MDPI is committed to supporting the academic community, nurturing talent and advancing science. Awards are an important part of the research landscape and play a vital role in helping academics gain recognition, especially young researchers as they embark on new research avenues.

In 2022, our journals presented a total number of 394 Awards, including Travel Awards, Young Investigator Awards, Best PhD Thesis Awards, Best Paper Awards, and Outstanding Reviewer Awards, with several winners announced for some of the awards. The total prize sum amounted to just under 580,000 Swiss francs (CHF), or approximately 650,000 US dollars. Overall, more than 720 scholars were awarded.

The majority of the awards were dedicated to young researchers in relatively early stages of their careers. This encompassed 66 of the afore-mentioned Travel Awards, 60 Young Investigator Awards, supporting research projects and conference attendance, as well as 51 Best PhD Thesis Awards. Additionally, 113 Best Paper Awards were given by our journals. The selection committees were entrusted with identifying the most impactful and novel research and review articles published in their journal within a given year.

MDPI will continue its support and recognition for the academic community moving forward, sponsoring new awards across disciplines. To learn more about all the awardees and their research projects in your field of study, please visit the following pages:

To explore more MDPI awards, please click here.

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 2022 in the social sciences, arts and humanities category. The winners were selected by the journals’ Award Evaluation Committee.

We warmly congratulate the following young investigators for their outstanding contributions. MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

• Alicia Forsberg, University of Sheffield, UK
• Jacqueline Caemmerer, University of Connecticut, USA

Religions:

• Alex Villas Boas, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP), Portugal

Social Sciences:

• João Pedro Baptista, University of Beira Interior, Portugal

About MDPI Awards:

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. These awards, serving as a source of inspiration and recognition, help raise the influence of talented individuals who have been credited with outstanding achievements and are making a significant contribution to the advancement of their fields.

To explore more MDPI awards, please click here.

In order to acknowledge our reviewers, who demonstrate diligence, professionalism, and timeliness when generously dedicating their time to reviewing papers, 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 2022 in the social sciences, arts and humanities 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 the winners on their achievements. MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Administrative Sciences:

• António Moreira, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

Behavioral Sciences:

• Alexandre González-Rodríguez, Mutua Terrassa University Hospital, Spain

Economies:

• Joana Costa, University of Aveiro, Portugal
• Maryna Nehrey, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine

Education Sciences:

• Jodye I. Selco, California State Polytechnic University, USA
• Leonie Brummer, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
• Dominique Sluijsmans, Maastricht University, The Netherlands

Encyclopedia:

• Bjørn Grinde, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Norway
• Bo-Wen Shen, San Diego State University, USA

Humanities:

• Sarah Chinn, Hunter College, New York, USA

• Florian Schmitz, Department of Psychology, Germany

JRFM:

• Elie Bouri, Lebanese American University, Lebanon
• Fahad Ali, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, China
• Dan-Cristian Dabija, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai, România
• Irena Jindřichovská, Metropolitan University Prague, Czech Republic
• Viorica Chirila, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania

Languages:

• Dai O’Brien, York St John University, UK
• Natascha Mueller, University of Wuppertal, Germany

Religions:

• David Gray, Santa Clara University, USA
• Michail Theodosiadis, Charles University, Czech Republic
• Christopher Lovins, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea
• Hans Van Eyghen, Tilburg School of Catholic Theology, The Netherlands
• Jonathon Lookadoo, Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary, Republic of Korea

Risks:

• Grzegorz Zimon, Rzeszow University of Technology, Poland
• Himchan Jeong, Simon Fraser University, Canada
• Guanming He, University of Durham, UK

About MDPI Awards:

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. These awards, serving as a source of inspiration and recognition, help raise the influence of talented individuals who have been credited with outstanding achievements and are making a significant contribution to the advancement of their fields.

To explore more MDPI awards, please click here.

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 scientific merit, overall impact, and the quality of presentation.

We are honored to present the winners in 2022 in the social sciences, arts and humanities category, who were selected amongst the extensive competition, and congratulate the authors for their outstanding scientific publications. MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Administrative Sciences:

• “Where Does CSR Come from and Where Does It Go? A Review of the State of the Art”
  by Sara Rodriguez-Gomez, Maria Lourdes Arco-Castro, Maria Victoria Lopez-Perez and Lazaro Rodríguez-Ariza
  Adm. Sci. 2020, 10(3), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci10030060

• “The Circular Economy Business Model: Examining Consumers’ Acceptance of Recycled Goods”
  by Cristina Calvo-Porral and Jean-Pierre Lévy-Mangin
  Adm. Sci. 2020, 10(2), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci10020028

Behavioral Sciences:

