Announcements

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!

In order to acknowledge our reviewers, who so generously dedicate their time to reviewing papers and demonstrate diligence, professionalism, and timeliness when reviewing manuscripts, MDPI journals regularly offer outstanding reviewer awards to scholars who participate in the peer-review process.

We are proud to recognize the winners for the year 2021 in the “Social Sciences & Humanities” category for their outstanding contributions among the extensive competition by presenting them with an Outstanding Reviewer Award.

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of the winners on their achievements. MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Administrative Sciences:

• Joana Costa, University of Aveiro, Portugal.

Behavioral Sciences:

• María Napal, Universidad Pública de Navarra, Spain.

Education Sciences:

• James Russo, Monash University, Australia;
• Luis Manuel Sánchez Ruiz, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain;
• Lasse Christiansen, University College Northern Denmark, Denmark.

Humanities:

• Brad Prager, University of Missouri, USA.

Journal of Intelligence:

• André Kretzschmar, University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Journal of Risk and Financial Management:

• Paulo Ferreira, Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre, Portugal;
• Sorin Anton, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania;
• Peter Moffatt, University of East Anglia, UK;
• Francisco Guijarro Martínez, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain;
• João Leitão, University of Beira Interior, Portugal;
• Mirela Panait, Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiesti, Romania;
• Błażej Prusak, Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland;
• Jakub Horák, The Institute of Technology and Business in České Budějovice, Czech Republic;
• Magdalena Ziolo, University of Szczecin, Poland;
• Tobias Basse, NORD/LB and Touro College Berlon, Germany;
• Ching Torng Lin, Da-Yeh University, Taiwan;
• Dean Fantazzini, Moscow State University, Russia;
• Doojin Ryu, Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea;
• Douglas J. Lamdin, University of Maryland, USA;
• Maria Luisa Esteban Salvador, University of Zaragoza, Spain;
• Masao Nakamura, University of British Columbia, Canada;
• Michael A. Talias, Open University of Cyprus, Cyprus;
• Sotiris Kotsiantis, University of Patras, Greece;
• Ryo Okui, Department of Economics, Seoul National University, South Korea;
• Grzegorz Mentel, Rzeszow University of Technology, Poland.

Religions:

• Daniel Boscaljon, Independent Scholar and Life Coach, USA;
• Dan Bradley, Gonzaga University, USA;
• Silvio Ferrari, University of Milan, Italy;
• Yu Tao, U4niversity of Western Australia, Australia;
• Aldona Piwko, Vistula University, Poland.

Social Sciences:

• Márcio Oliveira, School of Education and Social Sciences of Leiria, Portugal.

MDPI’s Young Investigator Awards recognize promising junior researchers, acknowledge their contributions, and enhance communication among scientists. We are proud to present the winners for the year 2021 in the “Social Sciences & Humanities” category. The winners were selected by the journals’ editors.

We warmly congratulate the awarded young investigators for their outstanding contributions. MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Journal of Intelligence:

• Okan Bulut, University of Alberta, Canada.

Religions:

• Kathryn Johnson, Arizona State University, USA.

The purpose of our best paper awards is to promote and recognize the most impactful contributions published within MDPI journals.

The editors of each journal carefully selected reviews and research papers through a rigorous judging process based on criteria such as the scientific merit, overall impact, and the quality of presentation of the papers published in the journal last year.

We are honored to present the winners in the “Social Sciences & Humanities” category, who were selected amongst the extensive competition, and congratulate the authors for their outstanding scientific publications.

MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Administrative Sciences:

• “Entrepreneurship Education in a Multidisciplinary Environment: Evidence from an Entrepreneurship Programme Held in Turin”
  by Eleonora Fiore, Giuliano Sansone and Emilio Paolucci
  Adm. Sci. 2019, 9(1), 28; doi 10.3390/admsci9010028
• “A Systematic Mapping Study on Customer Loyalty and Brand Management”
  by Andrea Moretta Tartaglione, Ylenia Cavacece, Giuseppe Russo and Giuseppe Granata
  Adm. Sci. 2019, 9(1), 8; doi 10.3390/admsci9010008

Journal of Risk and Financial Management:

