Announcements

Religions (ISSN: 2077-1444) is currently recruiting Editorial Board Members for the following Sections:

• “Religions and Theologies”;
• “Religions and Humanities/Philosophies”;
• “Religions and Health/Psychology/Social Sciences”.

Our current Board Members can be seen here.

Religions is an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal on religions and theology, published monthly online by MDPI. It is indexed within Scopus, A&HCI (Web of Science), the ATLA Religion Database, Religious and Theological Abstracts, and many other databases.

Religions has been ranked 4th in the “Religion” category in the latest release of the Google Scholar Metrics. We will strive to achieve a better result in the near future. For full details of the current rank release, please see Google Scholar’s news: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=c3y0qiUAAAAJ.

Religions also received a 2021 CiteScore of 1.0.

The benefits of being an Editorial Board Member include the following:

• The ability to publish one paper free of charge per year in Religions, and potential discounts for additional papers you invite;
• A recognition certificate as an Editorial Board Member of Religions;
• Religions will offer additional sponsorships for conferences organized by Editorial Board Members.

The responsibilities of Editorial Board Members include the following:

• Supervising the editorial process, including pre-screening submissions and making final decisions on whether to accept or reject papers;
• Contributing your work and inviting the submission of three papers to Religions (the Editorial Office will prepare the list of potential authors and the invitation template);
• The choice to edit a Special Issue on a topic related to your research or recommend potential topics and Guest Editors.

If you are interested in becoming an Editorial Board Member of Religions, or if you could recommend potential candidates, please send your application, including a full academic CV, to the Religions Editorial Office (religions@mdpi.com). We look forward to working with you in the future.

As a leading open access publisher, MDPI provides scholars with a high-quality and rich academic exchange platform by continuously expanding into new and exciting research areas.

In December 2022, MDPI launched five new journals, covering multiple subjects such as life sciences, biology, medicine and pharmacology, social sciences and humanities. These new journals are being edited by established scholars across the world.

If you are interested in creating more open access journals with us to publish cutting-edge research, please send your journal proposal application to newjournal-committee@mdpi.com.

MDPI is pleased to announce that we now display the co-authors’ email addresses in addition to the corresponding author’s email address on the webpage of published papers, protected by Captcha. For more information about this change, please visit the journal’s instructions for authors page. 

We believe this change will facilitate academic discussions and advance our cause of open science and research. The corresponding authors are responsible for communicating with their co-authors and indicating in our system (https://susy.mdpi.com/) if co-authors would prefer for their email addresses not to be displayed.

On 9 February 2023, Clarivate, a global leader in providing trusted insights and analytics, added the Preprint Citation Index to the Web of Science platform, streamlining the research process by allowing researchers to locate and link to preprints alongside other trusted content in the database.

The Preprint Citation Index will act as a bridge to connect cutting-edge preprints with peer-reviewed journal articles published within the Web of Science Core Collection. Alerts can be easily set to monitor new research across several repositories and authors will also be able to include preprints on their Web of Science Research Profile to more accurately display their various research outputs.

As of its launch, the Preprint Citation Index will provide nearly two million preprints from various repositories, including MDPI’s own Preprints.org.

MDPI's Preprints Platform – Preprints.org

To advance Open Science and the fast dissemination of research, MDPI offers researchers a free multidisciplinary preprint platform. Preprints.org accepts submissions from all research areas and offers authors high visibility, permanent archiving, article-level Metrics and immediately citable content by assigning a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to all preprints.

During submission to any MDPI journal, authors have the option to share their research as a preprint. After an initial screening, the manuscript is available online in 48 hours or less. Once online, preprints can be downloaded, shared, commented on, and cited, providing authors maximum visibility.

We invite you to join the ranks of the over 100k researchers using Preprints.org and share your research.

For more information, please visit Preprints.org.

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative—the MDPI Special Issue Mentor Program.

This program will enable early career researchers (who must hold a Ph.D. in a related field) to experience editing a Special Issue in MDPI journals, under the mentorship of our experienced Editorial Board Members or other experienced scientists. The mentor program will provide an excellent opportunity for early career scientists to gain editorial experience, and to cultivate their ability to edit scientific research.

