Announcements

Conference: Nutrients 2026—Clinical Nutrition: From Research to Practice
Date: 22–24 October 2026, CEST, Barcelona, Spain
Website: https://sciforum.net/event/Nutrients2026

We cordially invite you to attend and submit an abstract to this event, organized by MDPI’s Nutrients (ISSN 2072-6643, Impact Factor: 5.8, CiteScore: 10.2). It will take place from 22 to 24 October 2026, CEST, at UAB Casa Convalescencia, Barcelona, Spain.

Conference Chairs:

• Prof. Dr. Maria Luz Fernandez, University of Connecticut, USA;
• Prof. Dr. Lluis Serra Majem, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain;
• Dr. Francisco Jose Perez Cano, University of Barcelona, Spain.

Topics of Interest:
S1. Personalized nutrition based on diet–gene interactions;
S2. Innovations in clinical nutrition;
S3. Novel dietary recommendations for specific chronic diseases;
S4. Understanding the role of microbiota in clinical practice;
S5. The potential role of AI in clinical practice;
S6. Lifestyle and prevention of chronic diseases.

Plenary Speaker Announcement:
We are honored to have Dr. Carlo La Vechia, from the University of Milan ("La Statale"), Italy, as Nutrients 2026 Plenary Speaker for Session 6: Lifestyle and prevention of chronic diseases.

Other renowned researchers from internationally prestigious universities and institutes, including Yale School of Public Health, University of Connecticut, Qatar University, Icahn Medical School of Mount Sinai, and many more, are contributing with us as keynote speakers and scientific committee members.

To view all contributing researchers, please click the following link:
https://sciforum.net/event/Nutrients2026?section=#event_chairs.

Academic Supporters:
Nutrients 2026 is currently supported by and partnered with esteemed universities, institutes, and societies.

To view all supporting organizations and partners, please click on the following link:
https://sciforum.net/event/Nutrients2026?section=#sup_org.

Important Dates:
Deadline for abstract submissions: 24 July 2026;
Notification of acceptance: 14 August 2026;
Deadline for early bird registration: 28 August 2026;
Deadline for covering author registration: 28 August 2026.

Guide for Authors
To submit your abstract, please click on the following link: https://sciforum.net/user/submission/create/1496.

To register for the event, please click on the following link: https://sciforum.net/event/Nutrients2026?section=#registration.

For details regarding abstract submission, poster and slide submission, and publication opportunities, you may refer to the “Instructions for Authors” section below: https://sciforum.net/event/Nutrients2026?section=#instructions.

For any enquiries regarding the event, please contact nutrients2026@mdpi.com.

We look forward to seeing you at Nutrients 2026.

Conference: The 85th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Cancer Association
Date: 24–26 September 2026
Location: Kyoto, Japan

We are pleased to announce that MDPI will participate in the 85th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Cancer Association, held in Kyoto, Japan, from 24 to 26 September 2026.

The theme of the 85th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Cancer Association is “Intellectual Challenges: Toward Conquering Cancer”. In addressing cancer, a disease yet to be fully overcome, we aim to bring together expertise from diverse fields, including basic research, clinical medicine, and social sciences, to deepen our understanding of cancer pathology and to foster the development of new therapeutic approaches.

The following open access journals will be represented at the conference:

• Cancers;
• Reports;
• Journal of Clinical Medicine;
• Children;
• Current Oncology;
• Antibodies;
• Romanian Journal of Preventive Medicine;
• Radiation;
• Clinics and Practice;
• Diseases;
• Uro;
• Targets;
• Marine Drugs;
• Onco.

If you are planning to attend the above conference, please feel free to start an online conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person at our booth and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://www.c-linkage.co.jp/jca2026/en/.

In order to further enhance the international influence of the journal Children (ISSN 2227-9067), promote the academic exchange of young scientists, and support the Editorial Board with additional expertise, Children is inviting interested and eligible early career researchers to apply for Early Career Editorial Board (ECEB) membership.

A total of 30 Early Career Editorial Board Members are planned to be recruited. Early Career Editorial Board (ECEB) members will hold the position for two years with the possibility of renewal for a second term.

Application eligibility:

• Completed their doctorate/PhD degree in the past 10 years (considering exceptions for career interruptions, including medical and family leave);
• Evidence of significant research achievements in the field of children’s health;
• Willingness to dedicate their time to the development of the journal with passion and enthusiasm;
• Researchers that are active and engaged in their community (e.g., experienced at presenting at academic conferences or involved in professional organizations).

