Conference: The 13th China Satellite Navigation Conference
Date: 16–18 November 2022
Place: Beijing, China

Sensors (ISSN: 1424-8220) will be attending the 13th China Satellite Navigation Conference as an exhibitor. This meeting will take place from 16 to 18 November in Beijing, China.

The China Satellite Navigation Conference (CSNC) is an open academic exchange platform. It aims to strengthen academic innovation and promote the cooperation and exchange of satellite navigation systems, strengthen technological innovation and promote the engineering construction of satellite navigation systems, strengthen theoretical innovation and promote the progress of satellite navigation theories, and strengthen application innovation and promote the scientific development of satellite navigation industry. The conference has been successfully held for 12 years and has produced a large number of excellent results in academic, technical, theoretical, application, and talent aspects.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Sensors;
• Remote Sensing;
• Atmosphere;
• Aerospace;
• Technologies;
• Drones;
• Signals;
• Smart Cities;
• AI;
• Geomatics.

If you are planning to attend this conference, please do not hesitate to start an online conversation with us (booth #B18). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference and virtual booth, please visit the following website: https://www.beidou.org/annualmeeting.html.

1. “Comparison of Time Delay Estimation Methods Used for Fast Pipeline Leak Localization in High-Noise Environment”
by Kousiopoulos, G.-P.; Papastavrou, G.-N.; Kampelopoulos, D.; Karagiorgos, N. and Nikolaidis, S.
Technologies 2020, 8(2), 27; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8020027
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/2/27

Highlights:

• An acoustic method is described for pipeline leak localization;
• Cross-Correlation and Generalized Cross-Correlation techniques are used;
• Accelerometer sensors are used;
• The paper studies the relationship between the measurement duration and execution time of the method;
• The authors develop a statistical algorithm to deal with the stochastic (non-deterministic) nature of leak signals.

2. “Analog Realization of Fractional-Order Skin-Electrode Model for Tetrapolar Bio-Impedance Measurements”
by Alimisis, V.; Dimas, C.; Pappas, G. and Sotiriadis, P. P.
Technologies 2020, 8(4), 61; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8040061
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/4/61

Highlights:

• Cole models are employed for the electrode and skin cells;
• Inverse Follow the Leader Feedback (IFLF) is employed and a custom versatile topology proposed;
• Bio-impedance behaviors up to 10 kHz are captured;
• A tunable active integrated circuitry block (90 nm technology) is built to emulate the tetrapolar bio-impedance measurement setup.

3. “The Influence of Smart Manufacturing towards Energy Conservation: A Review”
by Terry, S.; Lu, H.; Fidan, I.; Zhang, Y.; Tantawi, K.; Guo, T. and Asiabanpour, B.
Technologies 2020, 8(2), 31; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8020031
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/2/31

Highlights:

• Smart Manufacturing combines multiple technologies, including Cyber-Physical Systems, Internet of Things, Robotics/Automation, Big Data Analytics, and Cloud Computing;
• Today's products made using Smart Manufacturing Technologies require 50% to 75% less energy than large-scale manufactured goods;
• Digital thread/twin technology provides manufacturers with the information needed to form intelligent solutions to reduce energy use.

4. “ExerTrack—Towards Smart Surfaces to Track Exercises”
by Fu, B.; Jarms, L.; Kirchbuchner, F. and Kuijper, A.
Technologies 2020, 8(1), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8010017
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/1/17

Highlights:

• The paper proposes embedded capacitive proximity sensing integrated into a fitness mat to track and monitor exercise, which successfully recognize up to eight different whole-body workout exercises;
• An evaluation study involving nine participants is conducted as a proof-of-concept. Data augmentation methods are introduced that can increase data diversity and broader generalizability for human-activity recognition in quantified-self exercises, and the authors further justify the model architecture and training strategy for reproducibility.

5. “Design, Construction and Tests of a Low-Cost Myoelectric Thumb”
by Ayvali, M.; Wickenkamp, I. and Ehrmann, A.
Technologies 2021, 9(3), 63; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies9030063
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/9/3/63

Highlights:

• The authors develop a low-cost myoelectric thumb;
• Freely available 3D printing models and software can serve as a basis for further research;
• By implementing feedback, the myoelectric thumb can be used as a low-cost prosthesis.

6. “Investigation of Methods to Extract Fetal Electrocardiogram from the Mother’s Abdominal Signal in Practical Scenarios”
by Sarafan, S.; Le, T.; Naderi, A. M.; Nguyen, Q.-D.; Kuo, B. T.-Y.; Ghirmai, T.; Han, H.-D.; Lau, M. P. H. and Cao, H.
Technologies 2020, 8(2), 33; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8020033
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/2/33 

Highlights:

• Various methods, including the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), template subtraction (TS), independent component analysis (ICA), and their combinations, are rigorously investigated using data from the PhysioNet 2013 Challenge;
• Data with added Gaussian and motion noise, which mimic a practical scenario, are utilized to examine the performance of different algorithms;
• Different algorithm combinations are proposed and tested, yielding promising results;
• A comprehensive performance metric, including the F1 score, computational complexity (i.e., execution time and allocated memories), and noise robustness, is used to assess performance.

MDPI is pleased to announce the publication of the inaugural issues of eight new Open Access journals. We wish to thank all the Editors-in-Chief, Associate Editors, and Editorial Board Members involved who will be shaping the future course of these brand-new journals.

The new titles presented below were set up as a result of our market research, which showed there is a need for Gold Open Access journals in each of these areas of research. At MDPI, the same trusted, fast, and rigorous peer-review process is employed across journals and disciplines.

Journal	Founding Editor-in-Chief	Journal Topics (Selected)
	Prof. Dr. Jesus S. Aguilar-Ruiz, Pablo de Olavide University, Spain| Editorial | view inaugural issue	data analytics; data science; information; statistics; visualization| view journal scope | submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Francesco Fornai, University of Pisa, Italy| Editorial | view inaugural issue	anatomy; neuroanatomy; morphological investigations| view journal scope | submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Jungho Baek, University of Alaska, USA| Editorial | view inaugural issue	commodities market; commodities supercycles; commodities and food security; commodities economics and finance; commodities policy| view journal scope | submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Hideki Kasuya, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan| Editorial | view inaugural issue	medical education; online education; telemedicine education; learning styles| view journal scope | submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Hans Henkes, Klinikum Stuttgart – Katharinenhospital, Germany| Editorial | view inaugural issue	cardiovascular diseases; cerebrovascular diseases; peripheral vascular diseases| view journal scope | submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Süleyman Ergün, University of Würzburg, Germany| Editorial | view inaugural issue	organoid; organ-on-chip; gastruloid; blastoid; 3D organ model| view journal scope | submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Ricardo Dinis-Oliveira, University Institute of Health Sciences (IUCS), Portugal; University of Porto, Portugal| Editorial | view inaugural issue	psychoactive drugs; addiction studies; medicinal uses; toxicology; social and political aspects| view journal scope | submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Anton Nijholt, University of Twente, the Netherlands| Editorial | view inaugural issue	virtual reality; augmented reality; mixed reality; digital twin; metaverse| view journal scope | submit an article

MDPI is committed to promoting diverse open science exchanges and provides support to academic organizations and institutions willing to join the open access publishing model.

If you are interested in jointly creating more open access journals with us to publish cutting-edge research, please send your journal proposal application here, and please do not hesitate to contact us ([email protected]) for further details.

We are pleased to welcome our new Editorial Board Members, Prof. Dr. Yinghui Zhang (Xi'an University of Posts and Telecommunications) and Dr. Francesco Aggogeri (University of Brescia). We look forward to their contributions to the journal.

We are pleased to announce that the 1^st Technologies Webinar, themed “Latest Innovations in Materials, Processing and Sustainable/Green Technologies”, was a great success. This webinar was chaired by Prof. Dr. Manoj Gupta, who was joined by four world-leading scientists, including Dr. Hajo Dieringa of MagIC - Magnesium Innovation Center, Germany; Dr. Jutima Simsiriwong of the University of North Florida, USA; Prof. Anders E. W. Jarfors of Jönköping University, Sweden; and Dr. Hamidreza Ezatpour of Hakim Sabzevari University, Iran.

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!

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Bernard Gil has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Quantum Technologies” in Technologies (ISSN: 2227-7080).

Prof. Dr. Bernard Gil has been a researcher at the CNRS (National Center of Scientific Research) since 1982. He is currently the Director of Research of Exceptional Class at the Institute of Physics (INP). He is an experimentalist and an expert in the measurement of the coupling between the electromagnetic field and the electronic states of solids. He has been studying in-depth the optical properties of semiconductors since 1994, with some specific interest in nitride semiconductors for compact-solid state lighting and energy savings linked to the utilization of this technology. He is currently very much interested in quantum technologies and in the emission of light in the deep ultraviolet range for the eradication of pathogens using as an active material boron nitride grown under different polytypes. Gil was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa of the University Saint Petersburg in 2012, and Doctor Honoris Causa of the Meijo University of Nagoya in 2013. He is the 2018 laureate of the Welker Award. His Google Scholar citation records indicate 14,000 citations, with a Hirsch factor of 60.

Keywords: wide gap semiconductors; quantum technologies; photonics; solid-state lighting

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Bernard Gil, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views of the research area and open access publishing:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief?
I progressively moved from the optical properties of bulk materials to those of their quantum heterostructures to finally focus on their applications for quantum technologies.

2. What is your vision for the journal?
From my own experience the journal should frame all aspects of quantum technologies. I wrote this before:

Quantum technologies (QTs) consist of a vast melting pot of different disciplinary fields running from basic science domains such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology, all of which are considered at a broad scale and thus more than often overlapping, combined with different technical approaches. The latter are of paramount importance in order to fabricate for these scientists, the objects for measuring and understanding what happens, sometimes at a sub-atomic level, for further controlling it and to transfer for realizing quantum devices with ad hoc designs that generally operate according to the prescriptions of quantum mechanics. Advantages can be taken of the predictions of its early days, but obviously of course of much more recently discovered effects. The building of a quantum computer, the race to the use of QTs in the field of cryptography have long been putting QTs under the lime-lights. Today’s race to find out how quantum simulators or quantum sensors can be used to solve non-quantum problems, to improve, for instance, the performance of brain scanners and for creating systems paving our ways toward better diagnosing medical conditions are typical examples required to illustrate the broad scale applicability of QTs when integrated into already existing systems. Thus, scientists of the fundamental science domains contribute on the same footing as engineers do, and economic challenges significantly generate some tropisms of developments of QTs in specific and eclectic directions, which at the end of the day form the quantum technology industry. The global challenges motivate us to open the possibility of submitting predicting ideas, including having in mind how the use QTs can be applicated in the areas of energy savings and sustainability. A substantial amount of funding is dedicated worldwide by the governing institutions for actively funding QTs.

The story begins at the stage of the growth and processing of sub-nanosized and nanosized and other materials of controlled purities such as semiconductors, metals, or any other molecular objects extensively used in the modern industry. QTs are multidisciplinary: they associate pertinent partners of different areas in networks susceptible to conceiving and fabricating a specific quantum sensor, quantum devices. It generally requires intense and profitable intergroup cross-talking exchanges before such quantum device or sensor comes to birth. Aside from simple scientific curiosity, economic motivations largely influence the development of QTs. This specific review is offered as an important forum for offering people of different areas for publishing their innovative discoveries in the multidisciplinary area of QTs. Both extended reviews and regular articles can be accepted for publication after peer-reviewing.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?
Multidisciplinary.

4. What do you think of the development of Open Access in the publishing field?
I am not sure that my institution CNRS is in favor of that; I am even sure it is reluctant to the concept of paying a lot of money for papers being published even after being refereed. This also holds for Nature and Science. Therefore, I cannot be explicitly polled for this.

We wish Prof. Dr. Gil every success in his new position, and we look forward to his contributions to the journal.

1. “A Survey on Contrastive Self-Supervised Learning”
by Jaiswal, A.; Babu, A. R.; Zadeh, M. Z.; Banerjee, D. and Makedon, F.
Technologies 2021, 9(1), 2; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies9010002
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/9/1/2

Highlights:

• Exploration and detailed analysis of the existing state-of-the-art techniques in contrastive learning;
• Extensive evaluation of contrastive learning in various domains such as computer vision (Images, Videos), Natural Language Processing, etc., with state-of-the-art results in multiple datasets;
• Future direction of contrastive learning.

2. “Unsupervised Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation: A Review”
by Toldo, M.; Maracani, A.; Michieli, U. and Zanuttigh, P.
Technologies 2020, 8(2), 35; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8020035
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/2/35

Highlights:

• Gives a comprehensive overview of recent advancements in Unsupervised Domain Adaptation of deep networks for Semantic Segmentation;
• Identifies 3 main representation levels at which domain adaptation can be applied, i.e., at the input, at the intermediate feature representation or at the output of the deep network;
• Categorizes the vast range of UDA techniques into 7 groups: Domain Adversarial Learning, Generative-based Adaptation, Classifier Discrepancy, Self-Training, Entropy Minimization, Curriculum Learning and Multi-Task Learning;
• Presents the widely used case study of synthetic-to-real adaptation for the semantic understanding of road scenes;
• Provides an extensive comparison of state-of-the-art approaches on multiple benchmarks and with different segmentation models.

3. “The Road to Improved Fiber-Reinforced 3D Printing Technology”
by Kabir, S. M. F.; Mathur, K. and Seyam, A.-F. M.
Technologies 2020, 8(4), 51; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8040051
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/4/51

Highlights:

• Evaluates scopes and capabilities of commercial 3D printing technology to develop fiber-reinforced composites from material (filaments) and technology (slicer) perspectives;
• Unveils detailed properties of commercial 3D printing filaments (fiber and polymer) used for printing fiber-reinforced composites;
• Demonstrates and illustrates the routes to avail high performance printed composites as well as potential avenues of improvement of the printing technology.

4. “Hardware Implementation of a Softmax-Like Function for Deep Learning”
by Kouretas, I. and Paliouras, V.
Technologies 2020, 8(3), 46; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8030046
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/3/46

Highlights:

• Proposes a simplified architecture for a softmax-like function, the hardware implementation of which is based on a proposed approximation that exploits the statistical structure of the vectors processed by the softmax layers in various CNNs;
• The proposed architecture is parametrized taking into account the requirements of the targeted application;
• The proposed architecture is efficiently implemented in hardware.

5. “A Parametric EIT System Spice Simulation with Phantom Equivalent Circuits”
by Dimas, C.; Uzunoglu, N. and Sotiriadis, P. P.
Technologies 2020, 8(1), 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8010013
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/1/13

Highlights:

• Parametric Simulation interface for an Electrical Impedance Tomography Hardware System;
• SPICE and MATLAB software are utilized to simulate the system's analog and digital parts;
• The Phantom Subject Under Test (SUT) is simulated as a frequency-dependent multiport RLC circuitry;
• Sources of measurement errors are examined.

Conference: The 10th International Conference on Smart Systems Engineering (SmaSys) 2022-Beyond Material Innovation (SMASYS2022)
Date: 6–7 October 2022
Organized by: Yamagata University, Yamagata, Japan

The International Conference on Smart Systems Engineering (SmaSys) is a series of successful conferences, starting with the first conference (SmaSys2013) held in 2013, which are organized to promote discussion on “smart systems engineering” between young, active, and motivated scientists. SmaSys covers a wide range of subjects on smart materials, devices, systems, and related research. It is an invaluable opportunity to share and exchange opinions and knowledge around various fields.

Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, SmaSys2022 will be convened as a fully online conference. COVID-19 is having a significant impact on our daily life, but various positive changes are also happening rapidly. Science, engineering, and smart systems are vital for these changes. Any new insights and networks contributing to the progress in these fields at SmaSys2022 will be greatly appreciated.