The mentee’s responsibilities include:

• Proposing a Special Issue title and assisting the mentor in preparing a summary (around 200–400 words) and 3–10 keywords describing the background, importance, and goal of the Issue;
• Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
• Preparing a list of scholars who may be interested in the Issue and personally e-mailing invitations on behalf of Guest Editors;
• Writing an editorial for the online Special Issue together with the mentor.

The mentor’s responsibilities include:

• Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
• Performing editorial control of the Special Issue and quality control of the publications, both of which must be carried out in a timely manner;
• Providing suggestions to younger scholars if they have any doubts or concerns regarding submissions;
• Organizing video calls with young scholars and the Editorial Office regularly to discuss problems and improvement suggestions for the Special Issue;
• Making and submitting decisions regarding submissions with the assistance of mentees.

Certificates and awards:
After the Special Issue closes, the Editorial Office will provide official certificates for all the mentors and early career researchers.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Editorial Office of a journal you choose, and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail. The full list of MDPI journals is as follows: https://www.mdpi.com/about/journals.

In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, we will continue to welcome all Special Issue proposals focusing on hot research topics.

MDPI has just become the first open access (OA) publisher to reach the milestone of one million articles published. That is one million articles freely available to all, to circulate and build upon! We are proud to share this special moment with the global scientific community.

This landmark has been reached thanks to the immeasurable support of more than 600,000 expert reviewers, 66,000 editorial board members and 6700 hard-working colleagues across MDPI’s global offices.

Within more than 25 years of publishing, our journals received 2.1 million manuscripts and generated 4.6 million peer review reports to get to one million papers published.

Reaching the milestone of one million articles published reinforces our mission to remove any existing barriers and to make scientific research accessible to all. Since its inception, MDPI’s goal has been to create reliable processes to make science open. This is a path towards facilitating the dissemination of novel insights in scientific communities.

Regular feedback from authors and reviewers shows that our service is greatly appreciated and needed. At the same time, the feedback helps us identify areas for further improvement.

As it stands, a significant share of published research findings remain closed access. More than half of the content published with the most well-known legacy publishers stays behind a paywall, and that is not including articles published in hybrid OA journals, or made available months or years after publication.

A new policy announced by the US administration in August 2022 requires that, as of January 2026, all US federally funded research be made freely and immediately available after publication. While the new policy does not mandate articles be published under an open access license, it is aligned with the open access movement in removing all barriers to research. Similarly, some of the most advanced research institutions in the world intend to have all funded research articles published in open access by 2025.

MDPI is proud to be the leading agent of the transition to open access.

"Thanks a Million" to all the contributors!

We are pleased to announce that the website of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation has been revamped! For the past couple of months, our UX UI team and front-end developers have been working hard to launch the website in time for the opening of the Sustainability Awards nominations.

The website is not the only thing that has had a remodeling. Indeed, the format of the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award (ESLA) has been updated. ESLA is now a competition open to individual researchers or start-ups founded by researchers under the age of 35. Nominee applications will go through 2 rounds of selection until the final 3 are decided. The finalists will then be invited to give pitch presentations during the Award Ceremony to win either first place (10,000 USD) or runner-up (2 x 5000 USD).

The World Sustainability Award, on the other hand, remains the same: a total prize money of 100,000 USD is up for grabs by senior individual researchers or groups of researchers from the international research community.

Nominations for both the World Sustainability Award and the Emerging Sustainability Leader award are now open! Check out our new website for more information on how to nominate.

The Religions (ISSN: 2077-1444) Editorial Office is pleased to announce this open call for Special Issue proposals for the Section “Religions and Humanities/Philosophies”, to provide a group of authors with the opportunity to work on an interconnected set of papers on an innovative topic. We would like to solicit high-quality proposals, which will be evaluated through a competitive procedure on a rolling basis throughout the year.

In order to ensure that the topic of your proposal is within the scope of Section “Religions and Humanities/Philosophies”, please read the aim and scope of the Section at the following website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/sections/Religions_and_Health_Psychology_Social_Sciences. Please click on the following link to submit your proposals: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/religions.

The following information must be provided in the proposal:

• A 150–200-word summary rationally explaining the proposed topic’s significance, novelty, technical advancement, and adherence to the scope of the journal;
• A list of 5–15 keywords on the topic;
• A proposed submission deadline (a Special Issue will usually be open for submissions for 6–8 months);
• A list of at least eight confirmed submissions (if you have not collected 8 planned papers, please send your proposal to religions@mdpi.com, along with a list of at least 40 potential authors in related research fields);
• A brief resume of the proposed Guest Editors, together with their information (title, name, email, affiliation, personal website, and keywords of interests). 

