processing; food production; food preservation; emerging food technologies; food quality; food waste
• Energy Systems:
  energy system planning; energy system transition; changes in energy demand; energy and electricity markets
• Process Control and Supervision:
  simulation and modeling methods; process data-based approaches; model identification; process control; process supervision; process optimization; process intensification
• Manufacturing Processes:
  lithographic methods; fabrication and integration for functional devices; exploitation and control of self-organization phenomena for patterning; further application of the created structures and devices
• Automation Control Systems:
  process automation and monitoring; artificial neural networks; fault detection and diagnosis; intelligent control systems; learning systems; micro- and nano-systems; system condition monitoring; optimization algorithms; control theory; networked systems
• Advanced Digital and Other Processes:
  industry 4.0; digitalization; internet of things (IoT); additive technologies (3D printing); sustainability; blockchain; other processes

In order to specifically develop different research areas and attract more high-quality papers, we are pleased to announce the addition of the following two new sections in Processes to cover all the disciplines of process/systems.

• Manufacturing Processes
• Automation Control Systems

We are now recruiting Editorial Board Members and Topic Editorial Board Member for these sections. If you are an active researcher in one of the aforementioned fields or know of potential candidates to recommend, please do not hesitate to get in touch (processes@mdpi.com).

As an Editorial Board Member, you will be responsible for supervising the operation of the journal. These responsibilities include the following:

• Making decisions on whether a manuscript can be accepted or not based on the reports we collect;
• Suggesting special topics or editing a Special Issue on a topic related to your research;
• Promoting the journal and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences.

Processes (ISSN 2227-9717) provides an advanced forum for process/system-related research in chemistry, biology, material, energy, environment, food, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and allied engineering fields.

At MDPI, we strive to make your online publication process seamless and efficient. To achieve this, our team is continuously developing tools and features to make the user experience useful and convenient.

As the number of academic papers continues to grow, so does the need to analyze and work with them on a large scale. This prompted us to design a new feature aimed at helping researchers find journals that are relevant to their publication by matching their abstract topic. In this regard, we designed a similarity model that automatically identifies the most suitable academic journals for your paper.

We are pleased to introduce Journal Selector, a new feature that measures similarity in academic contexts. By simply entering the title and/or abstract into our Journal Selector, the author will see a list of the most related scientific journals published by MDPI. This method helps authors select the correct journals for their papers, highlighting the time of publication and citability.

The methodology is known as representation learning, where words are represented as vectors in hyperspace. Representation helps us differentiate between different concepts within articles, and in turn, helps us identify similarities between them.

We used an advanced machine learning model to better capture the semantic meanings of words. This helps the algorithm make better predictions by leveraging scientific text representation. In turn, this ensures high precision, helping authors decide which journal they should submit their paper to.

The goal is to support authors to publish their work in the most suitable journal for their research, as fast as possible, accelerating their career progress.

Contact: Andrea Perlato, Head of Data Analytics, MDPI (email)

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

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

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

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

The Coalition is committed to:

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

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

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

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

1) Information is displayed in the left information bar.

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

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