The organizing committee, including iFlex students, promises an attractive program, and we look forward to your attendance at SmaSys2022. Your contribution will have a remarkable impact on the conference.

For more information about the conference, please visit the following link: http://yzyu.sakura.ne.jp/smasys.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/2022_1/.

1. “A Survey on Contrastive Self-Supervised Learning”
by Jaiswal, A.; Babu, A. R.; Zadeh, M. Z.; Banerjee, D.; Makedon, F.
Technologies 2021, 9(1), 2; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies9010002
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/9/1/2

2. “Review of Battery Management Systems (BMS) Development and Industrial Standards”
by Gabbar, H. A.; Othman, A. M.; Abdussami, M. R.
Technologies 2021, 9(2), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies9020028
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/9/2/28

3. “A Survey of Robots in Healthcare”
by Kyrarini, M.; Lygerakis, F.; Rajavenkatanarayanan, A.; Sevastopoulos, C.; Nambiappan, H. R.; Chaitanya, K. K.; Babu, A. R.; Mathew, J.; Makedon, F.
Technologies 2021, 9(1), 8; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies9010008
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/9/1/8

4. “Effect of Data Scaling Methods on Machine Learning Algorithms and Model Performance”
by Ahsan, M. M.; Mahmud, M. A. P.; Saha, P. K.; Gupta, K. D.; Siddique, Z.
Technologies 2021, 9(3), 52; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies9030052
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/9/3/52

5. “A Review of Extended Reality (XR) Technologies for Manufacturing Training”
by Doolani, S.; Wessels, C.; Kanal, V.; Sevastopoulos, C.; Jaiswal, A.; Nambiappan, H.; Makedon, F. Technologies 2020, 8(4), 77; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8040077
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/4/77

6. “The Road to Improved Fiber-Reinforced 3D Printing Technology”
by Kabir, S. M. F.; Mathur, K.; Seyam, A. -F. M.
Technologies 2020, 8(4), 51; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8040051
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/4/51

7. “Review on the Evaluation of the Impacts of Wastewater Disposal in Hydraulic Fracturing Industry in the United States”
by Yazdan, M. M. S.; Ahad, M. T.; Jahan, I.; Mazumder, M.
Technologies 2020, 8(4), 67; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8040067
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/4/67

8. “Augmented Reality in Industry 4.0 and Future Innovation Programs”
by Santi, G. M.; Ceruti, A.; Liverani, A.; Osti, F.
Technologies 2021, 9(2), 33; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies9020033
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/9/2/33

9. “Wire Tool Electrode Behavior and Wear under Discharge Pulses”
by Grigoriev, S. N.; Volosova, M. A.; Okunkova, A. A.; Fedorov, S. V.; Hamdy, K.; Podrabinnik, P. A.; Pivkin, P. M.; Kozochkin, M. P.; Porvatov, A. N.
Technologies 2020, 8(3), 49; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8030049
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/3/49

10. “Post-Processing of 3D-Printed Polymers”
by Dizon, J. R. C.; Gache, C. C. L.; Cascolan, H. M. S.; Cancino, L. T.; Advincula, R. C.
Technologies 2021, 9(3), 61; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies9030061
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/9/3/61

11. “Hardware Implementation of a Softmax-Like Function for Deep Learning †”
by Kouretas, I.; Paliouras, V.
Technologies 2020, 8(3), 46; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8030046
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/9/3/61

12. “Engineering Tests to Evaluate the Feasibility of an Emerging Solar Pavement Technology for Public Roads and Highways”
by A. Coutu, R., Jr.; Newman, D.; Munna, M.; Tschida, J. H.; Brusaw, S.
Technologies 2020, 8(1), 9; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8010009
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/1/9

13. “Influence of WC-Based Pin Tool Profile on Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of AA1100 FSW Welds”
by Tamadon, A.; Baghestani, A.; Bajgholi, M. E.
Technologies 2020, 8(2), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8020034
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/2/34

14. “An Investigation into the Application of Deep Learning in the Detection and Mitigation of DDOS Attack on SDN Controllers”
by Gadze, J. D.; Bamfo-Asante, A. A.; Agyemang, J. O.; Nunoo-Mensah, H.; Opare, K. A. -B.
Technologies 2021, 9(1), 14; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies9010014
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/2/34

15. “A Parametric EIT System Spice Simulation with Phantom Equivalent Circuits”
by Dimas, C.; Uzunoglu, N.; Sotiriadis, P. P.
Technologies 2020, 8(1), 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8010013
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/1/13

16. “Perceived Usefulness, Satisfaction, Ease of Use and Potential of a Virtual Companion to Support the Care Provision for Older Adults”
by Jegundo, A. L.; Dantas, C.; Quintas, J.; Dutra, J.; Almeida, A. L.; Caravau, H.; Rosa, A. F.; Martins, A. I.; Pacheco Rocha, N.
Technologies 2020, 8(3), 42; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8030042
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/3/42

17. “Comparison of iPad Pro®’s LiDAR and TrueDepth Capabilities with an Industrial 3D Scanning Solution”
by Vogt, M.; Rips, A.; Emmelmann, C.
Technologies 2021, 9(2), 25; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies9020025
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/9/2/25

18. “Deep Learning Based Fall Detection Algorithms for Embedded Systems, Smartwatches, and IoT Devices Using Accelerometers”
by Kraft, D.; Srinivasan, K.; Bieber, G.
Technologies 2020, 8(4), 72; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8040072
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/4/72

19. “Electrical Discharge Machining Non-Conductive Ceramics: Combination of Materials”
by Volosova, M. A.; Okunkova, A. A.; Fedorov, S. V.; Hamdy, K.; Mikhailova, M. A.
Technologies 2020, 8(2), 32; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8020032
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/2/32

20. “Unsupervised Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation: A Review”
by Toldo, M.; Maracani, A.; Michieli, U.; Zanuttigh, P.
Technologies 2020, 8(2), 35; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies8020035
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/8/2/35

The purpose of our Best Paper Awards is to promote and recognize the most impactful contributions published within MDPI journals.

The academic 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.

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

Actuators:

• “Position Control of Pneumatic Actuators Using Three-Mode Discrete-Valued Model Predictive Control”
  by Haitao Qi, Gary M. Bone and Yile Zhang
  Actuators 2019, 8(3), 56; doi: 10.3390/act8030056
• “Review of Electrothermal Actuators and Applications”
  by Alissa Potekhina and Changhai Wang
  Actuators 2019, 8(4), 69; doi: 10.3390/act8040069

Batteries:

• “Pre-Lithiation Strategies for Rechargeable Energy Storage Technologies: Concepts, Promises and Challenges”
  by Florian Holtstiege, Peer Bärmann, Roman Nölle, Martin Winter and Tobias Placke
  Batteries 2018, 4(1), 4; doi: 10.3390/batteries4010004
• “A Critical Review of Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Processes from a Circular Economy Perspective”
  by Omar Velázquez-Martínez, Johanna Valio, Annukka Santasalo-Aarnio, Markus Reuter and Rodrigo Serna-Guerrero
  Batteries 2019, 5(4), 68; doi: 10.3390/batteries5040068
• “Critical Review of the Use of Reference Electrodes in Li-Ion Batteries: A Diagnostic Perspective”
  by Rinaldo Raccichini, Marco Amores and Gareth Hinds
  Batteries 2019, 5(1), 12; doi: 10.3390/batteries5010012
• “Life Cycle Analysis of Lithium-Ion Batteries for Automotive Applications”
  by Qiang Dai, Jarod C. Kelly, Linda Gaines and Michael Wang
  Batteries 2019, 5(2), 48; doi 10.3390/batteries5020048
• “Design Strategies for High Power vs. High Energy Lithium Ion Cells”
  by Michael J. Lain, James Brandon and Emma Kendrick
  Batteries 2019, 5(4), 64; doi: 10.3390/batteries5040064

Chemosensors:

• “Influence of Humidity on NO₂-Sensing and Selectivity of Spray-CVD Grown ZnO Thin Film above 400 °C”
  by Roussin Lontio Fomekong and Bilge Saruhan
  Chemosensors 2019, 7(3), 42; doi: 10.3390/chemosensors7030042
• “Low Molecular Weight Fluorescent Probes (LMFPs) to Detect the Group 12 Metal Triad”
  by Ashley D. Johnson, Rose M. Curtis and Karl J. Wallace
  Chemosensors 2019, 7(2), 22; doi: 10.3390/chemosensors7020022

Journal of Marine Science and Engineering:

• “Marine Application of Fiber Reinforced Composites: A Review”
  by Felice Rubino, Antonio Nisticò, Fausto Tucci and Pierpaolo Carlone
  Mar. Sci. Eng. 2020, 8(1), 26; doi: 10.3390/jmse8010026
• “Numerical Simulation of Large Wave Heights from Super Typhoon Nepartak (2016) in the Eastern Waters of Taiwan”
  by Shih-Chun Hsiao, Hongey Chen, Han-Lun Wu, Wei-Bo Chen, Chih-Hsin Chang, Wen-Dar Guo, Yung-Ming Chen and Lee-Yaw Lin
  Mar. Sci. Eng. 2020, 8(3), 217; doi: 10.3390/jmse8030217
• “Development of Deterministic Artificial Intelligence for Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV)”
  by Timothy Sands
  Mar. Sci. Eng. 2020, 8(8), 578; doi: 10.3390/jmse8080578

Lubricants:

• “Solid Lubrication with MoS₂: A Review”
  by Mohammad R. Vazirisereshk, Ashlie Martini, David A. Strubbe and Mehmet Z. Baykara
  Lubricants 2019, 7(7), 57; doi:10.3390/lubricants7070057
• “Investigations of the Friction Losses of Different Engine Concepts. Part 1: A Combined Approach for Applying Subassembly-Resolved Friction Loss Analysis on a Modern Passenger-Car Diesel Engine”
  by Christoph Knauder, Hannes Allmaier, David E. Sander and Theodor Sams
  Lubricants 2019, 7(5), 39; doi: 10.3390/lubricants7050039
• “A Discussion on Present Theories of Rubber Friction, with Particular Reference to Different Possible Choices of Arbitrary Roughness Cutoff Parameters”
  by Andrea Genovese, Flavio Farroni, Antonio Papangelo and Michele Ciavarella
  Lubricants 2019, 7(10), 85; doi: 10.3390/lubricants7100085

Micromachines:

• “4D Printing of Multi-Hydrogels Using Direct Ink Writing in a Supporting Viscous Liquid”
  by Takuya Uchida and Hiroaki Onoe
  Micromachines 2019, 10(7), 433; doi: 10.3390/mi10070433
• “Enhanced Photocatalytic Performance and Mechanism of [email protected]₃ Composites with Au Nanoparticles Assembled on CaTiO₃ Nanocuboids”
  by Yuxiang Yan, Hua Yang, Zao Yi, Ruishan Li and Xiangxian Wang
  Micromachines 2019, 10(4), 254; doi: 10.3390/mi10040254
• “Three-Dimensionally Structured Flexible Fog Harvesting Surfaces Inspired by Namib Desert Beetles”
  by Jun Kyu Park and Seok Kim
  Micromachines 2019, 10(3), 201; doi: 10.3390/mi10030201

Processes:

• “Accelerating Biologics Manufacturing by Modeling or: Is Approval under the QbD and PAT Approaches Demanded by Authorities Acceptable without a Digital-Twin?”
  by Steffen Zobel-Roos, Axel Schmidt, Fabian Mestmäcker, Mourad Mouellef, Maximilian Huter, Lukas Uhlenbrock, Martin Kornecki, Lara Lohmann, Reinhard Ditz and Jochen Strube
  Processes 2019, 7(2), 94; doi: 10.3390/pr7020094
• “Multiscale Agent-Based and Hybrid Modeling of the Tumor Immune Microenvironment”
  by Kerri-Ann Norton, Chang Gong, Samira Jamalian and Aleksander S. Popel
  Processes 2019, 7(1), 37; doi: 10.3390/pr7010037
• “Dynamic Flowsheet Model Development and Sensitivity Analysis of a Continuous Pharmaceutical Tablet Manufacturing Process Using the Wet Granulation Route”
  by Nirupaplava Metta, Michael Ghijs, Elisabeth Schäfer, Ashish Kumar, Philippe Cappuyns, Ivo Van Assche, Ravendra Singh, Rohit Ramachandran, Thomas De Beer, Marianthi Ierapetritou and Ingmar Nopens
  Processes 2019, 7(4), 234; doi: 10.3390/pr7040234

Sensors:

• “A Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Healthcare Blockchain for IoT”
  by Ashutosh Dhar Dwivedi, Gautam Srivastava, Shalini Dhar and Rajani Singh
  Sensors 2019, 19(2), 326; doi: 10.3390/s19020326
• “The Progress of Glucose Monitoring—A Review of Invasive to Minimally and Non-Invasive Techniques, Devices and Sensors”
  by Wilbert Villena Gonzales, Ahmed Toaha Mobashsher and Amin Abbosh
  Sensors 2019, 19(4), 800; doi: 10.3390/s19040800
• “Contact-Based Methods for Measuring Respiratory Rate”
  by Carlo Massaroni, Andrea Nicolò, Daniela Lo Presti, Massimo Sacchetti, Sergio Silvestri and Emiliano Schena
  Sensors 2019, 19(4), 908; doi: 10.3390/s19040908

World Electric Vehicle Journal:

• “Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer Charging Infrastructure for Future EVs: From Experimental Track to Real Circulated Roads Demonstrations”
  by Stéphane Laporte, Gérard Coquery, Virginie Deniau, Alexandre De Bernardinis and Nicolas Hautière
  World Electr. Veh. J. 2019, 10(4), 84; doi: 10.3390/wevj10040084

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 “Engineering” 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.

Biosensors:

• Amay J. Bandodkar, North Carolina State University, USA.

ChemEngineering:

• Andrew S. Paluch, Miami University, USA.

Chemosensors:

• Mindy Levine, Ariel University, Israel.

Electronics:

• Amir H. Gandomi, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

Journal of Marine Science and Engineering:

• Tiago Fazeres-Ferradosa, University of Porto, Portugal.

Machines:

• Chen Lv, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore;
• Ignacio Gonzalez-Prieto, University of Malaga (UMA), Spain;
• Ning Sun, Nankai University, China.

Processes:

• Anton Rassõlkin, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia.

Sensors:

• Qammer H. Abbasi, Queen Mary University of London, UK;
• Chi Hwan Lee, Purdue University, USA.

We are proud to recognize the winners of MDPI’s 2021 Travel Awards in the “Engineering” category for their outstanding presentations and to present them with the prize.

MDPI journals regularly offer travel awards to encourage talented junior scientists to present their latest research at academic conferences in specific fields, which helps to increase their influence.

The winners mentioned below were carefully selected by the journal editors based on an outline of their research and the work to be presented at an academic conference.

We would like to warmly congratulate the winners of this year’s Travel Awards and wish them the greatest success with their future research endeavors. MDPI will continue to enhance communication among scientists.

Actuators:

• Matthew Wei Ming Tan, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Applied Sciences:

• Márcia de Sousa Oliveira, University of León, Spain;
• Caroline Sarah Taylor, University of Sheffield, UK;
• Raquel Viveiros, NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal;
• Alfonso González Briones, University of Salamanca, Spain;
• Alen Horvat, University Carlos III Madrid, Spain;
• Marie Švecová, University of Chemistry and Technology, Czech Republic;
• Venanzio Giannella, University of Salerno, Italy;
• Michaël Lobet, University of Namur, Belgium;
• Lam Thi Ngoc Tran, National Research Council, Italy;
• Hanfei Mei, University of South Carolina, USA.

