Announcements

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 the criteria such as scientific merit, overall impact, and quality of the presentation of the papers published in the journal.

We are honored to present the winners in the “Computer Science & Mathematics”, who were selected amongst extensive competition, and congratulate the authors for their outstanding scientific publications.

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

Axioms:

• A New gH-Difference for Multi-Dimensional Convex Sets and Convex Fuzzy Sets
  By Luciano Stefanini and Barnabas Bede
  Axioms 2019, 8(2), 48; doi:10.3390/axioms8020048

• Initial Value Problem for Nonlinear Fractional Differential Equations with ψ-Caputo Derivative via Monotone Iterative Technique
  By Choukri Derbazi, Zidane Baitiche, Mouffak Benchohra and Alberto Cabada
  Axioms 2020, 9(2), 57; doi:10.3390/axioms9020057

Future Internet:

• A review of Machine Learning and IoT in Smart Transportation
  By Fotios Zantalis, Grigorios Koulouras, Sotiris Karabetsos and Dionisis Kandris
  Future Internet 2019, 11(4), 94; doi:10.3390/fi11040094

Signals:

• Recognition of Blinks Activity Patterns during Stress Conditions Using CNN and Markovian Analysis
  By Alexandra I. Korda, Giorgos Giannakakis, Errikos Ventouras, Pantelis A. Asvestas, Nikolaos Smyrnis, Kostas Marias and George K. Matsopoulos
  Signals 2021, 2(1), 55–71; doi:10.3390/signals2010006

• An Educational Guide through the FMP Notebooks for Teaching and Learning Fundamentals of Music Processing
  By Meinard Müller
  Signals 2021, 2(2), 245–285; doi:10.3390/signals2020018

Symmetry:

• Hadronic and Hadron-Like Physics of Dark Matter
  By Vitaly Beylin, Maxim Yu. Khlopov, Vladimir Kuksa and Nikolay Volchanskiy
  Symmetry 2019, 11(4), 587; doi:10.3390/sym11040587

• Role of Asymmetric Autocatalysis in the Elucidation of Origins of Homochirality of Organic Compounds
  By Kenso Soai, Tsuneomi Kawasaki and Arimasa Matsumoto
  Symmetry 2019, 11(5), 694; doi:10.3390/sym11050694

• Convenient Asymmetric Synthesis of Fmoc-(S)-6,6,6-Trifluoro-Norleucine
  By Haibo Mei, Zizhen Yin, Toshio Miwa, Hiroki Moriwaki, Hidenori Abe, Jianlin Han and Vadim A. Soloshonok
  Symmetry 2019, 11(4), 578; doi:10.3390/sym11040578

• CMB Tensions with Low-Redshift H₀ and S₈ Measurements: Impact of a Redshift-Dependent Type-Ia Supernovae Intrinsic Luminosity
  By Matteo Martinelli and Isaac Tutusaus
  Symmetry 2019, 11(8), 986; doi:10.3390/sym11080986

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)

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Santiago Marco has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of Signals (ISSN: 2624-6120, https://www.mdpi.com/journal/signals).

Dr. Santiago Marco is a Full Professor (since 2020) at the Department of Electronics and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Barcelona (UB), in addition to being a Group Leader (since 2008) at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). He completed his university degree in physics (1988) and his Ph.D. (1993) from the UB. Then, he held a postdoctoral position at the Department of Electronic Engineering at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. In 1995, he became an Associate Professor at the UB. In 2004, he had a sabbatical leave at AIRBUS-Munich, working on ion mobility spectrometry. His research interests are in signal processing and machine learning for chemical instrumentation. He has published around 140 archival papers (75% in Q1) and six patents.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Santiago Marco, who shared his vision for the journal as well as his views on this research area:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role of Editor-in-Chief?
MDPI has been successful in promoting the open access publishing model, and it has highly efficient mechanisms for manuscript processing as well as paper publishing. I am ready to accept the challenge to make Signals a leading journal in the field of signal processing for a variety of applications, with the help of a committed Editorial Board.

2. What is your vision for Signals?
Signals are everywhere: multimedia, communications, audio, music, automotives, control systems, biomedicine, etc. However, some signal processing areas have been traditionally underrepresented in signal processing journals. We have exciting new developments in analytical chemistry, vibration, and structural analysis, neuroscience, geophysics, omics data science, imaging, multisensory systems, etc. I would like to expand the coverage of Signals to every area of science and technology where signals need to be analyzed to extract the relevant information. We should also promote science reproducibility by encouraging contributors to Signals to share datasets and software tools in open repositories.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?
The field of signal processing will continue to attract excellent engineers and scientists. We will also see vanishing borders between traditional signal processing and related areas, such as machine learning and image processing.

4. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?
This is clearly the future. The whole global community is moving in this direction.

Due to the aim and scope of our journal and published papers, we are currently recruiting an Editor-in-Chief for Signals (ISSN 2624-6120). Dr. Toshihisa Tanaka, the current Editor-in-Chief, will be stepping down from this position. To inquire, nominate a candidate, or submit an application, please contact us at signals@mdpi.com or ida.li@mdpi.com.

