Announcements

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!

MDPI will be attending the 34th Annual Conference of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE 2022), held in Athens, Greece, from 18 to 21 September 2022. The main theme of the 2022 conference is “Strengthening the global role of environmental epidemiology”, stressing the need to study and understand local conditions in order to synthesize knowledge and make a difference for our planet. In the 2022 conference we will continue advancing our society’s aims in promoting epidemiological studies that link environmental exposures to human health.

During this conference, MDPI (at booth #22) will welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest inspirations with us.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• IJERPH (leading journal);
• Sustainability;
• Healthcare;
• Children;
• Cancers;
• Climate;
• Environments;
• Earth;
• Societies;
• Epidemiologia.

If you plan on attending this conference, feel free to stop by our booth: #22. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions that you may have.

For more information about the conference, please see the following link: https://isee2022.org/.

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

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.

The ICOMTA'22 – International Conference on Communication and Applied Technologies 2022 is organized by the Universidad del Rosario (Bogotá, Colombia) and the Universidad Politécnica Salesiana (Cuenca, Ecuador), the Universidade de Vigo (Galicia, Spain), the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela-Equipo de Investigaciones Políticas (Galicia, Spain), the International Media Management Academic Association (IMMAA), Red de Investigadores de Comunicación de Ecuador (RICE), and the universities of the Observatorio Interuniversitario de Medios Ecuatoarianos (OIME): Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Universidad UTE, and Universidad Técnica de Cotopaxi. The conference will take place at the Universidad Politécnica Salesiana (Cuenca, Ecuador) from 7 to 9 September 2022 and will be in mixed mode (face-to-face and virtual).

All papers (full articles) will be subject to a “double-blind review” by at least two members of the Scientific Committee, who will judge them based on relevance, originality, importance, and clarity. The papers presented must be related to one of the main topics proposed for the Conference:

• Digital political communication and processes;
• Software, big data, data mining, and intelligent systems;
• Communication, health, politics and technologies, the other pandemic: misinformation in times of coronavirus, automation, bots, and algorithms;
• Fact-checking experiences in Europe and Latin America at the service of journalism: comparative perspective;
• Persuasion and emotion: analysis of language, content, and artificial intelligence;
• Freedom of expression, ethics, and transparency in the digital society;
• Digital social media;
• Miscellaneous (journalism, communication, advertising and public relations, political science, and other aspects of Social and Human Sciences from information and communication technologies).

Papers in English will be published in Springer’s Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies series and will be indexed in SCOPUS and ISI. Papers in Spanish will be published by Tirant Lo Blanch.

EXTRA! Extended versions (a new paper) of the best articles on political communication and digital societies will be sent to the journal Societies, where they will undergo peer review once more before publication.

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.