Applied System Innovation:

• Mert Nakip, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland.

Biosensors:

• Mengdi Bao, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA;

Yichi Su, Stanford University, USA.

Buildings:

• Karthik Panchabikesan, Concordia University, Canada;
• Xiaolei Yuan, Tongji University, China.

Chemosensors:

• Verónica Montes García, Université de Strasbourg & CNRS, France.

Electronics:

• Peng Hang, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore;
• Alfonso González Briones, University of Salamanca, Spain.

Fluids:

• Alberto Zingaro, Politecnico di Milano, Italy;
• Sarah E. Morris, Auburn University, USA.

Infrastructures:

• Angelo Aloisio, University of L’Aquila, Italy;
• André Filipe Castanheira Alves Furtado, University of Porto, Portugal.

Journal of Low Power Electronics and Applications:

• Tommaso Zanotti, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy.

Journal of Manufacturing and Materials Processing:

• Nagalingam Arun Prasanth, [email protected] Corporate Lab, Singapore.

Machines:

• Muhammad Jamil, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA), China;
• Mariagrazia Tristano, Sheffield Hallam University, UK.

Processes:

• Michele Schlich, University of Cagliari, Italy;
• Álvaro Santana Mayor, University of La Laguna, Spain.

Sensors:

• Eleonora Macchia, Åbo Akademi University, Finland;
• Alfonso Gonzalez Briones, University of Salamanca, Spain;
• Saúl Vallejos Calzada, University of Burgos, Spain;
• Ana Novo, University of Vigo, Spain;
• Yalin Liu, Macau University of Science and Technology, China;
• Marilena Giglio, Politecnico of Bari, Italy;
• Yuzhi Shi, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

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 “Engineering” category for their outstanding contributions among 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 achievement. MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Actuators:

• Ryszard Dindorf, Kielce University of Technology, Poland.

Applied Sciences:

• Khaled Giasin, University of Portsmouth, UK;
• Jakub Krzysztof Grabski, University of Technology, Poland;
• Marcos Tostado-Véliz, University of Jaén, Spain;
• Luigi Pugliese, University of Calabria, Italy;
• Francesco Bennardo, University of Catanzaro, Italy;
• Heriberto Perez-Acebo, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain.

Biosensors:

• Amir Hatamie, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Buildings:

• Francesco Fiorito, Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy;
• Paul G. O’Brien, York University, Canada.

Chemosensors:

• Verónica Montes García, University of Strasbourg, France.

Machines:

• Piotr Gierlak, Rzeszow University of Technology, Poland;
• Sebastian A. Nugroho, University of Michigan, USA;
• Viorel Paleu, Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iasi, Romania.

Processes:

• Marcin Dębowski, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland;
• Bartłomiej Zieniuk, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Poland;
• Zbigniew Nadolny, Poznan University of Technology, Poland;
• Attila Egedy, University of Pannonia, Hungary;
• Seok-Ho Rhi, Chungbuk National University, Korea.

Sensors:

• Hojong Choi, Kumoh National Institute of Technology, Korea;
• Li Fu, Hangzhou Dianzi University, China;
• Leonardo De Mello Honorio, Federal University of Juiz De Fora Juiz De Fora, Brazil;
• Mario Versaci, Mediterranea University, Italy;
• Robertas Damasevicius, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania.

Conference: International Conference of Non-Ferrous Materials 2022
Date: 15–17 July 2022
Place: Nanning, China
Booth: #A5

Materials (ISSN: 1996-1944) and Metals (ISSN: 2075-4701) will be attending the International Conference of Non-Ferrous Materials 2022 as exhibitors from 15 to 17 July in Nanning, China.

The International Conference of Non-Ferrous Materials is an important academic conference in the field of non-ferrous materials, sponsored by the Nonferrous Metals Society of China and co-organized by universities, research institutes, and enterprises engaged in the non-ferrous metal industry. It is held once a year. The meeting objectives are for China to be engaged in non-ferrous metal materials science research, the development and industrialization of experts, scholars, professors, and scientific as well as technical workers, the management of the relevant government department leaders, entrepreneurs, and other relevant personnel to build a communication platform, share the latest research results of materials, achieve the purpose of promoting each other, improving together, and, additionally, to improve the status and role of new materials in China's national economy and social development.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Materials;
• Metals;
• Technologies;
• QuBS;
• JMMP;
• Alloys.

Please do not hesitate to reach out if you plan on attending this conference. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you might have.

For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://www.huiyi-123.com/article/278-179.html.

Conference: The 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2022)
Date: 23–27 October 2022
Place: Kyoto, Japan

Machines (ISSN: 2075-1702) will be attending IROS 2022 as an exhibitor. This meeting will take place from 23 to 27 October in Kyoto, Japan.

IROS is one of the largest and most impactful robotics research conferences worldwide. It provides an international forum for the international robotics research community to explore the frontiers of science and technology in intelligent robots and smart machines. The theme of IROS 2022 is “Embodied AI for a Symbiotic Society”. In addition to technical sessions and multimedia presentations, IROS conferences also hold panel discussions, forums, workshops, tutorials, exhibits, and technical tours to encourage fruitful discussions among conference attendees.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Machines;
• Robotics;
• Sensors;
• Computers;
• Applied Sciences;
• Systems;
• Technologies;
• Inventions;
• JMMP;
• Fractal Fract;
• ASI;
• Smart Cities;
• AI;
• Automation.

If you are planning to attend this conference, please do not hesitate to start an online conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference and virtual booth, please visit the following website: https://iros2022.org/.

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:

Journal	CiteScore	Quartile	Category
Non-coding RNA	10.1	Q1	Genetics
Journal of Functional Biomaterials	10.0	Q1	Biomedical Engineering
Marine Drugs	8.1	Q1	Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics (miscellaneous)
Batteries	7.9	Q1	Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Nutrients	7.9	Q1	Nutrition and Dietetics
Remote Sensing	7.4	Q1	General Earth and Planetary Sciences
Drones	7.2	Q1	Computer Science Applications
International Journal of Molecular Sciences	6.9	Q1	Inorganic Chemistry
Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks	6.9	Q1	Computer Networks and Communications
Cells	6.7	Q1	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Nanomaterials	6.6	Q1	General Chemical Engineering
Toxins	6.6	Q1	Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
Viruses	6.6	Q1	Infectious Diseases
Antioxidants	6.5	Q1	Food Science
Fibers	6.5	Q1	Civil and Structural Engineering
Resources	6.4	Q1	Nature and Landscape Conservation
Sensors	6.4	Q1	Instrumentation
Big Data and Cognitive Computing	6.1	Q1	Management Information Systems
Molecules	5.9	Q1	Chemistry (miscellaneous)
Polymers	5.7	Q1	Polymers and Plastics
Biosensors	5.6	Q1	Engineering (miscellaneous)
Catalysts	5.5	Q1	General Environmental Science
Smart Cities	5.5	Q1	Urban Studies
Future Internet	5.4	Q2	Computer Networks and Communications
Beverages	5.3	Q1	Food Science
Fermentation	5.3	Q1	Plant Science
Environments	5.2	Q1	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Inventions	5.2	Q1	General Engineering
Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity	5.1	Q1	Development
Colloids and Interfaces	5.0	Q1	Chemistry (miscellaneous)
Energies	5.0	Q1	Control and Optimization
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information	5.0	Q1	Geography, Planning and Development
Sustainability	5.0	Q1	Geography, Planning and Development
Fire	4.9	Q1	Forestry
Robotics	4.9	Q1	Control and Optimization
Soil Systems	4.9	Q1	Soil Science
Geosciences	4.8	Q1	General Earth and Planetary Sciences
Journal of Manufacturing and Materials Processing	4.8	Q1	Mechanical Engineering
Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease	4.8	Q1	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Water	4.8	Q1	Geography, Planning and Development
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health	4.5	Q1	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Sports	4.5	Q1	Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation
Entropy	4.4	Q1	Mathematical Physics
Journal of Clinical Medicine	4.4	Q1	General Medicine
Symmetry	4.3	Q1	General Mathematics
Cosmetics	4.2	Q1	Surgery
Foods	4.1	Q1	Health Professions (miscellaneous)
Journal of Fungi	4.1	Q1	Plant Science
ChemEngineering	4.0	Q1	General Engineering
Forests	4.0	Q1	Forestry
Journal of Intelligence	4.0	Q1	Education
Antibiotics	3.9	Q1	General Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics
Cryptography	3.9	Q1	Applied Mathematics
Behavioral Sciences	3.8	Q1	Development
Buildings	3.8	Q1	Architecture
Metals	3.8	Q1	Metals and Alloys
Publications	3.5	Q1	Communication
Social Sciences	3.4	Q1	General Social Sciences
Mathematics	2.9	Q1	General Mathematics
Fractal and Fractional	2.8	Q1	Analysis
Animals	2.7	Q1	General Veterinary
Axioms	2.6	Q1	Algebra and Number Theory
Heritage	1.8	Q1	Conservation
Religions	1.0	Q1	Religious Studies
Philosophies	0.9	Q1	Philosophy

Source: 2021 CiteScores™ (Elsevier)

Conference: The 30th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED 2022)

Date: 28 June–1 July 2022

Venue: Divani Apollon Palace & Thalasso, Athens, Greece

Machines (ISSN: 2075-1702) will be attending the 30th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED 2022) as an exhibitor and will be sponsoring a Best Paper Award. This meeting will take place from 28 June to 1 July 2022, at the Divani Apollon Palace & Thalasso seaside resort in Vougliameni, Greece.

MED 2022 is co-sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS), the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), and the ICUAS Association, Inc.

The theme of MED 2022 centers on control and automation challenges and opportunities in the 21^st century and focuses on system design for autonomy and resilience in high-confidence cyber physical systems. The international conference committee is soliciting technical papers as well as inviting sessions, workshops, and tutorial proposals.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Machines;
• Systems;
• Robotics;
• Automation;
• Smart Cities;
• Applied sciences;
• Applied System Innovation (ASI);
• AI;
• Standards;
• Technologies;
• Big Data and Cognitive Computing (BDCC);
• Modelling.

If you are planning to attend this conference, please do not hesitate to start an online conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have. For more information about the conference and virtual booth, please visit the following website: https://www.med-control.org/med2022/.

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative, the Technologies (ISSN: 2227-7080) Special Issue Mentor Program.

This program will provide an opportunity for early career scientists to enhance their editing, networking, and organizational skills and to work closely with our journal to gain more editorial experience. Early career scientists with novel ideas for new Technologies Special Issues will act as Guest Editors under the mentorship of an experienced scientist; this mentor could be a member of the Editorial Board of Technologies, from other well-established research institutes or laboratories, etc.

Early career scientist’s responsibilities:

• Providing a CV, including a list of publications;
• Proposing a Special Issue title and a short introduction;
• Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
• Writing an editorial for the online Special Issue;
• Reviewing and making decisions for submissions under the mentorship of our Editorial Board Members.

Mentor’s responsibilities:

• Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
• Co-editing the Special Issue with younger scholars and performing quality control of the publications in the Special Issue;
• Providing suggestions to younger scholars if they have any doubts or concerns regarding submissions;
• Organizing video calls with young scholars and the office regularly to discuss problems and improvement suggestions for the Special Issue.

Certificates and awards:

After the Special Issue closes, the Editorial Office will provide official certificates for all the mentors.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Technologies Editorial Office ([email protected]), and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail.

In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, Technologies will continue to welcome all Special Issue proposals focusing on hot research topics.

Technologies Editorial Office

Technologies (ISSN: 2227-7080) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal singularly focusing on emerging scientific and technological trends and is published bimonthly online by MDPI. The Journal Citation Indicator (JCI) of Technologies is 0.73, which ranks 46/170 (Q2) in the category “Engineering and Multidisciplinary”, within the Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2021); Technologies continues to be indexed within ESCI (Web of Science), Inspec, INSPIRE, and many other databases.

In order to support the scientific community and contribute to the faster distribution of important scientific research, Technologies has been working to facilitate academic conference collaborations.

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

Technologies (ISSN: 2227-7080) is an international scientific journal focusing on emerging scientific and technological trends. The scope of Technologies includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Quantum technologies (quantum information processing, quantum communication, quantum metrology and quantum lithography, etc.);
• Innovations in materials processing (casting, forming and machining, etc.), development (nanomaterials, porous materials, etc.), and applications (transportation sector, electronics, etc.);
• Construction technologies (construction materials technologies, structure design, maintenance and rehabilitation, etc.);
• Environmental technologies (technologies related to environmental monitoring, modeling and conservation, etc.);
• Biotechnologies (DNA/protein engineering, bioinformatics, imaging, analytical biotechnologies, biosafety or biosecurity, etc.);
• Medical technologies (technologies related to diagnosing, monitoring and treating, etc.);
• Computer and information technologies (hardware, complex processing techniques, user interface technologies, networking technologies, software, web-based technologies, developing and maintaining databases, the Internet and web development, computer-aided design (CAD), engineering graphics and computer-aided engineering (CAE), data mining, etc.).

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.

