On Wednesday, 24 May 2023, MDPI and the journals International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601) and Children (ISSN: 2227-9067) organized the webinar entitled "Sleep(-Related) Phenotypes: Future Directions for Insomnia, ADHD, Restless Sleep Disorders in Childhood". The webinar focused on the current findings in children presenting insomnia and restless sleep. 

Insomnia, defined as difficulties falling asleep, difficulties maintaining sleep, or early awakenings, is a very common complaint. Presentations in this webinar demonstrate comprehensively that insomnia complaints are a transdiagnostic issue in (a)typically developing children. Therefore, careful assessment and diagnosis, as presented in these talks, are crucial steps toward successful treatment. The detrimental impact on families' sleep cannot be ignored, that is, at least one parent will have poor sleep when struggling each night with a poor-sleeping child. Thus, increased awareness across healthcare professionals is the priority of our pediatric sleep field, and this should resonate across our society. 

Please note that this webinar is associated with the Topical Collection in both IJERPH and Children: "Sleep in Children".  

Webinar Chair and Speakers:

• Prof. Dr. Karen Spruyt, Université de Paris, INSERM –Neuro Diderot, Academic Hospital Robert Debré, France;
• Prof. Dr. Oliviero Bruni, Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, Sapienza University, Italy;
• Prof. Dr. Silvia Miano, ¹Neurocenter of Southern Switzerland, Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland; ²Sleep Medicine Unit, Ospedale Civico, Switzerland;
• Prof. Dr. Lourdes M. DelRosso, Department of Medicine, University of California, USA.

On 15 March 2023, we received note that Clarivate has discontinued coverage of IJERPH and JRFM in Web of Science as of 13 February 2023. Clarivate revealed that two MDPI journals failed the Content Relevance criterion, highlighting publications that were deemed outside the scope of the journal, and not to do with quality of the publications. On 31 March 2023, we formally appealed the decision to discontinue IJERPH in Web of Science.

Clarivate periodically evaluates journals indexed in their collections, and any journals that no longer meet their criteria are removed from coverage. Unfortunately, publishers are not informed about the evaluation process until its completion.

In response to the decision, we have taken several actions, including collecting feedback from editorial board members and chief editors and submitting an official appeal. We have now agreed to send over a set of questions and we'll set up a virtual meeting once Clarivate have discussed our queries.

We believe that the decision made by Clarivate in relation to IJERPH is unfair and wrongly assessed, and we included such information from our appeal process to support this claim.

Throughout this process, we have identified several aspects that have not been transparent on the part of Clarivate. These include the lack of warning, refusal to index content published before the communication of decision, and the fact that we have not been provided with data and detailed information on the evaluation process and output.

MDPI was only informed that IJERPH and JRFM were assessed. Clarivate's blog post from March 20 provides more information about their current re-evaluation process, stating that they have been assessing over 500 journals since the beginning of the year, with 50 already delisted. Both major commercial publishing houses and smaller or society publishers are affected.

Close to 90% of MDPI published content is going to be covered by the Web of Science Core Collection going forward. MDPI takes this opportunity to safeguard the editorial policies of our journals, and work closely with Web of Science to ensure that the stated scope of journals is being met.

We value Web of Science as a highly trusted citation database within the publishing industry and look forward to more than 200 MDPI journals receiving advanced citation metrics with Web of Science this coming June.

We remain committed to providing high-quality service to our authors and look forward to resolving this issue with Clarivate in a fair and transparent manner.

Finally, we will keep the community updated with further notifications on this matter.

If you have any concern about the indexing status of your article in either of the two journals, please contact the Editorial Office: IJERPH and JRFM.

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.

Conference: 2023 AAG Annual Meeting
Date: 23–27 April 2023
Location: Denver, USA

MDPI will be attending the 2023 AAG Annual Meeting as an exhibitor, and we welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest ideas with us.

This conference is organized by the American Association of Geographers (AAG). The theme of the meeting is “Toward More Just Geographies”. At the meeting, specialists will share and discuss the latest in research and applications in geography, sustainability, and GIScience.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Remote Sensing (leading journal);
• Sustainability (leading journal);
• IJGI;
• Hydrology;
• Land;
• Water;
• Earth;
• Atmosphere;
• IJERPH;
• Fire;
• Oceans;
• GeoHazards;
• Coasts;
• Geomatics.

Remote Sensing (ISSN: 2072-4292, IF: 5.349) publishes regular research papers, reviews, technical notes and communications covering all aspects of remote sensing science, from sensor design and validation/calibration to its application in geosciences, environmental sciences, ecology, and civil engineering. The aim is to publish novel/improved methods/approaches and/or algorithms of remote sensing to benefit the community, open to everyone in need of them.

Sustainability (ISSN: 2071-1050, IF: 3.889) encourages experts to publish their experimental, computational and theoretical research on sustainability. This encompasses topics related to social sciences, natural and applied science and engineering, in order to enable the application and development of sustainability.

If you are planning to attend this conference, please do not hesitate to start an online conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://www.aag.org/events/aag2023/.

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.

On behalf of the Section Editorial Board Member Dr. Joanne Hudson, we are now accepting Special Issue proposals for the “Health-Related Quality of Life and Well-Being” Section of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601). If you are an active researcher in the field and are passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to contact the Section Managing Editor, Ms. Jocelyn Xu (Jocelyn.xu@mdpi.com). 

IJERPH is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, and open access journal published semimonthly online by MDPI. It covers environmental sciences and engineering, public health, environmental health, occupational hygiene, economic health and global health research, etc. The journal is indexed within Scopus, SCIE and SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, Embase, GEOBASE, CAPlus/SciFinder, and other databases. For more details, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/about. 

The “Health-Related Quality of Life and Well-Being” Section has the following topics for your consideration:

• Home-based physical activity interventions;
• Health inequalities in a post-COVID-19 world;
• Effectiveness of strategies to change physical activity behavior in middle-aged adults;
• Cross-discipline approaches to enhancing health;
• Health impacts of the self–environment interaction.

 The topics are tentative, and you are also welcome to propose a title that is of interest to you and within the scope of the journal. If you are interested, you are welcome to submit your proposal at the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/ijerph. Our editors will respond to you as soon as possible.

The duties of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Refining the Special Issue’s title and scope, and providing a short introduction (100–200 words) as well as 5–10 keywords to set up the Special Issue’s website;
• Inviting contributors with the assistance of the in-house editor to achieve a publication target (e.g., 10 papers);
• Supervising the peer review process of this Special Issue: conducting a pre-review check, making final decisions based on at least two review reports that we have collected, etc. 

The benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• As the Guest Editor, you will be offered the opportunity to publish one of your papers free of charge in an Open Access form, in addition to the chance to provide discounts to the papers that you invited for your Special Issue;
• A printed book of the Special Issue can be sent to you if more than 10 papers are published by the end of the Special Issue. See an example at https://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/book/1209;
• It is an ideal venue for networking and communicating with scholars in the research community, as well as a chance to mark you as influential within your discipline. The relationships you develop will last beyond the publication of your Special Issue, establishing a network for future collaboration. 

The Editorial Office will set up the Special Issue’s website, arrange the promotional materials, assist with the invitations for paper contributions, and take care of the administrative tasks associated with peer review (including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and arranging professional production before publication).

We look forward to receiving your proposals. 

IJERPH Editorial Office

On behalf of Section Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Kristie L. Ebi, we are now accepting Special Issue proposals for the Section “Climate Change” of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601). If you are an active researcher in the field and are passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to contact the Section Managing Editor, Ms. Ann Cheng (ann.cheng@mdpi.com). 

The journal IJERPH is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal published semimonthly online by MDPI. It covers Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Public Health, Environmental Health, Occupational Hygiene, Health Economic and Global Health Research, etc. The journal is indexed within Scopus, SCIE and SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, Embase, GEOBASE, CAPlus / SciFinder, and other databases. For more details, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/about. 

The Section “Climate Change” has the following topics for your consideration:

• Elaborating causal pathways related to global environmental changes with health;
• Quantifying associations between weather and health, taking into consideration other key drivers;
• Assessing the current burden of climate-sensitive diseases;
• Identifying thresholds and time of emergence of climate-sensitive health outcomes;
• Projecting climate-sensitive disease burdens under different climate and development pathways, including health system impacts, focusing on how changing weather patterns could affect the geographic range, seasonality, and/or burden of health outcomes;
• Examining challenges and opportunities for multi-sectoral adaptation partnerships that benefit human health;
• Identifying, implementing, and evaluating the effectiveness of adaptation policies and programs;
• Estimating the range of health co-benefits of climate change mitigation policies and technologies.

The duties of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Refining the Special Issue title and scope, and providing a short introduction (100–200 words) and 5–10 keywords to set up the Special Issue website;
• Inviting contributors with the assistance of the in-house editor to achieve a publication target (e.g., 10 papers);
• Supervising the peer review process of this Special Issue: conducting a pre-review check, making final decisions based on at least two review reports that we have collected, etc. 

The benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• As the Guest Editor, you will be offered an opportunity to publish one of your papers free of charge in open access form, and the chance to provide discounts to the papers that you invited for your Special Issue;
• A printed book of the Special Issue can be sent to you if more than 10 papers are published by the end of the Special Issue. See an example at https://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/book/1209;
• It is an ideal venue for networking and communication with scholars in the research community, as well as a chance to mark you as influential within your discipline. The relationships you develop will last beyond the publication of your Special Issue, establishing a network for future collaboration. 

The Editorial Office will set up the Special Issue’s website, arrange the promotional materials, assist with the invitations for paper contributions, and take care of the administrative tasks associated with peer review (including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and arranging professional production before publication). 

We look forward to receiving your proposals. 

IJERPH Editorial Office

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.

On behalf of the Section Editor-in-Chief, Prof Lingxin Chen, we are now accepting Special Issue proposals for the Section “Environmental Science and Engineering” of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601). If you are an active researcher in the field and are passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to contact the Section Managing Editor, Ms. Isobel Luan (isobel.luan@mdpi.com).

IJERPH is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, and open access journal published semimonthly online by MDPI. It covers environmental sciences and engineering, public health, environmental health, occupational hygiene, health economic and global health research, etc. The journal is indexed within Scopus, SCIE and SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, Embase, GEOBASE, CAPlus/SciFinder, and other databases. For more details, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/about.