Benefits of an Early Career Editorial Board Member:

• A certificate of appointment as an Early Career Editorial Board Member will be provided;
• The achievements of Early Career Editorial Board Members are publicized on journal media platforms to improve academic visibility;
• An opportunity to be promoted to Editorial Board Member based on contributions;
• The journal will regularly acknowledge those who participated in the peer-review process on the journal website;
• Opportunities to participate in or host annual meetings and online seminars organized by the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board Members.

Responsibilities of an Early Career Editorial Board Member

• Publicizing and promoting the journal at academic conferences and among peers;
• Selecting high-quality articles and preparing bilingual media content for promotion;
• Reviewing at least four manuscripts per year;
• Providing input on any new initiatives of journal development;
• Inviting submissions from local and overseas world-leading scientists in respective research fields.

Applications:

Please fill in the application form here.

Please send the application form and your academic résumé to children@mdpi.com with the subject “Children Early Career Editorial Board Application + Name + Institute + Research Expertise”.

Application deadline: 31 December 2027.

Selection process and announcement:

The selection process: initial screening of application materials → selection by the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board Members → email notification → issuing a certificate of appointment.

The selection will be made within one month of the application deadline and the results will be announced on the journal website.

1. Could you please briefly introduce yourself?
I’m Paul Carney, a board-certified pediatric neurologist and epileptologist, and Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at the University of Missouri. My career has spanned three academic medical centers—the University of Florida, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and now Missouri—where I’ve built and directed comprehensive pediatric epilepsy, epilepsy surgery, neurogenetics, and rare-disease programs. I trained in pediatrics at Rainbow Babies and Children’s in Cleveland and completed fellowships in pediatric neurology, epilepsy and clinical neurophysiology, and sleep medicine at the University of Michigan. Over more than two decades, I’ve worn three hats more or less at once: clinician caring for children with the most complex and drug-resistant epilepsies, researcher working at the intersection of neurology, neuroengineering, and genetics, and educator and mentor to the next generation. I’m also fluent in Spanish—I earned my medical degree in Chile and lived there for a decade—which has shaped a lot of my international collaboration.

2. What were the important turning points or challenges in your academic career, and how did you overcome them?
A few stand out. The first was committing early to a genuinely interdisciplinary path. When I joined the University of Florida, I took joint appointments in biomedical engineering and neuroscience alongside pediatrics and neurology. At the time, embedding a clinician inside engineering labs wasn’t common, and it meant constantly translating between two languages—clinical medicine and computational modeling. The payoff was a body of work on seizure prediction and neural-network dynamics that wouldn’t have been possible from inside any one department.
A second turning point was moving between institutions and effectively rebuilding programs from scratch—division chief and medical director roles, founding an ACGME fellowship, standing up Level 4 epilepsy programs. Each move carried the risk of losing momentum. What carried me through was treating program-building as its own discipline: recruit good people, align the clinical and research missions, and be patient about compounding gains.
The most recent pivot has been toward neurogenetics and precision medicine—founding the genetic autism and genetic epilepsy programs at Missouri. The challenge there is that rare-disease science moves faster than infrastructure and funding can keep up with. The way through has been partnership—state agencies, foundations, families, and industry—rather than waiting for any single funding stream.

3. What are the core scientific questions and which directions are you most optimistic about over the next 3–5 years?
The central pain point in my field hasn’t fundamentally changed: roughly a third of people with epilepsy don’t achieve seizure control with available medications, and for many genetic and developmental epilepsies we still treat symptoms rather than mechanisms. The core questions are how to predict seizures reliably, how to intervene precisely in the right circuit at the right moment, and how to move from a genetic diagnosis to a genuinely disease-modifying therapy.
Over the next three to five years, I’m most optimistic about a few convergent directions. First, gene-targeted and precision therapeutics for monogenic epilepsies and neurodevelopmental disorders—we now routinely identify the variant; the frontier is doing something about it. Second, closed-loop neuromodulation and the maturation of seizure-prediction algorithms—combining better signal analysis with machine learning to actually anticipate and pre-empt seizures rather than react to them. Third, the integration of computational modeling and AI into both diagnosis and trial design. And fourth, advanced neuroimaging that lets us map epileptic networks non-invasively. The exciting part is that these aren’t separate tracks—genetics, devices, imaging, and computation are starting to inform one another.

4. In your opinion, what are the most important qualities of an outstanding researcher?
Intellectual honesty above everything—the willingness to follow the data even when it contradicts your favorite hypothesis. Beyond that, I’d name persistence, because meaningful problems rarely yield on the first attempt and funding cycles test your resolve. Genuine curiosity that crosses disciplinary boundaries—some of my best work came from sitting in engineering and physics seminars I had no formal training for. And finally, generosity as a mentor. The measure of a research career isn’t only your own papers; it’s the investigators you help launch. I’ve been fortunate to train people now leading their own labs and programs, and that’s among the work I’m proudest of.

