Announcements

The purpose of the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day is to help raise awareness of the possibilities that the use of the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICTs) can bring to societies and economies, as well as of ways to bridge the digital divide. 17 May marks the anniversary of the signing of the first International Telegraph Convention and the creation of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

This year, World Telecommunication and Information Society Day focuses on “Empowering the least developed countries (LDCs) through information and communication technologies.” As the world becomes increasingly adept at leveraging the Internet for value creation, LDCs risk falling further behind. To further explore the information about digital transformation in these LDCs and communication technologies in the rest of the world on the 2023 World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, we have gathered academic research from several journals on the topic of digital communication, all of which are open access, enabling practitioners, policymakers and people around the world to access and share up-to-date scientific knowledge.

Let us celebrate the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day together.

MDPI will be attending the 18th International Conference on Waste Management and Technology (ICWMT18), held in Sanya, China, from 20 to 23 May 2023. The theme of this year’s conference is “Synergizing the Reduction of Pollution and Carbon Emission”. Throughout the conference, prominent researchers and government officials will give keynote speeches on pressing issues of solid waste management. ICWMT18 provides an excellent opportunity for participants from industry and academia to keep up to date with the latest trends in solid waste management.

During this conference, MDPI will welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest views as well as research with us.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Sustainability;
• Environments;
• Atmosphere;
• Buildings;
• Resources;
• Smart Cities;
• Sustainable Chemistry;
• Pollutants;
• Microplastics.

If you are attending this conference, please stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following link: http://www.bcrc.cn/icwmt-eng/.

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.

1. “Introducing the “15-Minute City”: Sustainability, Resilience and Place Identity in Future Post-Pandemic Cities”
by Carlos Moreno, Zaheer Allam, Didier Chabaud, Catherine Gall and Florent Pratlong
Smart Cities 2021, 4(1), 93-111; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities4010006.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2624-6511/4/1/6

2. “A Review on Electric Vehicles: Technologies and Challenges”
by Julio A. Sanguesa, Vicente Torres-Sanz, Piedad Garrido, Francisco J. Martinez and Johann M. Marquez-Barja
Smart Cities 2021, 4(1), 372-404; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities4010022.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2624-6511/4/1/22

3. “IoT in Smart Cities: A Survey of Technologies, Practices and Challenges”
by Abbas Shah Syed, Daniel Sierra-Sosa, Anup Kumar and Adel Elmaghraby
Smart Cities 2021, 4(2), 429-475; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities4020024.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2624-6511/4/2/24

4. “Artificial Intelligence Techniques in Smart Grid: A Survey”
by Olufemi A. Omitaomu and Haoran Niu
Smart Cities 2021, 4(2), 548-568; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities4020029.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2624-6511/4/2/29

5. “Cloud-Based IoT Applications and Their Roles in Smart Cities”
by Tanweer Alam
Smart Cities 2021, 4(3), 1196-1219; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities4030064.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2624-6511/4/3/64

6. “A Review of Car-Following Models and Modeling Tools for Human and Autonomous-Ready Driving Behaviors in Micro-Simulation”
by Hafiz Usman Ahmed, Ying Huang and Pan Lu
Smart Cities 2021, 4(1), 314-335; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities4010019.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2624-6511/4/1/19

7. “Application of Deep Learning on UAV-Based Aerial Images for Flood Detection”
by Hafiz Usman Ahmed, Ying Huang and Pan Lu
Smart Cities 2021, 4(3), 1220-1242; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities4030065.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2624-6511/4/3/65

8. “IoT-Enabled Solid Waste Management in Smart Cities”
by S. Vishnu, S. R. Jino Ramson, Samson Senith, Theodoros Anagnostopoulos, Adnan M. Abu-Mahfouz, Xiaozhe Fan, S. Srinivasan and A. Alfred Kirubaraj
Smart Cities 2021, 4(3), 1004-1017; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities4030053.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2624-6511/4/3/53

9. “Smart City Strategies—Technology Push or Culture Pull? A Case Study Exploration of Gimpo and Namyangju, South Korea”
by Seunghwan Myeong, Younhee Kim and Michael J. Ahn
Smart Cities 2021, 4(1), 41-53; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities4010003
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2624-6511/4/1/3

