To expand our offerings to the molecular science community, International Journal of Molecular Science (IJMS) is recruiting researchers to join the Editorial Board of the following Sections:

Molecular Toxicology Section Bioactives and Nutraceuticals Section Biochemistry Section Materials Science Section Molecular Plant Sciences Section Molecular Biology Section Molecular Pathology, Diagnostics, and Therapeutics Section Molecular Biophysics Section Physical Chemistry and Chemical Physics Section

Molecular Microbiology Section Molecular Oncology Section Molecular Genetics and Genomics Section Molecular Neurobiology Section Macromolecules Section Molecular Immunology Section Molecular Pharmacology Section Molecular Informatics Section Molecular Endocrinology and Metabolism Section Molecular Role of Xenobiotics Section

The International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067; CODEN: IJMCFK; ISSN 1661-6596 for printed edition) provides an advanced forum for molecular studies in biology and chemistry, with a strong emphasis on molecular biology and molecular medicine. The 2019 impact factor for IJMS was 4.556. The website of IJMS can be accessed here.

Should you decide to serve on the Editorial Board, you would be responsible for some of the following tasks, depending on your availability:

• Making decisions on whether a manuscript should be accepted or not, based on the reports we collect;
• Suggesting special topics or editing a Special Issue on a topic related to your research;
• Promoting IJMS and increasing its visibility at relevant academic conferences;
• Advising on the journal’s development.

If you are interested in this position or know of potential candidates to recommend, or wish to request further information, please contact the IJMS Editorial Office ([email protected]). We look forward to hearing from you soon.

MDPI Books recently released Book Builder, a new online tool to conveniently arrange, design and produce an eBook from any content published in MDPI journals. Book Builder offers two functions: on the one hand (1) Selections, available to every registered user of MDPI; on the other hand (2) Special Issue Reprints, which can be used exclusively by Guest Editors of Special Issues.

Selections

In just a matter of a few clicks, all users are now able to assemble books from MDPI articles and receive instantaneous feedback in the form of a fully produced and compiled book (PDF), which can be downloaded or ordered as print copy. Selections can include any paper published with MDPI, picking and combining content from different journals and special issues.

This way, the user may for example choose to compile an ebook focusing around a particular topic, or assemble articles from a group of others.

We invite you to make yourself familiar with the new tool! The Book Builder can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/books/book_builder.

Special Issue Reprints

The Book Builder allows Guest Editors of MDPI journals to create a reprint from a successfully completed Special Issue or Topical Collection in book format. If you are a Guest Editor for an MDPI journal, you can use the new tool  to create an PDF document which includes all articles published in the Special Issue as well as a book cover and table of contents.

For Special Issues containing a minimum of 5 articles, the Guest Editor can request its publication on the MDPI Book platform. Published reprints are assigned an ISBN and DOI.

In addition to the PDF copy of the Reprint Book, as a token of our gratitude, MDPI offers every Guest Editor one (1) complimentary print copy (via print-on-demand). All contributors benefit from a discount on orders of any additional print copies, to share with colleagues or libraries or others.

 

Why choose MDPI Books?

In line with our organization's values, MDPI Books publishes all content in open access, promoting the exchange of ideas and knowledge in a globalized world. MDPI Books encompasses all the benefits of open access—high availability and visibility, as well as wide and rapid dissemination. MDPI Books are distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License, meaning as an author you retain the copyright for your work. In addition, with MDPI Books you can complement the digital version of your work with a high-quality printed counterpart.

If you are interested in editing a book volume or series, or have a monograph manuscript to be considered for publication, please submit your proposal online and look at our Information for Authors.

Contact: Laura Wagner, MDPI Books Manager (email)

We are honored and pleased to announce that Professor Darren Griffin has been appointed Founding Editor-in-Chief for the new open access journal DNA. Darren Griffin is currently Professor of Genetics, School of Biosciences, University of Kent, UK.

Professor Darren Griffin received his Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Science degrees from the University of Manchester and his PhD from University College London. After postdoctoral stints at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Cambridge he landed his first academic post at Brunel University, before settling at the University of Kent, where he’s been for the last 15+ years. He is President of the International Chromosome and Genome Society, a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, the Royal Society of Biology and the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce. He is a prolific science communicator, making every effort to make scientific research publicly accessible and is an enthusiastic proponent for the benefits of interdisciplinary research endeavour.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Darren Griffin as the Founding Editor-in-Chief of DNA, and we look forward to the new journal achieving many milestones under his leadership. Further information about the journal can be found at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/dna.

In June of this year, MDPI will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its foundation. To mark this significant milestone, we have created a 25th Anniversary page on our website that evokes the development of our company over the past quarter-century.

MDPI has been a pioneer of Open Access publishing ever since the concept was first created.

In a wide-ranging interview, our CEO Delia Mihaila reflects on the company’s 25th anniversary and its contribution to the world of scientific publishing.

Delia considers how MDPI has evolved since starting life in 1996 as a visionary ‘project’ run out of an apartment in Basel, Switzerland, by Dr. Shu-Kun Lin. A chemist who was passionate about the long-term preservation of rare chemical sample, Dr. Lin was determined to help scholars publish their findings as quickly as possible and make their research results available to as wide a readership as possible worldwide. That determination remains unchanged 25 years later.

Today, MDPI is an international organization with over 4,000 employees based on three continents and in ten countries, and ranks among the world's top four academic publishers.

MDPI's mission is to accelerate access to new scientific research, delivering insight faster for researchers worldwide. Read more here about the company's remarkable success story and what the Open Access publishing model can offer the global scientific community.

The acquisition of Current Issues in Molecular Biology in February 2021 is adding to the options MDPI’s authors have who wish to publish their research in molecular biology. The title was established at the turn of the last century, in 1999, and published some 390 articles and review papers on various aspects of molecular biology and microbiology spanning from basic mechanisms to applications in adjacent fields.

Current Issues in Molecular Biology (CIMB) is going to publish original research papers and reviews which provide fundamental mechanistic and functional insights into molecular biology, in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes. There will be three issues published in 2021, and four quarterly issues as of 2022. The journal’s scope is available here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/cimb/about.

CIMB is indexed within Scopus, SCIE (Web of Science) with Journal Impact Factor 2.695 (2019), PubMed and MEDLINE, among other databases. The journal’s CiteScore ranks in Q2 among journals listed in the “Microbiology, medical” category in Scopus.

Do not hesitate to contact the editorial office if you would like to get involved with the journal, by submitting a paper, or acting as a volunteer reviewer.

Website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/cimb
Publishing Manager: Dr. Ivana Resanovic
Current Issues in Molecular Biology editorial office: [email protected]

At MDPI, we strive to make your online publication process seamless and efficient. To achieve this, our team is continuously developing tools and features to make the user experience useful and convenient.

As the number of academic papers continues to grow, so does the need to analyze and work with them on a large scale. This prompted us to design a new feature aimed at helping researchers find journals that are relevant to their publication by matching their abstract topic. In this regard, we designed a similarity model that automatically identifies the most suitable academic journals for your paper.

We are pleased to introduce Journal Selector, a new feature that measures similarity in academic contexts. By simply entering the title and/or abstract into our Journal Selector, the author will see a list of the most related scientific journals published by MDPI. This method helps authors select the correct journals for their papers, highlighting the time of publication and citability.

The methodology is known as representation learning, where words are represented as vectors in hyperspace. Representation helps us differentiate between different concepts within articles, and in turn, helps us identify similarities between them.

We used an advanced machine learning model to better capture the semantic meanings of words. This helps the algorithm make better predictions by leveraging scientific text representation. In turn, this ensures high precision, helping authors decide which journal they should submit their paper to.

The goal is to support authors to publish their work in the most suitable journal for their research, as fast as possible, accelerating their career progress.

Contact: Andrea Perlato, Head of Data Analytics, MDPI (email)

During 2020, IJMS had many achievements. The impact factor of IJMS increased to 4.556 and the journal entered Q1 in the category “Biochemistry Molecular Biology” for the first time and ranked No.4 in Q2 in the category “Chemistry Multidisciplinary”. At the same time, IJMS achieved the top position for annual publications across journals in both categories, which, overall, published 9705 papers last year. Our Editorial Board is growing as well, now comprising of approximately 5000 experts in the research field of molecular sciences, offering valuable scientific advice and strong academic support.