5. What are you most looking forward to at this year’s conference?
Honestly, the conversations between the sessions as much as the sessions themselves. The most valuable part of any meeting is watching people from adjacent fields—clinicians, geneticists, engineers, computational scientists—discover they’ve been circling the same problem from different angles. I’m especially looking forward to the work coming from younger investigators, who tend to arrive without the assumptions the rest of us have accumulated, and to seeing where the field’s thinking has genuinely shifted in the past year.

6. Why should someone attend? What will they gain that they can’t get elsewhere, and what would you say to young researchers or first-time attendees?
A focused conference offers something you can’t reconstruct from reading the literature alone: the chance to see where a field is actually heading before it’s published, and to build the relationships that turn into collaborations and careers. You meet the people behind the papers, you get unfiltered reactions to your own work, and you find the collaborators who have the method or model you’re missing.
To young researchers and first-time attendees: don’t wait until your work is perfect to engage. Present the poster, ask the question in the session, introduce yourself to the speaker whose work you admire—most of us are far more approachable than we appear from the podium. Some of my longest collaborations began as a hallway conversation at a meeting like this one. The field grows by being porous, and you belong in it from your very first abstract.

7. Is there anything else you’d like to add to encourage participation?
Only this: epilepsy and neurodevelopmental research is at one of its most hopeful moments in decades, with genetics, neuroengineering, and computation finally converging on the patients who’ve waited longest for answers. That progress depends entirely on people choosing to show up, share what hasn’t worked as readily as what has, and pull the next generation in alongside them. Whether you’re a senior investigator or attending your first meeting, you have something to contribute—so come, participate fully, and help move the field forward.

Introduction of IOCCH 2026:
Conference date: 17–19 November 2026;
Deadline for abstract submission: 17 July 2026;
Deadline for registration: 12 November 2026.

Conference Chair:

• Prof. Dr. Paul R. Carney, Departments of Child Health and Neurology, University of Missouri, Columbia, USA.

For more details, please visit the following link: https://sciforum.net/event/IOCCH2026.

For any enquiries regarding the event, please get in touch with iocch2026@mdpi.com.

Our portfolio of journals available for publishing up-to-date research in immediate open access format has been further expanded. In June 2026, eleven new journals released their inaugural issues and two transferred journals released their first issue as part of MDPI, covering the subjects of environmental & earth sciences, chemistry & materials science, public health & healthcare, engineering, medicine & pharmacology, and biology & life sciences. 

We extend our gratitude to the Editors-in-Chief, Associate Editors, and Editorial Board Members who will shape the future course of these new journals. Each journal is dedicated to upholding strong editorial standards through a thorough peer review process, enabling impactful open access scholarship. 

Please feel free to browse and discover more about the new journals below. 

We would like to thank everyone who has supported the development of open access publishing. If you would like to create a new journal, you are welcome to send an application here or contact the New Journal Committee (newjournal-committee@mdpi.com).

Peer review is the invisible foundation of academic progress. The 2025 MDPI Top Reviewers are some of the key experts who helped build it.

We are honored to recognize 1000 individuals from our global community of 210,000 reviewers across 67 countries and territories—chosen for their commitment to rigorous, constructive peer review and the consistency of their contributions throughout 2025.

The Top Reviewers provided constructive and impartial feedback that makes research stronger and more impactful, and we are grateful for it.

The names of these reviewers are listed below in alphabetical order by first name:

(Note: we respected all privacy preferences, with part of nominees opting for limited attribution.)

Children (ISSN 2227-9067) is an international, open-access journal dedicated to the streamlined, yet scientifically rigorous dissemination of peer-reviewed science related to childhood health and disease.

The journal was launched in 2014. Since then, it has published over 10,000 articles. Owing to these high-quality contributions, the journal has achieved a 2025 Impact Factor of 2.6 and a 2025 CiteScore of 4.5 and has progressed from Q2 to Q1. We look forward to collaborating with more senior scholars in the field to further develop the journal and continue to promote academic discussion. Journal statistics can be accessed via the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/children/stats.

At present, the journal comprises 24 Sections. The full list of Section is available here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/children/sections.