Responsibilities of the Editor-in-Chief:

• Decision-making concerning the journal's aims and scopes;
• Inviting distinguished scientists to join the Editorial Board;
• Giving suggestions for Special Issues or hot topics;
• Peer reviewing papers;
• Assisting the Guest Editors in organizing Special Issues;
• Making the final decision on whether a paper will be published after peer review and revisions.

If you are interested in applying for this position, please submit a proposal on your vision and plans for the journal, along with your CV. Please include the following:

• Description of your prior editorial experience;
• Your overall goals for the journal in the next two years;
• Suggestions for broadening the reach of the journal or improving it.

Please submit your proposal and CV to signals@mdpi.com no later than 30 April 2022. 

We look forward to reviewing your applications.

It is our great honor to congratulate the Editorial Board Members and Editors in MDPI's journals who have been distinguished as 2021 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate, according to Web of Science data. We herewith express our gratitude for the immense impact the named researchers continue to make on scientific progress and on our journals' development.

Clarivate's annual list of Highly Cited Researchers^TM identifies the most highly cited scientists for the past decade. Their impactful papers are among the top 1 per cent in the citation distribution of one or more of 22 fields analyzed in the "Essential Science Indicators", distinguishing them as hugely influential among their peers.

The full list of 2021 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed at the following webpage in the Web of Science^TM https://recognition.webofscience.com/awards/highly-cited/2021/.

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

Academic editors play a crucial role in leading our journals and ensuring that each article undergoes a robust and timely peer-review. With the launch of Topics this year and addition of Topic Editors to our family of academic editors, we decided it would be a good time to restructure our academic boards, thus providing more clarity and support for each role. MDPI is pleased to announce the launch of a new position—Topical Advisory Panel Member, that will replace the previous position of Topics Board Member. The Topical Advisory Panel will be comprised of early career researchers eager to gain experience in editorial work.

The main responsibility of the new members of the Topical Advisory Panel is to regularly provide support to Guest Editors, Topic Editors, and Section Board Members. The responsibilities of the Topical Advisory Panel are available here: https://www.mdpi.com/editors.

Each year, the members’ performances are evaluated, and outstanding members are promoted to the Editorial Board by the Editor-in-Chief.

To qualify as a Topical Advisory Panel Member, applicants must:

• Have expertise and experience in the field related to the journal;
• Have received a Ph.D. in the last 10 years, approximately;
• Have at least 6-8 published papers in the last 5 years as first author or corresponding author;
• Currently hold an independent research position in academia or a government institute.

If you are interested in this role, please contact the editorial office by email.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

According to the aims and scope of the journal, we plan to seek cooperation with conferences from 2021 to 2023. We welcome consultations with all signal-related conferences.

As a partner, we provide the following:

• You may publish some selected papers (or proceedings) in the form of a Special Issue "Selected Papers from Conference", which we would specifically create. All selected papers will be published in open access form, after peer review;
• Conference promotion through a banner on the journal homepage;
• Brief description of the conference on the journal’s webpage;
• We can sponsor a certain amount of the conference funds.

To apply for this cooperation, recommend potential candidates, or request further information, please contact the Signals Editorial Office (signals@mdpi.com). Interested applicants may contact us with the following information:

• A short Curriculum Vitae;
• Basic information on the Conference;
• Your role in the conference.

We will consider the overall situation of the candidates and select partners for cooperation.

Signals (ISSN 2624-6120) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal of signals and signal processing, published quarterly online by MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. The journal has been indexed within Scopus, SCIE (Web of Science), CAPlus / SciFinder, Inspec, and many other databases.

The scope of Signals includes, but is not limited to:

• Theories, algorithms, and methods;
• Statistical methods and machine learning for signals;
• Activity recognition, event detection, anomaly detection;
• Pattern recognition, classification, and mining;
• Information theoretic approach;
• Adaptive filtering and systems;
• Multidimensional and multivariate signal processing;
• Multimodal approach and multimedia;
• Graph-theoretic approach;
• Cryptography and coding for signals;
• Signal separation, extraction, and factorization;
• Signal processing and analysis with biological and chemical sensors.

These topics have various applications in audio/acoustics, speech, natural language, biomedical data, communications, image, video, social data, sensor data, etc.

Signals Editorial Office

Founded in 1996, MDPI was one of the first fully Open Access publisher. Over 25 years MDPI has grown to become the largest Open Access publisher globally, publishing over 160,000 articles across more than 350 journals in 2020. At the core, MDPI was founded in response to a pressing need of fast publication and inclusion. The scholar was set at the centre of the publication process for the first time. Acting as a service provider, rather than a product provider, MDPI exists to help scientists achive their objective to disseminate research results. At MDPI, we believe scientists deserve a better service from the publishing world.

The International Open Access Week (Open Access Week), founded by the SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Alliance and student partners in 2008, has been successfully running for 13 years. As an advocate and pioneer of open access publishing, MDPI actively responds to the call of International Open Access Week. This year’s theme of “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity” highlights the Recommendation’s call for equitable participation from all authors and readers.