Abate, Antonio Abatzoglou, John T. Abbaszadeh, Mostafa Acharya, U. Rajendra Acharya, Viral V. Agarwal, Ravi P. Ahn, Myung-Ju Airoldi, Laura Ali, Imran Allakhverdiev, Suleyman I. Aluko, Rotimi E. Anasori, Babak Andersson, Dan I. Andes, David Anker, Stefan D. Apergis, Nicholas Ariga, Katsuhiko Arqub, Omar Abu Aschner, Michael Assaraf, Yehuda G. Astruc, Didier Atala, Anthony Atanasov, Atanas G. Atangana, Abdon Bahram, Mohammad Bakris, George L. Balandin, Alexander A. Baleanu, Dumitru Balsamo, Gianpaolo Bando, Yoshio Banks, William A. Bansal-Travers, Maansi Barba, Francisco J. Barros, Lillian Basit, Abdul W. Baskonus, Haci Mehmet Bassetti, Matteo Battino, Maurizio Bell, Jordana T. Bellomo, Nicola Benediktsson, Jon Atli Benelli, Giovanni Benjakul, Soottawat Bhatnagar, Amit Biddle, Stuart J. H. Biondi, Antonio Biondi-Zoccai, Giuseppe Bjarnsholt, Thomas Blaabjerg, Frede Blaschke, Thomas Blay, Jean-Yves Blumwald, Eduardo Blunt, John W. Boffetta, Paolo Bogers, Marcel Bonomo, Robert A. Bowman, David M.J.S. Boyer, Cyrille Brestic, Marian Brevik, Eric C. Buhalis, Dimitrios Burdick, Jason A. Byrd, John C. Cabeza, Luisa F. Cai, Xingjuan Cai, Jianchao Calhoun, Vince D. Calin, George Cao, Jinde Cao, Guozhong Carvalho, Andre F. Castellanos-Gomez, Andres Cerqueira, Miguel Ângelo Parente Ribeiro Chang, Jo-Shu Chang, Chih-Hao Chastin, Sebastien Chau, Kwok-wing Chemat, Farid Chen, Xiaobo Chen, YangQuan Chen, Jianmin Chen, Chaoji Chen, Min Chen, Qi Chen, Jun Chen, Xi Chen, Peng Chen, Yulin Chen, Bo Chen, Chen Chen, Zhi-Gang Chen, Wei-Hsin Chen, Gang Chen, Yongsheng Chen, Xiang Chen, Yimin Chen, Runsheng Chen, Lidong Chen, Shaowei Chen, Qian Chen, Yu Chen, Shuangming Chiclana, Francisco Cho, Sun Young Choi, Wonyong Chowdhary, Anuradha Choyke, Peter L. Cichocki, Andrzej Corella, Dolores Corma, Avelino Cortes, Javier Cortes, Jorge Costanza, Robert Crommie, Michael F. Cui, Yi Cui, Haiying Cui, Qinghua Cummings, Kenneth Michael Dai, Shifeng Dai, Sheng Daiber, Andreas Davis, Steven J. Dawson, Ted M. de la Fuente-Nunez, Cesar Decker, Eric Andrew Dekel, Avishai Demaria, Marco Deng, Yong Deng, Xiangzheng DePinho, Ronald A. Desneux, Nicolas Dimopoulos, Meletios-Athanasios Ding, Aijun Dionysiou, Dionysios D. Dokmeci, Mehmet Remzi Dolgui, Alexandre Dong, Fan Dou, Shi Xue Dou, Letian Du, Qian Du, Bo Dube, Shanta Rishi Dufresne, Alain Dummer, Reinhard Dupont, Didier Edwards, David Elaissari, Abdelhamid Elhoseny, Mohamed Ellahi, Rahmat Ellis, Erle C. ElMasry, Gamal Esteller, Manel Estévez, Mario Fabbro, Doriano Facchetti, Antonio Fan, Zhanxi Fang, Chuanglin Fasano, Alessio Fečkan, Michal Felser, Claudia Feng, Liangzhu Fensholt, Rasmus Ferdinandy, Péter Fernandez-Lafuente, Roberto Ferreira, Isabel C. F. R. Filippi, Massimo Fisher, Helen Fortino, Giancarlo Fosso Wamba, Samuel Franceschi, Claudio Fujita, Hamido Fujita, Masayuki Gai, Francesco Gaisford, Simon Galanakis, Charis M. Galluzzi, Lorenzo Galvano, Fabio Gan, Ren-You Gan, Lihua Gandomi, Amir H. Gao, Bin Gao, Feng Gao, Minrui Gao, Huijun Gao, Wei Gao, Huile Garbe, Claus Garcia, Hermenegildo Gasbarrini, Antonio Gasco, Laura Gautret, Philippe Geng, Yong Gerdts, Gunnar Geschwind, Daniel H. Ghadimi, Noradin Ghaffari, Roozbeh Ghamisi, Pedram Giampieri, Francesca Glick, Bernard R. Gnant, Michael Goel, Ajay Gogotsi, Yury Goldewijk, Kees Klein Gong, Jinlong Gong, Yongji Govindan, Kannan Granato, Daniel Grancini, Giulia Green, Douglas R. Grosso, Giuseppe Gu, Ke Guan, Cao Guastella, Adam J. Guerrero, Josep M. Gui, Guan Guizani, Mohsen Guo, Zaiping Gupta, Rangan Gutzmer, Ralf Haase, Dagmar Habibi-Yangjeh, Aziz Hagemann, Stefan Hagger, Martin Hamblin, Michael R. Hammoudeh, Shawkat Han, Heesup Hanes, Justin Harrison, Roy M. Hartung, Hans-Peter Hasanuzzaman, Mirza He, Jr-Hau He, Hongwen He, Jiaqing He, Debiao Henseler, Jörg Herrera, Francisco Herrera-Viedma, Enrique Hetz, Claudio Ho Kim, Jung Holmes, Elaine Hossain, Ekram Hsueh, Po-Ren Hu, Xiaosong Hu, Wenbin Huang, Jianping Huang, Hongwei Huang, Yu Huang, Jianying Huang, Peng Huang, Baibiao Huang, Shaoming Hubacek, Klaus

Iqbal, Hafiz M. N. Ismail, Ahmad Fauzi Izzo, Angelo A. Jacobson, Kenneth A. Jain, Atul Jankovic, Joseph Jelezko, Fedor Ji, Xiaobo Ji, Guangbin Jiang, Hai-Long Jiang, Lei Jiang, Junjun Jiang, Qing Jiang, Shibo Jin, Shi Jones, Peter A. Kalantar-zadeh, Kourosh Kaner, Richard B. Kannan, Kurunthachalam Kappos, Ludwig Karagiannidis, George K. Karimi, Hamid Reza Karimi-Maleh, Hassan Karp, Peter D. Kataoka, Kazunori Katritch, Vsevolod Kawi, Sibudjing Keesstra, Saskia Kepp, Oliver Keyzers, Robert A. Khademhosseini, Ali Khan, Nafees A. Kiessling, Fabian Kim, Ki-Hyun Kim, Haegyeom Kim, Jeonghun Kim, Jong Seung Kirkwood, John M. Kisi, Ozgur Kivshar, Yuri Klenk, Hans-Peter Ko, Wen-Chien Konopleva, Marina Y. Kontoyiannis, Dimitrios P. Koonin, Eugene V. Kou, Gang Krausmann, Fridolin Krebs, Frederik C. Kroemer, Guido Kuca, Kamil Kudo, Masatoshi Kuhn, Jens H. Kumar, Devendra Kumar, Alan Prem Kumar, Sudhir Kumar Sangaiah, Arun Kurths, Juergen Kuznetsov, Nikolay V. Kuzyakov, Yakov Kwan, Mei-Po Kyrpides, Nikos C. La Vecchia, Carlo Lai, Yuekun Lam, James Lammers, Twan Lamuela-Raventos, Rosa M. Lancellotti, Patrizio Landi, Francesco Laurent, Sophie Lavie, Carl J. Laxminarayan, Ramanan Lee, Sang Soo Lee, Jin-Wook Lee, Pooi See Lehmann, Johannes Lei, Yaguo Lei, Ting Leng, Lijian Leung, Dennis Y. C. Leung, Victor C. M. Levine, Ross Li, Wei Li, Jie Li, Jinghong Li, Jun Li, Heng Li, Gang Li, Yat Li, Peng Li, Hailong Li, Changpin Li, Yan Li, Yurui Li, Xiaodi Li, Hong Li, Shutao Li, Hongyi Li, Zhijun Li, Peiyue Lin, Yuehe Lin, Hongjun Lin, Lin Lip, Gregory Y. H. Liu, Jian Liu, Meng Liu, Hong Liu, Tao Liu, Lei Liu, Jianxing Liu, Wei Liu, Gang Liu, Yang Liu, Peide Lockhart, Shawn R. Long, Hualou Löscher, Wolfgang Lu, Jun Lu, Jianquan Lu, Nanshu Lucey, Brian Lund, Henrik Luo, Jun Luo, Yi Luo, Jingshan Luo, Yangchao Lupton, Deborah Luque, Rafael Lv, Wei Lvov, Yuri M. Lyons, Timothy W. Ma, Tianyi Ma, Jun Ma, Jiayi Ma, Wen-Xiu Ma, Yanming Maggioni, Aldo Pietro Mahmood, Nasir Mahmoudi, Morteza Mai, Liqiang Mallavarapu, Megharaj Mandala, Mario Mardani, Abbas Marengo, Jose Maria Rossolini, Gian Martinoia, Enrico Mathiesen, Brian Vad Mathivanan, Suresh Mattick, John S. Matyjaszewski, Krzysztof McCabe, Matthew E. McCauley, Darren McClements, David Julian Melcher, Karsten Melenhorst, Jan Joseph Melero, Ignacio Mezzetti, Bruno Mirjalili, Seyedali Mishchenko, Artem Mittler, Ron Moreau, Philippe Motohashi, Hozumi Mousavi Khaneghah, Amin Mu, Shichun Mueller, Lukas A. Mueller-Roeber, Bernd Muenzel, Thomas Muhammad, Khan Munger, J. William Nauen, Ralf Naushad, Mu. Negri, Eva Nemeroff, Charles B. Newman, David J. Niaura, Raymond S. Nie, Feiping Nieto, Juan J. Novara, Agata Nunkoo, Robin Ogino, Shuji Olabi, Abdul-Ghani Ong, Hwai Chyuan O'Regan, Donal Orsini, Nicola Ouyang, Minggao Ozcan, Aydogan Pacher, Pal Pan, Xiaoqing Pan, Likun Pan, Quan-Ke Pang, Huan Pavela, Roman Pedrycz, Witold Pei, Yanzhong Peng, Shushi Peng, Qing Peng, Mugen Perc, Matjaz Perez-Alvarez, Jose Angel Perlin, David S. Piquero, Alex R. Polasky, Stephen Pommier, Yves Poor, H. Vincent Postolache, Mihai Potenza, Marc N. Poulter, Benjamin Preat, Veronique Prinsep, Michele R. Pu, Hong-Bin Putnik, Predrag Qiu, Jieshan Qu, Xiaogang Quiles, José L. Rabczuk, Timon Ramakrishna, Seeram Ramkissoon, Haywantee Ran, Jingrun Recio, Isidra Reiter, Russel J. Remuzzi, Giuseppe Ren, Jinsong Ren, Jun Riahi, Keywan Richardson, Paul G. Rignot, Eric Rimm, David Rinn, John L. Robert, Caroline Rodriguez, Rosa M. Rojo, Teofilo Ros, Emilio Rosen, Marc A. Roubaud, David Russo, Alessandro Russo, Gian Luigi

Saad, Fred Saad, Walid Sadorsky, Perry Sander, Chris Santamouris, Mattheos Santoro, Gabriele Saraiva, Jorge A. Sarchiapone, Marco Scalbert, Augustin Schloter, Michael Schneider, Gisbert Schubert, Ulrich S. Schulz, Rainer Schwab, Matthias Schweizer, Frank Scolyer, Richard A. Scorrano, Luca Scott, David Scott, Stuart A. Scott, Daniel Serra-Majem, Lluis Sethi, Gautam Shabala, Sergey Shaheen, Sabry M. Shao, Zongping Sharma, Gaurav Shen, Guozhen Shen, Hao Sheremet, Mikhail A. Shi, Peng Shi, Yumeng Shoenfeld, Yehuda Siano, Pierluigi Sillanpaa, Mika Simões, Manuel Simpson, Richard J. Singh, Bhupinder Pal Singh, Vijay P. Smagghe, Guy Song, Yu Song, Houbing Sood, Anil K. Srivastava, Hari M. Stadler, Marc Stadler, Peter F. Stanley, H. Eugene Stoumpos, Constantinos C. Strano, Michael S. Stunnenberg, Hendrik G. Su, [email protected] Su, Chun-Yi Subramanian, S. V. Sun, Zhipei Sun, Fengchun Sun, Hongqi Sunderland, Elsie M. Suzuki, Nobuhiro Svenning, Jens-Christian Szabo, Csaba Szallasi, Arpad Szolnoki, Attila Tacke, Frank Tan, Weihong Tan, Chaoliang Tang, Hua Tang, Chuyang Tang, Chuan-He Tanzi, Rudolph E. Teichmann, Sarah Telenti, Amalio Thakur, Vijay Kumar Thiele, Holger Tian, Jie Tohge, Takayuki Tran, Lam-Son Phan Truhlar, Donald G. Tsao, Rong Tsuda, Kenichi Tukker, Arnold Tung, Chen-Ho Turskis, Zenonas Urquhart, Andrew Valko, Marian Van Breusegem, Frank Van de Wiele, Tom van der Werf, Guido van Wesemael, Bas Vangronsveld, Jaco Varma, Rajender S. Varsani, Arvind Varshney, Rajeev K. Vasilakis, Nikos Vasilakos, Athanasios V. Vasquez, Juan C. Vatanen, Tommi Ventura, Marco Vermote, Eric Veronese, Nicola Verpoorte, Robert Vethaak, A. Dick Vieta, Eduard Vincent, Jean-Louis Wagner, Wolfgang Walton, Vaughn M. Wan, Jiafu Wan, Shaohua Wang, Qi Wang, Joseph Wang, Meng Wang, Tao Wang, Yuan Wang, Xin Wang, Chao Wang, Yong Wang, Jun Wang, Erkang Wang, Sibo Wang, Jian Wang, Ning Wang, John Wang, Qin Wang, Shaojian Wang, Guoxiu Wang, Huanting Wang, Chunsheng Wang, Gongming Wang, Zhong Lin Wang, Lianzhou Wang, Shaobin Wang, Yang Wang, Zifa Wei, Zhixiang Wei, Leyi Weissleder, Ralph Wen, Guanghui Wiens, John J. Wigneron, Jean-Pierre Willerslev, Eske Wishart, David S. Witlox, Frank Wu, Jun Wu, Tom Wu, Hao Bin Wu, Hui Wu, Haijun Wu, Zhongbiao Wu, Zhong-Shuai Wu, Zheng-Guang Xia, Meimei Xia, Xinhui Xiang, Quanjun Xiao, Jianbo Xiao, Jie Xie, Jian-Hua Xin, Sen Xing, Baoshan Xiong, Rui Xu, Bin Xu, Li Da Xu, Yi-Jun Xu, Hui Xu, Zeshui Yamauchi, Yusuke Yan, Huaicheng Yan, Kai Yang, Chenguang Yang, Xiao-Jun Yang, Bing Yang, Yun-Gui Yang, Jie Yang, Jian Yang, Xinsong Yang, Shihe Yang, Yi Yang, Yang Yao, Jen-Chih Yao, Yonggang Yazyev, Oleg Yin, Yulong Yin, Zongyou Yin, Shen Yin, Ya-xia Yin, Shou-Wei Ying, Guang-Guo Young, Allan H. Yu, Shu-Hong Yu, Jun Yu, Guihua Yu, Wenwu Yu, Guocan Yu, Minghao Zarco-Tejada, Pablo J. Zavadskas, Edmundas Kazimieras Zeadally, Sherali Zhai, Tianyou Zhang, Wei Zhang, Binlin Zhang, Shujun Zhang, Guoping Zhang, Zengqiang Zhang, Yu Shrike Zhang, Qichun Zhang, Xian-Ming Zhang, Guowen Zhang, Min Zhang, Yue-Jun Zhang, Shaoqing Zhang, Fan Zhang, Weili Zhang, Xiaodong Zhang, Zhien Zhang, Tierui Zhang, Hongjie Zhang, Dengsong Zhang, Liangpei Zhang, Dan Zhang, Yu-Dong Zhang, Fusuo Zhao, Yi Zhao, Guochun Zhao, Li-Dong Zheng, Hao Zheng, Gengfeng Zhong, Cheng Zhou, Weiqi Zhou, Qi Zhou, Jizhong Zhu, Hongwei Zhu, Chengzhou Zhu, Junfa Zhu, Zhe Zhu, Quanxin Zhuang, Xiaodong Zhuang, Xiaoying Zou, Quan

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.

MDPI will be attending the 2021 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) from 7 to 11 December 2021, in Madrid, Spain.

With the theme “Connecting Cultures around the Globe”, this flagship conference of the IEEE Communications Society will feature a comprehensive, high-quality technical program, including 12 symposia, selected areas in communications tracking, and a variety of tutorials and workshops. IEEE GLOBECOM 2021 will also introduce an attractive industry program aimed at practitioners, with keynotes and panels from prominent research, industry and government leaders, business and industry panels, and vendor exhibits.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Sensors;
• Future Internet;
• Technologies;
• Drones;
• ASI.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth, B5. Our delegate looks forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://globecom2021.ieee-globecom.org/.

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
[email protected]

This serves to announce to our valued authors based in Japan that value-added tax, or consumption tax will now be imposed on article processing fees and other service fees for all papers submitted, or resubmitted (assigned new paper IDs), effective from 15 August 2021. The change is in accordance with the Japanese "Act for Partial Revision of the Income Tax Act and Other Acts" (Act No. 9 of 2015), which includes a revision of consumption taxation on cross-border supplies of services such as digital content distribution.

