Announcements

Processes (ISSN 2227-9717) (IF 1.963, 69/138 (Q2) in 'Engineering, Chemical') is currently recruiting Editorial Board Members.

Processes provides an advanced forum for process/systems-related research in chemistry, biology, materials and allied engineering fields. The journal publishes regular research papers, communications, letters, short notes and reviews. Our aim is to encourage researchers to publish their experimental, theoretical and computational results in as much detail as necessary. There is no restriction on paper length or number of figures and tables.

As an Editorial Board Member, you would have the unique opportunity to help build the Processes community by identifying and introducing suitable collaborators. You would be able to lead specialty sections and direct the focus of research topics to facilitate the publication of key findings and historical advances in a hot research area. Furthermore, you would have an excellent avenue to gain insight into the latest developments in this multidisciplinary field of study. Finally, you would have the privilege of publishing one paper per year totally free of charge after peer review.

More details regarding the Editorial Board of Processes are available via the following link:

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/processes/editors

If you are interested in this position or have potential candidates to recommend, please contact the Processes Editorial Office at processes@mdpi.com.

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

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

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

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

We are pleased to announce that starting from 10 April 2020, the editorial leadership of Processes has been taken over by Professor Giancarlo Cravotto (University of Turin)

Prof. Cravotto became a researcher at the Department of Drug Science and Technology (University of Turin), after four years of experience in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. He spent a year at the Techniche Universität in Berlin (Prof. P. Weyerstahl), on an organic synthesis project, funded by DFG and CNR, in 1992.

His research activity in the domain of green organic synthesis and sustainable processes is documented by about 410 scientific, peer-reviewed papers (Scopus—H. Index 50; 10,800 citations), 19 patents, 40 book chapters and 7 books as editor, and more than 400 communications to scientific meetings, including several invited plenary and keynote lectures. The extraction, purification, synthesis, and chemical modification of bioactive natural products has been the focus of his research activity. These studies have paved the way for new, nonconventional energy source driven synthetic procedures (microwaves, ultrasound, hydrodynamic cavitation, mechanochemistry, flow chemistry, etc.), while also prompting the development of innovative hybrid reactors. New enabling technologies have been applied in process intensification with industrial partners across a number of fields, including food processing, phytoextracts, pharmaceutics, fine chemicals, cosmetics, and biomedical polymers. He was the Director of the Department of Drug Science and Technology from 2007 to October 2018, and he is currently Full Professor of Organic Chemistry and vice-Director, leading a research group and a technological platform for process design from lab to pilot scale. In his new role, he will work closely with over 100 Editorial Board Members from across the globe, and we are confident that under his leadership, the journal will continue as a highly respected journal in the field.

We would like to take the opportunity to express our gratitude to the previous Editor-in-Chief Prof. Dr. Michael A. Henson, for his invaluable contributions to the journal.

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

Scholarly Community—Encyclopedia

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

Comprehensive and Free Literature Database—Scilit

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

Display Academic Achievements—SciProfiles

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

Organize and Participate in Conferences Online—Sciforum

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

Post Early Versions of Research Outputs—Preprints

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the position paper here

We are pleased to announce that Encyclopedia will be awarding five Outstanding Contributor Awards for researchers in 2020. The nominations and applications will be assessed by an Evaluation Committee consisting of senior scholars from the Encyclopedia Editorial Board.

Prize for Winners

1. An official certificate;
2. A cash award of 500 CHF or an MDPI discount voucher of 800 CHF.

Application Deadline

31 December, 2020 (Please send your application email with a list of all entries you contributed to our office before the deadline: office@encyclopedia.pub)

Candidate Requirements

1. Have a Ph.D. degree;
2. Have more than three qualified entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020.

Evaluation Standards

1. Number of entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020;
2. Quality of entries online (including length, figure quality, and novelty);
3. Impact of entries (including the number of likes, discussion contents, views, and downloads).

If you are a researcher and have not yet contribute entries to Encyclopedia, please do not miss this chance to highlight your research results.

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2020 Processes Young Investigator Award is Prof. Kody Powell.

It was a difficult decision given the high standard of applications for the award, and we would like to thank all the applicants from various fields of study for their participation, and all the Award Committee members for their efforts in evaluating the many excellent applications. We congratulate the winner, Prof. Kody Powell, on his accomplishments. We wish him further success in his career.

For more information about Processes awards, please visit this page.

MDPI will be attending the 17th International Congress on Catalysis, San Diego, California, USA, June 14-19, 2020.

This congress is the premier technical gathering of our communities of practice in surface and organometallic catalysis, industrial homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, electrocatalysis, photocatalysis, and catalysis in condensed media. This meeting brings together participants from academia, industry, and national laboratories, with a tradition and expressed goal of nurturing and mentoring students and young researchers as part of its mission.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Catalysts
• Molecules
• Materials
• Coatings
• Clean Technologies
• Energies
• Inorganics
• Processes

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #408). 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://2020icc.com/

It is our pleasure to announce the winners of the 2020 Travel Awards, sponsored by MDPI and Processes. The awards have been granted to two outstanding young researchers working in thematic areas:

This has certainly been a difficult decision, with such a large collection of high-quality applications for the awards. We would like to thank all of the applicants for submitting such a diverse range of fascinating research topics and congratulate the winners for their accomplishment.

For more information about Processes awards, please see this page.