Announcements

As a leading Open Access publisher, MDPI is committed to fostering open scientific exchange in all forms across all disciplines. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, many researchers have to stay at home and many academic conferences have been cancelled or postponed. In light of these changes, MDPI has adopted numerous initiatives that may help accelerate scientific exchange and provide support to the academics during this period.

Scholarly Community—Encyclopedia

Encyclopedia is an online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as providing benchmark information for researchers and the general public interested in accurate and advanced knowledge on specific topics.

Comprehensive and Free Literature Database—Scilit

Scilit is a comprehensive, free database for scientists that uses a new method to collate data and index scientific material. Our crawlers extract the latest data from CrossRef and PubMed on a daily basis. This means that newly published articles are immediately added to Scilit.

Display Academic Achievements—SciProfiles

SciProfiles is an innovative social network for researchers and scholars that is developed by MDPI. In line with our broad mission, the purpose of SciProfiles is to accelerate discovery and innovation by facilitating immediate access to research results and providing opportunities for academic networking.

Organize and Participate in Conferences Online—Sciforum

Sciforum is an event planning platform that supports open science by offering the opportunity to host and participate in academic conferences. It provides an environment for scholarly exchange, discussion of topics of current interest, building of networks, and establishing collaborations.

Post Early Versions of Research Outputs—Preprints

Preprints is a platform dedicated to making early versions of research outputs permanently available and citable. We post original research articles and comprehensive reviews, and papers can be updated by authors at any time. Content on Preprints is not peer-reviewed, and feedback can be received from readers.

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MDPI remains committed to open science and open data and has signed a statement, along with more than thirty scholarly publishers, showing our intention to facilitate sharing of new research findings as early on as possible. The initiative sees publishers collectively removing barriers to new research, in the face of a global healthcare crisis.

The world is currently suffering from a global pandemic of the corona virus COVID-19. MDPI expresses its sympathies for all of those affected by the virus and stands in solidarity with medical staff and researchers treating patients and searching for scientific solutions.

MDPI has previously published papers covering corona viruses in addition to new papers on the current outbreak, see all papers here. In particular, Viruses has published a number of Special Issues and papers on the topic (see here, here, and here) as well as a forthcoming Special Issue.

Alongside journal articles, MDPI has been a strong supporter of preprints, which are increasingly being used to rapidly disseminate the latest research, and we run the preprint server Preprints.org. Our database of research articles, Scilit, is free to use and covers all publishers including preprint servers. New papers are often in search results within hours of publication and users can set up alerts for new papers.

Our main priority during this period has been the health and safety of staff, and we continue to allow staff to work at home and closely monitor the situation in all locations in which we work. Despite the restrictions, we continue to provide a full publication service and, by close collaboration with our editorial boards and making use our in-house teams, ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in publishing vital research. Fast and open publication has always been at the core of MDPI values and is now more important than ever.

We hope that a solution to the current situation will emerge soon. In the meantime, we will do our best to continue communicating vital research in all fields.

MDPI will be attending SEBBM 2020, held in Barcelona, Spain, 20th–23rd July 2020.

La Sociedad Española de Bioquímica y Biología Molecular (SEBBM) is committed to promoting research links, encouraging years of study, promoting the dissemination of knowledge, improving teaching, and promoting young scientists among Spanish researchers for the international development of Spanish science and to contribute to scientific aspects of the public interest.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Genes (Leading journal)
• Biomolecules (co-leading)
• Brain Sciences
• Biology
• IJMS
• Applied Sciences
• Antibiotics
• Cancers
• Cells

If you are also attending this conference, feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #17). 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:

The advantages of the open access model of scientific publishing are being increasingly recognized in the scientific community. It allows new scientific evidence to be accessed from the moment of publication for free by anyone around the globe, boosting the impact of new research. In response, many funders, libraries and universities have been adopting new principles to accelerate the transition to open access.

Recently, “transformative agreements” have been negotiated between traditional publishers and various institutions. While increasing the number of open access papers, these agreements lack binding commitments to a full transition to open access, their conditions vary across different regions, and access is still limited for many users.

MDPI is a co-signatory of the recent position statement raising concerns about potential downsides of transformative agreements and how they may delay a full transition to open access. The statement highlights that these models “risk perpetuating current limitations on access, transparency and market competitiveness, while simultaneously facilitating excessive charges on the public purse”.

As a pioneering open access journal publisher, MDPI is the first to promote the importance of science being made available to everyone. Our peer-reviewed journals, covering diverse academic disciplines, are fully accessible to the public free of charge under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). This is why, along with other open access publishers, MDPI is a proud signatory of the position paper and is committed to contributing to the replacement of weak transitional agreements with “agreements with publishers that are already fully committed to open science and who offer full, immediate and transparent Open Access”.

Read the position paper here

We are pleased to announce that Encyclopedia will be awarding five Outstanding Contributor Awards for researchers in 2020. The nominations and applications will be assessed by an Evaluation Committee consisting of senior scholars from the Encyclopedia Editorial Board.

Prize for Winners

1. An official certificate;
2. A cash award of 500 CHF or an MDPI discount voucher of 800 CHF.

Application Deadline

31 December, 2020 (Please send your application email with a list of all entries you contributed to our office before the deadline: office@encyclopedia.pub)

Candidate Requirements

1. Have a Ph.D. degree;
2. Have more than three qualified entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020.

Evaluation Standards

1. Number of entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020;
2. Quality of entries online (including length, figure quality, and novelty);
3. Impact of entries (including the number of likes, discussion contents, views, and downloads).