High Altmetrics Papers  

• A Review of SARS-CoV-2 and the Ongoing Clinical Trials
  Yung-Fang Tu et al.
  Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2020, 21(7), 2657; doi: 10.3390/ijms21072657

• Lactoferrin as Protective Natural Barrier of Respiratory and Intestinal Mucosa against Coronavirus Infection and Inflammation
  Elena Campione et al.
  Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2020, 21(14), 4903; doi: 10.3390/ijms21144903

• Could Intravenous Immunoglobulin Collected from Recovered Coronavirus Patients Protect against COVID-19 and Strengthen the Immune System of New Patients?
  Samir Jawhara
  Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2020, 21(7), 2272; doi: 10.3390/ijms21072272

• Electrohypersensitivity as a Newly Identified and Characterized Neurologic Pathological Disorder: How to Diagnose, Treat, and Prevent It
  Dominique Belpomme et al.
  Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2020, 21(6), 1915; doi: 10.3390/ijms21061915

• RT-qPCR Testing of SARS-CoV-2: A Primer
  Stephen A. Bustin et al.
  Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2020, 21(8), 3004; doi: 10.3390/ijms21083004

Collection/Special Issue:

Recent Advances in T Cell Immunity
edited by Stephanie Gras

T cells are a key player in the adaptive immune system, and research in cellular immunology provides an understanding of T cell recognition, activation and dysregulation and their roles in infectious diseases, allergy, and cancer. A hallmark of T cells is their incredible diversity, achieved by their T cell receptor (TCR). Further diversity is seen in their target molecule, the Major Histocompatibility (MHC) complex. This diversity is critical as it facilitates the recognition of an almost infinite range of antigens that T cells will have to face over their lifetimes.

Top Downloaded Topics

• Neuroprotection: Rescue from Neuronal Death in the Brain
  edited by Bae Hwan Lee

• Peptides for Health Benefits 2020
  edited by Blanca Hernández-Ledesma

• Optimization of Biomaterials for Reconstructive and Regenerative Medicine
  edited by Ralf Smeets and Anders Henningsen

• Environmental Stress and Plants
  edited by Giampiero Cai, Luigi Parrotta and Lavinia Mareri

• Host–Pathogen Interaction 2.0
  edited by Andreas Burkovski

Open Calls

• Molecular Connection between the Endocrine System and Body Regulation
  edited by Barbara Predieri
  submission deadline 30 June 2021

• Research Progress in RNA-Binding Proteins
  edited by Alexandre Smirnov
  submission deadline 31 July 2021

• Cell Fate Decisions in Neural Development
  edited by Chaya Kalcheim
  submission deadline 31 August 2021

Read full list of call for papers at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijms/special_issues.

On behalf of the editorial team, we would like to express our gratitude to the Editor-in-Chief of IJMS, all Section Editors-in-Chief and Editorial Board Members, as well as to the Guest Editors of Special Issues, Topic Board Members, and Reviewer Board Members, all of whom have ensured the continued success of the journal through their hard work and diligence!

In 2021, IJMS will continue to contribute to academic exchange and sharing of knowledge.

MDPI is proud to adopt the principles of the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) to support building equity, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications.

The C4DISC represents organizations and individuals working in scholarly communications and is focused on addressing issues of diversity and inclusion within the publishing industry.

MDPI’s Managing Editors encourage the Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors to appoint diverse expert Editorial Boards. This is also reflective in our multi-national and inclusive workplace. We are proud to create equal opportunities without regard to gender, ethnicity, geographic location, sexual orientation, age, disability, political beliefs, religion, or socio-economic status. There is no place for discrimination in our workplace and editors of MDPI journals are to uphold these principles in high regard.

Representatives from C4DISC meet monthly, and have started to implement initiatives to shed light and improve on the lack of diversity in scholarly communications. Some of the initiatives include developing a joint statement of principles; conducting market research; providing training resources, best practices, toolkits, and documentation for our collective memberships; and establishing outreach programs, curricula, events, and publications.

The Coalition is committed to:

• eliminating barriers to participation, extending equitable opportunities across all stakeholders, and ensuring that our practices and policies promote equitable treatment and do not allow, condone, or result in discrimination;
• creating and maintaining an environment that respects diverse traditions, heritages, and experiences;
• promoting diversity in all staff, volunteers, and audiences, including full participation in programs, policy formulation, and decision-making;
• raising awareness about career opportunities in our industries to groups who are currently underrepresented in the workforce;
• supporting our members in achieving diversity and inclusion within their organizations.

At MDPI we have slightly revised the layout for articles to be published in the 2021 Volume, starting at the end of December 2020. As of today, the article templates available for download on ‘Instructions for Authors’ pages have been updated.

The most noticeable change can be found on the first page of the article, where a left-hand column has been created to include the following front matter elements: (i) the recommended citation style for the article, (ii) the publishing history, (iii) as well as the Creative Commons Attribution license used (iv) a standard note regarding affiliations. At the same time, the extra spacing on the left means the authors’ affiliations are now more clearly set apart than before. Other front matter key elements such as journal logo, article type, article title, authors, abstract and keywords remain unchanged.

The blank column on the left runs through all pages in an article; as a result, the main text is slightly more condensed, which improve reader friendliness for smaller screens. Small figures/tables are aligned on the left with standard indenture, while large figures/tables are centered and covering the full width of the page. The revised layout was applied in the article pictured below, to serve as an example:

1) Information is displayed in the left information bar.

2) In the main text, there is a blank column on the left.

3) Small tables/figures are aligned on the left, large tables/figures are centered.

We are pleased to acknowledge that many academic editors who have made an impact on MDPI journals as editorial board members, editors-in-chief, or section editors, are recognized as 2020 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate.

Highly Cited Researchers highlights the top 1% of researchers, by citations, in one or more of the 22 fields used in Clarivate Analytics Essential Science Indicators. We offer our congratulations to 279 academic editors of MDPI journals who were recognized as the most influential scholars in their fields in 2020.

Adams, Dave Agarwal, Ravi P. Ahn, Choon Ki Ahn, Myung-Ju Albrecht, Randy A. Andersson, Dan I. Anker, Stefan D. Apergis, Nicholas Ariga, Katsuhiko Artaxo, Paulo Balsamo, Gianpaolo Barba, Francisco J. Benediktsson, Jon Atli Benelli, Giovanni Bhatnagar, Amit Bialystok, Ellen Blaabjerg, Frede Blay, Jean-Yves Bogers, Marcel Bolton, Declan J. Boyer, Cyrille Brocca, Luca Bruix, Jordi Buhalis, Dimitrios Burdick, Jason A. Byrd, John C. Cabeza, Luisa F. Cabrerizo-Lorite, Francisco Javier Cai, Jianchao Calhoun, Vince D. Cantu, Robert C. Cerqueira, Miguel Chang, Jo-Shu Chau, Kwok-wing Chemat, Farid Chen, Jianmin Chen, Jun Chen, Min Chen, Shaowei Chen, Wei Chen, Wei-Hsin Chen, Xiaofeng Chen, Yangkang Chen, Zhi-Gang Chiclana, Francisco Corella, Dolores Cortes, Javier Cortes, Jorge Cummings, Kenneth Michael Dai, Shifeng Decker, Eric A. DePinho, Ronald A. Dimopoulos, Meletios-Athanasios Dincer, Ibrahim Du, Yihong Dupont, Didier Edwards, David Ellahi, Rahmat Ellis, Erle C. ElMasry, Gamal Esteller, Manel Estruch, Ramón Fang, Chuanglin Fasano, Alessio Fernandez-Lafuente, Roberto Ferreira, Isabel Fortino, Giancarlo Galluzzi, Lorenzo Galvano, Fabio Gandomi, Amir H. Gandomi, Amir H. Gao, Bin Gao, Feng Gao, Wei Garbe, Claus García, Hermenegildo Geschwind, Daniel H. Giampieri, Francesca Giralt, Sergio A. Glanz, Karen Goldewijk, Kees Klein Gössling, Stefan Govindan, Kannan Granato, Daniel Grosso, Giuseppe Grosso, Giuseppe Guerrero, Josep M. Haase, Dagmar Hagger, Martin S. Hamblin, Michael R. Han, Heesup Jankovic, Joseph Janotti, Anderson