• “Social Cognition and Socioecological Predictors of Home-Based Physical Activity Intentions, Planning, and Habits during the COVID-19 Pandemic”
  by Navin Kaushal, NiCole Keith, Susan Aguiñaga and Martin S. Hagger
  Behav. Sci. 2020, 10(9), 133; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs10090133

Education Sciences:

• “Compassionate Flexibility and Self-Discipline: Student Adaptation to Emergency Remote Teaching in an Integrated Engineering Energy Course during COVID-19”
  by Laura A. Gelles, Susan M. Lord, Gordon D. Hoople, Diana A. Chen and Joel Alejandro Mejia
  Educ. Sci. 2020, 10(11), 304; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci10110304

• “Digital Learning Environments in Higher Education: A Literature Review of the Role of Individual vs. Social Settings for Measuring Learning Outcomes”
  by Elke Kümmel, Johannes Moskaliuk, Ulrike Cress and Joachim Kimmerle
  Educ. Sci. 2020, 10(3), 78; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci10030078

JRFM:

• “Refined Measures of Dynamic Connectedness based on Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregressions”
  by Nikolaos Antonakakis, Ioannis Chatziantoniou and David Gabauer
  J. Risk Financial Manag. 2020, 13(4), 84; https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm13040084

• “Digitalization of the EU Economies and People at Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion”
  by Aleksy Kwilinski, Oleksandr Vyshnevskyi and Henryk Dzwigol
  J. Risk Financial Manag. 2020, 13(7), 142; https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm13070142

• “Assessment of Bankruptcy Risk of Large Companies: European Countries Evolution Analysis”
  by Nicoleta Bărbuță-Mișu and Mara Madaleno
  J. Risk Financial Manag. 2020, 13(3), 58; https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm13030058

Genealogy:

• “From National Holiday to Independence Day: Changing Perceptions of the ‘Diada’”
  by Carsten Humlebæk and Mark F. Hau
  Genealogy 2020, 4(1), 31; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy4010031

• “Racialized Affectivities of (Un)Belonging: Mixed (Race) Couples in the Shadow of Brexit”
  by Elena Zambelli
  Genealogy 2020, 4(3), 83; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy4030083

Risks:

• “Nagging Predictors”
  by Ronald Richman and Mario V. Wüthrich
  Risks 2020, 8(3), 83; https://doi.org/10.3390/risks8030083

• “A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of Distance Driven on the Probability of Car Accidents”
  by Jean-Philippe Boucher and Roxane Turcotte
  Risks 2020, 8(3), 91; https://doi.org/10.3390/risks8030091

• “Financial Bubbles: A Study of Co-Explosivity in the Cryptocurrency Market”
  by Arianna Agosto and Alessia Cafferata
  Risks 2020, 8(2), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/risks8020034

• “A Generative Adversarial Network Approach to Calibration of Local Stochastic Volatility Models”
  by Christa Cuchiero, Wahid Khosrawi and Josef Teichmann
  Risks 2020, 8(4), 101; https://doi.org/10.3390/risks8040101

• “Machine Learning in Least-Squares Monte Carlo Proxy Modeling of Life Insurance Companies”
  by Anne-Sophie Krah, Zoran Nikolić and Ralf Korn
  Risks 2020, 8(1), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/risks8010021

Urban Science:

• “How Might the COVID-19 Pandemic Affect 21st Century Urban Design, Planning, and Development?”
  by Bradley Bereitschaft and Daniel Scheller
  Urban Sci. 2020, 4(4), 56; https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci4040056

About MDPI Awards:

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. These awards, serving as a source of inspiration and recognition, help raise the influence of talented individuals who have been credited with outstanding achievements and are making a significant contribution to the advancement of their fields.

To explore more MDPI awards, please click here.

MDPI will be organising an Author Training Workshop at the University of Central Lancashire on 18 July 2023. 

The aim of this workshop is for PGR students, ECRs and MCRs of GRACE, University of Central Lancashire, and North West Universities to get together and exchange experiences in the publishing world. MDPI has invited three experienced speakers from the MDPI UK Manchester Office to provide a guide on how to write and publish your manuscript to a journal. 

