Announcements

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. 

For more information about this building, see: https://www.mdpi.com/about/headquarters

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

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.

Open Access has been around for quite a time now, and it's appropriate that an OA journal on publishing continues to keep an eye on it. The latest issue of Publications: the journal of academic publishing and communication certainly does that with a couple of articles. And remember, they are all OA, and I give the links so you can go straight there and read them if you wish.

First up we have a review of the literature - what's it about and who's writing it (using Scopus as source). You will be shocked to know that the USA is the most prolific country, with over 30% of articles and UK trailing behind with about 13.4%. All other countries are, a bit, also-rans. No prizes for guessing the most prolific author - If I tell you his first name is Bo-Christer?... Steven Harnad comes in fourth.  https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/4/1/1/htm

And then we have an article looking more at content, at least as far as the Health Sciences are concerned, tracking what evidence has been found, and in what direction. Although most articles nowadays seem to start from the premise that OA is necessarily 'a good thing', and these are no exception, in the body of the article it is careful to point out where evidence is also either weak or contradictory. On citation impact, for example, it rather assumes OA is positive but points also to the caveats and studies by such as Phil Davis et al. https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/4/1/2/htm.  

The history and rise of OA seems to have acquired its own mythology - since I was one of the people responsible for one of the very first substantial OA (not called that then) journals in the 1990s, and founded for very different reasons, it's all mildly amusing, but we have to live with it...

There is another pair of articles looking at Non-Native English Speakers publishing in English. As someone who has now edited or 'polished' getting on for 200 articles in English by Chinese researchers, I read these with interest. One is really based on a set of case studies, charting in detail the trials and tribulations of such researchers as they work their way through, and trying to draw some conclusions. Interestingly, he raises how some are questioning the fairness of these systems 'requiring' English/American English and wanting to 'uncouple' the language from its native speakers, and talking, without irony, about the 'transformationalist framework' of that particular school of thought. https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/4/1/6/htm, https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/4/1/5/htm. These days all major publishers will at least refer non-native speakers to places where they can get help. More may be needed, however, and James Cameron and Karen Englander, based partly on their own experience, make a call for more properly organised courses within universities, and outline the one in Mexico as an example. Given my own experience, I feel an editorial coming on... By the way, I do have an editorial in this issue, on a couple of aspects of one of my hobby-horses - peer review. https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/4/1/8/htm. For some reason it's not at the top of the contents list - as a new boy here I'll have to have a word with the publishers about that.

We also have a bibliometric analysis of how co-authorship and exposure to 'international' journals e.g. those from USA and UK, can greatly assist visibility to authors from devloping countries, in this case, specifically, Brazil - which may have wider implications for many other other countries. https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/4/1/4/htm.

Lastly, we have a piece which at first sight is less about academic publishing than creative writing - but it's interesting to see whether there is any crossover. This explores what it calls 'implicit collaboration'  or 'appropriation' in the context of the Creative Commons licence. It recognises that in some fields this would be considered 'plagiarism' but explores how creative works use and build on the works of others, sometimes with full acceptance, and sometimes controversially. It makes interesting and thought-provoking reading - although I'm left with the feeling that, in science, it's fine for someone to 'stand on the shoulders of giants' but it's not ok for them to falsely pretend to actually be that giant.. https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/4/1/7/htm.

That's all for now. Hope you enjoy at least browsing the articles. Hope to see you again in a few months.

Alan Singleton
Editor-in-Chief
Publications

Email: singleton@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.