For additional information from the National Tax Agency please see here ("Cross-border supplies of electronic services").

Contact: Setsuko Nishihara, MDPI Tokyo

We are pleased to announce a Special Issue in honor of Professor Manoj Gupta for his 60th birthday.

Prof. Dr. Manoj Gupta received his Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Irvine, USA, in 1992 and is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the National University of Singapore. In August 2017, he was highlighted among the top 1% of scientists in the world by the Universal Scientific Education and Research Network and the top 2.5% by ResearchGate and top 1% in the Stanford list of researchers. To his credit are: (i) the disintegrated melt deposition technique and (ii) the hybrid microwave sintering technique, an energy-efficient solid-state processing method to synthesize alloys/micro/nanocomposites. He has published over 600 peer-reviewed journal papers and owns two US patents. His current h‐index is 72, RG index 48, and his citation number is greater than 19,000. He has also co-authored eight books, published by John Wiley, Springer, and MRF-USA. He is Editor-in-Chief of twelve international peer-reviewed journals. A multiple-award winner, he actively collaborates with researchers in Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China, the USA, and India.

In honor and recognition of Prof. Dr. Gupta’s outstanding career contributions to the field of light metals, metal matrix composites, and innovations in materials processing, we would like to invite you to submit an article for the Special Issue to be published in Technologies. Research articles or review papers relating to metal-based materials, metal matrix composites, and innovation in materials processing are welcome for publication in this Special Issue. The submission deadline is 31 December 2021. You are welcome to submit your work at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/technologies/special_issues/Issue_60th.

Date: 7–8 October 2021
Conference name: The 9th International Conference on Smart Systems Engineering 2021 (SMASYS2021)
Place: Yamagata University, Yonezawa, Japan
Conference website: https://smasys.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/2021/

In recent years, new smart materials, technologies, and devices have been developed and are spreading out into many facets of our everyday life and society. To fully achieve their potential, these must be organically linked together as “smart systems” to help support the well-being of society in the future. SmaSys2021 has been organized to provide a forum for discussing opportunities for collaboration across a wide range of fields and technologies related to emerging smart systems. This conference will focus on emerging technologies and their challenges in the fields of smart materials, devices, systems, and technologies. We believe that smart systems engineering will become an important scientific and engineering field and that SmaSys will have a key role in developing this field.

MDPI Books recently released Book Builder, a new online tool to conveniently arrange, design and produce an eBook from any content published in MDPI journals. Book Builder offers two functions: on the one hand (1) Selections, available to every registered user of MDPI; on the other hand (2) Special Issue Reprints, which can be used exclusively by Guest Editors of Special Issues.

Selections

In just a matter of a few clicks, all users are now able to assemble books from MDPI articles and receive instantaneous feedback in the form of a fully produced and compiled book (PDF), which can be downloaded or ordered as print copy. Selections can include any paper published with MDPI, picking and combining content from different journals and special issues.

This way, the user may for example choose to compile an ebook focusing around a particular topic, or assemble articles from a group of others.

 

We invite you to make yourself familiar with the new tool! The Book Builder can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/books/book_builder.

Special Issue Reprints

The Book Builder allows Guest Editors of MDPI journals to create a reprint from a successfully completed Special Issue or Topical Collection in book format. If you are a Guest Editor for an MDPI journal, you can use the new tool  to create an PDF document which includes all articles published in the Special Issue as well as a book cover and table of contents.

For Special Issues containing a minimum of 5 articles, the Guest Editor can request its publication on the MDPI Book platform. Published reprints are assigned an ISBN and DOI.

In addition to the PDF copy of the Reprint Book, as a token of our gratitude, MDPI offers every Guest Editor one (1) complimentary print copy (via print-on-demand). All contributors benefit from a discount on orders of any additional print copies, to share with colleagues or libraries or others.

 

Why choose MDPI Books?

In line with our organization's values, MDPI Books publishes all content in open access, promoting the exchange of ideas and knowledge in a globalized world. MDPI Books encompasses all the benefits of open access—high availability and visibility, as well as wide and rapid dissemination. MDPI Books are distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License, meaning as an author you retain the copyright for your work. In addition, with MDPI Books you can complement the digital version of your work with a high-quality printed counterpart.

If you are interested in editing a book volume or series, or have a monograph manuscript to be considered for publication, please submit your proposal online and look at our Information for Authors.

Contact: Laura Wagner, MDPI Books Manager (email)

ICET is the premier conference held yearly in Chengdu, China. Its primary aim is to offer senior and young scientists, from academic communities, electronic industries and from all over the world, the opportunity to exchange research ideas and share new knowledge, development and experiences on topics related to their experimental and theoretical work in the very widespread field of electronics and micro/nanoelectronics technology and electronic packaging in a convenient and multicultural atmosphere.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Electronics;
• Energies;
• International Journal of Turbomachinery, Propulsion and Power;
• Technologies.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have.

For more information about the conference, please visit: http://icet.net/.

In June of this year, MDPI will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its foundation. To mark this significant milestone, we have created a 25th Anniversary page on our website that evokes the development of our company over the past quarter-century.

MDPI has been a pioneer of Open Access publishing ever since the concept was first created.

In a wide-ranging interview, our CEO Delia Mihaila reflects on the company’s 25th anniversary and its contribution to the world of scientific publishing.

Delia considers how MDPI has evolved since starting life in 1996 as a visionary ‘project’ run out of an apartment in Basel, Switzerland, by Dr. Shu-Kun Lin. A chemist who was passionate about the long-term preservation of rare chemical sample, Dr. Lin was determined to help scholars publish their findings as quickly as possible and make their research results available to as wide a readership as possible worldwide. That determination remains unchanged 25 years later.

Today, MDPI is an international organization with over 4,000 employees based on three continents and in ten countries, and ranks among the world's top four academic publishers.

MDPI's mission is to accelerate access to new scientific research, delivering insight faster for researchers worldwide. Read more here about the company's remarkable success story and what the Open Access publishing model can offer the global scientific community.

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)

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.

Adams, Dave Agarwal, Ravi P. Ahn, Choon Ki Ahn, Myung-Ju Albrecht, Randy A. Andersson, Dan I. Anker, Stefan D. Apergis, Nicholas Ariga, Katsuhiko Artaxo, Paulo Balsamo, Gianpaolo Barba, Francisco J. Benediktsson, Jon Atli Benelli, Giovanni Bhatnagar, Amit Bialystok, Ellen Blaabjerg, Frede Blay, Jean-Yves Bogers, Marcel Bolton, Declan J. Boyer, Cyrille Brocca, Luca Bruix, Jordi Buhalis, Dimitrios Burdick, Jason A. Byrd, John C. Cabeza, Luisa F. Cabrerizo-Lorite, Francisco Javier Cai, Jianchao Calhoun, Vince D. Cantu, Robert C. Cerqueira, Miguel Chang, Jo-Shu Chau, Kwok-wing Chemat, Farid Chen, Jianmin Chen, Jun Chen, Min Chen, Shaowei Chen, Wei Chen, Wei-Hsin Chen, Xiaofeng Chen, Yangkang Chen, Zhi-Gang Chiclana, Francisco Corella, Dolores Cortes, Javier Cortes, Jorge Cummings, Kenneth Michael Dai, Shifeng Decker, Eric A. DePinho, Ronald A. Dimopoulos, Meletios-Athanasios Dincer, Ibrahim Du, Yihong Dupont, Didier Edwards, David Ellahi, Rahmat Ellis, Erle C. ElMasry, Gamal Esteller, Manel Estruch, Ramón Fang, Chuanglin Fasano, Alessio Fernandez-Lafuente, Roberto Ferreira, Isabel Fortino, Giancarlo Galluzzi, Lorenzo Galvano, Fabio Gandomi, Amir H. Gandomi, Amir H. Gao, Bin Gao, Feng Gao, Wei Garbe, Claus García, Hermenegildo Geschwind, Daniel H. Giampieri, Francesca Giralt, Sergio A. Glanz, Karen Goldewijk, Kees Klein Gössling, Stefan Govindan, Kannan Granato, Daniel Grosso, Giuseppe Grosso, Giuseppe Guerrero, Josep M. Haase, Dagmar Hagger, Martin S. Hamblin, Michael R. Han, Heesup Jankovic, Joseph Janotti, Anderson

Jiang, Hai-Long Kalaji, Hazem M. Kalantar-Zadeh, Kourosh Kaner, Richard B. Karimi, Hamid Reza Kataoka, Kazunori Keesstra, Saskia Kepp, Oliver Kerminen, Veli-Matti Keyzers, Robert A. Khademhosseini, Ali Khan, Nafees A. Kim, Ki-Hyun Klemeš, Jiří Jaromír Klenk, Hans-Peter Konopleva, Marina Y. Krammer, Florian Krebs, Frederik C. Kroemer, Guido Kudo, Masatoshi Kurths, Juergen Kurzrock, Razelle Kuznetsov, Nikolay V. Kyrpides, Nikos C. La Vecchia, Carlo Lai, Yuekun Lam, James Lancellotti, Patrizio Lee, Sangmoon Leung, Victor C. M. Li, Jinghong Li, Yurui Lindahl, José M. Merigó Lip, Gregory Y. H. Loh, Xian Jun Long, Hualou Lund, Henrik Luo, Jingshan Luque, Rafael Lyons, Timothy W. Ma, Jun Ma, Wen-Xiu Ma, Yanming Maeda, Keisuke Makarova, Kira Mantovani, Alberto Martín-Belloso, Olga Martinoia, Enrico Marzband, Mousa Masclaux-Daubresse, Celine Masson, Patrick Mateos, María Victoria Mathiesen, Brian Vad Matyjaszewski, Krzysztof McArthur, Grant A. McCauley, Darren Medlock, Jolyon M. Melero, Ignacio Mezzetti, Bruno Miroshnichenko, Andrey E. Moran, Daniel Mueller, Lukas A. Mueller-Roeber, Bernd Naushad, Mu Nemeroff, Charles B. Nieto, Juan J. O'Donnell, Colm Ogino, Shuji Olabi, Abdul-Ghani O'Regan, Donal Orsini, Nicola Oswald, Isabelle P. Ozcan, Aydogan Pahl-Wostl, Claudia Pang, Huan Payne, James E. Peng, Shushi Perc, Matjaz Perez-Alvarez, Jose Angel Piquero, Alex R. Ploss, Alexander Postolache, Mihai Pradhan, Biswajeet Prinsep, Michele R. Qian, Dong Qu, Xiaogang Reiter, Russel J. Riahi, Keywan Richter, Andreas Rignot, Eric Robert, Caroline Ros, Emilio Rosell, Rafael

Rosen, Marc A. Rossolini, Gian Maria Saad, Fred Saad, Walid Sadorsky, Perry Sakthivel, Rathinasamy Schwab, Matthias Scolyer, Richard A. Serra-Majem, Lluis Sethi, Gautam Seto, Karen C. Settele, Josef Seymour, John F. Shi, Peng Siano, Pierluigi Sillanpää, Mika Simal-Gandara, Jesus Smagghe, Guy Srivastava, Hari M. Stadler, Peter F. Sun, Fengchun Sunderland, Elsie M. Suzuki, Nobuhiro Svenning, Jens-Christian Tan, Weihong Teixeira, José António Thakur, Vijay Kumar Tong, Shilu Tornabene, Francesco Tsao, Rong Tukker, Arnold Turskis, Zenonas Uversky, Vladimir N. van Wesemael, Bas Van Zwieten, Lukas Vangronsveld, Jaco Varma, Rajender S. Varshney, Rajeev K. Vasquez, Juan C. Velicogna, Isabella Vieta, Eduard Wade, Timothy J. Wagner, Wolfgang Wamba, Samuel Fosso Wang, Chunsheng Wang, Guoxiu Wang, Joseph Wang, Qi Wang, Tao Wang, Yuan Wiens, John J. Wu, Hao Bin Wu, Hui Wu, Tom Wu, Zhongbiao Xia, Xinhui Xiao, Wenjiao Xin, Sen Xiong, Rui Xu, Bin Xu, Zeshui Yan, Huaicheng Yang, Bing Yang, Hongxing Yang, Jie Yang, Xiao-Jun Yin, Shen Ying, Guang-Guo Young, Allan H. Yu, Guihua Zarco-Tejada, Pablo J. Zavadskas, EdmundasKazimieras Zeadally, Sherali Zhang, Fan Zhang, Liangpei Zhang, Qichun Zhang, Xian-Ming Zhang, Yue-Jun Zhao, Guochun Zhao, Li-Dong Zhu, Zhe Zhuang, Xiaodong Zou, Quan

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.

MDPI will be attending 2020 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit, to be held in virtual form from 27 November to 4 December 2020.

This conference is the key forum to present research to an interdisciplinary and international audience. It represents a window to 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 connect with colleagues.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Materials
• Energies
• Metals
• Gels
• Technologies

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start an online conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference and our virtual booth, please visit: http://ii070.cn/Qi9MrG

MDPI will be attending the China Materials Conference and Exhibition 2020, Qingdao, Shandong, China, November 19–21, 2020.

CMC's 19th annual meeting is the premier venue for the presentation in the field of materials sciences, where one can learn from experts, forge collaborations with peers, explore new tools and technologies, and advance their career.

The purpose of the conference is to build an exchange platform for experts, scholars, professors, scientific and technological workers, relevant government management departments and leaders, entrepreneurs, and related personnel, engaged in the scientific research, development, and industrialization of new materials in China to exchange and share the latest materials research achievements, in order to achieve the purpose of mutual promotion and common improvement.

There are many outstanding people in the committee of the meeting, such as Professor Boyun Huang and Academician Lian Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Professor Bingbo Wei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, etc. The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Coatings (leading journal);
• Materials;
• Crystals;
• Energies;
• Molecules;
• Metals;
• Nanomaterials;
• Polymers.
• Actuators
• Sustainability
• Membranes
• Technologies
• Gels
• ASI

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth C13). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: http://cmc2020.medcon.net.cn/cn/web/index/

We are delighted to announce the establishment of our Open Access agreement with Jisc Collections, which will allow UK institutions to benefit from access to article processing charge (APC) discounts and streamlined payment workflows.

All institutions participating in the agreement will also gain access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information for easy identification and additional transparency.

Eligible authors affiliated with the participating institutions are prompted to choose the corresponding Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system.

About Jisc

Jisc's vision is for the UK to be the most digitally advanced education and research nation in the world. At its heart is the super-fast national research and education network, Janet, with built-in cyber security protection.  Jisc also provides technology solutions for its members (colleges, universities and research centres) and customers (public sector bodies), helps members save time and money by negotiating sector-wide deals and provides advice and practical assistance on digital technology. Jisc is funded by the UK higher and further education and research funding bodies and member institutions.

For more information, contact [email protected]

About MDPI

MDPI is a publisher of fully peer-reviewed, Open Access journals with a focus on thorough and rapid editorial processing. Its aim is to ensure that high-quality research is verified and made available to the research community as quickly as possible. MDPI stands at the forefront of the Open Access movement, having launched its first online journal Molecules in 1996. Today, MDPI is a leader in Open Access publishing with over 250 journals across all research disciplines, and all content published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

For any questions about this agreement, please contact the MDPI IOAP team at [email protected].

Since 1996, MDPI has been committed to supporting the research community by providing the latest research freely available and making relevant and useful research available as quickly as possible. The world is current experiencing a pandemic of COVID-19, and researchers are working extremely hard to understand it and find a cure.

The values MDPI holds strongly are particularly important at the moment, and we will continue to publish relevant, peer-reviewed research as quickly as possible in open access format. This means that it will immediately be available for researchers, health professionals, and the general public to read, distribute, and reuse. We believe that scientific advancements will be crucial to overcoming this pandemic, and will do everything we can to support researchers working looking for solutions.