Date: 18 July 2023
Time: 10:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.
Venue: Leigh Suite, Westleigh Conference Centre, University of Central Lancashire, Lea Road, Preston, Lancashire, England
Registration link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mdpi-author-training-at-the-university-of-central-lancashire-westleigh-tickets-672988555887 

Schedule:

 Speakers:

Dr. John Peter Wainwright		Dr. Wainwright is the Director of the Global Race Centre for Equality (GRACE), a transdisciplinary research centrer that is led by Black and Asian academics that focus on co-produced research in anti-racism/ race equality with minoritized ethnic communities, industry, the private, statutory and voluntary sector. His research expertise is co-production in race, (anti)-racism, youth justice, children and young people in the care system, adoption and fostering.
Mr. Rhys Pumphrey		Mr. Pumphrey obtained his MEng in materials science and engineering from the University of Manchester in 2021. He joined MDPI as an Assistant Editor for the journal Materials (ISSN: 1996-1944) the same year. In September 2022, he became a Section Managing Editor, and he is currently the Journal Relations Specialist for Materials.
Dr. Anya Osborn		Dr. Osborn obtained her Ph.D. in auditory neuroscience from Keele University in 2019. She joined MDPI as an Assistant Editor for the journal Cancers (ISSN: 2072-6694) in 2020. Currently, she is working towards becoming a Section Managing Editor and Journal Relations Specialist for Cancers.
Ms. Isabel Nelson		Ms. Nelson obtained her M.Sc. in environmental monitoring, modelling and reconstruction from the University of Manchester in 2020. With an interest in environmental and public health, she joined MDPI as an Assistant Editor for the journal Healthcare (ISSN: 2227-9032) in 2021. Since October 2022, she has been working towards becoming a Section Managing Editor, whilst acting as the Journal Relations Specialist for Healthcare.

With the first issue released in June 2023, five new MDPI journals disseminating multi-disciplinary science are due to launch, which will cover the subjects of medicine & pharmacology, biology and physical sciences.

The newly launched journals will be overseen by professional Editorial Board Members and Editors to ensure an accurate and rapid publication, rigorous peer review and broad visibility.

Please feel free to browse and discover more about the new journals below.

Journal	Founding Editor-in-Chief	Journal topics (selected)
	Prof. Dr. Jun Ma, Peking University, China| Editorial | view inaugural issue	growth and development; diet and nutrients; school health promotion policies and practices; child health and care; adolescent health and wellbeing | view journal scope | submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Bernd Rehm, Griffith University, Australia | Editorial | view inaugural issue	DNA and gene synthesis; synthetic transcription factors; protein engineering; viral engineering; metabolic engineering | view journal scope | submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Varsha Gandhi, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA | Editorial | view inaugural issue	lymphatics; cancers associated with lymphocytes and lymphoblasts; lymphatic tissues; lymphoma; lymphoid leukemia | view journal scope | submit an article
	Dr. Bradley Turner, University of Melbourne, Australia | Editorial | view inaugural issue	multiple sclerosis; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; primary lateral sclerosis; atherosclerosis; systemic sclerosis | view journal scope | submit an article
	Prof. Dr. Clemens Burda, Case Western Reserve University, USA | Editorial | view inaugural issue	Gamma ray, X-ray, and UV–Vis spectroscopies; NIR/mid-infrared/Raman spectroscopy; microwave and THz spectroscopy; high-resolution gas-phase atomic, molecular, and cluster spectroscopy; MS, NMR, and EPR spectroscopy | view journal scope | submit an article

We wish to thank everyone who has supported the development of open access publishing. You are welcome to submit an application to the New Journal Committee (newjournal-committee@mdpi.com) if you would like to create more new journals.

We are pleased to share that Genealogy (ISSN: 2313-5778) has received its first Impact Factor of 0.8 in the Journal Citation Reports™ (Clarivate) in June 2023.

Genealogy continues to be indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) within the Web of Science Core Collection. This is the first time that Clarivate has awarded Impact Factors to journals outside of the core flagship indices, SCIE and SSCI, creating greater transparency around the citedness of ESCI-indexed journals.

The 2022 Journal Impact Factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations of publications in a journal in the Web of Science records in 2022 by the number of citable publications published in the journal in 2020 and 2021. For further journal data, please visit https://www.mdpi.com/journal/genealogy/stats.

The journal’s performance is inseparable from the support and dedication of all journal editors, reviewers, authors, and readers. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have contributed to the journal.

The 2022 citation metrics have been released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), and we’re pleased to announce the following results for MDPI journals:

We are thrilled to announce that 90% of our ranked MDPI journals, specifically 86 out of 96 (captured in the table below), are performing above average in Q1 or Q2. This year, Clarivate has expanded its Impact Factor (IF) awards to include journals in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), providing greater transparency for the full set of journals indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection. As a result, 111 of MDPI journals have received their first IF in 2023, with 37 journals surpassing an IF of 3.0. In total, 208 MDPI journals have been honored with an IF.

Clarivate explains that by "expanding the coverage but holding to highly selective standards, the [Impact Factor] is now a reliable indicator of trustworthiness, as well as a measure of scholarly impact, at the journal level."

Please visit our blog post where we discuss the release of the latest citation metrics with our Indexing Manager, Dr. Constanze Schelhorn, to find out what's different this time around and how to make use of different metrics available.