• “Pediatric Neurology & Neurodevelopmental Disorders”;
• “Pediatric Hematology & Oncology”;
• “Pediatric Surgery”;
• “Global Pediatric Health”;
• “Pediatric Neonatology”;
• “Pediatric Cardiology”;
• “Pediatric Nephrology & Urology”;
• “Pediatric Dermatology”;
• “Pediatric Nursing”;
• “Pediatric Orthopedics & Sports Medicine”;
• “Pediatric Dentistry & Oral Medicine”;
• “Pediatric Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine”;
• “Pediatric Mental Health”;
• “Pediatric Allergy and Immunology”;
• “Pediatric Infectious Diseases”;
• “Pediatric Endocrinology & Diabetes”;
• “Pediatric Anesthesiology, Pain Medicine and Palliative Care”;
• “Pediatric Emergency Medicine & Intensive Care Medicine”;
• “Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition”;
• “Pediatric Drugs”;
• “Pediatric Radiology”;
• “Translational Pediatrics”;
• “Pediatric Ophthalmology”;
• “Pediatric Otolaryngology”.

We welcome all manuscripts related to these Sections or other areas. If you interested in the journal, please submit your manuscript via the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/children.

We look forward to collaborating with you.

Children Editorial Office

We are pleased to share that the Children (ISSN 2227-9067) was awarded an increased Impact Factor of 2.6 in the 2025 Journal Citation Reports™ released by Clarivate™ in June 2026. The Children ranks in Q1 (39 among 190 titles) in the “Pediatrics” category.

The 2025 Journal Impact Factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations received in 2025 to all publications in the journal from 2023 and 2024 by the total number of citable publications from those same years.

To learn more, visit our journal statistics website for detailed metrics or check out our news article for general information.

The support and dedication of all the editors, reviewers, authors, and readers are an integral part of the journal’s performance. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have contributed to the journal.

Impact Factors measure how often articles in scientific journals are cited—specifically, the average number of citations received in a given year by articles published in that journal over the previous two years, as tracked in the Web of Science. For researchers, the number answers a practical question: how often is work published in this journal being picked up and built upon?

The metric is assigned to the journal as a whole, not to individual articles. A high Impact Factor tells you something useful about a journal's place in its field; it tells you less about any single paper within it.

For a complementary, article-level view, MDPI lists an Altmetric score on each article page. Where the Impact Factor tracks academic citations, the Altmetric score captures broader online attention: how an article is being shared, discussed, and referenced beyond the journal literature. Together, they offer two different ways of asking the same question: is this research reaching people?

With 2025 CiteScores from Scopus published a few weeks ago, Clarivate has now released this year's Journal Impact Factors in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR).

254 MDPI Journals Saw a Rise in Impact Factor

This year's JCR include 330 MDPI journals across a wide range of disciplines. Of these, 231 journals are placed in the top 50% (Q1 or Q2) of their respective subject categories, a result that spans fields as different as materials science, public health, environmental studies, and mathematics. 78 journals hold a top-quartile position (Q1), and 33 journals have a JIF of 5.0 or above.

• 330 journals earned a Journal Impact Factor (JIF)
• 29 journals earned a first JIF
• 254 journals had an increase in JIF
• 71% of ranked journals are in Q1 or Q2

For the full metrics on any MDPI journal, visit our Web of Science journals overview page or a journal's individual statistics page.

29 MDPI Journals Received Their First Journal Impact Factor

A first Impact Factor is a confirmation for an emerging journal. It marks the point at which a journal has been publishing long enough, and cited broadly enough, to enter the formal record of scientific influence. For the research communities those journals serve, it signals that the work being published is being read and built upon.

This year, 29 MDPI journals received a Journal Impact Factor for the first time, across a range of emerging and established research areas. Each represents years of editorial development and peer review—recognized in 2026 for the first time in the JCR.

This is also part of a longer shift in how science gets indexed. When the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) launched in 2016, 24 MDPI journals were included. By 2024 that number had grown to over 200, reflecting a broader change in the visibility of open access publishing within major citation tracking systems, not just at MDPI but across the sector.

Open Access with Impact

MDPI journals have received a total of 25.2 million citations in Web of Science. That figure matters less as a measure of MDPI's reach and more as a measure of what happens when research is freely available: it gets found, read, and used. Open access is only meaningful if the work actually travels and citations are one indicator that it does.

More than 4.6 million authors have published with MDPI. That breadth, across disciplines, institutions, and geographies, is what makes open access at this scale worth doing.

Thank You to the MDPI Scholarly Community

These results belong to the people who do the actual work: the Editors-in-Chief who set the standards, the Editorial Board Members and reviewers who hold them, and the authors who choose open access for their research. The numbers in the Journal Citation Reports are the downstream effect of decisions made at the desk, in the review, and at submission. Thank you for making them.

Data: 2025 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports™ (Clarivate, 2026)