Jiang, Hai-Long Kalaji, Hazem M. Kalantar-Zadeh, Kourosh Kaner, Richard B. Karimi, Hamid Reza Kataoka, Kazunori Keesstra, Saskia Kepp, Oliver Kerminen, Veli-Matti Keyzers, Robert A. Khademhosseini, Ali Khan, Nafees A. Kim, Ki-Hyun Klemeš, Jiří Jaromír Klenk, Hans-Peter Konopleva, Marina Y. Krammer, Florian Krebs, Frederik C. Kroemer, Guido Kudo, Masatoshi Kurths, Juergen Kurzrock, Razelle Kuznetsov, Nikolay V. Kyrpides, Nikos C. La Vecchia, Carlo Lai, Yuekun Lam, James Lancellotti, Patrizio Lee, Sangmoon Leung, Victor C. M. Li, Jinghong Li, Yurui Lindahl, José M. Merigó Lip, Gregory Y. H. Loh, Xian Jun Long, Hualou Lund, Henrik Luo, Jingshan Luque, Rafael Lyons, Timothy W. Ma, Jun Ma, Wen-Xiu Ma, Yanming Maeda, Keisuke Makarova, Kira Mantovani, Alberto Martín-Belloso, Olga Martinoia, Enrico Marzband, Mousa Masclaux-Daubresse, Celine Masson, Patrick Mateos, María Victoria Mathiesen, Brian Vad Matyjaszewski, Krzysztof McArthur, Grant A. McCauley, Darren Medlock, Jolyon M. Melero, Ignacio Mezzetti, Bruno Miroshnichenko, Andrey E. Moran, Daniel Mueller, Lukas A. Mueller-Roeber, Bernd Naushad, Mu Nemeroff, Charles B. Nieto, Juan J. O'Donnell, Colm Ogino, Shuji Olabi, Abdul-Ghani O'Regan, Donal Orsini, Nicola Oswald, Isabelle P. Ozcan, Aydogan Pahl-Wostl, Claudia Pang, Huan Payne, James E. Peng, Shushi Perc, Matjaz Perez-Alvarez, Jose Angel Piquero, Alex R. Ploss, Alexander Postolache, Mihai Pradhan, Biswajeet Prinsep, Michele R. Qian, Dong Qu, Xiaogang Reiter, Russel J. Riahi, Keywan Richter, Andreas Rignot, Eric Robert, Caroline Ros, Emilio Rosell, Rafael

Rosen, Marc A. Rossolini, Gian Maria Saad, Fred Saad, Walid Sadorsky, Perry Sakthivel, Rathinasamy Schwab, Matthias Scolyer, Richard A. Serra-Majem, Lluis Sethi, Gautam Seto, Karen C. Settele, Josef Seymour, John F. Shi, Peng Siano, Pierluigi Sillanpää, Mika Simal-Gandara, Jesus Smagghe, Guy Srivastava, Hari M. Stadler, Peter F. Sun, Fengchun Sunderland, Elsie M. Suzuki, Nobuhiro Svenning, Jens-Christian Tan, Weihong Teixeira, José António Thakur, Vijay Kumar Tong, Shilu Tornabene, Francesco Tsao, Rong Tukker, Arnold Turskis, Zenonas Uversky, Vladimir N. van Wesemael, Bas Van Zwieten, Lukas Vangronsveld, Jaco Varma, Rajender S. Varshney, Rajeev K. Vasquez, Juan C. Velicogna, Isabella Vieta, Eduard Wade, Timothy J. Wagner, Wolfgang Wamba, Samuel Fosso Wang, Chunsheng Wang, Guoxiu Wang, Joseph Wang, Qi Wang, Tao Wang, Yuan Wiens, John J. Wu, Hao Bin Wu, Hui Wu, Tom Wu, Zhongbiao Xia, Xinhui Xiao, Wenjiao Xin, Sen Xiong, Rui Xu, Bin Xu, Zeshui Yan, Huaicheng Yang, Bing Yang, Hongxing Yang, Jie Yang, Xiao-Jun Yin, Shen Ying, Guang-Guo Young, Allan H. Yu, Guihua Zarco-Tejada, Pablo J. Zavadskas, EdmundasKazimieras Zeadally, Sherali Zhang, Fan Zhang, Liangpei Zhang, Qichun Zhang, Xian-Ming Zhang, Yue-Jun Zhao, Guochun Zhao, Li-Dong Zhu, Zhe Zhuang, Xiaodong Zou, Quan

The full list of 2020 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed on https://recognition.webofsciencegroup.com/awards/highly-cited/2020/

--- Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) is a Clarivate product.

MDPI acquired Current Oncology (ISSN 1718-7729) in October 2020 from Multimed Publications Inc., who launched the title in 1994, as Canada’s first peer-reviewed journal in oncology.

Current Oncology features papers in all fields of cancer medicine, including radiation oncology, surgical oncology, medical oncology, pediatric oncology, pathology, and cancer rehabilitation and survivorship. It continues to be a trusted source for all members of the oncology community in Canada and abroad.

Coverage in indexing services includes MEDLINE (PubMed/National Library of Medicine), the Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science), Journal Citation Reports, Scopus (Elsevier), EMBASE (Elsevier), and more. Current Oncology's 2019 Impact Factor is 2.257, ranked 185/244 in the 'Oncology' category.

Previously published six times annually, normally with one or two additional supplements, MDPI will continue the schedule of bimonthly publications. The current volume of Current Oncology (v. 27) will be concluded at the end of 2020, at which point MDPI will take over publication of the journal, starting with Volume 28, at the beginning of 2021.

The goal is to greatly expand the journal's global reach, alongside MDPI's flagship Cancers journal, in order to become one of the world’s leading oncology journals.

Website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/curroncol

Contact: Danica Jevtic, Marko Ristic
Current Oncology Editorial Office

MDPI will be attending the conference Neuroscience 2020, which will be hosted in Washington, USA, 24–28 October 2020.

SfN’s 50th annual meeting is the premier venue for the presentation of emerging science in the field of neurosciences, where one can learn from experts, forge collaborations with peers, explore new tools and technologies, and advance their career.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Brain Sciences (leading journal)
• JCM
• Medicina
• Genes
• Children
• Cancers
• Behavioral Sciences
• Cells
• IJERPH
• Disease
• Biomedicines
• JPM
• Pathogens
• Healthcare
• IJMS
• Psych
• Pharmaceuticals
• Clocks&Sleep
• Jounal of Intelligence
• Pharmaceutics

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #208). 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://www.sfn.org/meetings/neuroscience-2020

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 [email protected]

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 [email protected].

The updated citation metrics have been released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), published by Clarivate. The recent release of the JCR includes seventy-one MDPI titles. Out of these, 18 titles are newcomers, receiving a first Journal Impact Factor which is based on citation activity in 2019: Actuators, Agriculture, Biology, Biomedicines, Biosensors, Chemosensors, Children, Healthcare, Journal of Fungi, Journal of Personalized Medicine (JPM), Land, Life, Magnetochemistry, Membranes, Pharmaceuticals, Photonics, Separations and Toxics.

• Out of the previously listed journals, a total of 72 percent boast an increased Impact Factor.
• 25 journals are ranked among the top 25% of journals in at least one of the categories they are ranked for.
• Articles published in 2019 in MDPI journals account for approximately 17 percent of of articles published in gold Open Access journals covered in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).
  