Note: The Journal of Personalized Medicine's Impact Factor was omitted in the original release and will be assigned separately. Please find the data on the journal webpage in due course.

Source: 2022 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ^TM (Clarivate, 2023)

We are honored to welcome our four new Editorial Board members—Prof. Dr. Edward Telles, Dr. Rafaela Patrícia Gonçalves Granja, Dr. Laura King and Dr. Esther Mary Fitzpatrick.

Name: Prof. Dr. Edward Telles

Affiliation: Department of Sociology, School of Social Science, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA

Website: https://www.edwardtelles.com/

Interests: immigration; race/ethnicity; colorism; inequality; identity; Latin America; United States; Latinos

Prof. Dr. Edward Telles is a distinguished professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and former professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Prof. Dr. Telles has reoriented the field of sociology beyond the U.S. black-white paradigm through his research and writings on color, race and ethnicity globally, particularly in Latin America and for Latinos in the United States.

Name: Dr. Rafaela Patrícia Gonçalves Granja

Affiliation: Communication and Society Research Centre (CECS), University of Minho, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal

Website: https://www.cienciavitae.pt/8119-5F30-83B3

Interests: social studies of forensic genetics; forensic genetic genealogy; criminal investigation; surveillance of criminalized populations

Dr. Rafaela Patrícia Gonçalves Granja’s research explores the technological surveillance of criminalized populations and lies at the intersection of sociology of crime and justice and social studies of science and technology. Her work is intrinsically interdisciplinary, crossing the boundaries between social sciences and natural sciences, and heavily draws upon the European context.

Name: Dr. Laura King

Affiliation: School of History, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

Website: https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/history/staff/895/dr-laura-king

Interests: inter-generational family relationships; the history of families and emotions; family history practices; family archives; fatherhood; death and remembrance; collaborative research methodologies

Dr. Laura King’s research focuses on the social and cultural history of everyday family life and emotional relationships in modern Britain. She has written about fatherhood, childbirth, family archives, the remembrance of the dead, and methodologies for collaborative public history.

Name: Dr. Esther Mary Fitzpatrick

Affiliation: Faculty of Education and Social Work, The University of Auckland, Auckland 1023, New Zealand

Website: https://profiles.auckland.ac.nz/e-fitzpatrick

Interests: the histories, theories and complexities of identity constructions in colonized communities; neoliberal impacts on academic identity; critical and sociological perspectives of analyzing DNA and archival genealogies; non-human centric kinship and relationalities; critical autoethnography; arts-based methodologies

Dr. Esther Mary Fitzpatrick is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Learning, Development and Professional Practice and a Director of the Graduate Diploma in Teaching Primary. She is also the Director of the Narrative and Metaphor Special Interest at the University of Auckland. She is interested in issues of identity, bicultural practice and decolonizing strategies (methods and pedagogy).

We look forward to their contributions to the journal and the continued success of Genealogy (ISSN: 2313-5778). Further information about the journal can be found here.

As a leading open access publisher, MDPI provides scholars with a high-quality and rich academic exchange platform by continuously expanding into new and exciting research areas.

In December 2022, MDPI launched five new journals, covering multiple subjects such as life sciences, biology, medicine and pharmacology, social sciences and humanities. These new journals are being edited by established scholars across the world.

If you are interested in creating more open access journals with us to publish cutting-edge research, please send your journal proposal application to newjournal-committee@mdpi.com.

MDPI is pleased to announce that we now display the co-authors’ email addresses in addition to the corresponding author’s email address on the webpage of published papers, protected by Captcha. For more information about this change, please visit the journal’s instructions for authors page. 

We believe this change will facilitate academic discussions and advance our cause of open science and research. The corresponding authors are responsible for communicating with their co-authors and indicating in our system (https://susy.mdpi.com/) if co-authors would prefer for their email addresses not to be displayed.

On 9 February 2023, Clarivate, a global leader in providing trusted insights and analytics, added the Preprint Citation Index to the Web of Science platform, streamlining the research process by allowing researchers to locate and link to preprints alongside other trusted content in the database.

The Preprint Citation Index will act as a bridge to connect cutting-edge preprints with peer-reviewed journal articles published within the Web of Science Core Collection. Alerts can be easily set to monitor new research across several repositories and authors will also be able to include preprints on their Web of Science Research Profile to more accurately display their various research outputs.

As of its launch, the Preprint Citation Index will provide nearly two million preprints from various repositories, including MDPI’s own Preprints.org.

MDPI's Preprints Platform – Preprints.org

To advance Open Science and the fast dissemination of research, MDPI offers researchers a free multidisciplinary preprint platform. Preprints.org accepts submissions from all research areas and offers authors high visibility, permanent archiving, article-level Metrics and immediately citable content by assigning a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to all preprints.

