The 18th International Conference on Chemistry and the Environment will be held from 11 to 15 June 2023, in Venice, Italy. The conference is organized by the Environmental Chemistry Division of the Società Chimica Italiana and the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice.

Topics include:

• Analysis and modeling of environmental contaminants;
• Impacts of climate change on local to global circulation of chemicals;
• Nano-size particulate materials and microplastics in the environment;
• Atmospheric pollution;
• Environmental risk and impact assessment;
• Emerging contaminants;
• Water pollution;
• Innovations in water and wastewater treatment;
• Biotransformation of organic pollutants.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Toxics;
• Atmosphere;
• Environment;
• Membranes;
• Sustainability;
• Compounds;
• Heritage;
• Water;
• ChemEngineering.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start an online 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, please visit the following link: https://icce2023.com/.

The International Day for Biological Diversity will be celebrated on 22 May 2023, under the theme “From Agreement to Action: Build Back Biodiversity”, which aims to raise awareness and understanding of biodiversity issues. Biodiversity refers to the diversity of all life forms on Earth, including genetic, species, and ecosystem diversity. Biological diversity resources are the pillars upon which we build civilizations; however, the loss of biodiversity threatens everything, including our health. We hope that the established MDPI journals on life sciences and biology, including Biology, Diversity, Fishes, Birds, Insects, Water, Forests, Grasses, Life, Seeds, Agriculture, and Agronomy, will provide suitable communication platforms. The aim is to strengthen scientific cooperation in response to the International Day for Biological Diversity and to embrace the potential to promote sustainable development.

“Avifaunal Diversity and Abundance in the Proposed Sarasalai Mangrove Reserve, Jaffna, Sri Lanka”
by Nitharsan Aloysius, Shashi Madhushanka and Chathuri Chandrika
Birds 2023, 4(1), 103-116; https://doi.org/10.3390/birds4010009

“Perils of Underestimating Species Diversity: Revisiting Systematics of Psammocambeva Catfishes (Siluriformes: Trichomycteridae) from the Rio Paraíba do Sul Basin, South-Eastern Brazil”
by Wilson J. E. M. Costa, José Leonardo Mattos, Paulo J. Vilardo, Pedro F. Amorim and Axel M. Katz
Taxonomy 2022, 2(4), 491-523; https://doi.org/10.3390/taxonomy2040032

“Environmental DNA Metabarcoding: A Novel Contrivance for Documenting Terrestrial Biodiversity”
by Shahnawaz Hassan, Sabreena, Peter Poczai, Bashir Ah Ganai, Waleed Hassan Almalki, Abdul Gafur and R. Z. Sayyed
Biology 2022, 11(9), 1297; https://doi.org/10.3390/biology11091297

“Dam Construction Impacts Fish Biodiversity in a Subtropical River Network, China”
by Xiongjun Liu, Julian D. Olden, Ruiwen Wu, Shan Ouyang and Xiaoping Wu
Diversity 2022, 14(6), 476; https://doi.org/10.3390/d14060476

“Human Communities in Protected Natural Areas and Biodiversity Conservation”
by Elizabeth Olmos-Martínez, Heidi Leticia Romero-Schmidt, María del Carmen Blázquez, Camilo Arias-González and Alfredo Ortega-Rubio
Diversity 2022, 14(6), 441; https://doi.org/10.3390/d14060441

“Effects of Habitat Fragmentation on the Population Structure and Genetic Diversity of Erythroneurini in the Typical Karst Rocky Ecosystem, Southwest China”
by Chen Xiaoxiao, Jia Jiang, Ni Zhang, Xiao Yang, Yongkuan Chi and Yuehua Song
Insects 2022, 13(6), 499; https://doi.org/10.3390/insects13060499

“Application of Ecological Restoration Technologies for the Improvement of Biodiversity and Ecosystem in the River”
by Li Pushuang, Dan Li, Xiaoqing Sun, Zhaosheng Chu, Ting Xia and Binghui Zheng
Water 2022, 14(9), 1402; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14091402

“Conservation-Status Gaps for Marine Top-Fished Commercial Species”
by Imanol Miqueleiz, Rafael Miranda, Arturo Hugo Ariño and Elena Ojea
Fishes 2022, 7(1), 2; https://doi.org/10.3390/fishes7010002

International Day for Biological Diversity

Date and time: 22 May 2023, 9–11 a.m. (CEST)

This is a free webinar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information on how to join the webinar.