  

First Impact Factors

Journal	Impact Factor	Rank	Category	Details
Actuators	1.957	31/64 (Q2)	• Instruments & Instrumentation	Link
Agriculture	2.072	25/91 (Q2)	• Agronomy	Link
Biology	3.796	19/93 (Q1)	• Biology	Link
Biomedicines	4.717	30/138 (Q1) 36/270 (Q1)	• Medicine, Research & Experimental • Pharmacology & Pharmacy	Link
Biosensors	3.240	24/86 (Q2)	• Chemistry, Analytical	Link
Chemosensors	3.108	16/64 (Q1) 27/86 (Q2) 13/27 (Q2)	• Instruments & Instrumentation • Chemistry, Analytical • Electrochemistry	Link
Children	2.078	50/128 (Q2)	• Pediatrics	Link
Healthcare	1.916	62/102 (Q3) 45/87 (Q3)	• Health Care Sciences & Services (SCIE) • Health Policy & Services (SSCI)	Link
Journal of Fungi	4.621	5/29 (Q1) 31/135 (Q1)	• Mycology • Microbiology	Link
Journal of Personalized Medicine	4.433	24/165 (Q1) 10/102 (Q1)	• Medicine, General & Internal • Health Care Sciences & Services	Link
Land	2.429	58/123 (Q2)	• Environmental Studies (SSCI)	Link
Life	2.991	26/93 (Q2) 109/267 (Q2)	• Biology • Microbiology	Link
Magnetochemistry	1.947	22/45 (Q2) 109/159 (Q3) 201/314 (Q3)	• Chemistry, Inorganic & Nuclear • Chemistry, Physical • Materials Science, Multidisciplinary	Link
Membranes	3.094	53/143 (Q2) 129/314 (Q2) 23/89 (Q2)	• Engineering, Chemical • Materials Science, Multidisciplinary • Polymer Science	Link
Pharmaceuticals	4.286	49/270 (Q1)	• Pharmacology & Pharmacy	Link
Photonics	2.140	48/97 (Q2)	• Optics	Link
Separations	1.900	53/86 (Q3)	• Chemistry, Analytical	Link
Toxics	3.271	32/92 (Q2) 92/265 (Q2)	• Toxicology • Environmental Sciences	Link

Updated Impact Factors

Journal	Impact Factor	Rank	Category	Details
Agronomy	2.603	18/91 (Q1) 65/234 (Q2)	• Agronomy • Plant Sciences	Link
Animals	2.323	10/63 (Q1) 14/142 (Q1)	• Agriculture, Dairy & Animal Science • Veterinary Sciences	Link
Antibiotics	3.893	23/93 (Q1) 64/270 (Q1)	• Infectious Diseases • Pharmacology & Pharmacy	Link
Antioxidants	5.014	10/139 (Q1) 56/297 (Q1) 7/61 (Q1)	• Food Science & Technology • Biochemistry & Molecular Biology • Chemistry, Medicinal	Link
Applied Sciences	2.474	161/314 (Q3) 32/91 (Q2) 88/177 (Q2) 62/154 (Q2)	• Materials Science, Multidisciplinary • Engineering, Multidisciplinary • Chemistry, Multidisciplinary • Physics, Applied	Link
Atmosphere	2.397	48/93 (Q3)	• Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences	Link
Biomolecules	4.082	98/297 (Q2)	• Biochemistry & Molecular Biology	Link
Brain Sciences	3.332	113/271 (Q2)	• Neurosciences	Link
Cancers	6.126	37/244 (Q1)	• Oncology	Link
Catalysts	3.520	65/159 (Q2)	• Chemistry, Physical	Link
Cells	4.366	70/195 (Q2)	• Cell Biology	Link
Coatings	2.436	10/21 (Q2)	• Materials Science, Coatings & Films	Link
Crystals	2.404	10/26 (Q2) 165/314 (Q3)	• Crystallography • Materials Science, Multidisciplinary	Link
Diagnostics	3.110	39/165 (Q1)	• Medicine, General & Internal	Link
Diversity	1.402	119/168 (Q3)	• Ecology	Link
Electronics	2.412	125/266 (Q2)	• Engineering, Electrical & Electronic	Link
Energies	2.702	63/112 (Q3)	• Energy & Fuels	Link
Entropy	2.494	33/85 (Q2)	• Physics, Multidisciplinary	Link
Foods	4.092	27/139 (Q1)	• Food Science & Technology	Link
Forests	2.221	17/68 (Q1)	• Forestry	Link
Genes	3.759	53/177 (Q2)	• Genetics & Heredity	Link
Insects	2.220	18/101 (Q1)	• Entomology	Link
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	2.849	58/193 (Q2) 32/170 (Q1) 105/265 (Q2)	• Public, Environmental & Occupational Health (SCIE) • Public, Environmental & Occupational Health (SSCI) • Environmental Sciences (SCIE)	Link
International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	4.556	74/297 (Q1) 48/177 (Q2)	• Biochemistry & Molecular Biology • Chemistry, Multidisciplinary	Link
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJGI)	2.239	31/50 (Q3) 18/30 (Q3)	• Geography, Physical • Remote Sensing	Link
Journal of Clinical Medicine	3.303	36/165 (Q1)	• Medicine, General & Internal	Link
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering	2.033	31/66 (Q2)	• Oceanography	Link
Marine Drugs	4.073	16/61 (Q2)	• Chemistry, Medicinal	Link
Materials	3.057	132/314 (Q2)	• Materials Science, Multidisciplinary	Link
Mathematics	1.747	28/324 (Q1)	• Mathematics	Link
Medicina	1.205	107/165 (Q3)	• Medicine, General & Internal	Link
Metabolites	4.097	95/297 (Q2)	• Biochemistry & Molecular Biology	Link
Metals	2.117	18/79 (Q1) 185/314 (Q3)	• Metallurgy & Metallurgical Engineering • Materials Science, Multidisciplinary	Link
Micromachines	2.523	56/92 (Q3) 23/64 (Q2)	• Nanoscience & Nanotechnology • Instruments & Instrumentation	Link
Microorganisms	4.152	37/135 (Q2)	• Microbiology	Link
Minerals	2.380	6/21 (Q2) 11/30 (Q2)	• Mining & Mineral Processing • Mineralogy	Link
Molecules	3.267	70/177 (Q2) 141/297 (Q2)	• Chemistry, Multidisciplinary • Biochemistry & Molecular Biology	Link
Nanomaterials	4.324	89/314 (Q2) 42/103 (Q2)	• Materials Science, Multidisciplinary • Nanoscience & Nanotechnology	Link
Nutrients	4.546	17/89 (Q1)	• Nutrition & Dietetics	Link
Pathogens	3.018	65/135 (Q2)	• Microbiology	Link
Pharmaceutics	4.421	44/270 (Q1)	• Pharmacology & Pharmacy	Link
Plants	2.762	58/234 (Q1)	• Plant Sciences	Link
Polymers	3.426	16/89 (Q1)	• Polymer Science	Link
Processes	2.753	59/143 (Q2)	• Engineering, Chemical	Link
Remote Sensing	4.509	9/30 (Q2)	• Remote Sensing	Link
Sensors	3.275	22/86 (Q2) 77/266 (Q2) 15/64 (Q1)	• Chemistry, Analytical • Engineering, Electrical & Electronic • Instruments & Instrumentation	Link
Sustainability	2.576	120/265 (Q2) 26/41 (Q3) 53/123 (Q2) 6/8 (Q3)	• Environmental Sciences (SCIE) • Green & Sustainable Science & Technology (SCIE) • Environmental Studies (SSCI) • Green & Sustainable Science & Technology (SSCI)	Link
Symmetry	2.645	29/71 (Q2)	• Multidisciplinary Sciences	Link
Toxins	3.531	21/92 (Q1) 34/139 (Q1)	• Toxicology • Food Science & Technology	Link
Universe	1.752	18/29 (Q3) 42/68 (Q3)	• Physics, Particles & Fields • Astronomy & Astrophysics	Link
Vaccines	4.086	57/158 (Q2) 50/138 (Q2)	• Immunology • Medicine, Research & Experimental	Link
Viruses	3.816	12/37 (Q2)	• Virology	Link
Water	2.544	31/94 (Q2)	• Water Resources	Link

Source: Clarivate 2020, InCites Journal Citation Reports®.

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.

***

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:

https://www.sebbm.es/web/es/congresos/congresos-de-la-sebbm/3311-43-congreso-de-la-sebbm-barcelona-2020

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: [email protected])

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 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/.

The 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list has been announced by Web of Science athttps://recognition.webofsciencegroup.com/awards/highly-cited/2019/.

We are very glad to see that 16 of the IJMS Editorial Board members are listed as Highly Cited Researchers. They are the following:

Dr. José L. Quiles (Editor-in-Chief of Section "Molecular Role of Xenobiotics")
Department of Physiology, Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology “Jose Mataix”, Biomedical Research Center, University of Granada, Avda. Conocimiento s/n, 18100 Armilla, Granada, Spain

Dr. Maurizio Battino (Editor-in-Chief of Section "Bioactives and Nutraceuticals")
Department of Clinical Sciences, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy.

