Announcements

It is our great honor to congratulate the Editorial Board Members and Editors in MDPI's journals who have been distinguished as 2021 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate, according to Web of Science data. We herewith express our gratitude for the immense impact the named researchers continue to make on scientific progress and on our journals' development.

Clarivate's annual list of Highly Cited Researchers^TM identifies the most highly cited scientists for the past decade. Their impactful papers are among the top 1 per cent in the citation distribution of one or more of 22 fields analyzed in the "Essential Science Indicators", distinguishing them as hugely influential among their peers.

The full list of 2021 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed at the following webpage in the Web of Science^TM https://recognition.webofscience.com/awards/highly-cited/2021/.

--- Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) is a Clarivate product.

Academic editors play a crucial role in leading our journals and ensuring that each article undergoes a robust and timely peer-review. With the launch of Topics this year and addition of Topic Editors to our family of academic editors, we decided it would be a good time to restructure our academic boards, thus providing more clarity and support for each role. MDPI is pleased to announce the launch of a new position—Topical Advisory Panel Member, that will replace the previous position of Topics Board Member. The Topical Advisory Panel will be comprised of early career researchers eager to gain experience in editorial work.

The main responsibility of the new members of the Topical Advisory Panel is to regularly provide support to Guest Editors, Topic Editors, and Section Board Members. The responsibilities of the Topical Advisory Panel are available here: https://www.mdpi.com/editors.

Each year, the members’ performances are evaluated, and outstanding members are promoted to the Editorial Board by the Editor-in-Chief.

To qualify as a Topical Advisory Panel Member, applicants must:

• Have expertise and experience in the field related to the journal;
• Have received a Ph.D. in the last 10 years, approximately;
• Have at least 6-8 published papers in the last 5 years as first author or corresponding author;
• Currently hold an independent research position in academia or a government institute.

If you are interested in this role, please contact the editorial office by email.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

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.

MDPI will be attending the Advanced Membrane Technology Summit for Water Treatment 2021, jointly hosted by the International Water Association (IWA), China Regional Office and Tongji University, which will be held from 15 to 17 October 2021, in Shanghai, China.

Famous domestic and foreign experts will give keynote speeches during the conference, in addition to poster exhibitions, postgraduate seminars and other academic activities. This summit is focused on the theme of "Sustainable Development of Membrane Water Treatment Technology under the Background of Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality". Topics covered by the summit include, but are not limited to, membrane water and wastewater treatment, new theories of membrane processes, advanced membranes and membrane modules, advanced membrane processes and combined processes, sustainable membrane water treatment technologies, and the industrial application of membrane technology.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Membranes;
• Separations;
• IJERPH;
• Applied Sciences;
• Water;
• Toxics;
• Resources;
• Sustainability;
• ChemEngineering.

If you are also 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:

https://amts2021.scimeeting.cn/cn/web/index/12145.

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.

We are pleased to announce that the Advisory Board of Water (ISSN 2073-4441) has been set and five distinguished scholars have been appointed.

Dr. Andreas N. Angelakis is a Water Resources Engineer at the National Agric. Res. Foundation, Institute of Iraklion, Greece and Technical Consultant of Hellenic Union of Municipal Enterprises for Water Supply and Sewerage.

His scientific fields of interest are: environmental engineering; aquatic wastewater management systems; water and wastewater management for small and decentralized systems; treated wastewater renovation and reuse; and water and wastewater technologies in ancient civilizations. He is the author/co-author of over 450 publications. He has over 3000 SCH citations and an i10-index of 58. He has participated in the organizing/scientific committee of more than 120 international symposia and/or conferences in the last 25 years.

Prof. Dr. Fi-John Chang currently works at the Department of Bioenvironmental Systems Engineering at the National Taiwan University. He does research in hydrology, water resources management, ecological engineering, and environmental engineering by using artificial intelligence techniques (ANNs, evolution algorithms, fuzzy logical, machine learning. He is Associate Editor of Journal of Hydrology, Hydrological Science Journal, and Water.

Prof. Dr. Dionysiou performs research in the fields of (i) advanced oxidation technologies for water treatment, (ii) drinking water treatment and purification, (iii) physicochemical phenomena on particle-water interfaces, (iv) transition-metal oxidation and reverse electron transfer reactions, (v) the use of ionic liquids in environmental applications, (vi) destruction of biological toxins in water, and (vii) environmental nanotechnology (fundamental, fate, transport, and applications of nanomaterials). At the University of Cincinnati, Professor Dionysiou teaches graduate courses in the fields of (i) Advanced Unit Operations for the Treatment of Drinking Water and Wastewater, (ii) Physical-Chemical Processes for Water Quality Control, and (iii) Advanced Oxidation Technologies and Nanotechnologies. He also teaches a graduate level laboratory course on Unit Operations and Process Monitoring for the Treatment of Polluted Water and Air and an undergraduate course in Environmental Engineering Fundamentals and Process Design.