COVID-19 Academic Resources Center contains a variety of information related to COVID-19 available from MDPI, including journal articles, special issues, and preprints, among others.

For more information, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/covid-19

As a leading Open Access publisher, MDPI is committed to fostering open scientific exchange in all forms across all disciplines. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, many researchers have to stay at home and many academic conferences have been cancelled or postponed. In light of these changes, MDPI has adopted numerous initiatives that may help accelerate scientific exchange and provide support to the academics during this period.

Scholarly Community—Encyclopedia

Encyclopedia is an online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as providing benchmark information for researchers and the general public interested in accurate and advanced knowledge on specific topics.

Comprehensive and Free Literature Database—Scilit

Scilit is a comprehensive, free database for scientists that uses a new method to collate data and index scientific material. Our crawlers extract the latest data from CrossRef and PubMed on a daily basis. This means that newly published articles are immediately added to Scilit.

Display Academic Achievements—SciProfiles

SciProfiles is an innovative social network for researchers and scholars that is developed by MDPI. In line with our broad mission, the purpose of SciProfiles is to accelerate discovery and innovation by facilitating immediate access to research results and providing opportunities for academic networking.

Organize and Participate in Conferences Online—Sciforum

Sciforum is an event planning platform that supports open science by offering the opportunity to host and participate in academic conferences. It provides an environment for scholarly exchange, discussion of topics of current interest, building of networks, and establishing collaborations.

Post Early Versions of Research Outputs—Preprints

Preprints is a platform dedicated to making early versions of research outputs permanently available and citable. We post original research articles and comprehensive reviews, and papers can be updated by authors at any time. Content on Preprints is not peer-reviewed, and feedback can be received from readers.

***

MDPI remains committed to open science and open data and has signed a statement, along with more than thirty scholarly publishers, showing our intention to facilitate sharing of new research findings as early on as possible. The initiative sees publishers collectively removing barriers to new research, in the face of a global healthcare crisis.

The world is currently suffering from a global pandemic of the corona virus COVID-19. MDPI expresses its sympathies for all of those affected by the virus and stands in solidarity with medical staff and researchers treating patients and searching for scientific solutions.

MDPI has previously published papers covering corona viruses in addition to new papers on the current outbreak, see all papers here. In particular, Viruses has published a number of Special Issues and papers on the topic (see here, here, and here) as well as a forthcoming Special Issue.

Alongside journal articles, MDPI has been a strong supporter of preprints, which are increasingly being used to rapidly disseminate the latest research, and we run the preprint server Preprints.org. Our database of research articles, Scilit, is free to use and covers all publishers including preprint servers. New papers are often in search results within hours of publication and users can set up alerts for new papers.

Our main priority during this period has been the health and safety of staff, and we continue to allow staff to work at home and closely monitor the situation in all locations in which we work. Despite the restrictions, we continue to provide a full publication service and, by close collaboration with our editorial boards and making use our in-house teams, ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in publishing vital research. Fast and open publication has always been at the core of MDPI values and is now more important than ever.

We hope that a solution to the current situation will emerge soon. In the meantime, we will do our best to continue communicating vital research in all fields.

The advantages of the open access model of scientific publishing are being increasingly recognized in the scientific community. It allows new scientific evidence to be accessed from the moment of publication for free by anyone around the globe, boosting the impact of new research. In response, many funders, libraries and universities have been adopting new principles to accelerate the transition to open access.

Recently, “transformative agreements” have been negotiated between traditional publishers and various institutions. While increasing the number of open access papers, these agreements lack binding commitments to a full transition to open access, their conditions vary across different regions, and access is still limited for many users.

MDPI is a co-signatory of the recent position statement raising concerns about potential downsides of transformative agreements and how they may delay a full transition to open access. The statement highlights that these models “risk perpetuating current limitations on access, transparency and market competitiveness, while simultaneously facilitating excessive charges on the public purse”.

As a pioneering open access journal publisher, MDPI is the first to promote the importance of science being made available to everyone. Our peer-reviewed journals, covering diverse academic disciplines, are fully accessible to the public free of charge under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). This is why, along with other open access publishers, MDPI is a proud signatory of the position paper and is committed to contributing to the replacement of weak transitional agreements with “agreements with publishers that are already fully committed to open science and who offer full, immediate and transparent Open Access”.

Read the position paper here

We are pleased to announce that Encyclopedia will be awarding five Outstanding Contributor Awards for researchers in 2020. The nominations and applications will be assessed by an Evaluation Committee consisting of senior scholars from the Encyclopedia Editorial Board.

Prize for Winners

1. An official certificate;
2. A cash award of 500 CHF or an MDPI discount voucher of 800 CHF.

Application Deadline

31 December, 2020 (Please send your application email with a list of all entries you contributed to our office before the deadline: [email protected])

Candidate Requirements

1. Have a Ph.D. degree;
2. Have more than three qualified entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020.

Evaluation Standards

1. Number of entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020;
2. Quality of entries online (including length, figure quality, and novelty);
3. Impact of entries (including the number of likes, discussion contents, views, and downloads).

If you are a researcher and have not yet contribute entries to Encyclopedia, please do not miss this chance to highlight your research results.

MDPI is pleased to announce the release of SciProfiles, its social network platform for researchers and scholars.

The purpose of SciProfiles is aligned with MDPI’s broad mission to accelerate discovery and innovation by facilitating immediate access to research results and to serve scholars and communities by providing opportunities for academic networking.

SciProfiles also ambitions to serve as a sustainable, transparent and community-driven research evaluation system aligned with the DORA principles (https://sfdora.org/). Through their scientific profiles, academics can highlight their contribution to research communities, and measure their impact on their field, beyond publication numbers and impact factors. SciProfiles is currently a beta version and will enrich to give researchers the possibility to highlight all of their contributions to science and their scientific communities as authors, reviewers, editors, conference organizers, conference panelists, conference keynote speakers, or even as lecturers or student mentors at their University.

The classic components of popular community social networks, including follower/following, classical metrics, endorsements and recommendations (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1690), comments (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1397) are or will be very soon highlighted in SciProfiles as open science contributions.

To help increase the impact and visibility of articles and their authors to an appropriate audience, the platform offers a NewsFeed that includes recommendations of relevant content based on interests, publication history, saved searches or colleagues’ recommendations.

SciProfiles’ avatars are now being integrated on several MDPI platforms, meaning that you will directly access researchers’ profiles from any of the MDPI platforms:

MDPI's journal publishing website: www.mdpi.com
MDPI's conference hosting and management website: www.sciforum.net
MDPI's pre-print website : www.preprints.org
MDPI's knowledge sharing website : www.encyclopedia.pub
MDPI's books store: www.mdpi.com/books
MDPI's literature database : www.scilit.net

SciProfiles aims to serve scientific communities at large. It can be embedded into third-party websites and also welcomes integration of data from third-parties.

Dr. Shu-Kun Lin: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/2
Dr. Franck Vazquez: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/FranckVazquez
Dr. Martyn Rittman: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/martynrittman

We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2019 MDPI Writing Prize. Entrants were asked to write on the theme "Judging research: How should research and researchers be evaluated and rewarded?" We received a large number of excellent essays from PhD students and postdocs, and the process of shortlisting and choosing winners was not an easy one. The winners demonstrated excellent writing skills alongside interesting and thought-provoking ideas.

As last year, we will begin the process of collating all entries into a book that will be available in open access format. Alongside promoting good writing skills, we see the prize as a way to promote the voices of early career researchers within broader debates and policy discussions.

Congratulations to all of the participants and especially the winners. The winners are:

1st Prize (500 CHF):
Albin Nilsson (National Centre for Nuclear Research, Warsaw, Poland)
[Read here]

2nd Prize (250 CHF):
Qi Zhang (Shandong University, Jinan, China)
[Read here]
Igor Ogashawara (Indiana University, Indianapolis, US)
[Read here]

3rd Prize (100 CHF):
Margaret Sivapragasam (Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Perak, Malaysia)
[Read here]
Arvind Sharma (The University of Queensland, Gatton, Australia)
[Read here]
Jose Flores-Guerrero (University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands)
[Read here]

The MDPI Writing Prize is an annual award supported by MDPI Author Services, which provides services including language editing, reformatting, plagiarism checks, and image editing.

MDPI is pleased to announce the release of a new functionality giving the possibility for researchers and scholars to endorse, and formally recommend articles to their colleagues.

MDPI was an early signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (https://sfdora.org/read/) which calls for improvement in how quality and impact of scholarly research outputs are evaluated, especially in moving beyond journal-based citation metrics (journal Impact Factor, Scopus Citescore, etc.).

MDPI supports the establishment of article-level impact metrics, including citations, views, downloads, and Altmetric scores. These measures serve as an impact indicator for research articles on a case–by-case basis, assessing paper on its own merit. However, these metrics are also subjective and can give a biased picture of the article impact: they do not directly reflect the quality or the intrinsic scientific value of the article.

In our view, community engagement with publications based on community-driven metrics can help to overcome this limitation. We have therefore launched an option for scholars to endorse articles, indicating their own assessment of its content and making a recommendation to their community. This follows our implementation of the open source Hypothesis commenting tool, which has been available for all articles published by MDPI for over a year (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1397). Both endorsement and commenting are available for all previously published and forthcoming MDPI articles.

In addition to potentially serving as a sustainable solution to article assessment, endorsements will help scientific communities to identify the most relevant articles, independently of the journal in which it was published.

The code for the endorsing functionality, which relies on DOIs and ORCIDs, will be made available on GitHub with an open source license.

Dr. Shu-Kun Lin, President and Founder
Dr. Franck Vazquez, Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Martyn Rittman, Publishing Director

Encyclopedia is pleased to announce that certain well-prepared entries are eligible for a 100 CHF voucher, which can be used for paper publication in any journals in MDPI. We believe that your contribution would be a great help in keeping up with scientific developments. Do not miss the chance to publish with us. Please clink here to find the detailed guideline.

Encyclopedia is a free online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as provide a comprehensive record of scientific development. If you have any suggestions or questions, please feel free to contact us via [email protected].

We are pleased to announce that Preprints has passed the milestone of 10,000 posted preprints. We are delighted to have reached this after just over three years of operation. Our congratulations and thanks go to our authors and advisory board who have supported growth of the platform and been crucial to its operation.

You can find further details at https://www.preprints.org/announcement/show/37.

Last week, the DeepGreen initiative in Germany started into an advanced test phase with the publishing partners S. Karger AG, SAGE Publishing, MDPI, Frontiers and De Gruyter, as well as 27 universities from all over Germany, from Hamburg University of Applied Sciences to University of Konstanz.

DeepGreen aims at lowering the barriers for open access publishing by automatically delivering metadata and full text publications from participating publishers to authorized repositories at German universities.

In preparation for a later live operation, the advanced test phase serves to gain experience with extensive data deliveries from publishers and also handling different repository software (including OPUS4, DSpace, EPrints, MyCoRe). DeepGreen thereby acts as a sophisticated platform, receiving articles published by authors affiliated with German universities and depositing these articles to respective university repositories, based on the affiliation metadata. For more information about DeepGreen: https://deepgreen.kobv.de

Karger AG has been a close cooperation partner of the DeepGreen consortium since 2016. S. Karger has more than 80 subscription-based and around 20 open access journals covering a wide spectrum in health science. DeepGreen will assign S. Karger articles to authorized institutions on the legal basis of German alliance and national licenses.

SAGE Publishing  was founded by Sara Miller McCune in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE publishes more than 1,000 journals and over 600 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. Our growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne. SAGE Publishing has been a close cooperation partner of DeepGreen since 2016.

MDPI  is a scientific open access publisher and has been a partner of DeepGreen since 2017. MDPI comprises 205 peer-reviewed journals of various disciplines. All articles are published under a CC-BY license and are freely available without embargo period.

Frontiers  is a scientific open access publisher with 61 journals of over 600 academic disciplines. All articles are peer-reviewed and published freely available under CC-BY license.

De Gruyter  is an academic publisher with more than 700 subscription-based and open access journals of 29 disciplines. Articles provided by De Gruyter will be assigned to institutions with German alliance and national licenses.

There is promising communication with other publishers.

DeepGreen is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the consortium comprises six institutions: the Cooperative Library Network Berlin-Brandenburg, Bavarian State Library, Bavarian Library Network, University Library of the Technische Universität Berlin, University Library of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Helmholtz Open Science Coordination Office at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

If you would like to know in more detail which institutions take part in the advanced test phase of DeepGreen, you can find more information here.

The University of Basel and the MDPI Sustainability Foundation are organizing the First Basel Sustainable Publishing Forum on 9th September 2019.

The aim of this event is to provide background and perspectives on Plan S to Learned Societies, which have to make well-informed decisions to transition their journals to Open Access (OA).

The BSPF will bring together several representatives of Learned societies, Plan S architects as well as representatives from various publishers and publishing platforms. After getting the big picture from cOAlition S, panel discussions will allow to better understand the diverse challenges that Learned societies are facing to transition their journals to OA as well as to identify sustainable, implementable and scalable solutions for successful Open Access transition.

For program details and registration, please follow the link below:
https://sciforum.net/conference/SustainableSolutionsToOpenAccess

We are pleased to welcome more universities from Poland, Italy, Germany, Brazil and other parts of the world to MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). A warm welcome to the institutions listed below, who have joined the Program in February and March this year.

James Madison University (JMU), Harrisonburg	USA
Loughborough University	UK
Lublin University of Technology	Poland
Marquette University, Milwaukee	USA
Massey University, Palmerston North	New Zealand
Medical College of Wisconsin	USA
Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń	Poland
Poznań University of Life Sciences	Poland
Robert Koch-Institut, Berlin	Germany
Rothamsted Research, Harpenden	UK
Santa Clara University (SCU)	USA
Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau	Germany
University of Aveiro	Portugal
University of Brasília	Brazil
University of Duisburg-Essen	Germany
University of Greifswald	Germany
University of Molise	Italy
University of Naples Parthenope	Italy
University of São Paulo (USP) - São Carlos Institute of Physics	Brazil
University of Szczecin	Poland
University of Warmia and Mazury, Olsztyn	Poland
University West, Trollhättan	Sweden
UTP University of Science and Technology, Bydgoszcz	Poland
VTT - Technical Research Centre of Finland	Finland

Authors affiliated with these institutions can now enjoy a discount on the APC for papers accepted for publication in any MDPI journal. If you would like to learn more about our program, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap or email us at [email protected].

We are delighted to announce our participation in Jisc’s Publication Router project, as of March 2019.

Publications Router is a Jisc service that automatically sends notifications about research articles to institutions' systems such as their repositories or CRISs, since May 2015. Through this agreement, MDPI will provide Jisc with daily feeds and information regarding published articles, which will be gathered by their system and delivered to institutions also registered to this service. Nearly all of our articles are published within 15 days of acceptance, so institutions will receive them quite promptly.

The feed will include the full text of the published version of record, with no embargo, so the articles can be exposed immediately for public view. They are accompanied by rich metadata, including confirmation of the immediate CC BY licence, minimising the need for any manual intervention or checking.

For more information about Publications Router, you may contact Jisc’s central helpdesk at [email protected]. For any queries about MDPI’s institutional agreements and collaborations, you may get in touch with MDPI’s Institutional Engagement team at [email protected], which would be very happy to hear from further UK institutions.