Conference: OceanTech Program 2023
Date: 18–21 May 2023
Location: Zhejiang University Zhoushan Campus, Zhoushan, China

This conference is organized by Zhejiang University and the Committee of Ocean Technology System (OTS), Chinese Society for Oceanography, biennially. OT is an international grand event initiated by China's marine industry that integrates high-tech conferences, exhibitions, offshore demonstrations, technical exchanges, and training.

The conference covers a wide range of topics, such as marine remote sensing and detection equipment technology, new concept submersible technology, underwater optics and intelligent vision technology, ocean "dual carbon" technology, etc.

MDPI will be attending OceanTech Program 2023 as an exhibitor. We welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest ideas with us.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• JMSE;
• Sustainability;
• Water;
• Drones;
• Automation;
• Oceans;
• Coasts.

If you plan to attend this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth at #C050. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have.

For more information about the conference, please visit the following link: https://www.oceantech-ap.com/ot-2023.

MDPI is attending the Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2023 (JpGU 2023). The event will be held at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan, from 21 to 26 May 2023, and it is organized by the Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU). JpGU is an academic union that encompasses all the Earth and planetary science disciplines and related fields; additionally, it has been organizing annual meetings since 2005. JpGU 2023 will cover a wide range of Earth and planetary sciences, including space and planetary sciences, atmospheric and hydrospheric sciences, human geosciences, solid Earth sciences, and biogeosciences. The JpGU annual meeting provides participants with a good opportunity to become familiar with cutting-edge research and unique approaches to research objects within their own special field and beyond. Representatives of the following MDPI journals will be attending:

• Land;
• Remote Sensing;
• Minerals;
• Sustainability;
• Drones;
• Geographies;
• Climate;
• Geomatics;
• Geosciences;
• Water;
• Quaternary;
• Sensors;
• Earth.

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (#Pub05). 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://www.jpgu.org/meeting_e2023/.

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 17 to 19 May 2023.

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, in cooperation 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 co-sponsored by the Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences and the Persistent Organic Pollutants Professional Committee had 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 of 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. It is a high-level communication platform.

The forum focuses on new pollutant treatment and invites domestic and foreign experts from various fields of government, industry, academia, and research to discuss and exchange ideas together.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Toxics (leading);
• Water;
• JoX;
• 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 you may have. For more information about the conference and our booth, please visit: https://popsforum2022.scievent.com/.

Water is simultaneously our most abundant and scarce resource. Dysfunction throughout the water cycle undermines progress on all major global issues, from health to hunger, gender equality to jobs, education to industry, and disasters to peace. The theme for the 2023 World Water Day is “Groundwater: Making the Invisible Visible”. It aims to accelerate change to solve the water and sanitation crisis. Join us to salute those engaged in a challenge whose importance is second to none, as the MDPI is proud to support and publish research that works towards global water security.

Photo by Anonymous, University of Technology of Compiègne	Location: Qingyuan, Liaoning, China Photo by Bo Yu, Nankai University	Location: Can Luojiao, Guangdong, China Da Pang

To access more content about MDPI International Day Campaign Series activities, please click here.