Dr. Rosa M. Lamuela-Raventos (Section "Bioactives and Nutraceuticals")
Department of Nutrition, Food Science and Gastronomy-XARTA-INSA-UB, School of Pharmacy and Food Science, University of Barcelona, Barcelona 08028, Spain

Dr. Jianbo Xiao (Section "Bioactives and Nutraceuticals")
Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China

Dr. Francesca Giampieri (Section "Bioactives and Nutraceuticals")
Department of Odontostomatologic and Specialized Clinical Sciences, Sez-Biochimica, Faculty of Medicine, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Via Ranieri 65, 60100 Ancona, Italy

Dr. Vladimir Uversky (Editor-in-Chief of Section "Molecular Biophysics")
Department of Molecular Medicine, Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida, Tampa, USA

Dr. Russel J. Reiter (Section "Biochemistry")
University of Texas Health San Antonio, United States

Dr. Roberto Fernandez-Lafuente (Section "Biochemistry")
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), Spain

Dr. Avelino Corma (Section "Materials Science")
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), Spain

Dr. Hermenegildo García (Section "Materials Science")
Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain

Dr. Vincent Rotello (Section "Materials Science")
Department of Chemistry, 710 North Pleasant St., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 USA

Dr. H. Eugene Stanley (Section "Materials Science")
Boston University, United States

Dr. Rajender S. Varma (Section "Physical Chemistry and Chemical Physics")
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, ORD National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA"

Dr. Ondřej Novák (Section "Molecular Plant Science")
Laboratory of Growth Regulators, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Experimental Botany & Palacký University, Faculty of Science, Olomouc, Czech Republic

Dr. Sergey Shabala (Section "Molecular Plant Science”)
School of Land and Food, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia

Dr. Lam-Son Phan Tran (Section "Molecular Plant Science")
Unit Leader, Signaling Pathway Research Unit, RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, 1-7-22 Suehiro-cho, Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama, 230-0045, Japan

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Best Poster and Oral Communication Awards, sponsored by the International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS) at the 8th workshop of the European Calcium Society (ECS) “Calcium Signaling in Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases” in Coimbra, Portugal, on 18–20 September 2019.

The editorial team of IJMS would like to congratulate the winner of the Best Poster Award at the 8th ECS Workshop “Calcium Signaling in Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases”, Dr. Riccardo Filadi (University of Padova, Italy).

The title and introduction of Dr. Riccardo Filadi’s work are presented below:

Metabolic Consequences of Altered ER to Mitochondria Ca²⁺ Transfer in FAD-Presenilin 2 Models

The Riccardo Filadi group has previously demonstrated that different Presenilin 2 (PS2)-mutants, linked to familial Alzheimer’s disease (FAD), affect ER Ca²⁺ content and ER-mitochondria Ca²⁺ shuttling. In this work, the effects of these Ca²⁺-signalling alterations on mitochondrial and cell metabolism were investigated. In different FAD-PS2 models, including primary cortical neurons from FAD-PS2-N141I transgenic (tg) mice, mitochondrial ATP synthesis was found to be impaired. The defect depends on reduced mitochondrial pyruvate oxidation, due to both lower Ca²⁺-mediated stimulation of the Krebs cycle and dampened mitochondrial pyruvate uptake. We correlated this latter event to glycogen-synthase-kinase‑3β (GSK-3β hyper-activation, leading, in turn, to impaired recruitment of Hexokinase 1 (HK1) to mitochondria and destabilization of the mitochondrial-pyruvate-carrier (MPC)-complexes. Importantly, the defective mitochondrial bioenergetics influences glutamate-induced neuronal excitotoxicity.

The editorial team of IJMS would like to congratulate the winner of the Best Oral Communication Award at the 8th ECS Workshop “Calcium Signaling in Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases”, Dr. Tito Cali (University of Padova, Italy).

The title and introduction of Dr. Tito Cali’s work are presented below:

Shedding Light on Intracellular Organelle Contacts with Novel Modular Genetically Encoded Sensors

Tito Cali and colleagues have designed modular, split-GFP based contact site sensors (SPLICS) engineered to fluoresce when narrow (10 nm) and wide (50 nm) juxtapositions between organelles are present. SPLICS enable the exploration of the dynamic nature of the ER-mitochondria interface in the axon of zebrafish sensory neurons and in dendrites and soma of rat primary hippocampal neurons. Thanks to these new-generation sensors the mechanisms and the dynamic nature of organelle contact sites can be explored in health and disease.

MDPI will be attending the 20th Biennial Meeting for the Society for Free Radical Research International (SFRRI 2020), Taoyuan, Taiwan, 17-20 March 2020.

The Society for Free Radical Research, founded in the United Kingdom in 1982, is an International Society and operates as a charitable voluntary, non-profit institution. The aims and objectives of the International Society are to advance education in free radical processes with particular reference to their industrial and medical importance, informing education for the benefit of the public. The Society promotes interest in all aspects of research into the reactions and properties of free radicals and into their physical, chemical, biological, medical, and industrial roles. Founded in 1982, and now with over 2500 members worldwide, the Society consists of five autonomous regional groups: SFRR Asia, SFRR Europe, SFRR Australasia, Society for Free Radical Biology and Medicine (SFRR Americas), and SFRR Africa. A number of regional groups have also been established within these areas.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Antioxidants
• Molecules
• Biology
• International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)
• Medicines
• Biomolecules
• Life
• Metabolites
• Biomedicines

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the website: http://www.sfrri2020.org/.

The Signal Transduction Society (STS) was established in 1998 in Germany as a non-profit organization dedicated to providing an interdisciplinary forum for scientists interested in signal transduction processes in cells and organisms.

Since 2010, the STS has acknowledged outstanding scientists for their ground-breaking contributions to deciphering cellular signaling pathways and concepts by awarding them the STS Honorary Medal. In 2017 the International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS) became a co-sponsor of this award. In addition, the STS also supports the work of young investigators by providing travel stipends and poster prizes at the society’s annual meeting, thereby awarding the achievements of young post docs or principal investigators with the “STS Science Award”.

The STS Honorary Medal 2019 of the Signal Transduction Society (STS), supported by MDPI’s International Journal of Molecular Sciences, is being awarded to Professor Alfred Wittinghofer for his lifetime contributions to the elucidation of the structure–function relationship of GTP-binding proteins.

Professor Wittinghofer received his PhD from the German Wool Research Institute and pursued his postdoctoral work at the University of North Carolina with a focus on protein modification. He later returned to Germany where he joined the Max-Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg and continued his studies on the structure and function of proteins involved in protein biosynthesis. While leading a group working on small G proteins, such as Ras, Ran and Rap, he taught at the University of Heidelberg. Wittinghofer then moved to the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology (MPI) in Dortmund and became Director of the Department of Structural Biology from 1993 until 2009. During this time he was also an honorary professor in Biochemistry at the University of Bochum. Until 2016 he continued his scientific investigation of the structure, function, and mechanisms of GTP-binding proteins and their regulators as an Emeritus Group Leader at the MPI.

A milestone in Professor Wittinghofer’s career was the resolution of the 3D structure of Ras and the characterization of its interaction with effector and regulator proteins on the molecular and structural level, which eventually led to the understanding of why oncogenic Ras proteins are constantly active. His ideas and innovative experimental approaches dramatically influenced our current understanding of oncogenic Ras signaling and the characteristics of small GTPases.

The 2019 STS Honorary Award Ceremony was held on Tuesday, 5 November at the 23^rd Meeting on Signal Transduction, organized by the STS. Prof. Gudula Schmidt (Freiburg), one of the first of Wittinghofer’s PhD students at the MPI in Dortmund, gave a moving speech praising Fred Wittinghofer’s scientific merits and personality. In his honorary lecture, Professor Wittinghofer delivered a fascinating, enthusiastic, and passionate insight into the GTPase world, and highlighted his research on the role of GTPases in ciliopathies. The award lecture was completed by a lively discussion appreciating Fred Wittinghofer’s scientific work.

Professor Wittinghofer giving his honorary lecture at the 23^rd Meeting on Signal Transduction, entitled “Trends in Cancer and Infection".

 

The Honorary Medal 2019 of the Signal Transduction Society (STS) and MDPI’s International Journal of Molecular Sciences being awarded to Prof. Wittinghofer. From left to right: Prof. Ingo Schmitz, Prof. Detlef Neumann, Prof. Klaudia Giehl (STS council), Prof. Gudula Schmidt (laudator), Prof. Alfred Wittinghofer, and Prof. Katharina Kubatzky (Chair of the society).