The Section “Environmental Science and Engineering” has the following topics for your consideration:

• Toxic effects and degradation mechanisms of environmental/marine pollution;
• Machine learning uses in environmental monitoring and remediation;
• Pollution removal/remediation’s new materials, methods, and techniques;
• Relationship between pollution and health;
• Marine and coastal zone pollution;
• Rapid sampling and detection techniques as well as instruments;
• “Double carbon”- and green-chemistry-related analyses and remediation research.

The topics are tentative, and you are also welcome to propose a title that is of interest to you and within the scope of the journal. If you are interested, you are welcome to submit your proposal at the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/ijerph. Our editors will respond to you as soon as possible. 

The duties of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Refining the Special Issue’s title and scope, as well as providing a short introduction (100–200 words) and 5–10 keywords to set up the Special Issue’s website;
• Inviting contributors with the assistance of the in-house editor to achieve a publication target (e.g., 10 papers);
• Supervising the peer review process of this Special Issue: conducting a pre-review check, making final decisions based on at least two review reports that we have collected, etc.

The benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• As the Guest Editor, you will be offered an opportunity to publish one of your papers free of charge in open access form, in addition to the chance to provide discounts to the papers that you invite for your Special Issue;
• A printed book of the Special Issue can be sent to you if more than 10 papers are published by the end of the Special Issue. See an example at https://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/book/1209;
• It is an ideal venue for networking and communicating with scholars in the research community, as well as a chance to mark you as influential within your discipline. The relationships that you develop will last beyond the publication of your Special Issue, establishing a network for future collaboration.

The Editorial Office will set up the Special Issue’s website, arrange the promotional materials, assist with invitations for paper contributions, and take care of the administrative tasks associated with peer review (including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and arranging professional production before publication).

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

IJERPH Editorial Office

On behalf of the Section Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. William Douglas Evans, we are now accepting Special Issue proposals for the Section “Health Communication and Informatics” of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601). If you are an active researcher in the field and are passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to contact the Section Managing Editor, Pansy Wu (pansy.wu@mdpi.com).

The journal IJERPH is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal published semimonthly online by MDPI. It covers Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Public Health, Environmental Health, Occupational Hygiene, Health Economic and Global Health Research, etc. The journal is indexed within Scopus, SCIE and SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, Embase, GEOBASE, CAPlus / SciFinder, and other databases. For more details, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/about.

The Section “Health Communication and Informatics” has the following topics for your consideration:

• Digital technology strategies to reduce health disparities and increase equity;
• Health communication strategies to increase routine vaccination uptake among children and adolescents in the post-COVID era.

The topics are tentative, and you are also welcome to propose a title that is of interest to you and within the scope of the journal. If you are interested, you are welcome to submit your proposal at: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/ijerph. Our editors will respond to you as soon as possible.

The duties of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Refining the Special Issue title and scope, and providing a short introduction (100–200 words) and 5–10 keywords to set up the Special Issue website;
• Inviting contributors with the assistance of the in-house editor to achieve a publication target (e.g., 10 papers);
• Supervising the peer review process of this Special Issue: conducting a pre-review check, making final decisions based on at least two review reports that we have collected, etc.

The benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• As the Guest Editor, you will be offered an opportunity to publish one of your papers free of charge in open access form, and the chance to provide discounts to the papers that you invited for your Special Issue;
• A printed book of the Special Issue can be sent to you if more than 10 papers are published by the end of the Special Issue. See an example at https://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/book/1209;
• It is an ideal venue for networking and communication with scholars in the research community, as well as a chance to mark you as influential within your discipline. The relationships you develop will last beyond the publication of your Special Issue, establishing a network for future collaboration.

The Editorial Office will set up the Special Issue’s website, arrange the promotional materials, assist with the invitations for paper contributions, and take care of the administrative tasks associated with peer review (including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and arranging professional production before publication).

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

IJERPH 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!

On behalf of the Section Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Bert, we are now accepting Special Issue proposals for the Section “Digital Health” of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601). If you are an active researcher in the field and are passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to contact the Section Managing Editor, Ms. Crystal Wang (crystal.wang@mdpi.com).

The journal IJERPH is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal published semimonthly online by MDPI. It covers Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Public Health, Environmental Health, Occupational Hygiene, Health Economic and Global Health Research, etc. The journal is indexed within Scopus, SCIE and SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, Embase, GEOBASE, CAPlus/SciFinder, and other databases. For more details, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/about.

The Section “Digital Health” has the following topics for your consideration:

• Telemedicine: lessons learned from COVID-19 pandemic;
• Digital health: usefulness, role, and experiences from a medical education perspective;
• Digital health: local experiences and real-world results;
• Social media and older adults: experiences, risks, and potentialities;
• The role of public health professionals in the digital world.

The topics are tentative, and you are also welcome to propose a title that is of interest to you and within the scope of the journal. If you are interested, you are welcome to submit your proposal at: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/ijerph. Our editors will respond to you as soon as possible. 

The duties of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Refining the Special Issue title and scope and providing a short introduction (100–200 words) and 5–10 keywords to set up the Special Issue website;
• Inviting contributors with the assistance of the in-house editor to achieve a publication target (e.g., 10 papers);
• Supervising the peer review process of this Special Issue: conducting a pre-review check, making final decisions based on at least two review reports that we have collected, etc.

The benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• As the Guest Editor, you will be offered an opportunity to publish one of your papers free of charge in open access form and the chance to provide discounts to the papers that you invited for your Special Issue;
• A printed book of the Special Issue can be sent to you if more than 10 papers are published by the end of the Special Issue. See an example at https://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/book/1209;
• It is an ideal venue for networking and communication with scholars in the research community, as well as a chance to mark you as influential within your discipline. The relationships you develop will last beyond the publication of your Special Issue, establishing a network for future collaboration.

The Editorial Office will set up the Special Issue’s website, arrange the promotional materials, assist with the invitations for paper contributions, and take care of the administrative tasks associated with peer review (including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and arranging professional production before publication).

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

IJERPH Editorial Office

On behalf of the Section Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Javier Abián-Vicén, we are now accepting Special Issue proposals for the Section “Disease Prevention” of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601). If you are an active researcher in the field and are passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to contact the Section Managing Editor, Ms. Lily Lv (lily.lv@mdpi.com).

The journal IJERPH is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal published semimonthly online by MDPI. It covers Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Public Health, Environmental Health, Occupational Hygiene, Health Economic and Global Health Research, etc. The journal is indexed within Scopus, SCIE and SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, Embase, GEOBASE, CAPlus / SciFinder, and other databases. For more details, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/about.

The Section “Disease Prevention” has the following topics for your consideration:

• Exercise prescription for disease prevention and rehabilitation;
• Strategy for the prevention of temporomandibular disorders;
• The equipment as a preventive method of sports injuries;
• Physical activity as prevention of heart disease.

The topics are tentative, and you are also welcome to propose a title that is of interest to you and within the scope of the journal. If you are interested, you are welcome to submit your proposal at: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/ijerph. Our editors will respond to you as soon as possible.

The duties of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Refining the Special Issue title and scope, and providing a short introduction (100–200 words) and 5–10 keywords to set up the Special Issue website;
• Inviting contributors with the assistance of the in-house editor to achieve a publication target (e.g., 10 papers);
• Supervising the peer review process of this Special Issue: conducting a pre-review check, making final decisions based on at least two review reports that we have collected, etc.

The benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• As the Guest Editor, you will be offered an opportunity to publish one of your papers free of charge in open access form, and the chance to provide discounts to the papers that you invited for your Special Issue;
• A printed book of the Special Issue can be sent to you if more than 10 papers are published by the end of the Special Issue. See an example at https://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/book/1209;
• It is an ideal venue for networking and communication with scholars in the research community, as well as a chance to mark you as influential within your discipline. The relationships you develop will last beyond the publication of your Special Issue, establishing a network for future collaboration.

The Editorial Office will set up the Special Issue’s website, arrange the promotional materials, assist with the invitations for paper contributions, and take care of the administrative tasks associated with peer review (including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and arranging professional production before publication).

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

IJERPH Editorial Office

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.

On behalf of Section Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. William A. Toscano, we are now accepting Special Issue proposals for the Section “Environmental Health” of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601). If you are an active researcher in the field and are passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to contact the Section Managing Editor, Ms. Harley Chen (harley.chen@mdpi.com).

IJERPH is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal published semimonthly online by MDPI. It covers Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Public Health, Environmental Health, Occupational Hygiene, Health Economic and Global Health Research, etc. The journal is indexed within Scopus, SCIE and SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, Embase, GEOBASE, CAPlus / SciFinder, and other databases. For more details, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/about.

The Section “Environmental Health” has the following topics for your consideration:

• Planetary Health and Climate;
• Social Exposome and Epigenomics;
• Developmental Origins of Adult Diseases;
• Organs on a Chip as Models to Assess Risk of Environmentally-caused Disease;
• Global Environmental Justice;
• Urban Structure and Health;
• Mechanisms of Poverty and Chronic Diseases.

The topics are tentative, and you are also welcome to propose a title that is of interest to you and within the scope of the journal. If you are interested, you are welcome to submit your proposal at: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/ijerph. Our editors will respond to you as soon as possible. 

The duties of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Refining the Special Issue title and scope, and provide a short introduction (100–200 words) and 5–10 keywords to set up the Special Issue website;
• Inviting contributors with the assistance of the in-house editor to achieve a publication target (e.g., 10 papers);
• Supervising the peer review process of this Special Issue: conduct a pre-review check, make final decisions based on at least two review reports that we have collected, etc.

The benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• As the Guest Editor, you will be offered an opportunity to publish one of your papers free of charge in open access form, and the chance to provide discounts to the papers that you invited for your Special Issue;
• A printed book of the Special Issue can be sent to you if more than 10 papers are published by the end of the Special Issue. See an example at https://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/book/1209;
• It is an ideal venue for networking and communication with scholars in the research community, as well as a chance to mark you as influential within your discipline. The relationships you develop will last beyond the publication of your Special Issue, establishing a network for future collaboration.

The Editorial Office will set up the Special Issue’s website, arrange the promotional materials, assist with the invitations for paper contributions, and take care of the administrative tasks associated with peer review (including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and arranging professional production before publication).