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high quality academic publishing. Over 97,000 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2018. 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 all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year the “MDPI Top Reviewer Awards” are announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise, dedication, high quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2018 MDPI Top Reviewer Awards:

• Ali Behnood
• Andrea Pezzuolo
• Angela Gorgoglione
• Anna D'Auria
• Antonio D'Andrea
• Azhar Abbas
• Bogdan Zagajewski
• Chunhui Chen
• Dominika Głąbska
• Dominika Guzek
• Dragan Pamucar
• Francisco J. G. Silva
• Frank Li
• Gianluca Serafini
• Gyorgy Szekely
• Haozhi Pan
• Helvi Heinonen-Tanski
• José Manuel Gómez-Soberón
• Kathy Lewis
• Klara Kosova
• Luis N. López De Lacalle
• M. Z. Naser
• Malwina Tytła
• Masoume Amirkhani
• Matteo Ghidelli
• Moretti Laura
• Petra Schneider
• Roberto Cerchione
• Spyros Papaefthymiou
• Ştefan Cristian Gherghina

Since 2010, MDPI has run its own online submission system. More recently, we have made the software, with accompanying publishing services, available to other publishers as JAMS (Journal and Article Management System). We are now delighted to announce the launch of JAMS Journals, a standardized platform for operating open access journals at low cost.

JAMS Journals provides a comprehensive service, including a shared submission website, journal websites hosted at a URL provided by the publisher, and a full production service. There is a small setup fee and the cost for each published paper is just a few hundred Swiss francs.

The platform demonstrates that running an open access journal can be straightforward and affordable. The JAMS Journals platform is suitable for

• small publishers or groups of scholars looking to launch their own journal;
• existing publishers or societies seeking to explore open access options;
• publishers looking to convert an existing subscription journal to open access.

JAMS journals launches with two journals from Canadian-based publisher Etcetera Publications:

• Canadian Journal of Pesticides & Pest Management (http://www.cjppm.ca)
• Nanotechnology in Agriculture, Food & Environment (http://www.nanoafe.ca)

Dr AJ Al-Rajab (President of Etcetera Publications) comments:

“In the past few months, we were working on our project to launch new open access scientific journals in the field of agricultural and environmental sciences. We decided to go with JAMS for this venture because of the high quality of their services, reasonable prices, professionalism and easy communication. Our portfolio is expected to grow rapidly during 2019 to include more titles covering different areas in agriculture and environment. MDPI earned already our complete satisfaction and we are looking for a long term cooperation.”

Alongside the new platform, we continue to provide flexible, tailored journal management solutions for existing publishers. For any questions or to request a quotation, contact Dr. Constanze Schelhorn ([email protected]).

2018 was a great year for preprints, with increasing numbers of authors looking to make their papers available online before peer review. Along with other preprint servers, our platform Preprints.org  saw an increase in the uptake from authors, and more than double the number of announced papers compared to 2017. In fact, we recently passed two important milestones: 8000 preprints online and 30,000 authors. 

We believe that the whole research community has the opportunity to benefit from work being available online as early as possible. We thank and congratulate our authors for supporting us to make this goal a reality.

In 2019, we will be looking carefully at how to provide better value for authors, maintain efficiency while growing in size, and make sure we remain well-connected with the research community. 

If you want to participate, you can consider screening preprints or joining our advisory board. And, of course, posting your own work.

We are delighted to announce the establishment of our national Open Access agreement with the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Through this national agreement, the Austrian institutions listed below as well as FWF will cover the Article Processing Charges (APC) of manuscripts published by eligible corresponding or funded authors in MDPI journals as long as central funds are available.

All participating institutions have gained access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information as well as Funder and Grant ID details for easy identification and additional transparency. At the same time eligible authors are benefited from an APC discount which comes at no cost for the institutions.

Eligible corresponding authors affiliated with the participating institutions are prompted to choose the corresponding 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 address. To claim their discount, FWF funded authors should choose the particular funder and add their Grant ID upon online submission of their manuscript. The institutions will then crosscheck the information and confirm the APC funding.

Eligible authors that have their APC covered by their institution or funder are advised to include the following sentence in their acknowledgments: "Open Access Funding by the [name of the institution/funder]".

The full text of the agreement is openly available online at: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2536007

For any questions about the agreement, please contact the KEMÖ Consortium at [email protected], FWF at [email protected], or the MDPI IOAP team at [email protected]

The Austrian institutions participating in this agreement are:

• Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
• University for Continuing Education Krems
• University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna
• University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria
• University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien
• Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences
• International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
• Institute of Science and Technology Austria
• MCI Management Center Innsbruck
• University of Graz
• University of Linz
• University of Salzburg
• Graz University of Technology
• TU Wien
• University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna
• University of Vienna

This is our first collective agreement with a national library consortium, while the individual institutions around the world participating in our IOAP are now more than 500 - see details here: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap. We would be mostly interested in discussing about possible collaborations with other consortia, funders, and institutions in our mutual efforts to accelerate Open Access.

We are pleased to announce the new platform Encyclopedia, which is an online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as providing benchmark information for researchers and the general public interested in accurate and advanced knowledge on specific topics.

We encourage authors of review articles to quote and adapt the content of their published papers to create Encyclopedia entries. You can create completely new entries on topics in which you have knowledge and expertise. There is no limit on the topics or research fields. All of science and the humanities are included. Each entry will be published directly after submission.

We also have prepared a DOI application function in Encyclopedia. Once a DOI application is approved, the entry website will announce the DOI number and a pdf version with DOI information will be automatically created.

We look forward to your contributions and hope you will make use of this service. Find more about the service at: https://encyclopedia.pub/

We will attend the 32nd International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS 2019). It will be held in Seoul, Korea, 27–31 January 2019, and it will be organized by the society of Micro and Nano Systems (SMNS). MEMS 2019 is one of the premier annual events reporting research results on every aspect of microsystems technology. This conference reflects from the rapid proliferation of the commitment and success of the microsystems research community. In recent years, the IEEE MEMS Conference has attracted more than 700 participants and 800+ abstract submissions and has created a forum to present over 200 select papers in podium and poster/oral sessions. Representatives of the following open-access journals will attend:

Micromachines

Technologies

Chemosensors

Energies

Applied Sciences

Sensors

Fluids

J – Journal of Multidisciplinary Science

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (booth #40). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit http://mems19.org/html/main.php.

Our editors and colleagues are attending the 22nd International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS 2018). The conference is being held at the Kaohsiung Exhibition Center in Kaohsiung, Taiwan from 11 to 15 November 2018, organized by the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society (CBMS).

µTAS 2018 continues a series of Conferences that are the premier forum for reporting research results in microfluidics, microfabrication, nanotechnology, integration, materials and surfaces, analysis and synthesis, and detection technologies for life science and chemistry. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Micromachines

Applied Sciences

International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)

Sensors

Biosensors

Technologies

Diagnostics

Journal of Multidisciplinary Science (J)

If you're attending the conference too, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #350). 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://cbmsociety.org/conferences/microtas2018/

 

We are delighted to announce that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is now a participant of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). Authors funded by the BMGF can enjoy discounts on the APC, while the funder covers the costs of eligible articles centrally. BMGF also has access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information as well as Grant ID details for easy identification and additional transparency.

We hope that funded authors find the programme beneficial and we are happy to offer our IOAP to other funders that need a streamlined workflow of compliance checking and APC coverage. 

To claim their discount, BMGF funded authors should choose the particular funder and add their Grant ID upon online submission of their manuscript.

For any questions about the BMGF agreement, please contact the funder at [email protected] or the MDPI IOAP team at [email protected].

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 represented at IMECE 2018 in Pittsburgh, USA, from 9–15 November 2018.

ASME's International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) is the largest interdisciplinary mechanical engineering conference in the world. IMECE plays a significant role in stimulating innovation from basic discovery to translational application. It fosters new collaborations that engage stakeholders and partners not only from academia, but also from national laboratories, industry, research settings, and funding bodies.

The following MDPI open access journals will be represented:

• Energies
• Safety
• Technologies
• Materials
• Lubricants 
• Machines
• Nanomaterials
• IJTPP
• Designs
• Fluids

If you are planning to attend this conference, please stop by our booth #202. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person, and will be happy to answer any questions you may have regarding open access publishing or our journals. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.asme.org/events/imece

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 [email protected].

Technologies is currently accepting applications and nominations for two Travel Awards to sponsor two PhD students to attend conferences between February 2019 and February 2020. For more information about the awards and how to apply, click here.

Check what our previous winners say:

David Reber: “I was given the opportunity to attend this year's Spring Meeting of the Electrochemical Society in Seattle and was kindly supported by an MDPI Technologies Travel Award. At this large conference, over 2500 abstract were presented, I was able to display my research to a wide audience and meet many fellow researchers. During the session I chaired, I also gave my presentation and the audience of about 50 people was very responsive and many questions were asked after the talk. At my poster, I then spent two hours constantly talking about my project and discussing with peers working on similar subjects. I was able to talk to some of the big players in the field, but also enjoyed discussions with colleagues at an earlier point in their respective careers. I was lucky enough to win the third place poster prize and had a quick chat with several high ranking officials from the ECS. Exposure to such a wide international audience was a highly beneficial career experience and I was able to significantly grow my professional network. Thank you again for supporting me with a Technologies Travel Award.”

Maher Abujelala: "Attending the 20th International Conference on Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) was a fantastic opportunity for me to gain more insight into HCI research. It is one of the largest HCI conferences, with around 1700 participants from 74 countries attending this year's event. The conference spanned 6 days in Las Vegas, Nevada (USA), and it was highly interdisciplinary. As a computer engineering PhD student focusing on the fields of HCI and artificial intelligence, attending the conference really helped me to extend my knowledge and experience in both my research area as well as other interesting areas. 

On my first day at the conference, I had the chance to attend a tutorial session on Social Media Analysis for the Masses. As part of my research, I always deal with analyzing human physiological data and surveys that either we collect in our projects or are collected by other researchers and are publicly available for research purposes. However, I have never had the chance to learn how to collect millions of people’s data from social media and analyze it, but I was able to do that in this tutorial within a few hours.

It was very interesting to attend the various presentations, and I was very delighted to meet researchers from the USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Greece, Germany, Belgium, France, Norway, Austria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, China, South Korea, Japan, Australia and many other countries, and be able to ask them questions and have discussions with them during the Q&A and coffee sessions. I am very honored to have been able to attend this conference and meet so many experienced and driven individuals. I hope to have the chance to attend this conference again in the future, and I would like to express my gratitude for Technologies Journal for giving me this opportunity."

MDPI will be attending the 2018 Quantum Technology International Conference (QTech 2018), to be held in Paris, France, 5–7 September 2018.

The objective of the QTech conference is to present the latest developments of quantum technologies in the domains of quantum communication, computation, simulation, sensors and metrology, and their implementation using various platforms from atoms and ions to solid states, superconducting circuits and optics.

The following eight MDPI journals will be represented:

Entropy
Technologies
Atoms
Photonics
Computation
Condensed Matter
Cryptography
Quantum Reports

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (you can find us easily in the exhibition area). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have concerning open access publishing and our journals. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://premc.org/conferences/qtech-quantum-technology/.