MDPI will be attending the 7th International Conference on Food Factors and the 12th International Conference and Exhibition on Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods (ICoFF2019 / ISNFF2019) in Kobe, Japan, 1–5 December 2019.

With the mission of promoting research into all aspects of basic and applied Food and Nutritional Science, ICoFF held its first conference in 1995 and has continued to hold every four years. ICoFF is one of the largest international conferences for researchers, scientists, professors and students in the field of food factors and their health-promoting effects. ISNFF, founded in 2007, has been focusing on the research and development on materials that can be used as functional foods.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Foods
• Nutrients
• Antioxidants
• Biomolecules
• IJMS
• Molecules

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #34). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: http://icoff2019.umin.jp/index.html.

IJMS is recruiting Editorial Board members who would like to become involved in one of the sections listed below:

• Molecular Toxicology
• Bioactives and Nutraceuticals
• Biochemistry
• Materials Science
• Molecular Plant Sciences
• Molecular Biology
• Molecular Pathology, Diagnostics, and Therapeutics
• Molecular Biophysics
• Physical Chemistry and Chemical Physics
• Molecular Microbiology
• Molecular Oncology
• Molecular Genetics and Genomics
• Molecular Neurobiology
• Macromolecules
• Molecular Immunology
• Molecular Pharmacology
• Molecular Informatics
• Molecular Endocrinology and Metabolism
• Molecular Role of Xenobiotics

These sections will expand the Editorial Board and cover areas that are less represented by the current team. If you are interested in this position or know of potential candidates to recommend, please contact us.

IJMS provides an advanced forum for biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, molecular biophysics, molecular medicine, and all aspects of molecular research in chemistry. It was awarded a 2018 Journal Impact Factor of 4.183. The website of IJMS can be accessed here.

As an Editorial Board member, you have the following responsibilities:

• Supervise at least one Special Issue related to your research field (you can publish an extra paper for free) within every two years;
• Invite at least three authors to contribute to regular issues with 200 CHF reduction per year;
• Pre-screen submissions and make decisions on whether they should be rejected or accepted for processing (about 10 papers per year);
• Provide suggestions in specific cases (e.g., comment on submissions with two or more different review opinions; respond to requests or questions from the external experts);
• Promote IJMS at conferences that you attend or organize (materials, like flyers or business cards, can be designed and shipped to your office; conference attendees would enjoy special discounts).

To apply or request further information, please contact the IJMS Editorial Office ([email protected]). We look forward to hearing from you soon.

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.net

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

We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2019 MDPI Writing Prize. Entrants were asked to write on the theme "Judging research: How should research and researchers be evaluated and rewarded?" We received a large number of excellent essays from PhD students and postdocs, and the process of shortlisting and choosing winners was not an easy one. The winners demonstrated excellent writing skills alongside interesting and thought-provoking ideas.

As last year, we will begin the process of collating all entries into a book that will be available in open access format. Alongside promoting good writing skills, we see the prize as a way to promote the voices of early career researchers within broader debates and policy discussions.

Congratulations to all of the participants and especially the winners. The winners are:

1st Prize (500 CHF):
Albin Nilsson (National Centre for Nuclear Research, Warsaw, Poland)
[Read here]

2nd Prize (250 CHF):
Qi Zhang (Shandong University, Jinan, China)
[Read here]
Igor Ogashawara (Indiana University, Indianapolis, US)
[Read here]

3rd Prize (100 CHF):
Margaret Sivapragasam (Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Perak, Malaysia)
[Read here]
Arvind Sharma (The University of Queensland, Gatton, Australia)
[Read here]
Jose Flores-Guerrero (University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands)
[Read here]

The MDPI Writing Prize is an annual award supported by MDPI Author Services, which provides services including language editing, reformatting, plagiarism checks, and image editing.

MDPI is pleased to announce the release of a new functionality giving the possibility for researchers and scholars to endorse, and formally recommend articles to their colleagues.

MDPI was an early signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (https://sfdora.org/read/) which calls for improvement in how quality and impact of scholarly research outputs are evaluated, especially in moving beyond journal-based citation metrics (journal Impact Factor, Scopus Citescore, etc.).

MDPI supports the establishment of article-level impact metrics, including citations, views, downloads, and Altmetric scores. These measures serve as an impact indicator for research articles on a case–by-case basis, assessing paper on its own merit. However, these metrics are also subjective and can give a biased picture of the article impact: they do not directly reflect the quality or the intrinsic scientific value of the article.

In our view, community engagement with publications based on community-driven metrics can help to overcome this limitation. We have therefore launched an option for scholars to endorse articles, indicating their own assessment of its content and making a recommendation to their community. This follows our implementation of the open source Hypothesis commenting tool, which has been available for all articles published by MDPI for over a year (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1397). Both endorsement and commenting are available for all previously published and forthcoming MDPI articles.

In addition to potentially serving as a sustainable solution to article assessment, endorsements will help scientific communities to identify the most relevant articles, independently of the journal in which it was published.

The code for the endorsing functionality, which relies on DOIs and ORCIDs, will be made available on GitHub with an open source license.

Dr. Shu-Kun Lin, President and Founder
Dr. Franck Vazquez, Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Martyn Rittman, Publishing Director

We will be attending the 23rd International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (MicroTAS 2019), to be held at Congress Center Basel, in Basel, Switzerland, on 27–31 October 2019. MicroTAS 2019 represents the continuation of a series of conferences that are considered the premier forum for presenting the latest research in microfluidics, microfabrication, nanotechnology, integration, materials and surfaces, analysis and synthesis, and detection technologies for life science and chemistry. MicroTAS 2019 offers plenary talks as well as contributed oral presentations and posters from selected abstracts. The following open-access journals will be represented:

Micromachines
Biosensors
Coatings
Applied Sciences
IJMS
Sensors

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (booth #21). 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://microtas2019.org.

We are glad to inform you that MDPI will be attending the 2019 joint meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) and European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). The 2019 joint meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) and European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) will focus on cell biology as the fundamental basis of biology, and will offer sessions on emerging topics such as nontraditional model organisms, and the use of computational modeling and biophysics to "Build the Cell from the Ground Up".

Representatives of the following open-access journals will attend:

Biology
Biomolecules
Brain Sciences
Cancers
Cells
Genes
Healthcare
IJMS
Metabolites
Pathogens
Plants
Processes
Vaccines

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #132). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have.

Encyclopedia is pleased to announce that certain well-prepared entries are eligible for a 100 CHF voucher, which can be used for paper publication in any journals in MDPI. We believe that your contribution would be a great help in keeping up with scientific developments. Do not miss the chance to publish with us. Please clink here to find the detailed guideline.

Encyclopedia is a free online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as provide a comprehensive record of scientific development. If you have any suggestions or questions, please feel free to contact us via [email protected].

In June and July 2019, four societies chose to establish a cooperation with MDPI journals.

Society	Journal
Spanish Society of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology (SEFIG)	Pharmaceutics
Spanish Society for Cellular Biology (SEBC)	International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)
Canadian Urban Transit Research & Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC)	Sustainability
Clim4Vitis (Climate Change Impact Mitigation for European Viticulture)	Applied Sciences

As part of this collaboration, the members of these affiliated societies will enjoy a discount on the article processing charges (APC) when submitting articles to the corresponding journals. The collaboration goes beyond the discount benefit offered to members and includes other services as well as cross-promotions.

Further information about these societies:

Spanish Society of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology (SEFIG) is a national organization that includes pharmacists and other graduates devoted to pharmaceutical R&D and pharmaceutical education related to the pharmaceutical industry, university education, and research centers or health institutions.

Spanish Society for Cellular Biology (SEBC) was founded in 1984 and it is currently formed by over 350 members. It was initially established as a scientific association to coordinate research and formative activities in the field of Cell Biology.

Canadian Urban Transit Research & Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC) is an innovation consortium that seeks to make Canada a global leader in low carbon smart mobility technologies across heavy-duty and light-duty platforms, including advanced transit, transportation, and integrated mobility applications. It supports the commercialization of technologies through industry-led collaborative research, development, demonstration/delivery, and integration (RDD&I) projects that bring innovative design to Canada’s low-carbon smart mobility eco-system.