• Groundwater Level Modeling with Machine Learning: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
  Water 2022, 14, 949; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14060949
• A Review on Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Smart Technology in Water Treatment and Monitoring
  Water 2022, 14, 1384; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14091384
• Provision of Desalinated Irrigation Water by the Desalination of Groundwater Abstracted from a Saline Aquifer
  Hydrology 2022, 9, 128; https://doi.org/10.3390/hydrology9070128
• A Review on Evapotranspiration Estimation in Agricultural Water Management: Past, Present, and Future
  Hydrology 2022, 9, 123; https://doi.org/10.3390/hydrology9070123
• Stabilisation of Ozone in Water for Microbial Disinfection
  Environments 2022, 9, 45; https://doi.org/10.3390/environments9040045
• Preliminary Studies of Methylene Blue Remotion from Aqueous Solutions by Ocimum basilicum
  Environments 2022, 9, 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/environments9020017

Special Issue: Water Quality Engineering and Wastewater Treatment III	Special Issue: Groundwater Pollution: Sources, Mechanisms, and Prevention
Special Issue: Groundwater Quality and Groundwater Vulnerability Assessment Volume II	Special Issue: Pharmaceuticals in Wastewater and Natural Water: Distribution, Transformation and Removal

MDPI World Water Day Webinar 2023: Accelerating Change

22 Mar 2023, 02:00 (CET)
Free to register for the two sessions.

Recordings will be available on Sciforum shortly afterward.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Thanks a Million" to all the contributors!

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative—the Water 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’s 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 Special Issue;
• Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
• Preparing a list of scholars who may be interested in the issue and personally emailing the 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;
• Overseeing the editorial process of the Special Issue and quality control of the publications 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 for the 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 Water Editorial Office (water@mdpi.com), and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail.

In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, Water (ISSN: 2073-4441) continues to welcome all Special Issue proposals focusing on hot research topics.

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.

We are currently recruiting Topical Advisory Panel Members for the journal Water (ISSN: 2073-4441).

The main responsibility of new members of the Topical Advisory Panel is to regularly provide support to Guest Editors and Section Board Members. Full details of the responsibilities of Topical Advisory Panel Members are available at the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/editors#Supporting_Editor_Responsibilities.

Water is an international and interdisciplinary open access journal covering all aspects of water, including water science, technology, management and governance. We are pleased to inform you that applications are open for the Topical Advisory Panel.

The benefits of Topical Advisory Panel Members include the following:

• The opportunity to publish one paper per year with a discount in Water as well as potential discounts for additional papers you invite;
• A certificate of recognition for your position;
• Additional sponsorships for conferences organized by Topical Advisory Panel Members of Water;
• Travel grants for conferences that you attend or organize.

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

• Have expertise and experience in a field related to the journal;
• Have at least six published papers in the last 5 years as a first author or corresponding author;
• Currently hold an independent research position in academia or a government institute.

If you are interested in this position, please apply via the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/water/topical_advisory_panel_application, or send an email to the Editorial Office (water@mdpi.com) with your academic CV. We look forward to hearing from you.

Water Editorial Office

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/.

MDPI will be attending the IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition 2022, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 11 to 15 September 2022. This is the third edition of IWA, with the topic of “Water for Smart Liveable Cities”, which will engage stakeholders and key contacts within the conventional water sector and beyond. It will bring together core water sector groups, such as those focused on urban water and urban water services, as well as participants from industry and agriculture, architects and urban planners, soil and groundwater experts and hydrologists, social scientists, the ICT sector, the financial sector, and others.

During this conference, MDPI (at booth #C2-383) will welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest inspirations with us.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Water (leading journal);
• Hydrology;
• Sustainability;
• Energies;
• Geosciences;
• Infrastructures;
• Membranes;
• Toxics;
• Resources.

If you plan on attending this conference, feel free to stop by our booth at #C2-383. 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://worldwatercongress.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/.

A range of MDPI journals will be attending INTECOL 2022 as exhibitors. This meeting will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, from 28 August to 2 September 2022.

“Frontiers in Ecology – Science and Society” is the general theme of the conference. With an estimated number of 1500 participants coming to Geneva, and as many following the conference from a distance, the conference aims to bring the state-of-the-art expertise in ecology to the forefront of societal challenges.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Diversity (leading);
• Sustainability;
• Forests;
• Ecologies;
• Environments;
• Plants;
• Animals;
• World;
• Quaternary;
• Earth;
• Resources;
• Applied Sciences;
• Birds;
• Climate;
• Water;
• Fishes.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start a conversation with us at our booth #03. 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 http://intecol2021.org/, or contact the Diversity Editorial Office at diversity@mdpi.com.