During submission to any MDPI journal, authors have the option to share their research as a preprint. After an initial screening, the manuscript is available online in 48 hours or less. Once online, preprints can be downloaded, shared, commented on, and cited, providing authors maximum visibility.

We invite you to join the ranks of the over 100k researchers using Preprints.org and share your research.

For more information, please visit Preprints.org.

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative—the MDPI Special Issue Mentor Program.

This program will enable early career researchers (who must hold a Ph.D. in a related field) to experience editing a Special Issue in MDPI journals, under the mentorship of our experienced Editorial Board Members or other experienced scientists. The mentor program will provide an excellent opportunity for early career scientists to gain editorial experience, and to cultivate their ability to edit scientific research.

The mentee’s responsibilities include:

• Proposing a Special Issue title and assisting the mentor in preparing a summary (around 200–400 words) and 3–10 keywords describing the background, importance, and goal of the Issue;
• Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
• Preparing a list of scholars who may be interested in the Issue and personally e-mailing invitations on behalf of Guest Editors;
• Writing an editorial for the online Special Issue together with the mentor.

The mentor’s responsibilities include:

• Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
• Performing editorial control of the Special Issue and quality control of the publications, both of which must be carried out in a timely manner;
• Providing suggestions to younger scholars if they have any doubts or concerns regarding submissions;
• Organizing video calls with young scholars and the Editorial Office regularly to discuss problems and improvement suggestions for the Special Issue;
• Making and submitting decisions regarding submissions with the assistance of mentees.

Certificates and awards:
After the Special Issue closes, the Editorial Office will provide official certificates for all the mentors and early career researchers.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Editorial Office of a journal you choose, and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail. The full list of MDPI journals is as follows: https://www.mdpi.com/about/journals.

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

We are pleased to announce that Genealogy (ISSN: 2313-5778) has been selected for coverage in the Scopus indexing database in December 2022. We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all of the authors, reviewers, and editors who have contributed to this journal and helped to accomplish this achievement.

Genealogy is an open access, peer-reviewed, academic journal that publishes research on all aspects of genealogy and genealogy-related phenomena. Our aim is to provide an advanced, scholarly forum for the dissemination of empirical, comparative, theoretical, and multi-/interdisciplinary approaches to the role of genealogy in different kinds of social processes, from families to communities, institution building, transnational networks, and states.

To make the most of this opportunity, we would like to invite you to submit your research to the journal. If you have a paper concerning any topic within the scope of the journal, please feel free to submit it here.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Genealogy Editorial Office

MDPI has just become the first open access (OA) publisher to reach the milestone of one million articles published. That is one million articles freely available to all, to circulate and build upon! We are proud to share this special moment with the global scientific community.

This landmark has been reached thanks to the immeasurable support of more than 600,000 expert reviewers, 66,000 editorial board members and 6700 hard-working colleagues across MDPI’s global offices.

Within more than 25 years of publishing, our journals received 2.1 million manuscripts and generated 4.6 million peer review reports to get to one million papers published.

Reaching the milestone of one million articles published reinforces our mission to remove any existing barriers and to make scientific research accessible to all. Since its inception, MDPI’s goal has been to create reliable processes to make science open. This is a path towards facilitating the dissemination of novel insights in scientific communities.

Regular feedback from authors and reviewers shows that our service is greatly appreciated and needed. At the same time, the feedback helps us identify areas for further improvement.

As it stands, a significant share of published research findings remain closed access. More than half of the content published with the most well-known legacy publishers stays behind a paywall, and that is not including articles published in hybrid OA journals, or made available months or years after publication.

A new policy announced by the US administration in August 2022 requires that, as of January 2026, all US federally funded research be made freely and immediately available after publication. While the new policy does not mandate articles be published under an open access license, it is aligned with the open access movement in removing all barriers to research. Similarly, some of the most advanced research institutions in the world intend to have all funded research articles published in open access by 2025.

MDPI is proud to be the leading agent of the transition to open access.

"Thanks a Million" to all the contributors!

We are currently recruiting Editorial Board Members (EBMs) for MDPI journals indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) in Web of Science. In particular, we are looking for experts who are interested in aiding in the development of our journals and safeguarding the scientific quality of the published findings.

Journals currently listed in the ESCI will receive an Impact Factor in June 2023, according to the changes announced by Web of Science (Clarivate). Therefore, this is an excellent time to become an Editorial Board Member for one of these fast-developing journals.

If you are interested in sharing your expertise in one of the journals listed below, please send us an application using this link.