Clim4Vitis (Climate Change Impact Mitigation for European Viticulture) is a three-year Horizon 2020 project funded by the European Union Research and Innovation programme. Coordinated by UTAD (Portugal), with the support of PIK (Germany), UNIFI (Italy), LIST (Luxembourg) and SPI (Portugal), the project aims to encourage S&T capacity and performance in grapevine modelling with a vision to implement methods and tools for assessing climate change impacts on European viticulture. First edition of the project Newsletter can be found here.

MDPI will be attending the 11th Conference of The World Mycotoxin Forum^® and the XVth IUPAC International Symposium on Mycotoxins in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 14-16 October 2019.

The aim of WMFmeetsIUPAC – the world’s largest mycotoxin event – is to increase the awareness of human and animal health risks due to mycotoxin contamination. It offers a platform for the food and feed industry, science and regulatory authorities to exchange current knowledge, to promote harmonisation of food and feed safety regulations and control procedures, and to make recommendations for integrated strategies ensuring the safety and security of the food and feed supply chain.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Toxins
• Foods
• Molecules
• Biosensors
• IJMS
• Microorganisms

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth. 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://www.worldmycotoxinforum.org/welcome.php

The International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS), MDPI’s open access journal providing an advanced forum for biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, molecular biophysics, molecular medicine, and all aspects of molecular research in chemistry, has published more than 20,000 articles and reviews since its inception in 2000. The International Journal of Molecular Sciences is now covered in the Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science), Scopus, and PubMed, with a 2018 Impact Factor of 4.183. The journal ranks 78/298 (Q2) in the category 'Biochemistry & Molecular Biology' and 46/172 (Q2) in 'Chemistry, Multidisciplinary' in the Journal Citation Reports.

Our sincere thanks go to the Editors-in-Chief of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, and all the Editorial Board members, as well as to Guest Editors of Special Issues, who have ensured the continued success of the journal through their hard work and diligence.

We are pleased to announce that Preprints has passed the milestone of 10,000 posted preprints. We are delighted to have reached this after just over three years of operation. Our congratulations and thanks go to our authors and advisory board who have supported growth of the platform and been crucial to its operation.

You can find further details at https://www.preprints.org/announcement/show/37.

Last week, the DeepGreen initiative in Germany started into an advanced test phase with the publishing partners S. Karger AG, SAGE Publishing, MDPI, Frontiers and De Gruyter, as well as 27 universities from all over Germany, from Hamburg University of Applied Sciences to University of Konstanz.

DeepGreen aims at lowering the barriers for open access publishing by automatically delivering metadata and full text publications from participating publishers to authorized repositories at German universities.

In preparation for a later live operation, the advanced test phase serves to gain experience with extensive data deliveries from publishers and also handling different repository software (including OPUS4, DSpace, EPrints, MyCoRe). DeepGreen thereby acts as a sophisticated platform, receiving articles published by authors affiliated with German universities and depositing these articles to respective university repositories, based on the affiliation metadata. For more information about DeepGreen: https://deepgreen.kobv.de

Karger AG has been a close cooperation partner of the DeepGreen consortium since 2016. S. Karger has more than 80 subscription-based and around 20 open access journals covering a wide spectrum in health science. DeepGreen will assign S. Karger articles to authorized institutions on the legal basis of German alliance and national licenses.

SAGE Publishing  was founded by Sara Miller McCune in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE publishes more than 1,000 journals and over 600 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. Our growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne. SAGE Publishing has been a close cooperation partner of DeepGreen since 2016.

MDPI  is a scientific open access publisher and has been a partner of DeepGreen since 2017. MDPI comprises 205 peer-reviewed journals of various disciplines. All articles are published under a CC-BY license and are freely available without embargo period.

Frontiers  is a scientific open access publisher with 61 journals of over 600 academic disciplines. All articles are peer-reviewed and published freely available under CC-BY license.

De Gruyter  is an academic publisher with more than 700 subscription-based and open access journals of 29 disciplines. Articles provided by De Gruyter will be assigned to institutions with German alliance and national licenses.

There is promising communication with other publishers.

DeepGreen is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the consortium comprises six institutions: the Cooperative Library Network Berlin-Brandenburg, Bavarian State Library, Bavarian Library Network, University Library of the Technische Universität Berlin, University Library of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Helmholtz Open Science Coordination Office at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

If you would like to know in more detail which institutions take part in the advanced test phase of DeepGreen, you can find more information here.

In March 2019, the European Calcium Society (ECS) became affiliated to the International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS). As part of this collaboration, all members of ECS enjoy a discount on the article processing charges (APC) when submitting articles to IJMS.

The European Calcium Society (ECS) is an international scientific society open to all researchers working in the Ca²⁺ field. The ECS was officially incorporated in Belgium as international non-profit association by Royal Decree of September 22^nd, 1997. While the vast majority of its members (70%) work in a European country, 30% are based outside Europe and in particular in the USA, Canada, Central or South America, Australia, Japan, China, Korea as well as in various other countries. The ECS aims to:

To develop and sustain relationships between all scientists working in the field of Ca²⁺ binding, Ca²⁺ signaling and the study of the various proteins thereby involved (the "Ca²⁺ toolkit") as well as the upstream and downstream pathways, and also takes into account the researchers performing theoretical work in the field (modelling).

To especially encourage and support junior researchers via various incentives and to support initiatives for and by junior researchers via a “Junior Board”.

To bring all actors in the Ca2+ field together for presentation of their latest results and their discussion at our biennial International Meetings and our dedicated ECS Workshops.

To favor for all activities a bottom-up approach with extensive consultation of the members and their subsequent involvement in the realization of the activities.

To continuously promote the exchange of information and ideas between our members via our various communication means that include our monthly ECS e-Bulletins, ECS Newletters (2/year), our ECS website, our ECS Facebook page and our Slack ECS community channels.

ECS is a professional organization whose functions are highly relevant to the scope of IJMS. We look forward to collaborating with the ECS and publishing state-of-the-art research from its society members. For more information on ECS, please see here.

In June 2019, the Spanish Society for Cellular Biology (SEBC) became affiliated to the International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS). As part of this collaboration, all members of SEBC enjoy a discount on the article processing charges (APC) when submitting articles to IJMS.

The Spanish Society for Cellular Biology (SEBC) was founded in 1984 and it is currently formed by over 350 members. It was initially established as a scientific association to coordinate research and formative activities in the field of Cell Biology.

SEBC is a professional organization whose functions are highly relevant to the scope of IJMS. We look forward to collaborating with SEBC and publishing state-of-the-art research from its members in this field.

The University of Basel and the MDPI Sustainability Foundation are organizing the First Basel Sustainable Publishing Forum on 9th September 2019.

The aim of this event is to provide background and perspectives on Plan S to Learned Societies, which have to make well-informed decisions to transition their journals to Open Access (OA).

The BSPF will bring together several representatives of Learned societies, Plan S architects as well as representatives from various publishers and publishing platforms. After getting the big picture from cOAlition S, panel discussions will allow to better understand the diverse challenges that Learned societies are facing to transition their journals to OA as well as to identify sustainable, implementable and scalable solutions for successful Open Access transition.

For program details and registration, please follow the link below:
https://sciforum.net/conference/SustainableSolutionsToOpenAccess

We are pleased to inform the International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS) received an updated Journal Impact Factor of 4.183 in the recent release of the Journal Citation Reports®. The journal's 5-Year Impact Factor is 4.331. IJMS now ranks 78/298 (Q2) in the category 'Biochemistry & Molecular Biology' and 46/172 (Q2) in 'Chemistry, Multidisciplinary'.

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for IJMS:

Source: data according to Journal Citation Reports®, 2018 release, a Clarivate Analytics product.

MDPI will be attending Neuroscience 2019, to be held at McCormick Place in Chicago, IL, USA, 19–23 October 2019.

Join 30,000 colleagues from more than 70 countries at the world’s largest marketplace of ideas and tools for global neuroscience.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Brain Sciences
• Journal of Clinical Medicine
• Genes
• Cancers
• Diagnostics
• Pathogens
• Medicines
• International Journal of Molecular Sciences
• Healthcare
• Journal of Personalized Medicine
• Psych
• Cells
• Children
• Biomedicines

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #405). 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://www.sfn.org/Meetings/Neuroscience-2019.

MDPI will be attending the ESHG 2019, to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, 15th-18th June 2019.