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.

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

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.

Water will be attending the 2022 Ocean Sciences Meeting as an exhibitor. This meeting will be held in virtual form from 24 February to 4 March 2022.

The 2022 OSM will focus on the importance of strong pilina to the ocean science community. By coming together, we can forge a path toward a sustainable future. More than 5300 ocean specialists from over 75 different countries have submitted abstracts for OSM22, a conference that will show balance through:

• An enriching virtual conference experience with a robust scientific program and numerous networking and professional development events;
• A program working toward the goals of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development;
• An emphasis on diversity and inclusion, with support for student and early-career scientists.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Water;
• IJERPH;
• Climate;
• Data;
• Oceans;
• Diversity.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start an online 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 virtual booth, please visit: https://www.aslo.org/osm2022/.

In order to specifically develop different research areas and attract more high-quality papers, we are pleased to announce the addition of the following three new Sections to Water (ISSN 2073-4441), which are intended to cover all the disciplines of the field of water science:

• “Hydrogeology”;
• “Water and Climate Change”;
• “Soil and Water”.

Introduction of Section Editors-in-Chief:

Section Editor-in-Chief of “Soil and Water” is being recruited.

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

Water (ISSN: 2073-4441) will be attending as an exhibitor at the AGU Fall Meeting 2021, to be held in virtual form from 13 to 17 December 2021. If you are attending this conference, please feel free to visit our page.

The AGU Fall Meeting is the primary gathering for Earth and space scientists, students, and those in affiliated fields to share scientific findings and identify innovative solutions. With in-person and worldwide online participation, attendees will have numerous opportunities to network with government regulators, scientific visionaries, and industry thought-leaders.

A total of 26,000 passionate scientists from around the globe will gather at the AGU Fall Meeting 2021 to connect with colleagues, broaden their knowledge base, learn about new products and services, and embrace the joy of science.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Water;
• Climate;
• Diversity;
• Earth;
• Fire;
• Hydrology;
• IJERPH;
• Land;
• Pollutants;
• Sustainability.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start an online conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you and answering any questions you may have. For more information about the conference and our virtual booth, please visit: https://www.agu.org/fall-meeting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• 29 October 2021
  Processes journal and Beijing Institute of Technology

• 29 October 2021
  Coatings journal and Wuhan University of Technology

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

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

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

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. In 2020 the SDG Publishers Compact was launched, aimed to inspire publishers and accelerate progress to achieve the 17 goals by 2030. Members of the programme are committed to support the publication of materials that will promote and inspire actions towards SDGs.

MDPI is an eager advocate of SDGs and has already been supporting the programme by creating Special Issues and publishing a series of books on SDGs prior to joining the Compact in 2021. MDPI's Sustainability Foundation initiated the World Sustainability Awards in 2016. We fully support UN's goals to promote sustainable actions that make the world a better place for all and, as part of its commitment, we will focus our actions on SDG10: Reduced Inequalities whilst promoting all 17 SDGs. For more details, please visit the programme’s website: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sdg-publishers-compact/.

Joining this initiative was a unanimous decision. MDPI has in its core values the dissemination of science for all, breaking the wall between research access and under-represented members of the scientific community and the general population. To support this initiative further and continue to support under-represented scientists, MDPI will take a series of actions that will be announced once ready.

The first action MDPI takes is to nominate Dr. Liliane Auwerter as the coordinator of the programme. Dr. Auwerter studied Environmental Process Technology (UTFPR, Brazil), obtained her MSc degree in Water and Environmental Engineering (University of Surrey, UK) and in 2020 completed her PhD in self-healing low-friction materials for water transport (Imperial College London, UK), always focusing on diverse scientific projects that would potentially bring sustainability to industrial processes. As a student in Brazil, she engaged in volunteering activities focused on environmental education and took part in the Millennial Development Goals meetings held at the university.