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

Journal	Rank (Quartile)	Category	Link	CiteScore 2017	2016	2015	SNIP 2017
Aerospace	43/116 (Q2)	• Aerospace Engineering	Link	1.23	-	-	1.152
Agriculture	69/309 (Q1) 91/398 (Q1) 78/255 (Q2)	• Agronomy and Crop Science • Plant Science • Food Science	Link	1.93	-	-	1.133
Agronomy	46/309 (Q1)	• Agronomy and Crop Science	Link	2.38	-	-	1.115
Algorithms	22/46 (Q2) 61/125 (Q2) 60/107 (Q3) 64/114 (Q3)	• Numerical Analysis • Computational Mathematics • Computational Theory and Mathematics • Theoretical Computer Science	Link	1.03	1.15	1.07	0.749
Animals	12/154 (Q1) * 48/367 (Q1)	• General Veterinary • Animal Science and Zoology	Link	2.02	1.46	1.66	1.099
Antibiotics	6/68 (Q1) * 62/263 (Q1) 55/230 (Q1) 31/108 (Q2) 47/134 (Q2) 139/398 (Q2)	• General Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics • Infectious Diseases • Pharmacology (medical) • Microbiology (medical) • Microbiology • Biochemistry	Link	2.85	1.65	-	0.975
Antibodies	43/143 (Q2) 61/164 (Q2) 85/189 (Q2)	• Drug Discovery • Immunology and Allergy • Immunology	Link	2.85	-	-	0.844
Antioxidants	23/119 (Q1) 35/169 (Q2) 100/398 (Q2) 119/367 (Q2) 102/264 (Q2)	• Clinical Biochemistry • Physiology • Biochemistry • Molecular Biology • Cell Biology	Link	3.42	-	-	1.361
Applied Sciences	48/270 (Q1) 15/66 (Q1) 31/116 (Q2) 18/53 (Q2) 151/434 (Q2) 186/535 (Q2)	• General Engineering • Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes • Instrumentation • Process Chemistry and Technology • General Materials Science • Computer Science Applications	Link	1.90	-	-	0.801
Biology	12/177 (Q1)* 32/186 (Q1) 10/40 (Q1)	• General Agricultural and Biological Sciences • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology • General Immunology and Microbiology	Link	3.48	3.02	2.78	0.961
Biomolecules	31/398 (Q1) * 41/367 (Q1)	• Biochemistry • Molecular Biology	Link	5.72	1.67	3.08	1.542
Biosensors	20/119 (Q1)	• Clinical Biochemistry	Link	3.59	2.83	2.37	1.122
Brain Sciences	47/111 (Q2)	• General Neuroscience	Link	2.56	-	-	0.695
Cancers	26/323 (Q1) * 23/191 (Q1)	• Oncology • Cancer Research	Link	5.82	5.02	4.07	1.567
Catalysts	32/151 (Q1) 21/46 (Q2)	• Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Catalysis	Link	3.23	3.44	3.45	0.954
Crystals	76/272 (Q2) 140/434 (Q2) 127/398 (Q2) 26/64 (Q2)	• General Chemical Engineering • General Materials Science • Condensed Matter Physics • Inorganic Chemistry	Link	1.97	1.89	1.47	0.745
Diagnostics	49/119 (Q2)	• Clinical Biochemistry	Link	2.43	-	-	0.788
Diversity	30/124 (Q1) 14/52 (Q2) 83/306 (Q2) 11/29 (Q2)	• Nature and Landscape Conservation • Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous) • Ecology • Ecological Modelling	Link	2.15	2.03	1.96	1.300
Electronics	109/644 (Q1) 26/148 (Q1) 42/224 (Q1) 50/259 (Q1) 23/96 (Q1)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Hardware and Architecture • Control and Systems Engineering • Computer Networks and Communications • Signal Processing	Link	2.97	-	-	1.227
Energies	6/73 (Q1) * 31/192 (Q1) 103/644 (Q1) 4/16 (Q1) 47/140 (Q2)	• Control and Optimization • Energy Engineering and Power Technology • Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Energy (miscellaneous) • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment	Link	3.11	2.50	2.87	1.340
Entropy	35/202 (Q1)	• General Physics and Astronomy	Link	2.41	1.87	1.99	1.189
Forests	17/129 (Q1)	• Forestry	Link	2.31	2.06	1.76	0.990
Future Internet	132/259 (Q3)	• Computer Networks and Communications	Link	1.25	-	-	-
Games	132/187 (Q3) 78/110 (Q3) 305/418 (Q3)	• Statistics and Probability • Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty • Applied Mathematics	Link	0.61	0.87	0.57	1.038
Genes	21/91 (Q1) 74/311 (Q1)	• Genetics (clinical) • Genetics	Link	3.49	3.62	3.18	0.374
Geosciences	32/182 (Q1)	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	1.97	1.67	1.29	0.856
Information	143/251 (Q3)	• Information Systems	Link	1.16	0.78	0.94	1.146
Insects	27/135 (Q1)	• Insect Science	Link	1.85	1.81	1.38	0.719
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	80/478 (Q1) 34/106 (Q2)	• Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health • Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis	Link	2.41	2.38	2.42	0.931
International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	7/69 (Q1) * 61/535 (Q1) 20/163 (Q1) 9/64 (Q1) 26/151 (Q1) 89/367 (Q2) 17/46 (Q2)	• Spectroscopy • Computer Science Applications • Organic Chemistry • Inorganic Chemistry • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Molecular Biology • Catalysis	Link	3.86	3.73	3.37	0.998
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJGI)	79/605 (Q1) 22/82 (Q2) 13/36 (Q2)	• Geography, Planning and Development • Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) • Computers in Earth Sciences	Link	2.10	1.62	1.52	1.062
Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM)	10/841 (Q1) *	• General Medicine	Link	7.07	-	-	1.535
Journal of Functional Biomaterials (JFB)	43/199 (Q1) 23/77 (Q2)	• Biomedical Engineering • Biomaterials	Link	3.47	-	-	1.344
Journal of Low Po- wer Electronics and Applications (JLPEA)	301/644 (Q2)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering	Link	1.12	0.98	0.83	0.367
Journal of Personalized Medicine (JPM)	54/189 (Q2)	• Medicine (miscellaneous)	Link	2.61	-	-	0.944
Land	50/124 (Q2) 129/306 (Q2) 36/65 (Q3)	• Nature and Landscape Conservation • Ecology • Global and Planetary Change	Link	1.44	-	-	0.658
Life	4/94 (Q1) * 70/561 (Q1) 40/186 (Q1) 20/80 (Q2)	• Palaeontology • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology • Space and Planetary Science	Link	3.16	2.95	1.68	0.935
Marine Drugs	17/146 (Q1)	• Drug Discovery	Link	4.58	3.83	3.66	1.537
Materials	83/434 (Q1)	• General Materials Science	Link	3.02	3.26	3.11	1.285
Membranes	5/18 (Q2) 15/53 (Q2) 4/10 (Q2)	• Chemical Engineering (miscellaneous) • Process Chemistry and Technology • Filtration and Separation	Link	2.69	2.19	2.95	0.880
Metabolites	47/209 (Q1) 103/398 (Q2) 127/367 (Q2)	• Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism • Biochemistry • Molecular Biology	Link	3.35	-	-	0.925
Metals	155/434 (Q2)	• General Materials Science	Link	1.87	-	-	0.955
Micromachines	105/554 (Q1) 154/644 (Q1) 64/224 (Q2)	• Mechanical Engineering • Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Control and Systems Engineering	Link	2.31	1.83	1.78	0.987
Minerals	33/175 (Q1) 45/208 (Q1)	• Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology • Geology	Link	2.21	2.13	1.77	1.149
Molecules	4/25 (Q1) 25/172 (Q1) 18/104 (Q1) 31/163 (Q1) 30/151 (Q1) 31/146 (Q1) 55/160 (Q2)	• Chemistry (miscellaneous) • Pharmaceutical Science • Analytical Chemistry • Organic Chemistry • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Drug Discovery • Molecular Medicine	Link	3.27	3.09	2.65	1.146
Nutrients	11/255 (Q1) * 9/112 (Q1) *	• Food Science • Nutrition and Dietetics	Link	4.35	4.29	4.07	1.403
Pathogens	38/263 (Q1) 20/108 (Q1) 9/40 (Q1) 40/164 (Q1) 110/367 (Q2)	• Infectious Diseases • Microbiology (medical) • General Immunology and Microbiology • Immunology and Allergy • Molecular Biology	Link	3.52	-	-	1.166
Pharmaceuticals	14/172 (Q1) * 33/160 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science • Molecular Medicine	Link	4.12	4.90	3.64	1.370
Pharmaceutics	21/172 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science	Link	3.68	3.83	2.68	1.092
Photonics	30/116 (Q1) 80/270 (Q2) 53/160 (Q2)	• Instrumentation • Radiology Nuclear Medicine and Imaging • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics	Link	1.96	-	-	0.817
Plants	73/561 (Q1) 48/389 (Q1) 44/306 (Q1)	• Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics • Plant Science • Ecology	Link	3.13	-	-	0.969
Polymers	17/142 (Q1) 63/359 (Q1)	• Polymers and Plastics • General Chemistry	Link	3.30	3.74	3.37	1.213
Religions	26/389 (Q1) *	• Religious Studies	Link	0.56	-	-	0.676
Remote Sensing	13/182 (Q1) *	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	4.03	3.56	3.76	1.559
Resources	19/142 (Q1) 39/261 (Q1)	• Nature and Landscape Conservation • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law	Link	2.69	-	-	1.387
Scientia Pharmaceutica	92/172 (Q3)	• Pharmaceutical Science	Link	0.86	-	-	0.513
Sensors	9/116 (Q1) * 25/160 (Q1) 100/644 (Q1) 19/104 (Q1) 113/398 (Q2)	• Instrumentation • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics • Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Analytical Chemistry • Biochemistry	Link	3.23	2.78	2.21	1.550
Social Sciences	81/213 (Q2)	• General Social Sciences	Link	0.60	-	-	0.445
Sustainability	61/605 (Q1) * 55/261 (Q1) 60/140 (Q2)	• Geography, Planning and Development • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment	Link	2.37	1.96	1.78	1.030
Symmetry	44/327 (Q1) 17/45 (Q2) 16/40 (Q2) 14/25 (Q2)	• General Mathematics • Computer Science (miscellaneous) • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous) • Chemistry (miscellaneous)	Link	1.32	1.12	0.95	0.802
Toxins	18/106 (Q1) 21/111 (Q1)	• Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis • Toxicology	Link	3.32	3.34	3.76	1.136
Vaccines	5/230 (Q1) * 13/263 (Q1) * 18/302 (Q1) * 11/146 (Q1) * 32/189 (Q1)	• Pharmacology (medical) • Infectious Diseases • Pharmacology • Drug Discovery • Immunology	Link	4.88	1.23	3.76	1.255
Viruses	29/263 (Q1) 16/68 (Q1)	• Virology • Infectious Diseases	Link	3.88	3.60	3.74	1.130
Water	66/605 (Q1) 37/191 (Q1) 43/199 (Q1) 193/398 (Q2)	• Geography, Planning and Development • Water Science and Technology • Aquatic Science • Biochemistry	Link	2.29	2.05	1.96	1.007

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.

At MDPI, we always want to keep you up to date. Even for already published articles, some corrections or minor changes may occur. To prevent you from missing any updates, from now on you will be able to access the latest version of any manuscript by clicking on the “check for updates” logo that you can find in the PDF file, even if you have saved the file on your computer.

We are proud to announce that MDPI is now a member of UKSG, the UK´s largest scholarly communications community. Through UKSG, different stakeholders share their knowledge and experience in order to improve the knowledge and information environment for researchers. UKSG´s members include universities, publishers, content providers, intermediaries, and other similar organisations. Members participate in discussions and events on issues around scholarly communications.

The UKSG Annual Conference and Exhibition is a flagship initiative from the UKSG and one of the most stimulating events in the scholarly communications calendar. It is held annually and attracts a large number of delegates. More information is available at https://www.uksg.org/events/annualconference

MDPI is delighted to be a part of this active community and we look forward to making our own contribution. We will continue to support organisations and initiatives that boost collaboration and vision within scholarly communication.

More information about UKSG can be found at https://www.uksg.org/. The full membership list is available at: https://www.uksg.org/members.

The DORA initiative addresses the need for advanced approaches in the evaluation and measurement of the quality of scientific research outputs. It is a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines. MDPI proudly joins a list of more than 400 organizations around the world which support DORA’s recommendations for improving the way the quality of research results is evaluated.

More info can be found at http://www.ascb.org/dora/

 

The competition is still open until end of March! Please check out the banner for more details: https://mdpi-res.com/data/english-prize.pdf

We are delighted to announce that UCL Press has adopted MDPI's Journal Article & Management System, JAMS, including production services. JAMS is a modular, integrated editorial platform for academic publishers. It offers flexibility, ease-of-use, and is a fully integrated solution for the end-to-end management of scholarly journals. JAMS is based on the software used to publish MDPI’s portfolio of journals. 

Ian Caswell, UCL Press Journals Manager, says he is "excited to see UCL Press and MDPI partner together to implement the JAMS submission system for all UCL Press journals. The system offered a flexible, efficient and straightforward solution for our processes from author submission to ready for publication. I am grateful for the valuable experience and support MDPI have offered and look forward to developing our programme with an effective submission system in place.” Dr Martyn Rittman, MDPI’s Publishing Services Manager, adds, “We are proud to support one of the UK’s premier university presses in their publishing operation. This is an excellent way for us at MDPI to share our experience and knowledge, and benefit the research community beyond our own journals.”

JAMS combines services that are kept separate for many publishers. The entire editorial process, production and invoicing (e.g. for open access article processing charges) are fully integrated into a single platform. This allows for efficient, fast manuscript processing. For further information about JAMS, see https://www.mdpi.com/publishing_services. 

We are pleased to welcome new participants to MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), designed to help institutions manage the transition to the Open Access publishing model. Researchers affiliated with participating universites benefit from a 10% discount on the Article Processing Charges (APC) for any paper published in an MDPI journal, while the participating library or university incurs no basic fee for participating in the program.

The IOAP set of free services, provided by MDPI to institutions that sign up, include:

• No fee for participants and no obligation to prolong after the initial 12 months. The participants may withdraw from the programme at any time, and we will also keep it free for the library for as long as they continue in the programme.
• Authors affiliated with the university will receive a 10% discount on the APC.
• The institution is granted free access to the MDPI submission system and can receive free alerts of new submissions to our journals.
• By default, authors from the institution will continue to be invoiced directly unless the institution opts for central billing.
• Auto-archiving of papers into the institutions´ repository as long as it supports SWORD 1.3.

More details about the programme and a list of our current participant institutions can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap

Institutions which are interested to participate may do so online at: https://www.mdpi.com/ioap-form

The following North American universities have signed up to the IOAP program recently:

Connecticut College, USA
Emory University, USA
Florida International University, USA
Johns Hopkins University, USA
Mississippi State University, USA
Northeastern University, USA
Rice University, USA
University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada
University of Rhode Island, USA
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA
University of Toronto, Canada
University of Windsor, Canada
University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA
Wellesley College, USA
West Virginia University, USA

Many prestigious institutions from Europe and Asia have joined as well:

Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation, Malaysia
Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic
Gdansk University of Technology, Poland
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Newcastle University, UK
Northumbria University, UK
Southwest University, China
Technical University of Crete, Greece
University Malaya, Malaysia
University of Antwerp, Belgium
University of Cyprus, Cyprus
University of Manchester, UK
University of Reading, UK
University of Sussex, UK
University of Warwick, UK
West Pomeranian University of Technology Szczecin, Poland

We offer a warm welcome to the new participants!

In order to reward the academic community, especially young researchers, and enhance communication among scientists, MDPI journals regularly offer various awards to researchers in specific fields, for example, Young Investigator Awards, Travel Awards, Best Paper Awards, and Best Poster Awards, etc. The awardees range from PhD students to junior scientists.

Currently, the following 44 awards given by MDPI journals are accepting applications. Please click on the award title below to check whether you are eligible for it and start the application process.

Subject	Journal	Award	Intended Awardee
Biology & Life Sciences	Animals	Travel Award 2018	PhD students or postdoctoral researchers
	Antioxidants	Travel Awards 2018	Postdoctoral researchers or PhD students
	Biology	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Forests	2019 Travel award	Postdocs or PhD students
	International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	Outstanding Contribution Awards 2018	Ground-breaking contribution in the fields of Molecular Biology, and Molecular Pathology
	Journal of Fungi (JoF)	Travel Awards 2018	PhD graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows
	Life	Travel Award 2018	PhD students or postdoctoral fellows
	Metabolites	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
	Pharmaceuticals	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
	Toxins	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows
	Viruses	Best Oral Presentation Award 2018	Viruses 2018 participants
	Viruses	Best Poster Award 2018	Viruses 2018 participants
	Water	2018 Young Investigator Award	Young investigators
Chemistry & Materials Science	Biomimetics	Travel Award 2018	Graduate Student or Postdoctoral Trainee / Research Associate
	Catalysts	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
	Chemosensors	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Entropy	Young Investigator Award 2018	Young investigators
	Fibers	2018 Travel award	Postdocs or PhD students
	Magnetochemistry	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs
	Materials	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Metals	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Minerals	Travel Awards 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Sensors	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Sensors	Outstanding Reviewer Awards 2017	Sensors' reviewers in 2017
	Sensors	Young Investigator Award 2018	Young investigators
	Technologies	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
Computer Science & Mathematics	Multimodal Technologies and Interaction (MTI)	Travel Awards 2018	Postdoctoral researchers or PhD students
	ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information(IJGI)	2018 Travel Award	Postdocs
	Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks (JSAN)	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
	Journal of Imaging	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
Engineering	Actuators	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Remote Sensing	Best Paper Awards 2019	Authors
	Machines	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Micromachines	Travel Awards 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Fluids	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
	ChemEngineering	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral researchers and PhD students
Environmental & Earth Sciences	Diversity	Travel Awards 2018	Postdoctoral fellows
	International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	Best Paper Award 2018	Authors who submit from 1 Nov 2017 to 31 Oct 2018
	Resources	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs or PhD students
	Geosciences	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
Physical Sciences & Astronomy	Galaxies	Travel Award 2018	Ph.D. students, postdoctoral fellows, or lecturers in cosmology or galaxies physics
	Applied Science	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs
Medicine & Pharmacology; Public Health & Healthcare	Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM)	2018 Travel Award	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Medicines	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs

The Jussieu Call aims to develop and implement alternative models to meet the aims of open science while promoting bibliodiversity. In particular it wishes to promote new business models for funding open access publication. It was drafted on the Jussieu campus in Paris by a group of French researchers and scientific publishing professionals.

MDPI supports scholarly communities and initiatives that innovate and further promote Open Access publishing. There is a need to explore different frameworks to fund open access in ways that ensure that excessive funds are not diverted from research towards publishing. Many fair funding models already exist, and they can be further developed and extended. These include institutional support, library contributions or subsidies, premium services, participatory funding, etc. For this reason, MDPI has signed up to the Jussieu call and welcomes its aims.

More information can be found at http://jussieucall.org/ (archived here)

The Society for Scholarly Publishing’s popular blog about topics in academic publishing, Scholarly Kitchen, recently interviewed MDPI’s CEO, Dr. Franck Vazquez. He shared some thoughts and information on the past and future of MDPI and open access publishing in general:

“In the long run, we aim to anchor MDPI in research communities. We recently developed and launched the preprint platform Preprints, revamped our free-to-use conference hosting platform Sciforum, and are working on other projects, such as Scilit, our bibliographic database.”

Read the full interview here.

We will be attending the MicroTAS 2017, a series of Conferences that are the premier forum for reporting research results in microfluidics, microfabrication, nanotechnology, integration, materials and surfaces, analysis and synthesis, and detection technologies for life science and chemistry. It will be held at the Savannah International Trade and Conference Center in Savannah, Georgia, USA from October 22–26, 2017, representing the following MDPI open access journals:

Micromachines
Sensors
Diagnostics
Biosensors
Technologies
Applied Sciences

Please visit our stand ((booth number: #6) to chat about our journals with our delegates. We look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: http://www.microtas2017.org.

Conference Location

Savannah International Trade & Convention Center
1 International Drive
Savannah, Georgia 31402
USA