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

IJERPH Editorial Office

On behalf of the Section Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Linyu Xu, we are now accepting Special Issue proposals for the Section “Environmental Ecology” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601). If you are an active researcher in the field and are passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to contact the Section Managing Editor, Ms. Stealu Shi (stealu.shi@mdpi.com).

IJERPH is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open-access journal published semimonthly online by MDPI. It covers Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Public Health, Environmental Health, Occupational Hygiene, Health Economic and Global Health Research, etc. The journal is indexed within Scopus, SCIE and SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, Embase, GEOBASE, CAPlus/SciFinder, and other databases. For more details, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/about.

The Section “Environmental Ecology” covers the following topics for your consideration:

• Urban blue green space—mental health;
• Urban forest therapy—human health;
• Rapid urbanization—environmental health;
• Urban renewal—ecological environmental benefits;
• Urban energy consumption—public economy;
• Food safety/agricultural development—human health;
• COVID-19 mental/environmental health;
• Indoor air pollution—human health;
• Water environmental pollution—human health;
• Digital finance environmental sustainability;
• Sponge city/resilient city construction;
• Water environment problems and governance;
• Pollution reduction and carbon reduction synergy;
• Green low-carbon innovative technologies;
• Environmental research related to COVID-19;
• Research related to air pollution;
• Research on environmental characteristics;
• Risks and control of new pollutants;
• Biodiversity and species classification.

The topics are tentative, and you are also welcome to propose a title that is of interest to you and within the scope of the journal. If you are interested, you are welcome to submit your proposal at: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/ijerph. Our editors will respond to you as soon as possible. 

The duties of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Refining the Special Issue title and scope, and provide a short introduction (100–200 words) and 5–10 keywords to set up the Special Issue website;
• Inviting contributors with the assistance of the in-house editor to achieve a publication target (e.g., 10 papers);
• Supervising the peer-review process of this Special Issue: conduct a pre-review check and make final decisions based on at least two review reports that we have collected, etc.

The benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• As the Guest Editor, you will be offered an opportunity to publish one of your papers free of charge in open-access form, and the chance to provide discounts to the papers that you invited for your Special Issue;
• A printed book of the Special Issue can be sent to you if more than 10 papers are published by the end of the Special Issue. See an example at https://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/book/1209;
• It is an ideal venue for networking and communication with scholars in the research community, as well as a chance to mark you as influential within your discipline. The relationships you develop will last beyond the publication of your Special Issue, establishing a network for future collaboration.

The Editorial Office will set up the Special Issue’s website, arrange the promotional materials, assist with the invitations for paper contributions, and take care of the administrative tasks associated with peer review (including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and arranging professional production before publication).

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

IJERPH Editorial Office

On behalf of Section Editor-in-Chief, Prof Dr. Karl Goodkin, we are now accepting Special Issue proposals for the Section “Mental Health” of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601). If you are an active researcher in the field and are passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to contact the Section Managing Editor, Mr. Michael Pei (michael.pei@mdpi.com).

IJERPH is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal published semimonthly online by MDPI. It covers Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Public Health, Environmental Health, Occupational Hygiene, Health Economic and Global Health Research, etc. The journal is indexed within Scopus, SCIE and SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, Embase, GEOBASE, CAPlus / SciFinder, and other databases. For more details, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/about.

The Section “Mental Health” has the following topics for your consideration:

• Long-term mental health sequelae of COVID;
• Expansion of tele-mental health services;
• New applications of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS);
• Trauma-informed care --improving assessment of trauma history and integration into current care;
• Psychedelic research as an adjuvant to psychotherapy;
• Social media—the need for further definition of appropriate boundaries;
• Virtual reality: Treatment applications in mental health.

The topics are tentative, and you are also welcome to propose a title that is of interest to you and within the scope of the journal. If you are interested, you are welcome to submit your proposal at: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/ijerph. Our editors will respond to you as soon as possible. 

The duties of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Refining the Special Issue title and scope, and provide a short introduction (100–200 words) and 5–10 keywords to set up the Special Issue website;
• Inviting contributors with the assistance of the in-house editor to achieve a publication target (e.g., 10 papers);
• Supervising the peer review process of this Special Issue: conduct a pre-review check, make final decisions based on at least two review reports that we have collected, etc.

The benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• As the Guest Editor, you will be offered an opportunity to publish one of your papers free of charge in open access form, and the chance to provide discounts to the papers that you invited for your Special Issue;
• A printed book of the Special Issue can be sent to you if more than 10 papers are published by the end of the Special Issue. See an example at https://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/book/1209;
• It is an ideal venue for networking and communication with scholars in the research community, as well as a chance to mark you as influential within your discipline. The relationships you develop will last beyond the publication of your Special Issue, establishing a network for future collaboration.

The Editorial Office will set up the Special Issue’s website, arrange the promotional materials, assist with the invitations for paper contributions, and take care of the administrative tasks associated with peer review (including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and arranging professional production before publication).

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

IJERPH Editorial Office

On behalf of the Section Editor-in-Chief Dr. Pantelis T. Nikolaidis, we are now accepting Special Issue proposals for the Section “Exercise and Health” of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601). If you are an active researcher in the field and are passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to contact the Section Managing Editor, Ms. Miki Shen (miki.shen@mdpi.com).

IJERPH is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal published semimonthly online by MDPI. It covers Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Public Health, Environmental Health, Occupational Hygiene, Health Economic and Global Health Research, etc. The journal is indexed within Scopus, SCIE and SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, Embase, GEOBASE, CAPlus / SciFinder, and other databases. For more details, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/about.

The Section “Exercise and Health” has the following topics for your consideration:

• Effect of exercise on the metabolic systems;
• Physiological mechanisms and sex differences in exercise;
• Exercise and injury epidemiology;
• Recovery after exercise;
• Exercise and brain;
• Network physiology of exercise.

The duties of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Refine the Special Issue title and scope, and provide a short introduction (100–200 words) and 5–10 keywords to set up the Special Issue website;
• Invite contributors with the assistance of the in-house editor to achieve a publication target (e.g., 10 papers);
• Supervise the peer review process of this Special Issue: conduct a pre-review check, make final decisions based on at least two review reports that we have collected, etc.

The benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• As the Guest Editor, you will be offered an opportunity to publish one of your papers free of charge in open access form, and the chance to provide discounts to the papers that you invited for your Special Issue;
• A printed book of the Special Issue can be sent to you if more than 10 papers are published by the end of the Special Issue. See an example at https://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/book/1209;
• It is an ideal venue for networking and communication with scholars in the research community, as well as a chance to mark you as influential within your discipline. The relationships you develop will last beyond the publication of your Special Issue, establishing a network for future collaboration.

The Editorial Office will set up the Special Issue’s website, arrange the promotional materials, assist with the invitations for paper contributions, and take care of the administrative tasks associated with peer review (including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and arranging professional production before publication).

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

IJERPH Editorial Office

Recently, Clarivate^TM revealed its 2022 list of Highly Cited Researchers^TM – individuals at universities, research institutes and commercial organizations. 

The scientists who were selected into the list of Highly Cited Scientists this year have published highly cited papers in the 11 years from January 2011 to December 2021, and the citation frequency is in the top 1% of academic subjects and the same year of publication in the Web of Science ^TM database. Based on Web of Science Citation data, 6,938 researchers from across the globe who have demonstrated a disproportionate level of significant and broad influence in their chosen field or fields over the last decade have been awarded Highly Cited Researcher 2022 designations. The list is truly global, spanning 69 countries or regions and spread across a diverse range of research sciences and social sciences. 

According to statistics, 17 members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601) have been selected into the list of Highly Cited Scientists of Clarivate in 2022. They are recognized for their high-quality scientific research achievements and outstanding contributions in professional fields. The IJERPH journal office sincerely congratulates all elected Editorial Board Members and wishes them to make more breakthroughs together with the journal! 

Scientists at Stanford University has recently published an update of the list of the top 2% most widely cited scientists—the World’s Top 2% Scientists.

The time period of the statistical data of this list ranges from 1960 to 2022, and it is divided into two lists, "Lifetime Scientific Influence Ranking" and "2022 Annual Scientific Influence Ranking". The "Lifetime Scientific Influence Ranking" counts the comprehensive influence performance of scientists during their careers, and the "2022 Annual Influence Ranking" focuses on highlighting the academic influence of scientists in the previous year. This ranking, considered to be the most prestigious worldwide, is based on the bibliometric information contained in the Scopus database and includes more than 200,000 researchers from the more than 10 million scientists considered to be active worldwide, with 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields taken into account.

We are pleased to share that 561 Editorial Board Members from MDPI’s International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601) were featured in the World’s Top 2% Scientists in 2022. 

The latest Stanford rankings reflect the significant influence and research excellence of the scientists, who are committed to furthering their knowledge for the benefit of the world. 

We would like to congratulate our Editorial Board Members on their excellent achievement and thank them for their immense contribution to the scientific progression and development of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601) is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal published semimonthly online by MDPI. It covers Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Public Health, Environmental Health, Occupational Hygiene, Health Economic and Global Health Research, etc. The journal is indexed within Scopus, SCIE and SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, Embase, GEOBASE, CAPlus / SciFinder, and other databases. For more details, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/about.

The IJERPH editorial team is pleased to announce this open call for Special Issue proposals, which offers a group of authors the opportunity to work on an interconnected set of papers on an innovative topic. We are soliciting high-quality proposals that will be evaluated in a continuous selection process throughout the year.

If you would like to propose a Special Issue topic for this journal, please contact the IJERPH Editorial Office (ijerph@mdpi.com) or complete and submit the form at the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/ijerph. Our editors will respond to you as soon as possible.

The duties of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Refining the Special Issue title and scope, and providing a short introduction (100–200 words) and 5–10 keywords to set up the Special Issue website;
• Inviting contributors with the assistance of the In-House Editor to achieve a publication target (e.g., 10 papers);
• Supervising the peer review process of this Special Issue, conduct a pre-review check, make final decisions based on at least two review reports that we have collected, etc.

The benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• As the Guest Editor, you will be offered an opportunity to publish one of your papers free of charge in open access form, and the chance to provide discounts to the papers that you invited for your Special Issue;
• A printed book of the Special Issue can be sent to you if more than 10 papers are published by the end of the Special Issue. See an example at https://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/book/1209;
• It is an ideal venue for networking and communication with scholars in the research community, as well as a chance to mark you as influential within your discipline. The relationships you develop will last beyond the publication of your Special Issue, establishing a network for future collaboration.

