Announcements

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Mengdao Xing has been appointed as Section Editor-in-Chief of the “Radar Sensors” Section of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220).

Dr. Mengdao Xing received B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Xidian University, China in 1997 and 2002, respectively. He is currently a Full Professor at the National Laboratory of Radar Signal Processing, Xidian University. He is also the Deputy Dean of the Academy of Advanced Interdisciplinary Research, Xidian University. His current research interests are synthetic aperture radar (SAR), inversed synthetic aperture radar (ISAR), sparse signal processing and microwave remote sensing. He has written or co-written more than 200 peer reviewed scientific journal papers. He also has authored or co-authored two books about SAR signal processing. His research has received 8660 citations and an H-index of 46. He has achieved over 40 authorized China patents. He is an IEEE Fellow.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Mengdao Xing in taking up his role as Section Editor-in-Chief, and we look forward to him leading Sensors to achieve many more milestones.

Name: Prof. Dr. Mengdao Xing

Email: xmd@xidian.edu.cn

Affiliation: National Laboratory of Radar Signal Processing, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China

Interests: synthetic radar radar (SAR) imaging; inverse synthetic radar radar (SAR) imaging; interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) imaging; ground moving target detection and imaging; bistatic synthetic aperture radar (BiSAR) imaging; polarization synthetic aperture radar (POL-SAR) imaging; micro- and nano-synthetic aperture radars (MiniSAR and NanoSAR); synthetic aperture imaging lidar (SAIL); high-speed radar imaging data acquisition system; real-time radar imaging processor

Homepage: https://mobile.xidian.edu.cn/info/1377/5123.htm

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Hyungsoon Im has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the ”Biomedical Sensors“ Section in Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220).

Dr. Hyungsoon Im

Affiliation: Center for Systems Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA

Website: https://csb.mgh.harvard.edu/hyungsoon_im

Email: im.hyungsoon@mgh.harvard.edu

Interests: diagnostics; biosensors; plasmonics; point-of-care; cancers; extracellular vesicles; analytical chemistry

Dr. Hyungsoon Im is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Systems Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2011. He is a recipient of the NIH Pathway to Independence Award and NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Fellowship from the National Cancer Institute. His research focuses on developing next-generation sensing technologies to better understand the make-up of human diseases and changes associated with disease progression and therapy. His laboratory exploits have uniquely designed nanomaterials and sensors to quantitatively analyze biomarkers and overcome clinical unmet needs. He has co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed journal publications, which have been cited more than 6000 times (h-index of 32).

We warmly welcome Dr. Hyungsoon Im in his role as Editor-in-Chief of the “Biomedical Sensors” Section, and we look forward to him leading Sensors towards achieving more milestones.

At MDPI, we strive to make your online publication process seamless and efficient. To achieve this, our team is continuously developing tools and features to make the user experience useful and convenient.

As the number of academic papers continues to grow, so does the need to analyze and work with them on a large scale. This prompted us to design a new feature aimed at helping researchers find journals that are relevant to their publication by matching their abstract topic. In this regard, we designed a similarity model that automatically identifies the most suitable academic journals for your paper.

We are pleased to introduce Journal Selector, a new feature that measures similarity in academic contexts. By simply entering the title and/or abstract into our Journal Selector, the author will see a list of the most related scientific journals published by MDPI. This method helps authors select the correct journals for their papers, highlighting the time of publication and citability.

The methodology is known as representation learning, where words are represented as vectors in hyperspace. Representation helps us differentiate between different concepts within articles, and in turn, helps us identify similarities between them.

We used an advanced machine learning model to better capture the semantic meanings of words. This helps the algorithm make better predictions by leveraging scientific text representation. In turn, this ensures high precision, helping authors decide which journal they should submit their paper to.

The goal is to support authors to publish their work in the most suitable journal for their research, as fast as possible, accelerating their career progress.

Contact: Andrea Perlato, Head of Data Analytics, MDPI (email)

In November 2020, the Spanish Society of Biomedical Engineering (SEIB) became affiliated to Sensors and Entropy. As part of this collaboration, all members of SEIB enjoy a discount on the article processing charges (APC) when submitting articles to the journals.