• “Refined Measures of Dynamic Connectedness based on Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregressions”
  by Nikolaos Antonakakis, Ioannis Chatziantoniou and David Gabauer
  J. Risk Financial Manag. 2020, 13(4), 84; doi 10.3390/jrfm13040084
• “Digitalization of the EU Economies and People at Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion”
  by Aleksy Kwilinski, Oleksandr Vyshnevskyi and Henryk Dzwigol
  J. Risk Financial Manag. 2020, 13(7), 142; doi 10.3390/jrfm13070142
• “Assessment of Bankruptcy Risk of Large Companies: European Countries Evolution Analysis”
  by Nicoleta Bărbuță-Mișu and Mara Madaleno
  J. Risk Financial Manag. 2020, 13(3), 58; doi 10.3390/jrfm13030058

Risks:

• “Nagging Predictors”
  by Ronald Richman and Mario V. Wüthrich
  Risks 2020, 8(3), 83; doi 10.3390/risks8030083
• “A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of Distance Driven on the Probability of Car Accidents”
  by Jean-Philippe Boucher and Roxane Turcotte
  Risks 2020, 8(3), 91; doi 10.3390/risks8030091
• “Financial Bubbles: A Study of Co-Explosivity in the Cryptocurrency Market”
  by Arianna Agosto and Alessia Cafferata
  Risks 2020, 8(2), 34; doi 10.3390/risks8020034
• “A Generative Adversarial Network Approach to Calibration of Local Stochastic Volatility Models”
  by Christa Cuchiero, Wahid Khosrawi and Josef Teichmann
  Risks 2020, 8(4), 101; doi 10.3390/risks8040101
• “Machine Learning in Least-Squares Monte Carlo Proxy Modeling of Life Insurance Companies”
  by Anne-Sophie Krah, Zoran Nikolić and Ralf Korn
  Risks 2020, 8(1), 21; doi 10.3390/risks8010021

Our current Board Members can be seen here. If you are interested in applying for this position, or if you would like to recommend potential candidates, please contact the Religions Editorial Office (religions@mdpi.com) for more details.

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

Religions has risen to the 4^th place in the “Religion” category in the latest release of the Google Scholar Metrics. We will continue to strive to achieve an even better result in the future. For full details regarding the current rank release, please see Google Scholar’s news. Religions also received a 2021 CiteScore of 1.0.

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 offers 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 or reject 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.

The 2021 citation metrics have been officially released in Scopus!

We are pleased to announce that 182 MDPI journals are included, of which:

● 21 journals received their first CiteScore.
● 85% of journals increased their CiteScore from 2020.
● 155 journals (85%) ranked above average, in at least one category.

The following 65 MDPI journals (36%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category:

Source: 2021 CiteScores™ (Elsevier)

Religions (ISSN: 2077-1444) will be attending the Fifth Annual Conference of the European Academy of Religion (#EuARe2022) as an exhibitor. This conference will be held from 20 to 23 June 2022.

The European Academy of Religion (EuARe) will bring together scholars from all the scientific disciplines studying religions from all over the world for one meeting. The EuARe aims to offer an exchange forum where scientists can present their work and discuss their ideas with experts in all fields of religions.

As stated by EuARe’s Statute, each year, the Academy convenes an annual conference that combines working sessions (panels, working groups, round tables, and book presentations) with four keynote lectures offered by internationally renowned scholars. While the subjects of the working sessions reflect the variety of disciplines embraced by the Academy, the lessons are focused on a specific topic, which is different each year. This year, the overarching topic of the Conference will be Religion and Diversity.

The questions that will be addressed by this year’s overarching topic are:

• How the past of diversity has been re-elaborated to deny or boost violence;
• How diversity has become, since the classical cultures, a reason to close or open the divide between public power and the religious understanding of it;
• How religious diversity can be detected and critically identified through indirect sources such as international treaties, constitutions, laws, and artistic representations from the antiquity onward;
• What role education has had throughout its history and with the most different paradigms in shaping and/or managing religious diversity;
• What linguistic paradigms are (de)coded to manage diversity in given cultural areas;
• How theologies and doctrines have developed towards the shaping of languages and practices of diversity.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Religions;
• Social Sciences;
• Laws;
• Societies.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start an on-site conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have.

For more information about our booth, please visit here.