Announcements

We are pleased to announce that the website of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation has been revamped! For the past couple of months, our UX UI team and front-end developers have been working hard to launch the website in time for the opening of the Sustainability Awards nominations.

The website is not the only thing that has had a remodeling. Indeed, the format of the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award (ESLA) has been updated. ESLA is now a competition open to individual researchers or start-ups founded by researchers under the age of 35. Nominee applications will go through 2 rounds of selection until the final 3 are decided. The finalists will then be invited to give pitch presentations during the Award Ceremony to win either first place (10,000 USD) or runner-up (2 x 5000 USD).

The World Sustainability Award, on the other hand, remains the same: a total prize money of 100,000 USD is up for grabs by senior individual researchers or groups of researchers from the international research community.

Nominations for both the World Sustainability Award and the Emerging Sustainability Leader award are now open! Check out our new website for more information on how to nominate.

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 the launch of a new initiative—the Special Issue Mentor Program.

This program intends to 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 who have novel ideas for new Special Issues of Universe (ISSN: 2218-1997) will act as Guest Editors under the mentorship of an experienced scientist; this mentor could be a member of the Universe Editorial Board or may be from other well-established research institutes or laboratories, etc.

The mentee’s responsibilities include:

• 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.

The mentor’s responsibilities include:

• Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
• Co-editing the Special Issue with younger scholars and performing quality control of publications in the Special Issue;
• Providing suggestions to younger scholars if they have 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:
When the Special Issue is closed, 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 Universe Editorial Office (universe@mdpi.com), or complete and submit the form at the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/universe. We will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail after receiving your application.

In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, Universe continues to welcome all Special Issue proposals based on hot research topics as usual.

Universe Editorial Office

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 this year’s winners in the “Physical Sciences” 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.

Entropy:

• Jim W. Kay, University of Glasgow, UK;
• Christophe Chesneau, University of Caen, France;
• Esteban Tlelo-Cuautle, Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE), Mexico;
• Dennis Dieks, Utrecht University, The Netherlands;
• Claudio Cremaschini, Silesian University in Opava, Czech Republic.

Photonics:

• Carlos A. F. Marques, University of Aveiro, Portugal;
• Tatiana Latychevskaia, Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland.

Universe:

• Amit Kashi, Ariel University, Israel;
• Dominik Elsaesser, Technical University of Dortmund, Germany;
• Isaac Tutusaus, Instituto de Ciencias del Espacio, Spain;
• Jose A.R. Cembranos, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain;
• Kazuharu Bamba, Fukushima University, Japan;
• Przemyslaw Malkiewicz, National Centre for Nuclear Research, Poland;
• Szymon Piotr Harabasz, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany;
• Theocharis Kosmas, University of Ioannina, Greece;
• Viktor Toth, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada;
• Vitor De Souza, Universidade de São Paulodisabled, Brazil.

We are proud to recognize the winners of MDPI’s 2021 Travel Awards in the “Physical Sciences” 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.

Galaxies:

• Mahdis Ghodrati, Yangzhou University, China;
• Sandra Etoka, University of Manchester, UK.

Instruments:

• Adriana Dias, University of London, UK.

Photonics:

• Aleksandrs Leitis, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland;
• Elena Losero, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland;
• Zhifeng Zhang, University of Pennsylvania, USA.

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

The editors of each journal carefully selected reviews and research papers through a rigorous judging process based on criteria such as the scientific merit, overall impact, and the quality of presentation of the papers published in the journal last year.

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

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

Entropy:

• “Classical (Local and Contextual) Probability Model for Bohm–Bell Type Experiments: No-Signaling as Independence of Random Variables”
  By Andrei Khrennikov and Alexander Alodjants
  Entropy 2019, 21(2), 157; doi 10.3390/e21020157
• “Nonlinear Information Bottleneck”
  By Artemy Kolchinsky, Brendan D. Tracey and David H. Wolpert
  Entropy 2019, 21(12), 1181; doi 10.3390/e21121181
• “Dynamic Maximum Entropy Reduction”
  By Václav Klika, Michal Pavelka, Petr Vágner and Miroslav Grmela
  Entropy 2019, 21(7), 715; doi 10.3390/e21070715
• “Topological Information Data Analysis”
  By Pierre Baudot, Monica Tapia, Daniel Bennequin and Jean-Marc Goaillard
  Entropy 2019, 21(9), 869; doi 10.3390/e21090869

Universe:

