Announcements

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)

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.

We are pleased to announce that the following reviewer has been selected as the winner of the Toxics 2020 Outstanding Reviewer Award. This award is in appreciation of the high number, timeliness, and quality of reviews in 2020. The winner will receive a certificate, CHF 500 and an opportunity to publish a paper free of charge in 2021. 

Prof. Dr. Jun Yoshinaga
Faculty of Life Science, Toyo University, Japan
Research Interest: society medicine; hygiene environmental science; risk sciences of radiation and environmental chemical science; environmental impact assessment/environmental policy 

We want to extend our congratulations to the winner for his excellent reviews and well-earned award! 

The Toxics Editorial Board and Editorial Team would like to acknowledge all reviewers who have generously dedicated their time and efforts toward reviewing manuscripts submitted to Toxics. Due to their outstanding contributions, the high scientific quality of the journal and fast article processing are constantly maintained.

Toxics Editorial Office

It is our pleasure to welcome the following recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Toxics:

Prof. Dr. Jingchun Tang, Nankai University, China
Dr. Giovanna Tranfo, Epidemiology and Hygiene, Italy
Xiangang Hu, Nankai University, China
Prof. Dr. Qixing Zhou, Nankai University, China
Dr. Rafael Clemente, CEBAS-CSIC,  Spain
Prof. Dr. Daohui Lin. Zhejiang University, China
Prof. Dr. Jiayin Dai, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Prof. Dr. Mei-Rong Huang, Tongji University, China
Prof. Dr. Xin-Gui Li, Tongji University, China
Prof. Dr. Sijie Lin, Tongji University, China
Prof. Dr. Shuguang Xie, Peking University, China
Prof. Dr. Gary O. Rankin, Marshall University, USA
Prof. Dr. Danny D. Reible, Texas Tech University, USA
Prof. Dr. M.Firoze Khan, University of Texas Medical Branch, USA
Dr. Michael Petriello, Wayne State University, USA
Prof. Dr. Scott W. Burchiel, University of New Mexico College of Pharmacy, USA
Dr. Thomas J. Sharpton, Oregon State University, USA
Prof. Dr. Edmund Maser, University Medical School Schleswig-Holstein, USA
Dr. Jordi Morato Farreras, Universidad Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain
Dr. Yi Wan, Peking University, China
Dr. Yoshinori Ikenaka, Hokkaido University, Japan
Dr. Montserrat Sole, ICM-CSIC, Spain
Dr. Clara Coscollá Raga, FISABIO, Spain
Prof. Dr. Zhenghong Zuo, Xiamen University, China
Prof. Dr. Christopher W. Theodorakis, Southern Illinois University, USA
Prof. Dr. Flemming R. Cassee, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
Prof. Dr. Michael J. Carvan, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA
Prof. Dr. Natalia González-Benítez, University Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
Prof. Dr. Youssef Sari. The University of Toledo, USA
Prof. Dr. David McBride, University of Otago, USA
Dr. Bakhtiyor Rasulev, North Dakota State University, USA

We look forward to their contributions to the journal.
Toxics Editorial Office

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)

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the Toxics 2020 Young Investigator Award is Dr. Andreu Rico.

Dr. Andreu Rico (born in 1983 in Spain) is the principal investigator of the ecotoxicology group of the IMDEA Water Institute (Alcalá de Henares, Spain) and a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, at the University of Valencia (Spain). His research has mainly focused on assessing (1) the environmental fate of emerging contaminants (including microplastics), (2) the resilience of aquatic populations and communities to chemical stress, and (3) the interactive effects of global climate change (e.g., water scarcity, temperature increase, salinization) and chemical pollution on freshwater ecosystems. More recently, he has been involved in several field sampling campaigns to assess the impacts of chemical pollution in the Amazon River and in Mediterranean wetland ecosystems.

Dr. Rico received his Ph.D. in 2014 from Wageningen University (the Netherlands) and has an outstanding publication record, comprising over 60 high-quality publications, with over 1500 citations. In 2015, he won the SETAC Best Paper Award for his study on the relationship between biological traits and invertebrate vulnerability to insecticides. In today’s competitive environment, his achievements are outstanding.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Rico on his impressive array of accomplishments!

As the awardee, Dr. Rico will receive an honorarium of 1800 CHF, an offer to publish a paper free of charge before 31 December 2021 in Toxics after peer review, and an engraved plaque.

We would like to thank all the nominators from various fields of study for their participation and all the Award Committee Members for their evaluation of the abundant excellent nominations.

Microplastics, defined as plastic particles >5 mm in diameter, include primary microplastics, which have small sizes for use in plastic production, cleaning, and cosmetic or medical products, and secondary microplastics, which result from the fragmentation of larger items in the environment. After a decade of intense research efforts in this field, numerous studies have shown the widespread distribution of microplastics over the planet and their effects on ecosystems. However, there is still a general lack of understanding on several aspects that need to be addressed, such as the incorporation of microplastics and associated pollutants into food webs.

This webinar will discuss some of the current challenges in microplastic research, aiming to contribute to the development of strategies for assessing the distribution, fate, and effects of microplastics in ecosystems and, ultimately, to achieve sustainable development goals.

Date: 14 January 2021

Time: 15:30pm (CET) | 9:30 am (EDT) | 22:30 pm (CST Asia)

Webinar ID: 860 7927 9263

Register for free here: https://toxics-3.sciforum.net/

Chair:

Speakers

For any further inquiries about the webinar, please send an email to toxics@mdpi.com.

We are pleased to announce that Toxics became a monthly publication on 1 January, 2021. A monthly publication allows papers to be indexed in Web of Science and other indexing databases on a monthly basis rather than every 3 months, and they become searchable and are cited earlier. We also acknowledge the many valuable publications from our authors and the important contribution of our dedicated reviewers.

Dear colleagues,

The editorial team would like to congratulate the winners of the Toxics 2020 Best Paper Awards, who were chosen by the Journal’s Award Committee. The recipients of the “Toxics 2020 Best Paper Awards” are as follows:

Article:

Aldehydes in Exhaled Breath during E-Cigarette Vaping: Pilot Study Results

Vera Samburova, Chiranjivi Bhattarai, Matthew Strickland, Lyndsey Darrow, Jeff Angermann, Yeongkwon Son and Andrey Khlystov
Toxics 2018, 6(3), 46; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics6030046
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6304/6/3/46

Review:

Dietary Cadmium Intake and Its Effects on Kidneys

Soisungwan Satarug
Toxics 2018, 6(1), 15; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics6010015
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6304/6/1/15

Please join us in congratulating the winners of Toxics 2020 Best Paper Awards!

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all our authors for their continued support of Toxics.

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.