The Editorial Office of the journal will contact you once the application has been approved.
Editorial Board Members are responsible for academic decisions on manuscripts in their field of expertise, will edit Special Issues, and may be invited to review manuscripts. The initial term lasts for two years, after which it can be renewed, and entails the following:

• Prescreening and making decisions on new submissions related to your research interests;
• Setting up at least one Special Issue during your term on a topic related to your research interests (or supervising Special Issues related to your research field);
• Providing input or feedback regarding journal policies;
• Helping to promote the journal among your peers or at conferences;
• Attending Board meetings to suggest journal development strategies;
• Reviewing manuscripts.

Editorial Board Members are entitled to a full waiver on one publication per year in the journal that they serve and need to be experts in their fields.

The list of ESCI journals can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/about/journals/esci.

Please find the list of ESCI journals, categorized by subject, for which we are recruiting Editorial Board Members below.

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!

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 “Social Sciences & Humanities” category for their outstanding contributions among the 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 achievements. MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Administrative Sciences:

• Joana Costa, University of Aveiro, Portugal.

Behavioral Sciences:

• María Napal, Universidad Pública de Navarra, Spain.

Education Sciences:

• James Russo, Monash University, Australia;
• Luis Manuel Sánchez Ruiz, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain;
• Lasse Christiansen, University College Northern Denmark, Denmark.

Humanities:

• Brad Prager, University of Missouri, USA.

Journal of Intelligence:

• André Kretzschmar, University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Journal of Risk and Financial Management:

• Paulo Ferreira, Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre, Portugal;
• Sorin Anton, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania;
• Peter Moffatt, University of East Anglia, UK;
• Francisco Guijarro Martínez, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain;
• João Leitão, University of Beira Interior, Portugal;
• Mirela Panait, Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiesti, Romania;
• Błażej Prusak, Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland;
• Jakub Horák, The Institute of Technology and Business in České Budějovice, Czech Republic;
• Magdalena Ziolo, University of Szczecin, Poland;
• Tobias Basse, NORD/LB and Touro College Berlon, Germany;
• Ching Torng Lin, Da-Yeh University, Taiwan;
• Dean Fantazzini, Moscow State University, Russia;
• Doojin Ryu, Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea;
• Douglas J. Lamdin, University of Maryland, USA;
• Maria Luisa Esteban Salvador, University of Zaragoza, Spain;
• Masao Nakamura, University of British Columbia, Canada;
• Michael A. Talias, Open University of Cyprus, Cyprus;
• Sotiris Kotsiantis, University of Patras, Greece;
• Ryo Okui, Department of Economics, Seoul National University, South Korea;
• Grzegorz Mentel, Rzeszow University of Technology, Poland.

Religions:

• Daniel Boscaljon, Independent Scholar and Life Coach, USA;
• Dan Bradley, Gonzaga University, USA;
• Silvio Ferrari, University of Milan, Italy;
• Yu Tao, U4niversity of Western Australia, Australia;
• Aldona Piwko, Vistula University, Poland.

Social Sciences:

• Márcio Oliveira, School of Education and Social Sciences of Leiria, Portugal.

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 “Social Sciences & Humanities” 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.

Journal of Intelligence:

• Okan Bulut, University of Alberta, Canada.

Religions:

• Kathryn Johnson, Arizona State University, 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 “Social Sciences & Humanities” category, who were selected amongst the extensive competition, and congratulate the authors for their outstanding scientific publications.

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

Administrative Sciences:

• “Entrepreneurship Education in a Multidisciplinary Environment: Evidence from an Entrepreneurship Programme Held in Turin”
  by Eleonora Fiore, Giuliano Sansone and Emilio Paolucci
  Adm. Sci. 2019, 9(1), 28; doi 10.3390/admsci9010028
• “A Systematic Mapping Study on Customer Loyalty and Brand Management”
  by Andrea Moretta Tartaglione, Ylenia Cavacece, Giuseppe Russo and Giuseppe Granata
  Adm. Sci. 2019, 9(1), 8; doi 10.3390/admsci9010008

Journal of Risk and Financial Management:

• “Refined Measures of Dynamic Connectedness based on Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregressions”
  by Nikolaos Antonakakis, Ioannis Chatziantoniou and David Gabauer
  J. Risk Financial Manag. 2020, 13(4), 84; doi 10.3390/jrfm13040084
• “Digitalization of the EU Economies and People at Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion”
  by Aleksy Kwilinski, Oleksandr Vyshnevskyi and Henryk Dzwigol
  J. Risk Financial Manag. 2020, 13(7), 142; doi 10.3390/jrfm13070142
• “Assessment of Bankruptcy Risk of Large Companies: European Countries Evolution Analysis”
  by Nicoleta Bărbuță-Mișu and Mara Madaleno
  J. Risk Financial Manag. 2020, 13(3), 58; doi 10.3390/jrfm13030058