10. “Optimal Planning of Electrical Appliance of Residential Units in a Smart Home Network Using Cloud Services”
by Morteza Azimi Nasab, Mohammad Zand, Mohsen Eskandari, Padmanaban Sanjeevikumar and Pierluigi Siano
Smart Cities 2021, 4(3), 1173-1195; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities4030063
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2624-6511/4/3/63

11. “Sustainable and Reliable Information and Communication Technology for Resilient Smart Cities”
by Nikolay Tcholtchev and Ina Schieferdecker
Smart Cities 2021, 4(1), 156-176; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities4010009
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2624-6511/4/1/9

12. “Concept Drift Adaptation Techniques in Distributed Environment for Real-World Data Streams”
by Hassan Mehmood, Panos Kostakos, Marta Cortes, Theodoros Anagnostopoulos, Susanna Pirttikangas and Ekaterina Gilman
Smart Cities 2021, 4(1), 349-371; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities4010021.
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2624-6511/4/1/21

Smart Cities (ISSN: 2624-6511) released its inaugural issue in 2018 and is now published bimonthly. Since it was established, Smart Cities has aimed to provide a professional publishing service to the scientific community and has strived towards the effective dissemination of high-quality scientific work. In 2021, Smart Cities was accepted for coverage in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI)—Web of Science and Scopus (Elsevier). The CiteScore (Scopus) 2021 of Smart Cities was 5.5, which equals to a ranking of 24/241 (Q1) in the “Urban Studies” category, 174/708 (Q1) in the “Electrical and Electronic Engineering” category, and 87/269 (Q2) in the “Artificial Intelligence” category.

In order to support the scientific community and contribute to the faster distribution of important scientific research, Smart Cities has cooperated with various academic conferences. For more details, please visit the following events website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/smartcities/events.

Smart Cities is now seeking cooperation with additional academic conferences, and is open to a diverse range of collaborations, such as media partnerships, awards, exhibitions, and publications, amongst others.

We welcome consultations with any conferences related to “smart cities”. If you are interested in collaborating with Smart Cities, please contact us at cities@mdpi.com.

Smart Cities is an international, scientific, peer-reviewed, open access journal containing research on the science and technology of smart cities. The scope of Smart Cities includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Information and communication technology (ICT) in the smart city;
• Internet of Things (IoT) for smart cities;
• Smart sensing;
• Smart grids and smart infrastructures;
• Smart transportation and mobility;
• Smart energy;
• Smart buildings;
• Smart food and agriculture;
• Smart governance;
• Smart people;
• Smart economy;
• Smart healthcare;
• Smart living.

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 currently recruiting Editorial Board Members (EBMs) for MDPI journals indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) in Web of Science. In particular, we are looking for experts who are interested in aiding in the development of our journals and safeguarding the scientific quality of the published findings.

Journals currently listed in the ESCI will receive an Impact Factor in June 2023, according to the changes announced by Web of Science (Clarivate). Therefore, this is an excellent time to become an Editorial Board Member for one of these fast-developing journals.

If you are interested in sharing your expertise in one of the journals listed below, please send us an application using this link.

The Editorial Office of the journal will contact you once the application has been approved.
Editorial Board Members are responsible for academic decisions on manuscripts in their field of expertise, will edit Special Issues, and may be invited to review manuscripts. The initial term lasts for two years, after which it can be renewed, and entails the following:

• Prescreening and making decisions on new submissions related to your research interests;
• Setting up at least one Special Issue during your term on a topic related to your research interests (or supervising Special Issues related to your research field);
• Providing input or feedback regarding journal policies;
• Helping to promote the journal among your peers or at conferences;
• Attending Board meetings to suggest journal development strategies;
• Reviewing manuscripts.

Editorial Board Members are entitled to a full waiver on one publication per year in the journal that they serve and need to be experts in their fields.

The list of ESCI journals can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/about/journals/esci.

Please find the list of ESCI journals, categorized by subject, for which we are recruiting Editorial Board Members below.