Announcements

A range of MDPI journals will be attending the 2023 National Polymer Academic Paper Conference of the Chinese Chemical Society as exhibitors. This meeting will be held in Wuhan, China, from 13 to 17 October 2023. 

The National Polymer Academic Paper Conference of the Chinese Chemical Society, which has been held every two years since 1954, is the most important, largest and most influential academic conference in the field of polymers in China. The 2023 National Polymer Academic Paper Conference of the Chinese Chemical Society will be held in Wuhan from 13 to 17 October. It will be sponsored by the Polymer Science Committee of the Chinese Chemical Society and Huazhong University of Science and Technology. 

The conference will take the important function of polymer science and technology in the new era of national economy and society as the entry point. It will focus on showing the research results and development trends of our country’s polymer science and materials field in recent years. It provides a broad academic and technical exchange platform for those sci-tech, education, and industry workers and young students who conduct research and development in the field. The aim is to promote the sustainable development and innovation of polymer science, improve the level of interdisciplinary and cutting-edge research of polymer-related disciplines, connect with the major national needs, overcome the core and key technical problems, and promote the transformation of scientific research results. 

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Polymers;
• IJMS;
• Molecules;
• Gels;
• Membranes;
• Crystals;
• Polysaccharides;
• Symmetry;
• Fibers. 

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start a conversation with us at our booth. 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 https://www.bagevent.com/event/8282755/p/504954.

We are pleased to announce that the Fibers 2022 Outstanding Reviewer Award has been granted to Dr. Aref Abbasi Moud from the University of British Columbia, Canada. It is important for the journal that outstanding scholars such as Dr. Moud help us to evaluate submissions. The editorial team of Fibers (ISSN: 2079-6439) would like to express their sincere gratitude to all reviewers for their excellent work for the journal.

Conference: 6th International Conference on Natural Fibers
Date: 19–21 June 2023
Place: Funchal, Portugal

MDPI will be attending the 6th International Conference on Natural Fibers as an exhibitor. This meeting will be held at the VidaMar Resort Hotel, Funchal, Portugal, from 19 to 21 June 2023. The Organizing Committee comprises the University of Minho. The theme of the conference is "Nature Inspired Sustainable Solutions". Through this meeting, we wish to contribute to discussing and exchanging progress in the potential of natural fibers as key materials for smart designs and sustainable solutions in future generations. 

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Polymers;
• Fibers;
• Macromol;
• Sustainability;
• Surfaces;
• Textiles;
• Materials. 

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, please visit: https://www.icnf2023.fibrenamics.com/.

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 [email protected].

The year 2023 marks the 10th anniversary of Fibers (ISSN: 2079-6439), an international, peer-reviewed, and fully open access journal that provides a forum for integrating fiber research across many disciplines.

We are grateful to our authors, reviewers, academic editors, and readers, as well as other people working in other ways for the journal, for their trust and support.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, we are arranging a series of special content and events. We hope that you will be able to join us in celebrating this milestone of our journal. You can find out more about the journal’s anniversary at the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/fibers/anniversary.

Celebration Activities:

• Recruiting Editors for Fibers
• Seeking Conferences Collaborations for Fibers
• Special Issue Mentor Program
• Social media activities: Twitter and LinkedIn

Anniversary Special Issues:

• Fibers 10th Anniversary: Past, Present, and Future
  Editors: Prof. Dr. Catalin R. Picu and Prof. Dr. Lucian Lucia

• Feature Papers in Fibers
  Editors: Dr. Ionela Andreea Neacsu and Dr. Alexandru Mihai Grumezescu

• Review Papers of Fibers
  Editor: Prof. Dr. Martin J. D. Clift

Your contributions to these Special Issues are welcome.

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

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

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

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

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

MDPI's Preprints Platform – Preprints.org

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

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

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

For more information, please visit Preprints.org.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Fibers (ISSN: 2079-6439) we will expand our Editorial Board to include experts in all areas of fiber research. We also welcome you to join us as an Editorial Board Member, Topical Advisory Panel Member or Guest Editor. If you are interested in becoming one of our editors, please send your full academic CV and a short cover letter that details your interest and enthusiasm for the position to [email protected].

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!