Dr. David Dunkerley currently works at the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, at Monash University. Dr. Dunkerley does research in rainfall; rainfall intensity profiles; infiltration; runoff and overland flow production; ephemeral streamflow; ecohydrology; ecohydrology of arid environments; hydraulics of shallow overland flow; flow speeds in overland flow; and instrumentation for surface water hydrology.

Prof. Dr. Fernando A. L. Pacheco was born in 1967 in Mozambique. He holds a B.Sc. in Engineering Geology (1991) from the Coimbra University (Portugal), with an ERASMUS student specialization in Geochemistry (1991) from the Utrecht University (The Netherlands); an M.Sc. in Geosciences, with a specialization in Environment and Territory Management (1996) from the Coimbra University (Portugal); a Ph.D. degree in Hydrogeology (2001) from the Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro University – UTAD (Portugal); and an Habilitation title in Environmental Geochemistry (2011) from the UTAD. He is currently an Associate Professor of Hydrogeology and Environmental Geochemistry at the UTAD. He was the Head of Geology Department between 2013 and 2021 and a member of Life and Environment School of UTAD between 2017 and 2021. He joined the Vila Real Chemistry Research Centre in 2005, where he still develops most of his research, but he also collaborates with various Brazilian research groups, namely the POLUS—Land Use Policy group from the São Paulo State University (UNESP). He has published over 100 research papers in international journals, co-authored by nearly 120 scientists from various countries (Portugal, the Netherlands, Brazil, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Spain), and participated in many and integrated the organizing and scientific committees of many national and international conferences and seminars.

We wish the new Advisory Board Members every success in both their research and the development of the journal.

Further details about the Advisory Board can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/water/editors#advisoryboard.

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
liliane.auwerter@mdpi.com

We are pleased to announce that the new journal Hydrobiology (ISSN 2673-9917) has established companionship with its sister journals Life (ISSN 2075-1729) and Water (ISSN 2073-4441).

Hydrobiology is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal related to the science of life and life processes in water. It publishes regular research articles, reviews, and short notes. Our aim is to encourage scientists to publish their experimental and theoretical results in as much detail as possible. There is no restriction on the length of the papers. The full experimental details must be provided so that results can be reproduced.

We welcome cross-disciplinary research at the molecular, organism, and ecosystem level on all aspects of aquatic ecosystems and biodiversity conservation ranging from freshwater fauna and flora to marine habitats. For details on the background and scope of this journal, please click on this link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/hydrobiology/about.

We offer a full waiver on article processing charges for papers submitted before 15 November 2021. Manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision provided to authors approximately 15 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 3 days (median values for MDPI journals in the second half of 2020). If accepted after peer review, your paper will be published in open access format.

Manuscripts can be submitted via the journal’s online submission system at: https://susy.mdpi.com/user/manuscripts/upload?journal=hydrobiology.

Read Publisher’s Note to Launch Hydrobiology here.

We cordially invite you to consider Hydrobiology as the platform for publishing your work.

Hydrobiology Editorial Office
hydrobiology@mdpi.com

We are pleased to welcome you to the 6th International Electronic Conference on Water Sciences (ECWS-6) addressing the impacts of climate change and human interventions on coastal zones. The conference will be held online and promoted and facilitated by the open-access MDPI Journal Water.

In the last few years, five International Electronic Conferences on Water Sciences (ECWS-1, ECWS-2, ECW-3, ECWS-4 and ECWS-5) have addressed a variety of important water-related aspects. A sixth conference focusing on the impact of climate change and human interventions on coastal zones in the Anthropocene is considered timely. The Earth’s most recent geologic time period is a complex mix of climatic changes and human interventions. Overwhelming regional as well as global evidence exists that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric, and other earth-system compartments and processes are now altered by a wide diversity of anthropogenic activities. Different aspects of the interactions between water and the coastal geo-, bio- and ecosphere in the context of global changes will be considered in this conference.

Date: 15–30 November 2021

Webinar Website: https://ecws-6.sciforum.net/

For any questions about the webinar, please send an email to ecws@mdpi.com.

In order to specifically develop different research areas and attract more high-quality papers, we are pleased to announce the addition of the following three new Sections to Water, which are intended to cover all the disciplines of the field of water science:

• “Ecohydrology”;
• “Water-Energy Nexus”;
• “New Sensors, New Technologies and Machine Learning in Water Sciences”.

Introduction of Section Editors-in-Chief:

We warmly welcome these three scholars in the role of Section Editors-in-Chief, and we look forward to them leading Water to achieve more milestones.