• “Nonsingular Black Holes in ƒ (R) Theories”
  By Gonzalo J. Olmo and Diego Rubiera-Garcia
  Universe 2015, 1(2), 173-185; doi 10.3390/universe1020173
• “Is It No Longer Necessary to Test Cosmologies with Type Ia Supernovae?”
  By Ram Gopal Vishwakarma and Jayant V. Narlikar
  Universe 2018, 4(6), 73; doi 10.3390/universe4060073
• “A Universe that Does Not Know the Time”
  By João Magueijo and Lee Smolin
  Universe 2019, 5(3), 84 ; doi 10.3390/universe5030084
• “Seeing Black Holes: From the Computer to the Telescope”
  By Jean-Pierre Luminet
  Universe 2018, 4(8), 86; doi 10.3390/universe4080086

The 2021 citation metrics have been released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), and we’re pleased to announce the following results for MDPI journals:

For more information on Impact Factors and what it means to index academic journals, please visit our related blog posts.

* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2022

Source: 2021 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ^TM (Clarivate, 2022)

Universe (ISSN: 2218-1997) will be attending the 23rd International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR23) and the 2022 Annual Meeting of Division of Gravitation and Relativistic Astrophysics, Chinese Physical Society as an exhibitor. This meeting will be held from 3 to 8 July 2022.

GR23 will be hosted by the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. This conference series constitutes the principal international meetings for scientists working in all areas of relativity and gravitation.

Below are Parallel Sessions being held during the conference:

A1: Classical GR: Theoretical developments;
A2: Classical GR: Mathematical developments;
A3: Alternative and modified theories of gravity.

B1: Relativistic astrophysics;
B2: Numerical relativity;
B3: Approximations, perturbation theory, and their applications;
B4: Cosmology: Theory and observations.

C1: Pulsar Timing Arrays;
C2: Gravitational wave astronomy: searches, data analysis, parameter estimation;
C3: Astrophysics and multi-messenger astronomy with gravitational waves;
C4: Gravitational waves: Present and future of ground-based and space-based detectors;
C5: Experimental gravitation.

D1: Loop quantum gravity and spin foams;
D2: Gravitational aspects of string theory;
D3: Causal sets, causal dynamical triangulations, non-commutative geometry, asymptotic safety, and other approaches to quantum gravity;
D4: Quantum fields in curved space-time, semiclassical gravity, quantum gravity phenomenology, and analog models.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Universe;
• Symmetry;
• Astronomy;
• Galaxies;
• Physics;
• Particles.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start an on-site conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have.

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Jianrong Shi and Dr. Andrea Longobardo have joined Universe (ISSN 2218-1997) as Editorial Board Members of the Sections “Stellar Astronomy” and “Planetary Sciences”, respectively.

Prof. Dr. Jianrong Shi is a researcher in stellar astrophysics at the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is the Operations Manager of the LAMOST. His main research interests encompass stellar astrophysics, the origin of the chemical elements, and the formation and evolution of galaxies. In particular, his work focuses on accurately determining the chemical composition of stars. By observing stars of different ages and locations, we can thereby uncover, for example, how stars forge different elements by nuclear burning, and how a galaxy, like our own Milky Way, has evolved with time since its formation. His recent work focuses on accurately determining the abundances of Li, Mg, Ca, Ba, Eu, etc., from the LAMOST medium-resolution spectra.

Dr. Andrea Longobardo is an INAF-IAPS researcher, working in the planetary science field, with a particular focus on small bodies. He is a team member of the VIR imaging spectrometer (NASA’s Dawn mission) and an associated scientist of the ESA/Rosetta instruments VIRTIS (imaging spectrometer) and GIADA (dust detector). He is currently a team member of the ESA/Comet Interceptor mission. He has also collaborated with the VIRTIS/Venus Express and Hayabusa2/NIRS3 teams. He has led several projects concerning the photometry, mineralogy, and spectroscopy of small bodies in addition to planetary dust characterization. Moreover, he is involved in the development of dust sensors (MarcoPoloR/VISTA, Hera/VISTA, Comet Interceptor/DISC, and ESA’s CAM and CAMLAB sensors) and is the deputy PI of the VISTA instrument.

We wish them every success in their new positions, and we look forward to their contributions to the journal.

The 2021 citation metrics have been officially released in Scopus!

We are pleased to announce that 182 MDPI journals are included, of which:

● 21 journals received their first CiteScore.
● 85% of journals increased their CiteScore from 2020.
● 155 journals (85%) ranked above average, in at least one category.

The following 65 MDPI journals (36%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category:

Source: 2021 CiteScores™ (Elsevier)