The Spanish Society of Biomedical Engineering (SEIB) is a non-profit organization representing the biomedical engineering community in Spain. Its mission is to improve the health, wealth, and wellbeing of Spanish citizens through the application of biomedical engineering (BME).

SEIB is a professional organization whose functions are highly relevant to the scope of Sensors and Entropy. We look forward to collaborating with SEIB and publishing state-of-the-art research from its members in this field.

The year 2020 marks the 20th anniversary of Sensors. Sensors has published more than 30,000 papers from more than 100,900 authors. To celebrate this 20th anniversary, we have arranged a series of special content and events. We hope you can join us to celebrate this milestone of our journal and enjoy the collection below.

The year 2020 was a year of growth for Sensors. The journal received 17,136 submissions and published 7255 articles from 30,084 international authors. More than 49,000 experts were involved in reviewing articles for Sensors during 2020 and involved in the peer review process of the journal. Moreover, 554 academic editors joined the Editorial Board in 2020. Sensors’ articles were cited 12,703 times in 2020 and the impact factor (IF) increased from 3.031 to 3.275. Thanks to the commitment and dedication of the editorial staff, the median time between submission and publication is around 39 days.

The journal established the following six new sections: “Communications”, “Fault Diagnosis & Sensors”, “Wearables”, “Nanosensors”, “Sensing and Imaging” and “Sensors and Robotics”.

The E-conference organized by Sensors, the 7th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications (ECSA-7), has been closed successfully with 115 accepted proceedings and 6 live sessions. We would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciations to all the participants for their contributions and all the chairs and committee members for their excellent work.

Moreover, Sensors became an affiliated journal of the Spanish Society of Biomedical Engineering (SEIB).

High Altmetrics Papers

Physical Sensors
Vacuum Ultraviolet Absorption Spectroscopy Analysis of Breath Acetone Using a Hollow Optical Fiber Gas Cell
Yudai Kudo et al.

Chemical Sensors
Photometric Sensing of Active Chlorine, Total Chlorine, and pH on a Microfluidic Chip for Online Swimming Pool Monitoring
Sait Elmas et al.

Physical Sensors
Wildfire Smoke Adjustment Factors for Low-Cost and Professional PM_2.5 Monitors with Optical Sensors
William W. Delp et al.

Biosensors
An Optical Urate Biosensor Based on Urate Oxidase and Long-Lifetime Metalloporphyrins
Tokunbo Falohun et al.

Chemical Sensors
A ppm Ethanol Sensor Based on Fabry–Perot Interferometric Surface Stress Transducer at Room Temperature
Toshiaki Takahashi et al.

Sensor Networks
Discovering Suspicious APT Behaviors by Analyzing DNS Activities
Guanghua Yan et al.

Hot Special Issues

Intelligent Vehicles
Sensors and Robot Control
Advanced Sensors and Signal Processing of Sensor Data: Recent Advances and Applications
Sensors for Biomechanics Application
Emotion and Stress Recognition Related Sensors and Machine Learning Technologies

Sensors runs Special Issues to create collections of articles on specific topics with the aim of building a community of authors and readers to discuss the latest research and develop new ideas and research directions.

Open Calls

Sensors for Gait, Human Movement Analysis, and Health Monitoring
edited by Marco Iosa
submission deadline 31 March 2021

Internet of Things for Smart Homes and Industrial Application
edited by Tiago M. Fernández-Caramés and Paula Fraga-Lamas
submission deadline 18 June 2021

Sensing Technologies for Agricultural Automation and Robotics
edited by Manoj Karkee
submission deadline 30 June 2021

Please find the full list of topics and calls for papers via the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors/special_issues.

On behalf of the editorial team, we would like to express our gratitude to the Editor-in-Chief of Sensors, all Section Editors-in-Chief and Editorial Board Members, as well as to the Guest Editors of Special Issues, Topic Board Members, and Reviewer Board Members, all of whom have ensured the continued success of the journal through their hard work and diligence.