The Editorial Office will set up the Special Issue’s website, arrange the promotional materials, assist with the invitations for paper contributions, and take care of the administrative tasks associated with peer review (including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and arranging professional production before publication).

Please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office (ijerph@mdpi.com) for further details and clarification.

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

IJERPH Editorial Office

MDPI will be attending the 15th European Public Health Conference 2022, held in Berlin, Germany, from 9 to 12 November 2022. The theme of Berlin 2022 is “Strengthening Health Systems: Improving Population Health and Being Prepared for the Unexpected”. This conference will aim to explore ways in which the public health community can rally around the principle of bringing about better population health. Meanwhile, the conference committee wants the discussions at the 15th EPH Conference to contribute to resilient health systems, universal health coverage (UHC), a well-trained and highly qualified clinical and public health workforce, and governance structures that take a stand and shape health systems globally.

During this conference, MDPI (at booth #13) will welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest ideas with us.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• IJERPH;
• Medicina;
• JCM;
• EJIHPE;
• Epidemiologia;
• Behavioral Sciences;
• Healthcare;
• Women;
• MPs;
• Nursing Report;
• COVID;
• Diseases;
• Data;
• Adolescents.

If you plan on attending this conference, feel free to stop by our booth at #13. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have.

For more information about the conference, please see the following link: https://ephconference.eu/index.php.

MDPI will be attending the 17th International Conference on Waste Management and Technology (ICWMT17), held in Sanya, China, from 19 to 22 November 2022. The theme of this year’s conference is “Synergizing the Reduction of Pollution and Carbon Emission”. Throughout the conference, prominent researchers and government officials will give keynote speeches on pressing issues of solid waste management. ICWMT17 provides an excellent opportunity for participants from industry and academia to keep up to date with the latest trends in solid waste management.

During this conference, MDPI will welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest views as well as research with us.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Sustainability (leading journal);
• Environments;
• IJERPH;
• Atmosphere;
• Buildings;
• Resources;
• Smart Cities;
• Sustainable Chemistry;
• Pollutants;
• Microplastics.

If you plan on attending this conference, feel free to stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions that you may have.

For more information about the conference, please see the following link: http://www.bcrc.cn/icwmt/.

Conference: The 20th International Congress for Tropical Medicine and Malaria (ICTMM2020)
Date: 24–28 October 2022
Place: Bangkok, Thailand
Booth: B02

MDPI will be attending the 20th International Congress for Tropical Medicine and Malaria (ICTMM2020) from 24 to 28 October 2022 in Bangkok, Thailand.

The ICTMM is one of the largest tropical-medicine conferences in the world, gathering more than 2,000 scientists, researchers, and experts every four years. It offers an excellent opportunity for delegates to exchange knowledge on tropical medicine with people from all over the world who share the same research interests. The congress will cover topics and updates on tropical medicine, malaria, infectious diseases, neglected diseases, drug resistance, parasitology, zoonoses, and travel medicine, to name just a few.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• TropicalMed;
• Diagnostics;
• Diseases;
• Future Pharmacology;
• Healthcare;
• IJERPH;
• Parasitologia;
• Pathogens;
• Pharmaceutics.

Please do not hesitate to reach out (tropicalmed@mdpi.com) if you plan on attending this conference. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you might have.

For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://ictmm2020.org/.

Recently, the Editorial Office of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601) has had the honor of receiving video greetings from the Section Editors-in-Chief of the journal for receiving a new Impact Factor in 2021 and hereby shares it with you. At the same time, the journal would also like to thank the many scholars for their support. IJERPH will continue to provide scholars with high-quality academic services and wishes everyone continued achievements in 2022.

The following are the messages from Section Editors-in-Chief:

Prof. Dr. Jimmy T. Efird, Section Editor-in-Chief of “Public Health Statistics and Risk Assessment”

Dr. David Berrigan, Section Editor-in-Chief of “Health Behavior, Chronic Disease and Health Promotion”

Prof. Xinbing Feng, Section Editor-in-Chief of “Environmental Earth Science and Medical Geology”

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!

MDPI will be attending the AGU Fall Meeting 2022 (AGU22), held in Chicago and online, from 12 to 16 December 2022. The AGU Fall Meeting is the most influential event in the world dedicated to the advancement of Earth and space sciences. The conference unites the Earth and space science community to share findings, connect like-minded scientists from around the world, and advance our profession and shared passion for the impact of science. Researchers, scientists, educators, students, policymakers, enthusiasts, journalists, and communicators attend the AGU Fall Meeting to better understand our planet and environment, and our role in preserving its future.

During this conference, MDPI (at booth #1452) will welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest views and research with us.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Water (leading journal);
• Remote Sensing (leading journal);
• Geosciences;
• Climate;
• Hydrology;
• Land;
• Drones;
• Environments;
• Sustainability;
• IJERPH;
• Earth;
• Fire;
• GeoHazards;
• Oceans;
• World.

If you plan on attending this conference, feel free to stop by our booth at #1452. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have.

For more information about the conference, please see the following link: https://igs.org/event/agu22/.

We are pleased to announce that, in order to further develop different research areas and manage the journal more professionally, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601) has established the following two Sections:

• “Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation”;
• “Disaster Medicine”.

Additionally, we are currently accepting applications for Section Editorial Board Members and editorial positions for these two Sections. Successful applicants will have the opportunity to be promoted to Section Editor-in-Chief.

The main responsibilities of Section Editorial Board Members are as follows:

• Prescreening and issuing decisions on new submissions to the Section;
• Helping to edit a Special Issue on a relevant topic (or supervising Special Issues related to your research field);
• Providing input or feedback regarding journal policies;
• Promoting the journal among peers or at conferences;
• Attending board meetings and suggesting journal development strategies;
• Reviewing manuscripts.

Please send your application to the IJERPH Editorial Office (ijerph@mdpi.com), and feel free to reach out with any questions.

MDPI will be attending the 34th Annual Conference of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE 2022), held in Athens, Greece, from 18 to 21 September 2022. The main theme of the 2022 conference is “Strengthening the global role of environmental epidemiology”, stressing the need to study and understand local conditions in order to synthesize knowledge and make a difference for our planet. In the 2022 conference we will continue advancing our society’s aims in promoting epidemiological studies that link environmental exposures to human health.

During this conference, MDPI (at booth #22) will welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest inspirations with us.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• IJERPH (leading journal);
• Sustainability;
• Healthcare;
• Children;
• Cancers;
• Climate;
• Environments;
• Earth;
• Societies;
• Epidemiologia.

If you plan on attending this conference, feel free to stop by our booth: #22. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions that you may have.

For more information about the conference, please see the following link: https://isee2022.org/.

Toxics (ISSN: 2305-6304) will be attending the 17th Persistent Organic Pollutants Forum and Chemical Environmental Safety Conference as an exhibitor. This meeting will be held in Qingdao, China, from 8 to 10 December 2022.

The Persistent Organic Pollutants Forum and Chemical Environmental Safety Conference (hereinafter referred to as the "POPs Forum") was initiated by the Persistent Organic Pollutants Research Center of Tsinghua University in 2006, and cooperated with the Office of the National Coordination Group for the Implementation of the Stockholm Convention of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. A series of annual meetings cosponsored by the Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences and the Persistent Organic Pollutants Professional Committee have been successfully held for 16 sessions by 2021. The POPs Forum has become a forum for academia, management, and industry in the field of POPs in China to brainstorm and contemplate countermeasures, review the international trends in POPs compliance and China's progress, discuss POPs research hotspots and development trends, and showcase high-tech and advanced products for POPs analysis and control, as well as high-level communication platforms.

The 17th POPs Forum focuses on "new pollutant treatment", and invites domestic as well as foreign experts from various fields of government, industry, academia, and research to discuss and exchange information together.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Toxics (leading);
• Water;
• JoX;
• IJERPH;
• Pollutants.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start a conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference and our booth, please visit the following link: https://popsforum2022.scievent.com/.

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Lingxin Chen has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Environmental Science and Engineering” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601, IF 4.614). 

Prof. Dr. Lingxin Chen is a professor at the Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yantai, China. The Institute’s R&D work is mainly about innovative chemical measurement technology and marine measurement technology, involving the fields of analytical chemistry, environmental science, marine chemistry, marine environmental monitoring, and ecological restoration engineering technology. It is committed to taking typical pollutants in the coastal environment as research objects, using nanomaterials, biomaterials, and photoelectric as well as magnetic analysis and detection technologies, building micro/nano sensing interfaces and exploring new principles, methods, and new instrument technologies for analysis and monitoring, in addition to paying attention to the study of the interaction between typical pollutants and life systems as well as revealing their relevance to human health. Meanwhile, the group pays attention to actively carrying out domestic and international cooperation. Additionally, nowadays, wide and deep contacts with distinguished experts/scholars and instrumental companies are built within the USA, Korea, Germany, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, etc.

He has published more than 400 scientific original articles and reviews. His current research interests are in coastal zone pollutants; typical water body pollutants; microanalysis techniques; environmental microanalysis; oceanic oil spill; and situ on-line as well as real-time environmental monitoring techniques. He was selected as a Clarivate “Highly Cited Researcher” in the Cross-Field category in 2020 and 2021, respectively.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Lingxin Chen, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views of the research area and open access publishing:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as its Editor-in-Chief?
Fortunately, contemporary society has great awareness of deleterious environmental side effects, resulting in a sense of responsibility toward the environment. Today we look forward to a healthy and harmonious environment system. I have devoted most of my energy to research, especially in the identification, analysis and monitoring of environmental pollution. In this direction, I have been tracking the research works engaged in environment and health, studying how pollutants lead to the change of the endogenous sources of active species in life, so as to reveal the relationship between environment and public health. I have also been thinking about how to exploit environmental science and engineering technology knowledge to solve global problems stemming from environmental pollution. I am interested in studying how to develop environmental models to investigate, analyze, predict and remediate environmental crises, how to achieve key pollution control, treatment and prevention, how to avoid exposure to hazardous materials, and ways to participate in public health prevention and management through valuable analytical insights. My relevant background coincides with the journal, and I look forward to working with researchers across the world to promote the development of this field.