The benefits of being a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Special discounts will be offered for your submissions and to any of the articles you invite;
• Expanding your network by engaging with experts in the field;
• Keeping up with developments in the field;
• Increasing your own influence;
• Recognition by the promotion evaluation committee;
• If ten or more papers are published in a Special Issue, the Special Issue can be published as a printable book, and each Guest Editor will receive a complimentary hard copy. 

The responsibilities of being a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Refining the Special Issue title, scope, and schedule and providing the required information to set up the Special Issue website;
• Inviting submissions;
• Promoting the Special Issue within networks on social media, personal websites, relevant networks, and any attended conferences when possible;
• Pre-checking, making decisions, and overviewing the manuscript submission process;
• Writing an editorial when the Special Issue is successfully published. 

The Editorial Office will take care of setting up the Special Issue website, arranging the promotional materials, and assisting with invitations to contribute papers, and it will also take care of the rest of the administrative tasks associated with the peer-review process, including inviting reviewers, collating reviews, contacting authors, and professional production before publication. 

Please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office (religions@mdpi.com) for further details and clarification.

We look forward to receiving your proposals. 

Religions Editorial Office

Religions (ISSN: 2077-1444) is currently recruiting Editorial Board Members for Section “Religions and Health/Psychology/Social Sciences”.

If you are interested in applying for this position, or if you could recommend potential candidates, please contact the Religions Editorial Office (religions@mdpi.com) for more details. Our current Board Members can be consulted here (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/editors).

Religions is an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal on religions and theology, published monthly online by MDPI. It is indexed within Scopus, A&HCI (Web of Science), ATLA Religion Database, Religious and Theological Abstracts, and many other databases.

Religions has risen to the 3rd position in the category of “Religion” in the latest release of the Google Scholar Metrics. We will strive to achieve a higher result in the future. For full details of the current rank release, please see Google Scholar’s news: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&vq=hum_religion.

The benefits of being an Editorial Board Member include the following:

• Publishing one paper free of charge per year in Religions, and potential discounts for additional papers you invite;
• A recognition certificate as an Editorial Board Member of Religions;
• Religions will offer additional sponsorships for conferences organized by Editorial Board Members.

Responsibilities of Editorial Board Members include the following:

• Supervising the editorial process, including pre-screening submissions and making final decisions on whether to accept papers;
• Contributing your work and inviting three papers to Religions (the Editorial Office will prepare the list of potential authors and the invitation template);
• Choosing to edit a Special Issue on a topic related to your research or recommending potential topics and Guest Editors.

If you are interested in becoming an Editorial Board Member of Religions, please send your application, including a full academic CV, to the Religions Editorial Office (religions@mdpi.com). We look forward to working with you in the future.

Religions Editorial Office

Peer Review Week began 19 September 2022 under the theme of “Research Integrity: Creating and Supporting Trust in Research”. Through various blog articles, podcast, and webinar, we discussed this crucial subject throughout the week, celebrating the essential role peer review plays in maintaining research quality.

To begin, we held a Webinar on the topic. Professor Peter W. Choate and Dr. Emmanuel Obeng-Gyasi joined Dr. Ioana Craciun, one of MDPI’s scientific officers, for an in-depth discussion.

We invite you to view the event recording:

During the week, the MDPI Blog in a series articles highlighted how good Peer Review safeguards research integrity. The following topics were covered:

• Peer Review Week 2022
• Research Integrity
• What We’ve Learned About Peer Review Reports
• 4 Steps to the Perfect Peer Review Report
• How to Write the Perfect Peer Review Report: An Interview
• Inviting Great Peer Reviewers

In a new edition of Insight Faster, an MDPI podcast, we were delighted to talk to the co-chairs of the Peer Review Week committee, Jayashree Rajagopalan (Senior Manager of Global Community Engagement for CACTUS) and Danielle Padula (Head of Marketing and Community Development at Scholastica) to get their take on this year’s event and its related topics.

You can find the Podcast here.

We hope you enjoy the contents!