For more information, please contact:
Dr. Liliane Auwerter
Scientific Officer
liliane.auwerter@mdpi.com

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

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

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

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

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

Read Publisher’s Note to Launch Hydrobiology here.

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

Hydrobiology Editorial Office
hydrobiology@mdpi.com

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

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

Date: 15–30 November 2021

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

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

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

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

Introduction of Section Editors-in-Chief:

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

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

Climate variations have always impacted water resources. Global concern is that the near-future rate of climate change may reach levels of which the impact is beyond our capacity to respond. Have we learned anything from the past? Is it possible to respond and take adaptation and mitigation measures? The webinar will address these issues, although in a focused sense. Three contributions will be presented: (1) historical climate change and adaptation technology; (2) water availability in southern Europe and the measures to be undertaken; (3) climate change impacts on droughts and water resources in the Mediterranean area and appropriate water resources management.

Date: 7 October 2021
Time: 4:00pm CEST | 10:00am EDT | 10:00pm CST
Webinar ID: 864 4451 3181
Webinar website: https://water-3.sciforum.net/
Register for free here:

Program

Chair

Invited Speakers

	Prof. Dr. Demetris Koutsoyiannis Department of Water Resources, School of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece
	Prof. Dr. Luis Garrote Department of Civil Engineering: Hydraulics, Energy and Environment, Technical University of Madrid, Spain
	Prof. Dr. Antonio Cancelliere Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Architettura, Università di Catania, Via S. Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy

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

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

* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2021

Source: 2020 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ® (Clarivate, 2021)

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Gang Pan has been appointed as Associate Editor of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). His term started in June 2021.

Dr. Gang Pan is a Full Professor and Ex-Associate Dean of Research for the School of Animal, Rural, and Environmental Sciences. He is now the Director of the Centre of Integrated Water–Energy–Food (iWEF) studies at NTU. Prof. Pan is an environmental, ecological, material, and physical chemist. He pioneers in geoengineering technologies for natural water restoration and eutrophication control, sediment remediation, environmental nanotechnology, surface adsorption, algal biotechnology, and synchrotron techniques. He was awarded the National First Prize of Environmental Science and Technology of China (2009); “Scientists of the Year” (2010, Chinese national annual award); 2014 Excellence in Review Awards (ES&T); the First Prize of “Dayu Award” in 2017 (the highest Chinese national award in hydrology and ecology). He has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers (H-index 51 Google Scholar) and filed over 50 patents. His current research focuses on algal biotechnology and nanobubble technology.

The editorial team warmly welcomes Prof. Dr. Gang Pan as Associate Editor and looks forward to his contribution to the continued success of Water.

For further information on the journal Water, please see here.

It is our great pleasure to announce that Water (ISSN 2073-4441) has received an increased CiteScore (2020 Scopus data) of 3.7 for the year 2020, which equals the rank of 66/225 (Q2) in "Water Science and Technology" (Environmental Science); 63/224 (Q2) in "Aquatic Science" (Agricultural and Biological Sciences); 125/704 (Q1) in "Geography, Planning and Development" (Social Sciences).

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

Following the pressing needs of the society to ensure a sustainable future, amidst human-influenced environmental changes, the theme of the meeting is “Aquatic Sciences for a Sustainable Future: Nurturing Cooperation”. Underdeveloped and developed societies face different levels of sustainability problems in aquatic resources and have contrasting capacities to address and adapt to upcoming changes and threats, which makes cooperation paramount for an efficient and increasing exchange of information to find long-term sustainable solutions. Dialogue among scientists, as well as the transfer of knowledge for the benefit of society, are very important in addressing sustainability challenges. To provide a venue for this exchange, we will incorporate the theme into the plenary sessions: The future of seafood resources and the role of cooperation; Restoration of aquatic ecosystems, in line with the United Nations Decade of Restoration; Carbon dynamics in lakes and rivers; Past and future of ocean circulation and its role for the climate system; Linking the health of the oceans to humans; Remote sensing and large scale detection; Integrated management of aquatic resources.