2. What is your vision for the journal?
I hope for this journal to promote high-quality scientific research, which meets the need of Environmental Protection Agencies, health organizations, academics, and the governmental personnel/the public engaged in ecological protection and also human/living creatures’ safety across the world. This is the most important goal and requirement of the journal. I hope that we can attract all types of scientific researchers from many disciplines to contribute in promoting the development of environmental science, environmental engineering, clinical medicine and public health. I also hope for this journal to not only act as a platform for scientific researchers to display their research results, but also as a resource platform for understanding the latest and most important progress in the field, so as to stimulate the continuous emergence of new research results. It is hoped that in the near future, we will pool our wisdom and pay attention to the quality of the papers so that the journal can become a mainstream journal in this field.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?
Environment and human health are enduring scientific themes. Humans and the environment are inseparable. They interact with each other, restrict each other, depend on each other and adapt to each other. Over billions of years of evolution, human beings have constantly adjusted their adaptive ability to maintain their dynamic balance with the changing environment. Along with the development of society and the progress of science, unsustainable anthropogenic activities have increased and a large number of environmental pollutants (physical/chemical/biological pollution) have been emitted into the human living environment (water, air and soil), further leading to the deterioration of the ecological environment and causing a variety of harm to human health. How should mankind choose a development path that coexists harmoniously with nature, so that human development needs can be met and meanwhile the natural ecosystem can be protected to the maximum extent? This question indicates the direction in which the field will be headed in the future. We expect multidisciplinary global researchers, especially those in Environmental Science and engineering technology, to put forward feasible solutions for pollution control, treatment and prevention to solve environmental problems such as pollution and public health problems including hazard exposure prevention. This is pivotal work to maintain a healthy and sustainable environmental system suitable for humans’ and other living creatures’ survival.

4. What do you think of the development of Open Access in the publishing field?
Open Access publishing provides a platform to share findings for global researchers, thus promoting the rapid dissemination and development of science and technology. Providing a cross-application science platform focusing on the combination of the environment and human health, open access publishing holds unique significance.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Lingxin Chen as he starts his new role as Section Editor-in-Chief, and we look forward to him leading International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health to achieve many more milestones.

Dear colleagues,

I am very glad to inform you that Thomson Reuters has recently released the 2021 Journal Citation Reports® (JCR), including a very impressive impact factor of 4.614 for the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601). The new impact factor represents a 36.11% increase compared to its 2020 record of 3.390.

This remarkable increase in impact factor for IJERPH underscores the rigorous peer review process and the high quality of scientific papers that have been published. It clearly demonstrates the important role IJERPH has played and will continue to play in advancing scientific knowledge and providing a decision support tool for protecting the environment and human health.

It is indeed an outstanding achievement that ranks IJERPH as one of the top journals in the multi-disciplinary field of environmental science and public health.

I would like to commend our entire Editorial Board including the Section Editors-in-Chief, the editors of Special Issues and Topical Collections, the Managing Editors, and Assistant Editors, as well as the external referees, for working tirelessly to attract, review, and publish the best scientific discoveries in IJERPH. I am grateful for their outstanding contributions to our journal.

Special thanks are also extended to the MPDI leadership for their excellent vision in guiding a robust development of our journal.

Kind regards,

Paul Tchounwou
Editor-in-Chief

A range of MDPI journals will be attending the 11th National Conference on Environmental Chemistry as an exhibitor. This meeting will be held in Harbin, China, from 25 to 29 July 2022.

The theme of this conference will be “Innovating Environmental Sciences, Low-Carbon Protecting Environment and Health”, which fully reflects the conference’s purpose of innovation, participation, cooperation, and foresight. More than 50 branches have been set up in the fields of interface process, toxicology and health, public health, environmental safety, pollution control, remediation technology, green and low-carbon, and environmental policy, and various well-known experts at home and abroad have been invited to produce conference and branch reports and deliver speeches. We invite experts in the field and environmental protection companies to participate in the exhibition, for which academic activities such as paper exhibitions, postgraduate forums, and Editor-in-Chief meetings have been organized.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Toxics (leading);
• Water (leading);
• Sustainability (leading);
• Applied Sciences;
• JoX;
• Nanomaterials;
• Soil Systems;
• Sustainable Chemistry;
• IJERPH;
• Pollutants;
• Environments.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start a conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have. For more information about the conference and our booth, please visit the following link: https://www.ncec2021.com/Home/Default.

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Bert has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Digital Health” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN 1660-4601, IF 4.614). 

Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Bert is an associate professor of public health at the Department of Public Health and Pediatrics Sciences at the University of Turin, Italy. He graduated in Medicine and Surgery and then specialized in Public Health at the University of Turin. He is involved in many international and national projects, research initiatives, and networks. His main research focuses are on digital health, mental health, vaccinology, and healthcare organization.

He has published more than 120 scientific original articles and reviews. His teaching activity includes courses on epidemiology, hygiene, health promotion, and public health for the School of Medicine in Turin, where he is the vice president of the Degree in Medicine and Surgery. He is a member of the International Scientific Committee of the main international conferences in the public health field. 

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Bert, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views of the research area and open access publishing:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as its Editor-in-Chief?

In recent years, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health has proved to be an open space for the scientific community involved in many topics related to public health. The efficient peer-reviewing and editorial process offers a fast and favorable publication path and allows many researchers to be continuously updated. The digital health field is innovative, characterized by a forward-looking approach and it is naturally subject to constant novelties. Considering the good experience as Guest Editor of a Special Issue and the potential of the digital health topic, I decided to give my personal contribution to the journal’s aims as Editor-in-Chief of this specific Section.

2. What is your vision for the journal?

In my vision, the journal will benefit from high-quality research papers and reviews with a growing excellent standard of peer review and the publication process. It will be a home for several top researchers and scientists and a platform for the dissemination of their findings. The “Digital Health” Section with its Special Issues will give a strong contribution to the scientific community’s knowledge. 

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?

Digital health is a very promising research field. The combination of informatic science, ICT, and medicine is the present and the future of health services provision. The investigation of these phenomena is important for the current society’s goals. We will surely approach them further with new innovations, technological developments, and opportunities through digital solutions for health professionals. It is an exciting field of research in constant evolution, and it will be great to be part of it.

4. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?

The open access format is important to make research findings available to the whole community. It is a big step forward in the path leading to greater transparency and accountability of scientists' work. In the future, I sincerely hope for equal opportunities for all researchers to disseminate their research findings, and the same possibilities should be guaranteed to all of them. For this reason, some improvements to overcome the issue of open access costs for those researchers with funding issues can still be achieved. 

We wish Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Bert every success in his new position, and we look forward to his contributions to the journal.

We are pleased to announce that the following experts have been appointed to the roles of Section Editors-in-Chief of IJERPH (ISSN: 1660-4601):

Name: Prof. Dr. Karl Goodkin
Affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Omaha, NE 68198, USA
Interests: HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND); major depressive disorder in persons living with HIV; aging and HIV infection; global epidemiology of HAND; psychoneuroimmunology; psycho-oncology; chronic pain
Section: “Mental Health”

Name: Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Bert
Affiliation: Department of Public Health, University of Turin, Via Santena 5 bis, 10126 Turin, Italy
Interests: public health; epidemiology; e-health; mental health; minority health
Section: “Digital Health”

Name: Prof. Dr. Germán Vicente-Rodríguez
Affiliation: Department of Physiatry and Nursing, Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences (FCSD), University of Zaragoza, Ronda Misericordia 5, 22001 Huesca, Spain
Interests: adolescents; MASS; osteoporosis; children; fractures; physical activity; publication bias; weight-bearing exercise; vitamin D status; impact exercise
Section: “Adolescents”

Name: Prof. Dr. Fulvio Lauretani
Affiliation: Geriatric-Rehabilitation Department, University Hospital of Parma, University of Parma, 43121 Parma, Italy
Interests: frail older persons; parkinsonism; dementia; amyloid PET; older persons
Section: “Aging”

Name: Prof. Dr. David Rodríguez-Lázaro
Affiliation: Microbiology Section, Department of Biotechnology and Food Science, Faculty of Science, University of Burgos, 09001 Burgos, Spain
Interests: food-borne pathogens; food safety; food microbiology
Section: “Environmental Microbiology”

Name: Prof. Dr. Nicola Magnavita 
Affiliation: Department of Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Largo Gemelli 8, 00168 Roma, Italy
Interests: health promotion; public health; epidemiology health; risk assessment; safety; risk analysis; epidemiology and public health; healthcare; environmental risk assessment; health and safety sleep disorders and sleep medicine; risk factors; determination health risk assessment; exposure assessment; environmental exposure occupational health; hospital management; chemical risk assessment environmental epidemiology; health impact assessment informed consent; occupational epidemiology; chemical safety occupational medicine; occupational health and disease; inhalation toxicology; environmental medicine; aging and work; hazardous workers
Section: “Nursing”

Name: Prof. Dr. Olaf Gefeller 
Affiliation: Department of Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology, Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, 91054 Erlangen, Germany
Interests: epidemiology; biostatistics; melanoma; ultraviolet radiation; UV index; prevention of sun exposure
Section: “Skin Health”

Name: Prof. Dr. Dongsheng Ji
Affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Physics and Atmospheric Chemistry, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China
Interests: atmospheric environment; atmospheric chemistry; atmospheric physics; aerosol chemistry; volatile organic compounds; photochemical air pollution; regional air pollution; hazardous airborne elements; carbonaceous aerosols; atmospheric pollution control
Section: “Air”

Name: Prof. Dr. Javier Abián-Vicé
Affiliation: Performance and Sports Rehabilitation Laboratory, Faculty of Sport Sciences, University of Castilla-La Mancha, 45071 Toledo, Spain
Interests: sport science; sport biomechanics; physical activity; caffeine; ergogenic aids; racquet sports; injury prevention; exercise performance; sonoelastography in sports injury diagnosis
Section: “Disease Prevention”

Name: Prof. Dr. Jinyou Shen
Affiliation: School of Environmental and Biological Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China
Interests: wastewater treatment process; environmental engineering; anaerobic digestion; bioelectrochemistry; nanobiotechnology; advanced oxidation processes treatment; environmental remediation; biodegradation; renewable energy
Section: “Chemoenvironment”

We warmly welcome each expert in taking up their roles as Section Editors-in-Chief and look forward to them leading IJERPH to achieve many more milestones.

