Announcements

Recently, it was announced that a group of European funders supported 10 principles that will help to expand open access, known as Plan S. MDPI warmly welcomes this move as a step towards achieving more open and accessible communication of research across all disciplines. Some aspects remain to be clarified, however the details given so far match the aims and values that MDPI has held over the past two decades.

We believe that open access publishers should be active participants in discussions around Plan S, particularly regarding potential new business models and practical aspects of implementation. MDPI supports APCs as a transparent unit of payment for article publishing, however we are committed to exploring other measures and recently signed the Jussieu Call. Sustainability is a key value for MDPI, and future funding models should have at their heart the sustainability of knowledge and research dissemination. Plan S provides an opportunity for funders and publishers to directly discuss funding of open access journals in ways that are beneficial to all parties involved.

MDPI will be attending 2018 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit, to be held in Boston, USA, 25–30 November 2018.

This conference is the key forum to present research to an interdisciplinary and international audience. It provides a window on the future of materials science and offers an opportunity for researchers—from students and postdoctoral fellows, to Nobel and Kavli Prize Laureates—to exchange technical information and network with colleagues.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Materials
• Polymers
• Energies
• Nanomaterials
• Metals
• Journal of Functional Biomaterials (JFB)
• Processes
• Sensors
• Sustainability
• C
• Journal of Manufacturing and Materials Processing (JMMP)
• Biomimetics
• Methods and Protocols (MPs)

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #123). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.mrs.org/fall2018

We are happy to announce the establishment of an Open Access (OA) agreement with Qatar National Library (QNL). QNL is committed to supporting and helping Qatar authors publish OA at no cost. Through this national agreement, QNL will cover the Article Processing Charges (APC) of manuscripts published by Qatar-based corresponding authors in MDPI journals.

Eligible corresponding authors affiliated with Qatar research centers and universities are prompted to choose QNL as part of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system. The program will be selected automatically if authors submit their papers using their institutional email and/or a computer registered with the institution’s IP range. QNL will then crosscheck the information and confirm the APC funding.

Qatar authors that have their APC covered by QNL are advised to include the following sentence in their acknowledgments: "The publication of this article was funded by Qatar National Library".

For more information, please visit Open Access at QNL or email the QNL Open Access team at openaccess@qnl.qa.

We are pleased to inform that Sensors received an updated Journal Impact Factor of 2.475 in the June 2018 release of the Journal Citation Reports®.The journal's 5-Year Impact Factor is 3.014. Sensors now ranks 30/80 (Q2) in the category 'Analytical Chemistry', 15/28 (Q3) in 'Electrochemistry' and 16/61 (Q2) in 'Instruments & Instrumentation.'

Overview of Citation Metrics:

• Journal Impact Factor, 2 yrs (2017): 2.475
• 5-Year Impact Factor (2017): 3.014
• CiteScore, 3 yrs (Scopus): 3.23
• SJR Scimago Journal Rank 2017(SJR): 0.584
• Source Normalized Impact 2017 (SNIP): 1.550

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Remote Sensing:

We are pleased to announce the 5th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications (ECSA-5). After the success of the four editions from 2014 to 2017, this year's edition will focus on four thematic areas where sensors are changing science:

• Chemo and Biosensors (Session A)
• Physical Sensors (Session B)
• Sensor Networks (Session C)
• Applications (Session D)

There will be 4 specific sessions on:

• Smart Cities (Specific Session S1)
• Smart Sensing Systems and Structures (Specific Session S2)
• Structural Health Monitoring Technologies and Sensor Networks (Specific Session S3)
• Wearable Sensors (Specific Session S4)

Abstracts (in English) should be submitted before 10 September 2018 online at https://sciforum.net/login. The conference aims to bring the scientists working in the field onto a common platform and promote and advance the exciting and rapidly changing field of sensing technologies and applications.

More info can be found at https://ecsa-5.sciforum.net/.

All the accepted Eurosensors 2018 submissions will also be published in open access form in the MDPI journal Proceedings. For the publications from Eurosensors 2017, please visit at: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-3900/1/4

Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Sensors
Chemosensors
Biosensors
Actuators
Materials

We are pleased to report Sensors received a CiteScore of 3.23 for 2017. The metric reflects citation activity in 2017 in Scopus for papers published in the period 2014‒2016.

For the full details in the current CiteScore release, please see the journal's Source profile. To check the full list of MDPI journals receiving CiteScores, please see here.

The 2017 CiteScore™ data is available now, based on citation data in the Scopus® database. The current CiteScore reflects citation activity in 2017 for articles published in 2014‒2016. Please note that the list below includes journals assigned a CiteScore in this year’s release. For a full list of journals indexed in Scopus, please see our journal list.

Thirteen of our journals received a CiteScore which is in the top 10% of the distribution in at least one of the categories (marked with * in the table below), while a further 32 journals exhibit scores that are in the first quartile of the respective categories.

To access the full data for MDPI journals, please see here. More data can also be found in SJR Scimago Journal & Country Rank.

Unlike CiteScores and the widely used Journal Impact Factors, the Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) metrics are normalized in order to correct for differences in citation practices between scientific fields. Therefore, the SNIP allows direct comparison between journals specialized in different fields.

According to 2017 data, MDPI publishes six journals with an average citation impact, or SNIP, in excess of 1.500. These journals are Biomolecules, Cancers, Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM), Marine Drugs, Remote Sensing and Sensors (see the last column in the table below).

CiteScore Data for MDPI Journals

We are pleased to announce the results of the first MDPI Writing Prize. We received a large number of entries from across the globe on the theme of “The Global Benefits of Open Research”. It was a pleasure to read so many original, well-researched and well-presented ideas, and the final choice was not an easy one. We are pleased to announce that the winners are as follows:

1st prize (500 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Edmond Sanganyado, Shantou University, China

2nd prizes (250 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Kamala T. Rajahgopal, Asia e University, Malaysia
Yin Zhixuan, Qingdao University of Technology, China

3rd prizes (100 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Alexandra Ticea, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Romania
Ankur Sarker, University of Virginia, USA
Daniel Attoye, United Arab Emirates University, UAE

Congratulations to all of them! The winning entries can be downloaded by clicking on the names above. A compilation of all entries will soon be available as an open access book.

The writing prize is sponsored by the MDPI English editing service.