For the last 25 years, MDPI has been committed to disseminating open research. Here is a video showing MDPI’s Commitment to Equity, Inclusion and Diversity for More than 25 Years.

International Open Access Week is an important opportunity to catalyze new conversations, create connections across and between communities that can facilitate this co-design, and advance progress in the building of more equitable foundations for opening knowledge—discussions and actions that need to be continued, year in and year out. MDPI has always aimed to provide professional and efficient publishing services to scholars around the world.

Our mission is to make scientific research accessible to everyone; this year, we interview and hold discussions with open science ambassadors on how to build an equal and inclusive environment for open science. Academic editors help us collaborate with more institutions to advocate for open access ideas.

Read our anniversary blog post: "Sharing 'Collective Human Knowledge': The Benefits of Open Access Publication"

Besides this, our scientific community is a key driver of our success and MDPI’s remarkable growth. Despite the pandemic, we have prepared online conferences and workshops to gather scholars from different communities.

The Basel Sustainable Publishing online forum provides an equal opportunity for stakeholders and researchers from multi-cultural environments to exchange ideas and eliminate barriers to participation.

Conference date: 25 October 2021, online
Conference website: https://bspf2021.sciforum.net/
Main topics: MDPI discusses the current dilemma of open access science from various perspectives such as governments, libraries, and publishers, and related measures on how to change the status quo of discrimination from a global perspective.

We aim to support equality, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications. We collaborate with universities and key laboratories and have scholarly communications with researchers, teachers, and students on open access workshops.

• 25 October 2021
  Energies journal and Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

• 28 October 2021
  Machines journal and State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong University

• 29 October 2021
  Processes journal and Beijing Institute of Technology

• 29 October 2021
  Coatings journal and Wuhan University of Technology

MDPI is committed to providing open access and high-quality publishing services for scholars and promoting rapid dissemination of academic achievements. We hope to promote the practices and policies of open access publishing and diversify the dissemination of academic achievements.

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high-quality academic publishing. Over 369,916 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2020. We are extremely appreciative of all those who made a contribution to the editorial process in this capacity. At the beginning of every year, journal editorial offices publish a list of all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year, the MDPI Top Reviewer Award was announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise and dedication, and their high-quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2020 MDPI Top Reviewer Award:

• Adriana Burlea-Schiopoiu;
• Alban Kuriqi;
• Álvaro González-Vila;
• Alessandro Alaimo;
• Alexey Beskopylny;
• Alexander Yu Churyumov;
• Alberto Fernández-Isabel;
• Andrea Mastinu;
• Antonios N. Papadopoulos;
• Anton Rassõlkin;
• Antonio Humberto Hamad Minervino;
• Arkadiusz Matwijczuk;
• Artur Słomka;
• Baojie He;
• Bartłomiej Potaniec;
• Bojan Đurin;
• Camilo Arturo Rodriguez Diaz;
• Carmelo Maria Musarella;
• Chiachung Chen;
• Chiman Kwan;
• Cristian Busu;
• Danil Pimenov;
• Dan-Cristian Dabija;
• Delfín Ortega-Sánchez;
• Demetrio Antonio Zema;
• Denis Butusov;
• Elena Lucchi;
• Gaurab Dutta;
• Livia Anastasiu;
• M. R. Safaei.

For more information about how to become a reviewer of MDPI journals, please see: www.mdpi.com/reviewers.

UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. In 2020 the SDG Publishers Compact was launched, aimed to inspire publishers and accelerate progress to achieve the 17 goals by 2030. Members of the programme are committed to support the publication of materials that will promote and inspire actions towards SDGs.

MDPI is an eager advocate of SDGs and has already been supporting the programme by creating Special Issues and publishing a series of books on SDGs prior to joining the Compact in 2021. MDPI's Sustainability Foundation initiated the World Sustainability Awards in 2016. We fully support UN's goals to promote sustainable actions that make the world a better place for all and, as part of its commitment, we will focus our actions on SDG10: Reduced Inequalities whilst promoting all 17 SDGs. For more details, please visit the programme’s website: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sdg-publishers-compact/.

Joining this initiative was a unanimous decision. MDPI has in its core values the dissemination of science for all, breaking the wall between research access and under-represented members of the scientific community and the general population. To support this initiative further and continue to support under-represented scientists, MDPI will take a series of actions that will be announced once ready.

The first action MDPI takes is to nominate Dr. Liliane Auwerter as the coordinator of the programme. Dr. Auwerter studied Environmental Process Technology (UTFPR, Brazil), obtained her MSc degree in Water and Environmental Engineering (University of Surrey, UK) and in 2020 completed her PhD in self-healing low-friction materials for water transport (Imperial College London, UK), always focusing on diverse scientific projects that would potentially bring sustainability to industrial processes. As a student in Brazil, she engaged in volunteering activities focused on environmental education and took part in the Millennial Development Goals meetings held at the university.

For more information, please contact:
Dr. Liliane Auwerter
Scientific Officer
liliane.auwerter@mdpi.com