We are pleased to announce that Dr. António M. Lopes has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Complexity” in Fractal and Fractional (ISSN: 2504-3110). His term began in July 2022.

Name: Dr. António M. Lopes
Email: [email protected]
Affiliation: Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200–465 Porto, Portugal
Interests: complex systems; nonlinear dynamics; robotics; control; fractional calculus; simulation
Homepage: https://sigarra.up.pt/feup/en/FUNC_GERAL.FORMVIEW?P_CODIGO=211599

Dr. António M. Lopes is an associate professor with Habilitation of Mechanical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), Portugal. He is also the Senior Researcher and Coordinator of the research group Intelligent Systems and Control at the Laboratory for Energy, Transport and Aeronautics (LAETA) at the Institute of Science and Innovation in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Engineering (INEGI). His research interests include complex systems, nonlinear dynamics, robotics, control, fractional calculus, and simulation.

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

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

I have collaborated with MDPI for a long time, as an author and as an Editorial Board Member of several journals, and my experience has been excellent. Despite being relatively young, Fractal and Fractional has developed fast, its impact factor has increased continuously, and the journal is, nowadays, a reference in the field. The journal has a dynamic team of Editorial Board Members, and the MDPI staff has a way of working that differs from traditional publishing. This is crucial for speeding up the peer-review process and editorial decisions, which is widely appreciated by authors. There are also new opportunities for attracting authors to the journal since the Fractal and Fractional research community is still growing.

2. What is your vision for the journal?

I envisage steady progress towards increasing the impact indices and scientific quality, which will confirm Fractal and Fractional as a reference journal in the field. This must be achieved with rigorous peer-review processes to maintain high standards of publication and citation.

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

The Fractal and Fractional research community is still growing, however, the concepts of fractals and fractional calculus have been developing fast in recent years. New theoretical findings and applications in science and engineering will contribute to a better understanding of real-world systems and phenomena. Therefore, many developments are expected in mathematics, numerical algorithms, computational methods, modeling, simulation, control, and applications.

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

Open access is the future of scientific publishing. Indeed, this publishing model has been increasingly adopted not only by new journals but also by well-established ones, which are adopting hybrid or open access publishing models. The knowledge must be freely available, and open access will facilitate the exchange of scientific results to all. Institutions have become more aware of the need to fund open access publications, which has become a part of the budget in most project proposals. Although some (wrong) preconceptions that are held by some funding agencies and authors still exist, linking the publishing model to quality, this will soon vanish.

The editorial team warmly welcomes Dr. António M. Lopes as the Section Editor-in-Chief of “Complexity”, and we look forward to his contribution to the continued success of Fractal and Fractional. For further information on the journal’s Sections, please click here.