Announcements

Dermatopathology (ISSN 2296-3529) is a peer-reviewed journal publishing original scientific articles dealing with diagnostic and experimental human and animal studies in dermatopathology. The aims of the journal are to share interesting and recent clinicopathological information with the dermatopathology community all over the world, and to create a stronger link between dermatopathology, clinical dermatology, and investigative dermatology. The Dermatopathology Editorial Team is pleased to announce this open call for Special Issue proposals, which gives a group of authors the possibility to work on an interconnected set of papers on an innovative topic. We would like to solicit high-quality proposals that will be evaluated in a competitive procedure on a rolling basis throughout the year.

Proposals for a Special Issue should have a well-articulated unifying topic and reflect, on an international level, the best work in a particular research area, either a mature area or an important emerging area, in which future investigations may be boosted by the publication of a set of excellent papers. Hence, an international group of Guest Editors and a few high-quality planned papers are always encouraged when it comes to proposals.

Proposals for Special Issues need to be sent to the Editorial Office (dermatopathology@mdpi.com), who will then forward them to the Editor-in-Chief of Dermatopathology for evaluation.

Information to be provided in a proposal:

• A 300–500-word summary to rationally explain the significance, novelty, technical advancement, and adherence to the scope of the journal of the proposed topic;
• A few keywords on the topic;
• A plan for obtaining quality papers or a list of at least three planned papers;
• A brief resume of the proposed Guest Editors, together with their information (title, name, email, affiliation, personal website, keywords of interests);
• A proposed submission deadline (we normally run a Special Issue for 8–12 months).

Guest Editor(s) Role:

• Once the proposal is accepted, the GE will circulate the Call for Papers for the Special Issue and invite submissions.
• Guest Editor has the privilege of publishing 1 paper free of charge (with 1000 CHF publication fee waived) in this Special Issue and inviting 4 feature papers to be published free of charge.
• Each submission will undergo a formal peer review process, after which we will ask the GE, the Editor in Chief, or a suitable Editorial Board Member to decide whether the paper is acceptable for publication in Dermatopathology.
• If five or more papers are published in this Special Issue, Guest Editor(s) could publish an Editorial free of charge.
• If ten or more papers are published in this Special Issue, we can make a Special Issue book and send a hard copy to each Guest Editor.

Editorial Office’s Role

The Editorial Office will take care of setting up the Special Issue website, arranging promotional material, assisting with invitations to contribute papers, and taking care of administrative tasks associated with peer review, including inviting reviewers, collating reports, contacting authors, and professional production before publication.

Please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office if you are interested and would like further details and clarifications.

We look forward to receiving your creative proposals.

Kind regards,
Dermatopathology Editorial Office

We are pleased to inform the European Society of Dermatopathology (ESDP) chose to partner with MDPI to publish the society journal Dermatopathology (ISSN 2296-3529) from June 2020.

Dermatopathology is a peer-reviewed open access journal publishing original scientific articles dealing with diagnostic and experimental human and animal studies in dermatopathology. The journal was funded in 2014 and published with Karger up until its sixth volume in 2019.

Professor Gürkan Kaya (University Hospital of Geneva, Switzerland) acts as the Editor-in-Chief of Dermatopathology as well as the President of ESDP. In editing Dermatopathology, Prof. Kaya is supported by Prof. Sylvie Fraitag (Necker Hospital, Paris Descartes University), Daniela Kroshinsky, MD MPH (Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA) and Prof. Jeffrey North (University of California, San Francisco, USA), who are overseeing topical sections set up in the journal.

If your scholarly society is interested in partnering with MDPI, please check our Information for Societies.

We are delighted to announce the establishment of our Open Access agreement with Jisc Collections, which will allow UK institutions to benefit from access to article processing charge (APC) discounts and streamlined payment workflows.

All institutions participating in the agreement will also gain access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information for easy identification and additional transparency.

Eligible authors affiliated with the participating institutions are prompted to choose the corresponding Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system.

About Jisc

Jisc's vision is for the UK to be the most digitally advanced education and research nation in the world. At its heart is the super-fast national research and education network, Janet, with built-in cyber security protection.  Jisc also provides technology solutions for its members (colleges, universities and research centres) and customers (public sector bodies), helps members save time and money by negotiating sector-wide deals and provides advice and practical assistance on digital technology. Jisc is funded by the UK higher and further education and research funding bodies and member institutions.

For more information, contact helen.dobson@jisc.ac.uk.

About MDPI

MDPI is a publisher of fully peer-reviewed, Open Access journals with a focus on thorough and rapid editorial processing. Its aim is to ensure that high-quality research is verified and made available to the research community as quickly as possible. MDPI stands at the forefront of the Open Access movement, having launched its first online journal Molecules in 1996. Today, MDPI is a leader in Open Access publishing with over 250 journals across all research disciplines, and all content published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

For any questions about this agreement, please contact the MDPI IOAP team at ioap@mdpi.com.

Since 1996, MDPI has been committed to supporting the research community by providing the latest research freely available and making relevant and useful research available as quickly as possible. The world is current experiencing a pandemic of COVID-19, and researchers are working extremely hard to understand it and find a cure.

The values MDPI holds strongly are particularly important at the moment, and we will continue to publish relevant, peer-reviewed research as quickly as possible in open access format. This means that it will immediately be available for researchers, health professionals, and the general public to read, distribute, and reuse. We believe that scientific advancements will be crucial to overcoming this pandemic, and will do everything we can to support researchers working looking for solutions.

COVID-19 Academic Resources Center contains a variety of information related to COVID-19 available from MDPI, including journal articles, special issues, and preprints, among others.

For more information, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/covid-19

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 has endorsed Open Pharma’s Position Statement in support of open access publishing with the aim of advancing medical science and ultimately, improving patient care. Open pharma is a group of research funders, healthcare professionals, publishers, academics, and other healthcare stakeholders.

Since its inception in 1996, MDPI’s efforts have aligned with Open Pharma’s vision of more effective and transparent publishing, collaborating internationally with experts to deliver peer-reviewed online research journals to the scientific community and the general public. MDPI publishes 56 journals in the field of Medicine and Pharmacology and is planning to hold the World Pharma Forum in Basel in 2021.

Published under a Creative Commons License, MDPI’s articles can be freely shared and their content re-used, upon proper attribution. In support of the statement, MDPI will continue to uphold its open access policy and provide fast editorial services to ensure that new medical evidence can be read by everyone, without paywall restrictions.

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.