Risks:

• “Nagging Predictors”
  by Ronald Richman and Mario V. Wüthrich
  Risks 2020, 8(3), 83; doi 10.3390/risks8030083
• “A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of Distance Driven on the Probability of Car Accidents”
  by Jean-Philippe Boucher and Roxane Turcotte
  Risks 2020, 8(3), 91; doi 10.3390/risks8030091
• “Financial Bubbles: A Study of Co-Explosivity in the Cryptocurrency Market”
  by Arianna Agosto and Alessia Cafferata
  Risks 2020, 8(2), 34; doi 10.3390/risks8020034
• “A Generative Adversarial Network Approach to Calibration of Local Stochastic Volatility Models”
  by Christa Cuchiero, Wahid Khosrawi and Josef Teichmann
  Risks 2020, 8(4), 101; doi 10.3390/risks8040101
• “Machine Learning in Least-Squares Monte Carlo Proxy Modeling of Life Insurance Companies”
  by Anne-Sophie Krah, Zoran Nikolić and Ralf Korn
  Risks 2020, 8(1), 21; doi 10.3390/risks8010021

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)

MDPI released a statement on and expressed its support for the citizens and residents of Ukraine.

For detailed information, please check the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/3612.

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.

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
liliane.auwerter@mdpi.com

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

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.

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)

We are pleased to inform you that the journal Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778) has been accepted into the ESCI. Acceptance into the ESCI is the first step towards inclusion in the more selective Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).

We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all authors, reviewers, and editors who have contributed to the journal and made these achievements possible.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Athena S. Leoussi, Dr. Natividad Gutiérrez Chong and Dr. Joanna Beata Michlic have been appointed as the new Editors-in-Chief of Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778).

Dr. Athena S. Leoussi

Dr. Athena S. Leoussi (Licence de Sociologie, Grenoble, France; MPhil, Courtauld Institute of Art, UK; PhD, LSE, UK) is an art historian and social scientist. She is an Associate Professor in European History in the Department of Languages and Cultures of the University of Reading, UK. She is known for her publications on nationalism and the classical tradition in nineteenth-century Europe. She is also known for her publications on the classical body, and the exhibition that she initiated and co-curated at the British Museum, ‘Defining Beauty’ (2015). She is a Founding Chair (1992) of The Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism that was founded at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and is currently a member of ASEN's Steering Committee and a Founding Editor (1994) and continuing editor of the journal, Nations and Nationalism. She has been Visiting Senior Fellow in the Department of Government, LSE, UK (2008–2012), is a Fellow of the Panteion University of Athens, Greece, and her research has received funding from the Greek government, the Hellenic Foundation, and the Irving Louis Horowitz Foundation (USA). Her book publications include Nationalism and Classicism: The Classical Body as National Symbol in Nineteenth-Century England and France (1998), Encyclopaedia of Nationalism (2001), The Call of the Homeland: Diaspora Nationalisms, Past and Present (co-ed. with Allon Gal and Anthony D. Smith, 2010), Nationality and Nationalism (4 vols, co-ed. with Steven Grosby, 2003), Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations (co-ed. with Steven Grosby, 2006), and Famous Battles and How they Shaped the Modern World (2 vols, co-ed. with Beatrice Heuser, 2018). She is currently working on a book on the art and architecture of national parliaments in Europe.

Prof. Dr. Natividad Gutiérrez Chong

Prof. Dr. Natividad Gutiérrez Chong is a Mexican sociologist who graduated from the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, UNAM; MSc and received her PhD from the London School of Economics, University of London, UK. She is a full-time researcher and professor at the Institute of Social Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico.

She has researched extensively on Indigenous peoples and nation building, stateless nationalisms, and ethnic autonomies. She has formed and coordinated research projects that are pioneering in Mexico and abroad, of which her studies on indigenous intellectuals, women and nation, trafficking in women, and racism stand out. Her research began in 1983 in the People's Republic of China, and later in Bolivia, Ecuador, England, and Mexico. She has received funding from Mexico, PRC, Spain, and the European Union.

Her most recent research can be found in the online database on the political culture of ethnic minorities and ethnic conflicts in the Americas (www.sicetno.org) and her work on youth identities and inequalities with an intersectional approach (https://juventidades.sociales.unam.mx).

She was editorial director of the Revista Mexicana de Sociología (2001–2007) and is a member of several editorial committees, including Nations and Nationalism, Fronteiras, and the Journal of Intercultural Studies.