IJERPH Editorial Office

To ensure the efficient and high-quality production of our journal, we have added several new Sections and are currently seeking nominations and applications for the position of Section Editor-in-Chief (SEiC) for the following Sections:

• “Health Care Sciences & Services”;
• “Traumas”;
• “Biosafety”;
• “Health-Related Quality of Life and Well-Being”;
• “Environmental Science and Engineering”;
• “Reproductive Health”.

If you are a researcher in a related field and are passionate about participating in the publication of cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to get in touch about joining the Editorial Board.

The responsibilities of the Section Editor-in-Chief include the following:

• Defining the aims and scope of the Section;
• Advising on the strategic development of the Section;
• Providing support and guidance to the Editorial Board Members and editorial staff where required;
• Inviting distinguished scientists to join the Editorial Board;
• Maintaining oversight of the editorial process to ensure that the published content is of high quality, and discussing possible improvements;
• Suggesting themes/subjects for Special Issues and assisting in inviting Guest Editors to lead them;
• Performing prechecks of new manuscripts and making final decisions after peer review as well as revisions when requested;
• Chairing the annual Editorial Board meeting;
• Acting as an ambassador for the journal, MDPI, and open access publishing.

The Section Editor-in-Chief should be a leader in their particular field of research and will be responsible for checking and maintaining the scientific quality of a particular Section in the journal. The Section Editor-in-Chief is expected to oversee the growth and development of the journal’s Sections and Board Members. The Section Editor-in-Chief position is honorary; therefore, MDPI will support the Section Editor-in-Chief with an annual honorarium. Additionally, as the Section Editor-in-Chief, you will be granted the opportunity to publish two papers in the journal per year—these will be free of charge once they are accepted for publication.

The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN: 1660-4601) is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, and open access journal published semimonthly online by MDPI. It covers environmental sciences and engineering, public health, environmental health, occupational hygiene, health economics, global health research, etc. It is indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)—Web of Science, and is to be covered in Scopus. Citations are available in PubMed and full-text archived in PubMed Central.

Applications or nominations must include:

• A complete curriculum vitae (CV);
• A personal statement summarizing a proposed vision and plans for this Section.

The deadline for applications is 30 September 2022. Please contact us (ijerph@mdpi.com) before the deadline.

We look forward to working with you in the future.

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

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

* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2022

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

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 “Environmental & Earth Sciences” 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.

Atmosphere:

• Shaojie Song, Harvard University, USA

Clean Technologies:

• Francesco Galiano, Institute on Membrane Technology of the National Research Council, Italy

Energies:

• Qilin Wang, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
• Christopher H. T. Lee, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health:

• Grace Vincent, Central Queensland University, Australia

Minerals:

• Antony Burnham, Australian National University, Australia

Remote Sensing:

• Celso Henrique Leite Silva Junior, National Institute for Space Research – INPE, Brasil; Agricultural Engineering Department of the State University of Maranhão – UEMA, Brazil

Sustainability:

• Baojie He, Chongqing University, China

Water:

• Stefanos Giannakis, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain

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 winners for the year 2021 in the “Environmental & Earth Sciences” category for their outstanding contributions among extensive competition by presenting them with an Outstanding Reviewer Award.

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all the winners on their achievement. MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.

Atmosphere:

• Hristo Chervenkov, National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, Bulgaria
• Jouni Räisänen, University of Helsinki, Finland

Climate:

• Piotr F. Borowski, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Poland

Energies:

• Elena Lucchi, Institute for Renewable Energy, Italy
• Marcin Dębowski, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland
• Miroslav Variny, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia
• Piotr F. Borowski, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Poland
• Vedran Mrzljak, University of Rijeka, Croatia

Forests:

• Tomasz Oszako, Forest Research Institute, Poland
• Stelian Alexandru Borz, Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania
• Maricar Aguilos, North Carolina State University, USA
• Narayan Bhusal, Seoul National University, South Korea

Geosciences:

• Dave Waters, University of Oxford, UK

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health:

• Anuli Njoku, Southern Connecticut State University, USA
• Haruna Musa Moda, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
• Jesús Molina-Mula, University of BalearicIsland, Spain
• Katharina Diehl, Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
• Katarzyna Tomaszek, Pedagogical University of Kracow, Poland
• Matteo Nioi, University of Cagliari, Italy
• Pablo A. Cantero-Garlito, Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, Spain
• Seoyong Kim, Ajou University, South Korea
• Andrzej Adamski, University of Information Technology and Management, Poland
• Adrian Curto, Faculty of Medicine, University of Salamanca, Spain
• Arkaitz Castañeda Babarro, University of Deusto, Spain
• Álvaro Francisco Lopes De Sousa, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
• Agata Gabryelska, Medical University of Lodz, Poland
• Ana Reyes Menéndez, Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain
• Bartosz Dalewski, Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, Poland
• Chong Chen, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan
• Carla Maria Batista Ferreira Pires, CBIOS-Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias-Escola de Ciências e Tecnologias da Saúde, Portugal
• Claudia Pisanu, University of Cagliari, Italy
• Emmanuel Obeng-Gyasi, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, USA
• Faisal F. Hakeem, King’s College London, UK
• Francisco Javier Fernández Carrasco, Punta de Europa Hospital, Spain
• Haewon Byeon, Inje University, South Korea
• HuiJun Chih, Curtin University, Australia
• Jerónimo Aragón Vela, University of Granada, Spain
• Joana Costa, University of Aveiro, Portugal,
• Joanne Lloyd, University of Wolverhampton, UK
• José Luis Romero-Bejar, University of Granada, Spain
• Laura Nathans, Human Development and Family Studies, Penn State Scranton, USA
• Mateusz Jankowski, Centre of Postgraduate Medical Education, Poland
• Matteo Riccò, Azienda USL-IRCCS di Reggio Emilia, Italy
• Nicola Döring, Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany
• Nora Suleiman-Martos, University of Granada, Spain
• Russell Kabir, Anglia Ruskin University, UK
• Roy McConkey, University of Ulster, UK
• Sunhee Kim, Ajou University, South Korea
• Sol García-Germán, Centro de Estudios e Investigación para la Gestión de Riesgos Agrarios y Medioambientalesdisabled, Spain
• Sebastian Rutkowski, Opole University of Technology, Poland
• Tamás Berki, University of Szeged, Hungary
• Terence Moriarty, University of Northern Iowa, USA
• Pedro Antonio Martín Cervantes, University of Almería, La Cañada de San Urbano, Spain

ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information:

• Lemenkova Polina, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
• Andrew Newton, Nottingham Trent University, UK
• Dennis Edler, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
• Lukáš Herman, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
• Marcela Bindzarova Gergelova, Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia

Land:

• Rahul Datta, Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic
• Dirk H.R. Spennemann, Charles Sturt University, Australia
• Raimundo Jimenez-Ballesta, (Retired recently) Autonoma University of Madrid, Spain

Remote Sensing:

• Veraldo Liesenberg, Santa Catarina State University, Brazil
• Yady Tatiana Solano-Correa, University of Cauca, Colombia
• Francesco Marinello, University of Padova, Italy
• Pedro Melo-Pinto, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal
• Ignacio Bosch, Universitat Politènica de València, Spain
• Juan Soria, University of Valencia, Spain
• Chiman Kwan, Signal Processing, Inc., USA
• Benoit Vozel, University of Rennes, France
• Giuseppe Casula, National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology Unit of Bologna, Italy
• Simone Cosoli, The University of Western Australia, Australia

Resources:

• Maria Economou-Eliopoulos, University of Athens, Greece

Toxics:

• Cynthia Rider, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, USA

We are proud to recognize the winners of MDPI’s 2021 Travel Awards in the “Environmental & Earth Sciences” category for their outstanding presentations and to present them with the prize.

MDPI journals regularly offer travel awards to encourage talented junior scientists to present their latest research at academic conferences in specific fields, which helps to increase their influence.

The winners mentioned below were carefully selected by the journal editors based on an outline of their research and the work to be presented at an academic conference.

We would like to warmly congratulate the Travel Awards winners for the year 2021 and wish them the greatest success with their future research endeavors. MDPI will continue to enhance communication among scientists.

Atmosphere:

• Charbel Harb, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech, USA
• Jibran Khan, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark

Climate:

• Agostino Niyonkuru Meroni, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
• Platon Patlakas, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Energies:

• Nnaemeka Vincent Emodi, University of Tasmania, Australia
• Irene Poza-Casado, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain

Forests:

• Pipiet Larasatie, Oregon State University, USA
• Tania L. Maxwell, French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), France

Hydrology:

• Georgia Papacharalampous, Roma Tre University, Italy
• Mattei Alexandra, University of Corsica, France

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health:

• Danila Azzolina, University of Eastern Piedmont, Italy
• Kelvin Fong, Yale University, USA
• Levi Frehlich, University of Calgary, Canada‎
• Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, Imperial College London, UK

ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information:

• Junghwan Kim, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
• Xuke Hu, Institute of Data Science, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany

Land:

• Álvaro Castilla Beltrán, University of La Laguna, Spain
• Lauren Nerfa, University of Hawaiʻi, USA

Remote Sensing:

• Amen Al-Yaari, Sorbonne University, France
• Meng Lu, Utrecht University, Netherlands

Resources:

• Alessandro Lenci, University of Bologna, Italy
• Evangelia Georgantzia, Liverpool John Moores University, UK

Sustainability:

• Sayyed Rasoul Khayyam Nekouei, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia
• Georgia A. Papacharalampous, Roma Tre University, Italy
• Raquel Filipa da Costa Viveiros, NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal
• Rajesh Pathak, South Dakota State University, USA

Water:

• Nnanake-Abasi Okon Offiong, University of Uyo, Nigeria
• Tonni Agustiono Kurniawan, Polytechnic of Health, Indonesia
• Shawna Andrea Foo, Arizona State University, USA

IJERPH (ISSN: 1660-4601) and Toxics (ISSN: 2305-6304) will be attending the Joint Conference on Environmental Chemicals 2022 as exhibitors. This conference will be held from 14 to 16 June 2022.

The joint conference will focus on the importance of research related to the environment and chemical substances to society and on expanding scientific knowledge and management of chemicals that support sustainable development, while understanding the risks of chemicals.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• IJERPH;
• Toxics;
• Sustainability;
• Atmosphere;
• Environments;
• Diversity. 