If you are a researcher and have not yet contribute entries to Encyclopedia, please do not miss this chance to highlight your research results.

MDPI will be attending the American Thoracic Society (ATS) 2020 Congress in Philadelphia, PA, USA, 15–20 May 2020.

The ATS International Conference is the home of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep professionals, from those in the earliest stages of their careers to those whose research or strides in clinical care has gained them international recognition. Each year, nearly 14,000 of these professionals choose to attend, present, and learn about the latest advances, meet with colleagues from around the world, and strike new collaborations. It is truly where today’s science meets tomorrow’s care.

This international conference is also multidisciplinary. Clinicians and researchers in many other fields attend the conference, thereby enriching conversations that lead to insights that ultimately improve patient care.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• JCM
• IJERPH
• Medicina
• Cancers
• Children
• Brain Sciences
• Medicines
• JPM
• Healthcare

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth 1101). 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://conference.thoracic.org.

MDPI will be attending the Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC 2020) in Washington, DC, USA, 22–26 April 2020.
TAGC is a unique conference organized by the Genetics Society of America that gives you both topic-driven and community-specific sessions to foster collaboration and inspire fresh thinking.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Genes
• Life
• Brain Sciences
• Cancers
• IJMS
• Cells
• Healthcare
• Viruses
• Microorganisms

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth 723). 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://genetics-gsa.org/tagc-2020/.

It is our pleasure to announce that Brain Sciences, MDPI’s open access neuroscience research journal, has officially published more than one thousand articles and reviews since its inception in 2011. Brain Sciences (ISSN 2076-3425) is now included in the Science Citation Index Expanded in the Web of Science and received an Impact Factor of 2.786 for 2018. Brain Sciences’ current CiteScore in Scopus is 2.85, which equals rank 47/111 (Q2) in ‘General Neuroscience’.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Stephen D. Meriney has been appointed as Editor-in-Chief of Brain Sciences (ISSN 2076-3425). His term started in October 2019.

Stephen D. Meriney received his PhD in physiology/neuroscience from the University of Connecticut in 1987. After postdoctoral training with Dr. Alan Grinnell at the UCLA Jerry Lewis Neuromuscular Research Center, Professor Meriney joined the faculty in the Neuroscience Department at the University of Pittsburgh in 1993 where he is now professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry. His research program is focused on voltage-gated calcium channels, synaptic physiology and modulation, neuromuscular diseases, and the development of novel calcium channel gating modifiers as potential therapeutics for neuromuscular diseases. His research program has been continuously supported predominately by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

The editorial team warmly welcomes Professor Meriney as Editor-in-Chief and look forward to his contribution to the continued success of Brain Sciences. Professor Meriney is supported by a team of Section Editors-in-Chief: Professor Sergey Kasparov, Dr. Caterina Cinel, Professor Heather Bortfeld, Dr. Evanthia Bernitsas, Professor Pierluigi Zoccolotti, Dr. Jose Lujan, Professor Konstantin V. Slavin, Professor Jason Brandt, Dr. Andrew Clarkson and Dr. Mark Burke. For further information on the journal sections please see here.

At the same time, we would like to take the opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to the previous Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. German Barrionuevo, for his invaluable contribution to the journal.

MDPI is pleased to announce the release of SciProfiles, its social network platform for researchers and scholars.

The purpose of SciProfiles is aligned with MDPI’s broad mission to accelerate discovery and innovation by facilitating immediate access to research results and to serve scholars and communities by providing opportunities for academic networking.

SciProfiles also ambitions to serve as a sustainable, transparent and community-driven research evaluation system aligned with the DORA principles (https://sfdora.org/). Through their scientific profiles, academics can highlight their contribution to research communities, and measure their impact on their field, beyond publication numbers and impact factors. SciProfiles is currently a beta version and will enrich to give researchers the possibility to highlight all of their contributions to science and their scientific communities as authors, reviewers, editors, conference organizers, conference panelists, conference keynote speakers, or even as lecturers or student mentors at their University.

The classic components of popular community social networks, including follower/following, classical metrics, endorsements and recommendations (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1690), comments (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1397) are or will be very soon highlighted in SciProfiles as open science contributions.

To help increase the impact and visibility of articles and their authors to an appropriate audience, the platform offers a NewsFeed that includes recommendations of relevant content based on interests, publication history, saved searches or colleagues’ recommendations.

SciProfiles’ avatars are now being integrated on several MDPI platforms, meaning that you will directly access researchers’ profiles from any of the MDPI platforms:

MDPI's journal publishing website: www.mdpi.com
MDPI's conference hosting and management website: www.sciforum.net
MDPI's pre-print website : www.preprints.org
MDPI's knowledge sharing website : www.encyclopedia.pub
MDPI's books store: www.mdpi.com/books
MDPI's literature database : www.scilit.com

SciProfiles aims to serve scientific communities at large. It can be embedded into third-party websites and also welcomes integration of data from third-parties.

Dr. Shu-Kun Lin: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/2
Dr. Franck Vazquez: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/FranckVazquez
Dr. Martyn Rittman: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/martynrittman