Interview with Prof. Dr. Antony Bryant, Prof. Dr. Paolo Bellavista and Prof. Dr. Kenji Suzuki—Winners of the 2024 MDPI Topics Award

Congratulations to Prof. Dr. Antony Bryant, Prof. Dr. Roberto Montemanni, Prof. Dr. Min Chen, Prof. Dr. Paolo Bellavista, Prof. Dr. Kenji Suzuki and Prof. Dr. Jeanine Treffers-Daller who won the 2024 MDPI Topics Award for their Topic “AI Chatbots: Threat or Opportunity?”.

	Name: Prof. Dr. Antony Bryant Affiliation: School of Built Environment, Engineering, and Computing, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds LS6 3QS, UK Research interests: business process modelling and integration; complexity & chaos theory; formal specification; grounded theory method; information systems development; informatics & information management; knowledge management; methods integration; object orientation; process improvement & capability maturity; qualitative research approaches—particularly grounded theory; research philosophy & methods; software engineering; standards and standardization
	Name: Prof. Dr. Roberto Montemanni Affiliation: Department of Sciences and Methods for Engineering, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, 42100 Reggio Emilia, Italy Research interests: combinatorial optimization; operations research; machine learning; artificial intelligence; logistics; heuristic algorithms; exact algorithms
	Name: Prof. Dr. Min Chen Affiliation: School of Computer Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China Research interests: cognitive computing; 5G networks; wearable computing; big data analytics; robotics; machine learning; deep learning; emotion detection; mobile edge computing
	Name: Prof. Dr. Paolo Bellavista Affiliation: Department of Computer Science & Engineering (DISI), University of Bologna, 40136 Bologna, Italy Research interests: wireless sensor and actuator networks; middleware for sensor and actuator networks; vehicular sensor networks; edge computing; fog computing; online stream processing of sensing dataflows; IoT and big data processing; pervasive and mobile computing; cooperative networking; cyber physical systems for Industry 4.0
	Name: Prof. Dr. Kenji Suzuki Affiliation: Biomedical Artificial Intelligence Research Unit (BMAI), Institute of Integrated Research, Institute of Science Tokyo, Yokohama 226-8501, Japan Research interests: machine learning; deep learning; artificial intelligence; medical image analysis; medical imaging; computer-aided diagnosis; signal and image processing; computer vision
	Name: Prof. Dr. Jeanine Treffers-Daller Affiliation: Department of English Language & Applied Linguistics, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6AH, UK Research interests: second language acquisition; code-switching; bilingualism and language; language contact; multilingualism

The following is a short interview with Prof. Dr. Antony Bryant, Prof. Dr. Paolo Bellavista and Prof. Dr. Kenji Suzuki:

1. Could you please briefly introduce your winning Topic to our readers? What inspired you to lead this Topic?
Prof. Dr. Bryant: The issue of AI chatbots began to manifest itself in late 2022. By 2023, the potential impact of these technologies was becoming clear and I felt it important that it was addressed from a wide range of perspectives. MDPI’s practice of establishing a topic involving a number of related journals was an obvious vehicle for this aim.

Prof. Dr. Bellavista: The research area targeted by our Topic relates to AI-enabled chatbots. With the rapidly increasing relevance and interest dedicated to large language models, this MDPI Topic issue gained momentum and received an extremely high number of high-quality submissions. Of course, we worked on growing the visibility and impact of our Topic, but we were also lucky to be very timely in the proposal of the subject.
It is quite evident that the Topic is of full interest both for AI-oriented researchers appreciating the novelty of contributions in terms methodologies and algorithms and for researchers/practitioners in vertical application domains that can benefit from the availability of AI chatbot-based tools.

Prof. Dr. Kenji Suzuki: The introduction of ChatGPT-3 by OpenAI in November 2022 made us feel that another revolution in AI technology was taking place. The Editors-in-Chief of six journals in related fields decided to launch this Topic focusing on this rapidly growing and promising area of research.

2. What has been your impression of the publishing experience with MDPI Topics?
Prof. Dr. Bryant: I have been impressed with the input, advice, and support from MDPI editors. The process of receiving and reviewing submissions has gone very smoothly and has been highly effective.

Prof. Dr. Bellavista: Great experience. The process was managed very smoothly, with the support of the MDPI staff to split the load among the editors of the Topic. Very manageable and well-organized experience.

Prof. Dr. Kenji Suzuki: I have served as an Editor-in-Chief, Editorial Board Member, and Guest Editor for multiple Special Issues. I have enjoyed my editorial experience with MDPI.

3. What advice would you offer to young investigators who aspire to achieve similar recognition in their research careers?
Prof. Dr. Bryant: Early-career researchers should build on their enthusiasm and skills, making sure they engage with topics in a critical and insightful manner. They should be prepared to accept disappointment in the early stages, using the reviews and feedback as supportive suggestions and criticism that can be taken into account as their ideas develop. They should also try to make contact with like-minded researchers and experts in the field.

Prof. Dr. Bellavista: For us it was crucial to identify a very timely hot topic, with good inter-disciplinarity and multi-disciplinarity. My suggestion is to look for very interdisciplinary topics, capable of attracting significant attention but also of best exploiting the different expertise and communities brought in by different GEs from different journals and research areas.

Prof. Dr. Kenji Suzuki: I would suggest choosing a promising, essential, and long-lasting topic that is likely to become mainstream.

4. Which research topics do you think will be of particular interest to the research community in the coming years?
Prof. Dr. Bryant: I have already set up a related Topic on “Living with Gen-AI”, a series of technologies which may to an extent be overhyped, but which will undoubtedly have significant and wide-ranging impacts in the immediate future and beyond.

Prof. Dr. Bellavista: (1) Edge cloud computing for latency-sensitive and/or privacy-sensitive domains.
(2) Federated learning for health and wellness applications.
(3) Advanced IoT for improved energy sustainability.

Prof. Dr. Kenji Suzuki: Foundational AI models represent one essential direction, while small-data or efficient AI models represent another.

5. What are your thoughts on the evolution of open access publishing in academia? How do you see it impacting the dissemination of future research?
Prof. Dr. Bryant: I think open access has moved from a rarity, often regarded with suspicion by many academics and researchers, to gaining far wider acceptance. There are still issues to be dealt with, such as APCs, but in general I believe it is a positive advancement, allowing published reports to be widely accessible.

Prof. Dr. Bellavista: Open access is a direction that is going to grow and grow even further in the coming years, partly because of the support of institutions that fund research, e.g., the EU requiring that at least some of the central results of publicly funded EU projects are published in open access. In addition, the accessibility of open access articles tends to improve their bibliometric impact, which is a non-negligible factor for attracting excellent authors and contributors.

Prof. Dr. Kenji Suzuki: Open access publishing has become a major venue for researchers across most fields. It is gaining increasing recognition. Papers published in open access journals receive immediate attention from a broad audience and are cited more quickly in other publications.