In 2021, Sensors will continue to contribute to academic exchange and sharing of knowledge.

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Xianbin Wang has been appointed as Section Editor-in-Chief of the “Communications” Section of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220).

Dr. Xianbin Wang is a Full Professor and Tier-1 Canada Research Chair in 5G and Wireless IoT Communications at the Western University (The University of Western Ontario), Canada. His current research interests are focused on 5G and beyond/6G, intelligent wireless communications, wireless security, machine-learning, and the Internet-of-Things. The activities of his research team have led to the publication of more than 400 highly cited publications and over 30 patents.

Dr. Wang is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Engineering Institute of Canada, and the of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He has served as Editor/Associate Editor/Guest Editor for over ten journals, including IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting and IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. He was involved in numerous conferences including IEEE ICC, GLOBECOM, WCNC, VTC, CCECE, CWIT and PIMRC, assuming roles such as the technical program co-chair, symposium chair, track chair, tutorial instructor, session chair and keynote speaker. Dr. Wang has been nominated as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer several times during the last ten years.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Xianbin Wang in taking up his role as Section Editor-in-Chief and we look forward to him leading Sensors to achieve many more milestones.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Prof. Xianbin Wang

Email: xianbin.wang@uwo.ca

Affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Western University, London, Ontario CANADA N6A 5B9

Interests: 5G/6G; IoT; intelligent wireless communications; communication security; AI/machine learning; NOMA/MIMO/OFDM; locationing technologies; collaborative computing

Homepage: https://www.eng.uwo.ca/electrical/faculty/wang_x/index.html

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Roozbeh Ghaffari has been appointed as Section Editor-in-Chief of the “Wearables” Section in Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220).

Prof. Dr. Roozbeh Ghaffari obtained his BS and MEng degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001 and 2003. He received his PhD degree in biomedical engineering from the Harvard Medical School-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology in 2008. He joined the Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics (CBIE) at Northwestern University in May 2017, where he is currently the Director of Translational Research and Research Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Prof. Dr. Ghaffari has published over 100 academic papers and is inventor of over 50 patents issued. His research focus is at the intersection between soft bioelectronics, micro/nano-scale systems, and neuroscience.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Roozbeh Ghaffari in his role as Section Editor-in-Chief and we look forward to him leading Sensors to achieve more milestones.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Roozbeh Ghaffari

Email: rooz@northwestern.edu

Affiliation: Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics, Department of

Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA

Homepage: https://bioelectronics.northwestern.edu/people/ghaffari-roozbeh.html

Research Keywords: flexible electronics; biosensors; wearable computing; MEMS; neuroscience, microfluidics

MDPI is proud to adopt the principles of the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) to support building equity, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications.

The C4DISC represents organizations and individuals working in scholarly communications and is focused on addressing issues of diversity and inclusion within the publishing industry.

MDPI’s Managing Editors encourage the Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors to appoint diverse expert Editorial Boards. This is also reflective in our multi-national and inclusive workplace. We are proud to create equal opportunities without regard to gender, ethnicity, geographic location, sexual orientation, age, disability, political beliefs, religion, or socio-economic status. There is no place for discrimination in our workplace and editors of MDPI journals are to uphold these principles in high regard.

Representatives from C4DISC meet monthly, and have started to implement initiatives to shed light and improve on the lack of diversity in scholarly communications. Some of the initiatives include developing a joint statement of principles; conducting market research; providing training resources, best practices, toolkits, and documentation for our collective memberships; and establishing outreach programs, curricula, events, and publications.

The Coalition is committed to:

• eliminating barriers to participation, extending equitable opportunities across all stakeholders, and ensuring that our practices and policies promote equitable treatment and do not allow, condone, or result in discrimination;
• creating and maintaining an environment that respects diverse traditions, heritages, and experiences;
• promoting diversity in all staff, volunteers, and audiences, including full participation in programs, policy formulation, and decision-making;
• raising awareness about career opportunities in our industries to groups who are currently underrepresented in the workforce;
• supporting our members in achieving diversity and inclusion within their organizations.

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.