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

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 subject areas of “Environmental & Earth Sciences”, who were selected amongst extensive competition, and congratulate the authors for their outstanding scientific publications.

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

Geosciences:

• “Distinguishing between Deep-Water Sediment Facies: Turbidites, Contourites and Hemipelagites”
  by Dorrik Stow and Zeinab Smillie
  Geosciences 2020, 10(2), 68. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences10020068
• “Review of Explosive Hydrovolcanism”
  by Károly Németh and Szabolcs Kósiks
  Geosciences 2020, 10(2), 44. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences10020044

Remote Sensing:

• “A Review on Deep Learning Techniques for 3D Sensed Data Classification”
  by David Griffiths and Jan Boehm
  Remote Sens. 2019, 11(12), 1499. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11121499
• “Satellite Remote Sensing of Precipitation and the Terrestrial Water Cycle in a Changing Climate”
  by Vincenzo Levizzani and Elsa Cattani
  Remote Sens. 2019, 11(19), 2301. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11192301
• “Evaluation of Different Machine Learning Methods and Deep-Learning Convolutional Neural Networks for Landslide Detection”
  by Omid Ghorbanzadeh, Thomas Blaschke, Khalil Gholamnia, Sansar Raj Meena, Dirk Tiede and Jagannath Aryal
  Remote Sens. 2019, 11(2), 196. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11020196
• “An Integrated View of Greenland Ice Sheet Mass Changes Based on Models and Satellite Observations”
  by Ruth Mottram, Sebastian B. Simonsen, Synne Høyer Svendsen, Valentina R. Barletta, Louise Sandberg Sørensen, Thomas Nagler, Jan Wuite, Andreas Groh, Martin Horwath, Job Rosier, Anne Solgaard, Christine S. Hvidberg and Rene Forsberg
  Remote Sens. 2019, 11(12), 1407. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11121407
• “UAV-Based High Resolution Thermal Imaging for Vegetation Monitoring, and Plant Phenotyping Using ICI 8640 P, FLIR Vue Pro R 640, and thermoMap Cameras”
  by Vasit Sagan, Maitiniyazi Maimaitijiang, Paheding Sidike, Kevin Eblimit, Kyle T. Peterson, Sean Hartling, Flavio Esposito, Kapil Khanal, Maria Newcomb, Duke Pauli, Rick Ward, Felix Fritschi, Nadia Shakoor and Todd Mockler
  Remote Sens. 2019, 11(3), 330. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11030330

Toxics:

• “A Review of Biomonitoring of Phthalate Exposures”
  by Wang, Yu, Hongkai Zhu and Kurunthachalam Kannan
  Toxics 2019, 7(2), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics7020021
• “Trace Element Uptake by Herbaceous Plants from the Soils at a Multiple Trace Element-Contaminated Site”
  by Nworie, Obinna E., Junhao Qin and Chuxia Lin
  Toxics 2019, 7(1), 3; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics7010003

Water:

• “Water Quality Indices: Challenges and Application Limits in the Literature”
  by Moez Kachroud, Fabienne Trolard, Mohamed Kefi, Sihem Jebari and Guilhem Bourrié
  Water 2019, 11(2), 361. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11020361
• “A Brief Review of Random Forests for Water Scientists and Practitioners and Their Recent History in Water Resources”
  by Hristos Tyralis, Georgia Papacharalampous and Andreas Langousis
  Water 2019, 11(5), 910. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11050910
• “The Use of Non-Conventional Water Resources as a Means of Adaptation to Drought and Climate Change in Semi-Arid Regions: South-Eastern Spain”
  by Álvaro-Francisco Morote, Jorge Olcina and María Hernández
  Water 2019, 11(1), 93. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11010093
• “Hydrological Effectiveness of an Extensive Green Roof in Mediterranean Climate” 
  by Stefania Anna Palermo, Michele Turco, Francesca Principato and Patrizia Piro
  Water 2019, 11(7), 1378. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11071378
• “Forecasting Groundwater Table in a Flood Prone Coastal City with Long Short-term Memory and Recurrent Neural Networks”
  by Benjamin D. Bowes, Jeffrey M. Sadler, Mohamed M. Morsy, Madhur Behl and Jonathan L. Goodall
  Water 2019, 11(5), 1098. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11051098
• “Effectiveness of Rainwater Harvesting Systems for Flood Reduction in Residential Urban Areas”
  by Gabriele Frenib and Lorena Liuzzo
  Water 2019, 11(7), 1389. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11071389

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)

Water (ISSN: 2073-4441) and IJERPH (ISSN: 1660-4601) will be attending the EGU General Assembly 2022 as exhibitors. This meeting will be held from 23 to 27 May 2022.

The EGU General Assembly 2022 will bring together geoscientists from all over the world for one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary, and space sciences. The EGU aims to provide a forum where scientists, especially early career scientists, can present their work and discuss their ideas with experts in all fields of geoscience.

The last two General Assemblies, Sharing Geoscience Online in 2020 and vEGU21: Gather Online, were organized as virtual meetings due to COVID-19-related restrictions. In 2022, the EGU aims to once again provide an on-site experience for those attending in person while, at the same time, introducing new concepts for including virtual attendees as much as possible. The EGU General Assembly 2022 (EGU22) will be a conference with a virtual component where everybody is welcome, in person or online. We plan for the format of the conference to be flexible, giving us the opportunity to adapt to uncertainties more easily in a global context.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Water;
• IJERPH;
• CivilEng;
• Climate;
• Earth;
• Geographies;
• GeoHazards;
• Geosciences;
• Land;
• Minerals;
• Remote Sensing;
• Resources;
• Sustainability;
• Forests.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start an on-site conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have. For more information about our booth, please visit here.

We are pleased to announce a new Section entitled "Chemoenvironment" in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN 1660-4601, IF 3.390). This Section focuses on the effect of chemical properties, produced by the constituent factors of soil, water, air, etc., on the life of humans and other organisms. More information regarding this Section can be found via the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/sections/chemoenvironment.

We are looking to recruit new Editorial Board Members for this new Section to add to the expertise in these areas. The ideal candidates will be active, international, and experienced scholars in research areas related to those listed above. In addition, candidates should have a passion for journal editing, scientific communication, and digital publishing. We encourage anyone who is interested in applying for this position or who would like to recommend a potential candidate to contact us by 30 June 2022.

Members of the Editorial Board have the following duties:

• Reviewing a couple of manuscripts per year;
• Editing a Special Issue on a topic related to your research, and making final decisions for submitted papers regarding acceptance for publication;
• Recommending timely topics and suggesting potential Guest Editors;
• Publishing one paper per year, free of charge, in open access;
• Identifying appropriate conferences for editors to attend;
• Promoting the journal.

We are also accepting Special Issue proposals for this new Section.

Guest Editor’s duties and benefits are as follows:

• Redefining the title and scope of a Special Issue;
• Determining whether a manuscript can be accepted based on the reports we collect;
• Promoting the Special Issue and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences;
• Full/partial waivers for the publishing fee will be granted for your first submission in this Special Issue.

If you are interested, please let us know and send your Special Issue proposal as well as your academic CV to Mr. Weldon Luo (weldon.luo@mdpi.com).

Please feel free to forward the journal announcement to any colleagues or other contacts in this field who may be interested.

We are pleased to announce a new Section entitled "Health-Related Quality of Life and Well-Being" in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH, ISSN 1660-4601, IF 3.390). This Section focuses on the impact that health status has on our quality of life. More information regarding this Section can be found via the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/sections/health-related_quality_of_life_and_well-being. We are currently accepting Special Issue proposals for this new Section.

The duties and benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Redefining the title and scope of this Special Issue;
• Determining whether a manuscript can be accepted based on the reports we collect;
• Promoting the Special Issue and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences;
• Full/partial waivers for the publishing fee will be granted for your first submission in this Special Issue.

This upcoming Section will be an ideal venue for networking and communication among scholars in the research community, as well as a chance to establish your influence within your discipline. The relationships you develop will last beyond the publication of your Special Issue, promoting a network for future collaboration.

If you are interested, please let us know and send your Special Issue proposal as well as your academic CV within two weeks to Ms. Merilee Song (merilee.song@mdpi.com). You are also welcome to contact us if you are interested in joining the Editorial Board of this new Section.

Please feel free to forward the journal announcement to any colleagues or other contacts in this field who may be interested.

We are pleased to announce a new Section entitled "Environmental Earth Science and Medical Geology" in IJERPH (ISSN 1660-4601, IF 3.390). Prof. Dr. Xinbin Feng, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will serve as the Section Editor-in-Chief. 

This Section includes two major fields: environmental earth science and medical geology. More information on this Section can be found via the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/sections/earth. 

We are currently accepting Special Issue proposals for this new Section.

The duties and benefits of acting as a Guest Editor are as follows:

• Re-defining the title and scope of this Special Issue;
• Determining whether a manuscript can be accepted based on the reports we collect;
• Promoting the Special Issue and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences;
• Full/partial waivers for the publishing fee will be granted for your first submission in this Special Issue. 

This upcoming Section will be an ideal venue for networking and communication among scholars in the research community, as well as a chance to establish your influence within your discipline. The relationships you develop will last beyond the publication of your Special Issue, promoting a network for future collaboration. 

If you are interested, please let us know and send your Special Issue proposal as well as your academic CV within two weeks to Ms. Merilee Song (merilee.song@mdpi.com). 

You are also welcome to forward the journal announcement to any colleagues or other contacts in this field who may be interested.

We cordially invite you to participate in the 4th International Electronic Conference on Environmental Research and Public Health (ECERPH2022), which will be held from 15 to 30 October 2022. Prof. Dr. Jon Øyvind Odland serves as the chair of this e-conference. He is a Professor of Global Health at NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and a specialist in GYN/OB, environmental medicine, and epidemiology. This online event will bring together researchers from all over the world with no concerns regarding travel or other related expenditures.

Health effects could be very different if the world’s temperature increases from 5 to 10 °C compared to an increase from 35 to 40 °C. If we look at the mortality associated with climate change, it is obvious that the burden is higher in tropical areas. However, if we add morbidity and complications for, e.g., reproductive health and pregnancy care, the situation might be very different. The spread of infectious diseases related to vector migration is also a very important topic, as is the situation of environmental exposure to contaminants and occupational health.

This conference will provide leading scientists, working in the environmental research and public health field, with an online platform to share their latest research and engage in exciting discussions.