She is the author of 7 books as sole author, 4 with other authors, 6 as coordinator, 21 refereed articles, and 49 book chapters. Some of her publications include the following: Ethnicity and Conflict in the Americas, Volume I and II, 2013; Nationalist Myths and Ethnic Identities. Indigenous Intellectuals and the Mexican State, 2nd edition, English edition Nebraska University Press, 1999; The words that slept in me: indigenous discourses from Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and Mexico, 2019; Being Indigenous in Mexico. Roots and Rights, 2015. Cultures Today, 2019.

Dr. Joanna Beata Michlic

Dr. Joanna Beata Michlic is a social and cultural historian, and founder and first Director of the HBI (Hadassah-Brandeis Institute) Project on Families, Children, and the Holocaust at Brandeis University. She is an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the UCL Centre for the Study of Collective Violence, the Holocaust and Genocide, UCL Institute for Advanced Studies, an Honorary Senior Associate at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) in London, and Research Fellow at Weiss-Livnat International Centre for Holocaust Research and Education, University of Haifa, June 2019–May 2022. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of Poland and East European Jews, the Holocaust and its memory in Europe, East European Jewish childhood, rescue and rescuers of Jews in East-Central Europe, and antisemitism, racism, and nationalism in Europe.

She is the author of 5 books and more than 60 articles. Her most important publications are Neighbors Respond: The Controversy about Jedwabne (2004; co-edited with Antony Polonsky), Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present, (translated into Polish in 2015 and nominated for the Best History Book of Kazimierz Moczarski Award 2016 in Poland); Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe, co-edited with John-Paul Himka (Lincoln, NUP, 2012), a singled co-edited Jewish Family 1939–Present: History, Representation, and Memory, Brandeis University Press/NEUP, January 2017), which was included in the Ethical Inquiry list of the best books published in 2017 at Brandeis University (http://www.brandeis.edu/ethics/ethicalinquiry/2017/December.html), and Piętno Zagłady. Wojenna i powojenna historia oraz pamięć żydowskich dzieci ocalałych w Polsce (ZIH, Dec. 2020). Her forthcoming publication is Lessons from the Holocaust: History and (Self)-Representations of Jewish Child Survivors (NUP, 2021). She is currently working on a book project on the history and memory of the rescue of Jews in Poland, More Than The Milk Of Human Kindness: Jewish Survivors and Their Polish Rescuers Recount Their Tales, 1944-1949, supported by the Gerda Henkel Fellowship.

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.

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.

Genealogy would like to introduce a new feature called "Editor's Choice Articles", which serves to highlight the most notable papers published in the journal. These are selected by the editors and include original articles that report important and impactful findings on various topics. With this feature, readers can expect timely and useful highlights of recent articles in the journal, and the most valuable contributions would receive more attention. We hope that this feature will enhance your reading pleasure and experience with Genealogy.

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 helen.dobson@jisc.ac.uk.

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 ioap@mdpi.com.

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.

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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: office@encyclopedia.pub)

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 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 office@encyclopedia.pub.

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.

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

ESHG 2019 - The 53rd European Human Genetics Conference is everything you need in human genetics, whatever your professional background. The Scientific Program Committee (SPC) has worked hard to invite the best speakers from various sectors of human genetics, and to select the best abstracts for platform presentations.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Genes
• Journal of Clinical Medicine
• Cancers
• International Journal of Molecular Sciences
• Cells
• Diagnostics
• Healthcare
• Journal of Personalized Medicine
• Genealogy
• Biomedicines

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #492). 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://2019.eshg.org/

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.

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 ioap@mdpi.com.

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 help@jisc.ac.uk. For any queries about MDPI’s institutional agreements and collaborations, you may get in touch with MDPI’s Institutional Engagement team at ioap@mdpi.com, 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 (constanze.schelhorn@mdpi.com).

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 emedien@obvsg.at, FWF at Katharina.Rieck@fwf.ac.at, or the MDPI IOAP team at ioap@mdpi.com.

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/

MDPI will be attending the AAG Annual Meeting, to be held in Washington, DC, US, 3–7 April 2019.

Representing an international community of geographers, GIS specialists, and environmental scientists, the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers is an interdisciplinary forum open to anyone interested in geography and related disciplines. The AAG facilitates the exchange of the latest research and applications in geography and GIScience, with over 8,500 annual meeting attendees. Founded in 1904 as a scientific and educational society, the AAG is a growing body of leading scholars, researchers, professionals, and students. The AAG promotes networking and collaboration among its members through events such as its annual meeting, international workshops, specialty conferences, publications, and research programs. For more information, visit annualmeeting.aag.org

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

Remote Sensing
IJGI
Land
Genealogy
Quaternary

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth # 412). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit annualmeeting.aag.org.

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 support@chronos-oa.com or the MDPI IOAP team at ioap@mdpi.com.

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.

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 openaccess@qnl.qa.

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.