Water will be present online at ASLO 2021 Aquatic Sciences Meeting as an exhibitor. If you are attending this conference, please feel free to visit our page.

Besides Water, the following MDPI journals will be represented as well:

• Energies;
• Hydrology;
• JMSE;
• Resources;
• Ocean.

For more information about the conference, please visit https://aslo2021.secure-platform.com/a/page/newhomepage.

MDPI will be attending IGARSS 2021, to be held in virtual form from 12th to 16th of July 2021.

IGARSS 2021, which will take place from 12 to 16 July 2021, is a joint effort of the Low Countries, the Netherlands and Belgium, and they have chosen Crossing Borders as the overall theme of the conference:

• Between countries and research institutes;
• Between types of platforms (from satellites to drones);
• Between data sources;
• Between disciplines.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Remote Sensing
• Atmosphere
• Water
• Sustainability
• Data
• Soil Systems
• IJGI
• Drones

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start an online 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 virtual booth, please visit: https://igarss2021.com/default.asp.

The Society for Freshwater Science (SFS) is an international scientific organization whose purpose is to promote further understanding of freshwater ecosystems (rivers, streams, lakes, reservoirs and estuaries) and ecosystems at the interface between aquatic and terrestrial habitats (wetlands, bogs, fens, riparian forests and grasslands).

In freshwater science, many of us study transformations that happen in nature, such as nutrient cycles, animal life histories, river channel geomorphology, and more. With all of the challenges in 2020, SFS as a society is clearly facing a time of dramatic transformations. The SFS 2021 Meeting Program Committee embraces and welcomes changes in our scientific society as we transform in ways that make our scientific society more inclusive, equitable, and better able to respond to the many freshwater challenges facing the world.

Water will be present online at the SFS 2021 Annual Meeting as an exhibitor. If you are attending this conference, please feel free to visit our page.

In addition to Water, Toxics will be represented as well. For more information about the conference, please visit https://sfsannualmeeting.org/.

MDPI Books recently released Book Builder, a new online tool to conveniently arrange, design and produce an eBook from any content published in MDPI journals. Book Builder offers two functions: on the one hand (1) Selections, available to every registered user of MDPI; on the other hand (2) Special Issue Reprints, which can be used exclusively by Guest Editors of Special Issues.

Selections

In just a matter of a few clicks, all users are now able to assemble books from MDPI articles and receive instantaneous feedback in the form of a fully produced and compiled book (PDF), which can be downloaded or ordered as print copy. Selections can include any paper published with MDPI, picking and combining content from different journals and special issues.

This way, the user may for example choose to compile an ebook focusing around a particular topic, or assemble articles from a group of others.

We invite you to make yourself familiar with the new tool! The Book Builder can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/books/book_builder.

Special Issue Reprints

The Book Builder allows Guest Editors of MDPI journals to create a reprint from a successfully completed Special Issue or Topical Collection in book format. If you are a Guest Editor for an MDPI journal, you can use the new tool  to create an PDF document which includes all articles published in the Special Issue as well as a book cover and table of contents.

For Special Issues containing a minimum of 5 articles, the Guest Editor can request its publication on the MDPI Book platform. Published reprints are assigned an ISBN and DOI.

In addition to the PDF copy of the Reprint Book, as a token of our gratitude, MDPI offers every Guest Editor one (1) complimentary print copy (via print-on-demand). All contributors benefit from a discount on orders of any additional print copies, to share with colleagues or libraries or others.

Why choose MDPI Books?

In line with our organization's values, MDPI Books publishes all content in open access, promoting the exchange of ideas and knowledge in a globalized world. MDPI Books encompasses all the benefits of open access—high availability and visibility, as well as wide and rapid dissemination. MDPI Books are distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License, meaning as an author you retain the copyright for your work. In addition, with MDPI Books you can complement the digital version of your work with a high-quality printed counterpart.

If you are interested in editing a book volume or series, or have a monograph manuscript to be considered for publication, please submit your proposal online and look at our Information for Authors.

Contact: Laura Wagner, MDPI Books Manager (email)