Announcements

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.

We are pleased to acknowledge that many academic editors who have made an impact on MDPI journals as editorial board members, editors-in-chief, or section editors, are recognized as 2020 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate.

Highly Cited Researchers highlights the top 1% of researchers, by citations, in one or more of the 22 fields used in Clarivate Analytics Essential Science Indicators. We offer our congratulations to 279 academic editors of MDPI journals who were recognized as the most influential scholars in their fields in 2020.

The full list of 2020 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed on https://recognition.webofsciencegroup.com/awards/highly-cited/2020/

--- Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) is a Clarivate product.

Radiation (ISSN 2673-592X) is a new peer-reviewed open access journal on radiology published by MDPI. This journal publishes reviews and research articles related to radiation and their application in medicine, biology, chemistry, physics, environmental, etc. The Radiation Editorial Team is pleased to announce this open call for Special Issue proposals. Special Issues give a group of authors the possibility to work on an interconnected set of papers on an innovative topic. We would like to solicit high-quality proposals that will be evaluated in a competitive procedure on a rolling basis throughout the year.

Proposals for a Special Issue should have a well-articulated unifying topic and reflect, at an international level, the best work in a particular research area, either a mature area or an important emerging area, in which future investigations may be boosted by the publication of a set of excellent papers. Hence, an international group of Guest Editors and a few high-quality planned papers are always encouraged in the proposals.

Please take into account that proposals for Special Issues should be sent by 30 June 2021 to the Radiation Editorial Office (radiation@mdpi.com), who will forward them to the Editors of Radiation for evaluation.

Information to be provided in a proposal:

• A 300–500-word summary to rationally explain the significance, novelty, technical advancement, and adherence to the scope of the journal of the proposed topic;
• A few keywords on the topic;
• A plan for obtaining quality papers or a list of at least three planned papers;
• A brief resume of the proposed Guest Editors together with their information (title, name, email, affiliation, personal website, keywords of interests);
• A proposed submission deadline (we normally run a Special Issue for 6–8 months).

Guest Editor(s) Role:

• Once the proposal is accepted, the GE will circulate the Call for Papers for the Special Issue and invite submissions.
• Each submission will undergo a formal peer review process, after which we will ask the GE, the Editor in Chief, or a suitable Editorial Board Member to decide whether the paper is acceptable for publication in
• If ten or more papers are published in this Special Issue, we can make a Special Issue book and send a copy to each Guest Editor.

Editorial Office’s Role:

The Editorial Office will take care of setting up the Special Issue website, arranging promotional material, assisting with invitations to contribute papers, and taking care of administrative tasks associated with peer review, including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and professional production before publication.

Please do not hesitate to contact the Radiation Editorial Office if you are interested and would like further details and clarifications.

We look forward to receiving your creative proposals.

Kind regards,
Radiation Editorial Office

Radiation, a new journal published by MDPI, is looking for new Editorial Board Members with the passion to drive the journal forward in an exciting period of development. Radiation covers all areas of radiology. This journal publishes reviews and research articles related to radiation and their application in medicine, biology, chemistry, physics, environmental, etc. Please see the Radiation homepage for more information and details of the journal’s Aims and Scope.

This opportunity will allow you to keep up with research in our field and position yourself as one of the leaders in the evolving and exciting field of radiation. Appointments to the Editorial Board are for a two-year period and may be renewable. Your name and affiliation will be displayed on the journal website.

The main responsibilities of Editorial Board Members are as follows:

• Working closely with Editors to develop the journal’s vision, policy, and practices;
• Pre-screening submissions and making decisions on whether a manuscript can be accepted or rejected for processing, and suggesting reviewers if necessary;
• Acting as Guest Editor of a Special Issue in your particular field of expertise, or recommending potential topics and Guest Editors;
• Promoting radiation and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences;
• Advising on the journal’s development.

The following are criteria for the selection of board members:

• A PhD degree and relevant expertise;
• Having a strong interest in the scholarly journal;
• Holding an appointment at a university, or an academic or research institution;
• Prior experience with publishing in and reviewing for peer-review publications.

To apply or request further information, please send your curriculum vitae and a short statement of interest to the Radiation Editorial Office (radiation@mdpi.com). We look forward to hearing from you.

We believe that by combining our rigorous editorial policies with your expertise, we can produce a high-quality journal. We thank you in advance for your interest and look forward to collaborating with you.

Kind regards,
Radiation Editorial Office

We are delighted to announce the establishment of our Open Access agreement with Jisc Collections, which will allow UK institutions to benefit from access to article processing charge (APC) discounts and streamlined payment workflows.

All institutions participating in the agreement will also gain access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information for easy identification and additional transparency.

Eligible authors affiliated with the participating institutions are prompted to choose the corresponding Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system.

About Jisc

Jisc's vision is for the UK to be the most digitally advanced education and research nation in the world. At its heart is the super-fast national research and education network, Janet, with built-in cyber security protection.  Jisc also provides technology solutions for its members (colleges, universities and research centres) and customers (public sector bodies), helps members save time and money by negotiating sector-wide deals and provides advice and practical assistance on digital technology. Jisc is funded by the UK higher and further education and research funding bodies and member institutions.

For more information, contact helen.dobson@jisc.ac.uk.

About MDPI

MDPI is a publisher of fully peer-reviewed, Open Access journals with a focus on thorough and rapid editorial processing. Its aim is to ensure that high-quality research is verified and made available to the research community as quickly as possible. MDPI stands at the forefront of the Open Access movement, having launched its first online journal Molecules in 1996. Today, MDPI is a leader in Open Access publishing with over 250 journals across all research disciplines, and all content published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

For any questions about this agreement, please contact the MDPI IOAP team at ioap@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 inform you that the Journal Board Member Positions including Editorial Board Member, Topic Board Member, and Reviewer Board Member are now open for application in the journal Radiation (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/radiation).

Radiation is a new, open-access journal published quarterly online by MDPI, covering all areas of radiology. This journal publishes reviews and research articles related to radiation and their application in medicine, biology, chemistry, physics, environmental, etc. Radiation include but are not limited to the following:

• Electromagnetic radiation, such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma radiation (γ);
• Particle radiation, such as alpha radiation (α), beta radiation (β), and neutron radiation (particles of nonzero rest energy);
• Acoustic radiation, such as ultrasound, sound, and seismic waves (dependent on a physical transmission medium);
• Gravitational radiation, radiation that takes the form of gravitational waves, or ripples in the curvature of space-time.

MDPI is a pioneer in scholarly open-access publishing and has supported academic communities since 1996. Currently, there are more then 200 scientific international open-access journals and 70 SCIE journals. MDPI is the largest open-access scientific publisher in the word today. We also have a sister journal Cancers with IF 6.162, which holds a JCR category rank of 31/229 (Q1) in '’Oncology’'. We wish to establish Radiation as an important platform and provide high-quality service to the researchers in this field. If you are interested in working with us or have any enquiries, please feel free to send us your CV or your questions to radiation@mdpi.com.

We believe your participation will help the journal to succeed.

Thanks, and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

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 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