The main topics and sessions of the conference are:

• Pregnancy, Reproductive Health, and Climate Change;
• Vector Migration from a Climate Perspective;
• COVID-19 from a Climate Perspective;
• The Forgotten Tropical Diseases from a Climate Perspective;
• Cardiovascular Diseases and Climate Change;
• Occupational Health and Temperature Change.

The conference will be completely free of charge to attend, as well as for scholars to upload and present their latest work on the conference platform.

The accepted proceedings papers from the conference will most likely be published in a dedicated issue of the MDPI journal Environmental Sciences Proceedings (ISSN: 2673-4931). Please note that, before publication, Proceedings Series Journals will review accepted papers using the powerful text comparison tool iThenticate. This procedure aims to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism. Articles with a high repetition rate and lack of novelty will not be published in the conference proceedings. In addition, all participants will be encouraged to submit an extended full manuscript to one dedicated Special Issue in IJERPH (ISSN 1660-4601) with a 15% discount on the article processing charge (APC, the original APC is CHF 2500).

Important Dates:

• Abstract Submission Deadline: 10 July 2022;
• Notification of Acceptance: 31 July 2022;
• Full Paper Submission Deadline: 28 August 2022;
• Conference Date: 15–30 October 2022.

IJERPH is indexed in Scopus, SCIE (IF = 3.390), SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, and many other databases. Please visit the following website for more information: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph.

Event Awards

In recognition of the support of the conference’s esteemed authors and their outstanding scientific accomplishments, we are pleased to announce that the conference will provide one Best Paper Award and one Best Presentation Award.

For more information on ECERPH 2022, please visit the conference website (https://sciforum.net/event/ECERPH-4) or contact us by email (ecerph-4@mdpi.com).

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions and we look forward to welcoming you to this exciting online meeting.

Conference Secretariat 

We would like to inform you that the schedule of the 2nd International Electronic Conference on Healthcare (IECH2022) has been updated: 

• Abstract submission deadline: 13 January 2022;
• Notification of acceptance: 24 January 2022;
• Full file Submission Deadline: 8 February 2022;
• Conference date: 17 February–3 March 2022. 

This conference will provide leading scientists working in the field with an online platform on which to share their latest research and engage in exciting discussions. The main topics and sessions of the conference are: 

• Artificial Intelligence: Prof. Tin-Chih Toly Chen;
• COVID-19 Update (Diagnostics and Vaccines): Prof. Roberto Verna;
• Regenerative Medicine;
• Sport Performance: Dr. Alyx Taylor.

The conference will be completely free of charge to attend, as will also be the case for scholars to upload to and present their latest work on the conference platform. 

We would like to invite those of you who have not yet submitted an abstract to do so up until 13 January 2022. Please refer to https://iech2022.sciforum.net/ for the instructions for authors. 

Event Award

The IECH Best Student Award (CHF 500) will be awarded to one student researcher. If you would like to join this competition, please submit your work to the Student Session. 

We look forward to welcoming you at the 2nd International Electronic Conference on Healthcare. 

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. You can contact us at iech-2@mdpi.com. 

Conference Secretariat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Founded in 1996, MDPI was one of the first fully Open Access publisher. Over 25 years MDPI has grown to become the largest Open Access publisher globally, publishing over 160,000 articles across more than 350 journals in 2020. At the core, MDPI was founded in response to a pressing need of fast publication and inclusion. The scholar was set at the centre of the publication process for the first time. Acting as a service provider, rather than a product provider, MDPI exists to help scientists achive their objective to disseminate research results. At MDPI, we believe scientists deserve a better service from the publishing world.

The International Open Access Week (Open Access Week), founded by the SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Alliance and student partners in 2008, has been successfully running for 13 years. As an advocate and pioneer of open access publishing, MDPI actively responds to the call of International Open Access Week. This year’s theme of “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity” highlights the Recommendation’s call for equitable participation from all authors and readers.

For the last 25 years, MDPI has been committed to disseminating open research. Here is a video showing MDPI’s Commitment to Equity, Inclusion and Diversity for More than 25 Years.

International Open Access Week is an important opportunity to catalyze new conversations, create connections across and between communities that can facilitate this co-design, and advance progress in the building of more equitable foundations for opening knowledge—discussions and actions that need to be continued, year in and year out. MDPI has always aimed to provide professional and efficient publishing services to scholars around the world.

Our mission is to make scientific research accessible to everyone; this year, we interview and hold discussions with open science ambassadors on how to build an equal and inclusive environment for open science. Academic editors help us collaborate with more institutions to advocate for open access ideas.

Read our anniversary blog post: "Sharing 'Collective Human Knowledge': The Benefits of Open Access Publication"

Besides this, our scientific community is a key driver of our success and MDPI’s remarkable growth. Despite the pandemic, we have prepared online conferences and workshops to gather scholars from different communities.

The Basel Sustainable Publishing online forum provides an equal opportunity for stakeholders and researchers from multi-cultural environments to exchange ideas and eliminate barriers to participation.

Conference date: 25 October 2021, online
Conference website: https://bspf2021.sciforum.net/
Main topics: MDPI discusses the current dilemma of open access science from various perspectives such as governments, libraries, and publishers, and related measures on how to change the status quo of discrimination from a global perspective.

We aim to support equality, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications. We collaborate with universities and key laboratories and have scholarly communications with researchers, teachers, and students on open access workshops.

• 25 October 2021
  Energies journal and Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

• 28 October 2021
  Machines journal and State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong University

• 29 October 2021
  Processes journal and Beijing Institute of Technology

• 29 October 2021
  Coatings journal and Wuhan University of Technology

MDPI is committed to providing open access and high-quality publishing services for scholars and promoting rapid dissemination of academic achievements. We hope to promote the practices and policies of open access publishing and diversify the dissemination of academic achievements.

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

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

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

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

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit:

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

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high-quality academic publishing. Over 369,916 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2020. We are extremely appreciative of all those who made a contribution to the editorial process in this capacity. At the beginning of every year, journal editorial offices publish a list of all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year, the MDPI Top Reviewer Award was announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise and dedication, and their high-quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2020 MDPI Top Reviewer Award:

• Adriana Burlea-Schiopoiu;
• Alban Kuriqi;
• Álvaro González-Vila;
• Alessandro Alaimo;
• Alexey Beskopylny;
• Alexander Yu Churyumov;
• Alberto Fernández-Isabel;
• Andrea Mastinu;
• Antonios N. Papadopoulos;
• Anton Rassõlkin;
• Antonio Humberto Hamad Minervino;
• Arkadiusz Matwijczuk;
• Artur Słomka;
• Baojie He;
• Bartłomiej Potaniec;
• Bojan Đurin;
• Camilo Arturo Rodriguez Diaz;
• Carmelo Maria Musarella;
• Chiachung Chen;
• Chiman Kwan;
• Cristian Busu;
• Danil Pimenov;
• Dan-Cristian Dabija;
• Delfín Ortega-Sánchez;
• Demetrio Antonio Zema;
• Denis Butusov;
• Elena Lucchi;
• Gaurab Dutta;
• Livia Anastasiu;
• M. R. Safaei.

For more information about how to become a reviewer of MDPI journals, please see: www.mdpi.com/reviewers.

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

You are cordially invited to participate in the 2nd International Electronic Conference on Healthcare (IECH2022), which will be held from 17 February to 3 March 2022. This online event will bring researchers from all over the world together with no concerns of travel or other related expenditures.

Healthcare is the maintenance or improvement of health. An efficient healthcare system can contribute to a significant part of a country’s economy, development, and industrialization. This conference will provide leading scientists working in the healthcare field with an online platform to share their latest research and engage in exciting discussions. The main topics and sessions of the conference are:

• Artificial Intelligence
• COVID-19 Update
• Regenerative Medicine
• Sport Performance
• Student Session

The conference will be completely free of charge to attend, as well as for scholars to upload and present their latest work on the conference platform.

The accepted proceedings papers from the conference will most likely be published in a dedicated issue of the MDPI journal Medical Sciences Forum. Please note that before publication, Proceedings Series Journals will review accepted papers using the powerful text comparison tool iThenticate. This procedure aims to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism. Articles with a high repetition rate and lack of novelty will not be published in the conference proceedings. In addition, all participants will be encouraged to submit an extended full manuscript to one dedicated Special Issue in Healthcare with a 20% discount on the article processing charge (APC).

Important Dates:
• Abstract Submission Deadline: 3 December 2021
• Notification of Acceptance: 14 January 2022
• Submission of Full Manuscript to Healthcare Deadline: 27 January 2022
• Conference Date: 17 February–3 March 2022

Healthcare is indexed in Scopus, SCIE (IF = 2.645), SSCI (Web of Science), PubMed, PMC, and many other databases. Please visit the following website for more information: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/healthcare.

Event Awards

In order to encourage high-quality work among young researchers, we are launching the IECH Best Student Award.

Terms and Conditions:

This award is for the IECH-2 online student competition. The prize will be 500 Swiss francs, and one winner will be selected.

Eligibility Requirements:

• The student themselves should be the corresponding author;
• A scanned copy or photograph of a valid student ID card must be submitted together with the extended abstract;
• Presentation materials must be submitted.

If you would like to join this competition, please submit your work to the Student Session.

For more information on IECH, please visit the conference website (https://sciforum.net/event/IECH2022) or contact us by email (iech-2@mdpi.com).

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions.

We look forward to welcoming you to this exciting online meeting.

Conference Secretariat

We are pleased to inform you that IJERPH received an updated Impact Factor of 3.390 in the June 2021 release of the Journal Citation Reports®. The journal's 5-Year Impact Factor is 3.789. IJERPH now ranks 118/274 (Q2) in “Environmental Sciences” (SCIE), 68/203 (Q2) in “Public, Environmental & Occupational Health” (SCIE) and 41/176 (Q1) in “Public, Environmental & Occupational Health” (SSCI). It has also received an increased CiteScore (2020 Scopus data) of 3.4.

We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all of the authors, reviewers, and editors who have contributed to the journal and enabled this excellent achievement!

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

The 2020 citation metrics have been officially released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR)!

We are pleased to announce that 85 MDPI journals are included, of which:

• 10 journals received their first impact factor
• 96% of journals increased their impact factor from 2019
• 32 journals (38%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category