ESHG 2019 - The 53rd European Human Genetics Conference is everything you need in human genetics, whatever your professional background. The Scientific Program Committee (SPC) has worked hard to invite the best speakers from various sectors of human genetics, and to select the best abstracts for platform presentations.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Genes
• Journal of Clinical Medicine
• Cancers
• International Journal of Molecular Sciences
• Cells
• Diagnostics
• Healthcare
• Journal of Personalized Medicine
• Genealogy
• Biomedicines

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #492). 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://2019.eshg.org/

We will be attending the 46th Controlled Release Society Annual Meeting & Exposition. It is one of the biggest events in pharmaceutical field. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Pharmaceutics
JCM
Biomolecules
Materials
IJMS
Molecules
Nanomaterials
Pharmaceuticals
Scientia Pharmaceutica
Vaccines
JPM
Genes
JFB
IJERPH
Biomedicines
Healthcare

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #303). 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://2019.controlledreleasesociety.org/

We are pleased to welcome more universities from Poland, Italy, Germany, Brazil and other parts of the world to MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). A warm welcome to the institutions listed below, who have joined the Program in February and March this year.

James Madison University (JMU), Harrisonburg	USA
Loughborough University	UK
Lublin University of Technology	Poland
Marquette University, Milwaukee	USA
Massey University, Palmerston North	New Zealand
Medical College of Wisconsin	USA
Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń	Poland
Poznań University of Life Sciences	Poland
Robert Koch-Institut, Berlin	Germany
Rothamsted Research, Harpenden	UK
Santa Clara University (SCU)	USA
Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau	Germany
University of Aveiro	Portugal
University of Brasília	Brazil
University of Duisburg-Essen	Germany
University of Greifswald	Germany
University of Molise	Italy
University of Naples Parthenope	Italy
University of São Paulo (USP) - São Carlos Institute of Physics	Brazil
University of Szczecin	Poland
University of Warmia and Mazury, Olsztyn	Poland
University West, Trollhättan	Sweden
UTP University of Science and Technology, Bydgoszcz	Poland
VTT - Technical Research Centre of Finland	Finland

Authors affiliated with these institutions can now enjoy a discount on the APC for papers accepted for publication in any MDPI journal. If you would like to learn more about our program, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap or email us at [email protected].

We are delighted to announce our participation in Jisc’s Publication Router project, as of March 2019.

Publications Router is a Jisc service that automatically sends notifications about research articles to institutions' systems such as their repositories or CRISs, since May 2015. Through this agreement, MDPI will provide Jisc with daily feeds and information regarding published articles, which will be gathered by their system and delivered to institutions also registered to this service. Nearly all of our articles are published within 15 days of acceptance, so institutions will receive them quite promptly.

The feed will include the full text of the published version of record, with no embargo, so the articles can be exposed immediately for public view. They are accompanied by rich metadata, including confirmation of the immediate CC BY licence, minimising the need for any manual intervention or checking.

For more information about Publications Router, you may contact Jisc’s central helpdesk at [email protected]. For any queries about MDPI’s institutional agreements and collaborations, you may get in touch with MDPI’s Institutional Engagement team at [email protected], which would be very happy to hear from further UK institutions.

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high quality academic publishing. Over 97,000 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2018. We are extremely appreciative of all those who made a contribution to the editorial process in this capacity. At the beginning of every year, journal editorial offices publish a list all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year the “MDPI Top Reviewer Awards” are announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise, dedication, high quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2018 MDPI Top Reviewer Awards:

• Ali Behnood
• Andrea Pezzuolo
• Angela Gorgoglione
• Anna D'Auria
• Antonio D'Andrea
• Azhar Abbas
• Bogdan Zagajewski
• Chunhui Chen
• Dominika Głąbska
• Dominika Guzek
• Dragan Pamucar
• Francisco J. G. Silva
• Frank Li
• Gianluca Serafini
• Gyorgy Szekely
• Haozhi Pan
• Helvi Heinonen-Tanski
• José Manuel Gómez-Soberón
• Kathy Lewis
• Klara Kosova
• Luis N. López De Lacalle
• M. Z. Naser
• Malwina Tytła
• Masoume Amirkhani
• Matteo Ghidelli
• Moretti Laura
• Petra Schneider
• Roberto Cerchione
• Spyros Papaefthymiou
• Ştefan Cristian Gherghina

Since 2010, MDPI has run its own online submission system. More recently, we have made the software, with accompanying publishing services, available to other publishers as JAMS (Journal and Article Management System). We are now delighted to announce the launch of JAMS Journals, a standardized platform for operating open access journals at low cost.

JAMS Journals provides a comprehensive service, including a shared submission website, journal websites hosted at a URL provided by the publisher, and a full production service. There is a small setup fee and the cost for each published paper is just a few hundred Swiss francs.

The platform demonstrates that running an open access journal can be straightforward and affordable. The JAMS Journals platform is suitable for

• small publishers or groups of scholars looking to launch their own journal;
• existing publishers or societies seeking to explore open access options;
• publishers looking to convert an existing subscription journal to open access.

JAMS journals launches with two journals from Canadian-based publisher Etcetera Publications:

• Canadian Journal of Pesticides & Pest Management (http://www.cjppm.ca)
• Nanotechnology in Agriculture, Food & Environment (http://www.nanoafe.ca)

Dr AJ Al-Rajab (President of Etcetera Publications) comments:

“In the past few months, we were working on our project to launch new open access scientific journals in the field of agricultural and environmental sciences. We decided to go with JAMS for this venture because of the high quality of their services, reasonable prices, professionalism and easy communication. Our portfolio is expected to grow rapidly during 2019 to include more titles covering different areas in agriculture and environment. MDPI earned already our complete satisfaction and we are looking for a long term cooperation.”

Alongside the new platform, we continue to provide flexible, tailored journal management solutions for existing publishers. For any questions or to request a quotation, contact Dr. Constanze Schelhorn ([email protected]).

2018 was a great year for preprints, with increasing numbers of authors looking to make their papers available online before peer review. Along with other preprint servers, our platform Preprints.org  saw an increase in the uptake from authors, and more than double the number of announced papers compared to 2017. In fact, we recently passed two important milestones: 8000 preprints online and 30,000 authors. 

We believe that the whole research community has the opportunity to benefit from work being available online as early as possible. We thank and congratulate our authors for supporting us to make this goal a reality.

In 2019, we will be looking carefully at how to provide better value for authors, maintain efficiency while growing in size, and make sure we remain well-connected with the research community. 

If you want to participate, you can consider screening preprints or joining our advisory board. And, of course, posting your own work.

We are delighted to announce the establishment of our national Open Access agreement with the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Through this national agreement, the Austrian institutions listed below as well as FWF will cover the Article Processing Charges (APC) of manuscripts published by eligible corresponding or funded authors in MDPI journals as long as central funds are available.

All participating institutions have gained access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information as well as Funder and Grant ID details for easy identification and additional transparency. At the same time eligible authors are benefited from an APC discount which comes at no cost for the institutions.

Eligible corresponding 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. The program will be selected automatically if authors submit their papers using their institutional email address. To claim their discount, FWF funded authors should choose the particular funder and add their Grant ID upon online submission of their manuscript. The institutions will then crosscheck the information and confirm the APC funding.

Eligible authors that have their APC covered by their institution or funder are advised to include the following sentence in their acknowledgments: "Open Access Funding by the [name of the institution/funder]".

The full text of the agreement is openly available online at: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2536007

For any questions about the agreement, please contact the KEMÖ Consortium at [email protected], FWF at [email protected], or the MDPI IOAP team at [email protected]

The Austrian institutions participating in this agreement are:

• Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
• University for Continuing Education Krems
• University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna
• University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria
• University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien
• Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences
• International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
• Institute of Science and Technology Austria
• MCI Management Center Innsbruck
• University of Graz
• University of Linz
• University of Salzburg
• Graz University of Technology
• TU Wien
• University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna
• University of Vienna

This is our first collective agreement with a national library consortium, while the individual institutions around the world participating in our IOAP are now more than 500 - see details here: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap. We would be mostly interested in discussing about possible collaborations with other consortia, funders, and institutions in our mutual efforts to accelerate Open Access.

We are pleased to announce the new platform Encyclopedia, which 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.

We encourage authors of review articles to quote and adapt the content of their published papers to create Encyclopedia entries. You can create completely new entries on topics in which you have knowledge and expertise. There is no limit on the topics or research fields. All of science and the humanities are included. Each entry will be published directly after submission.

We also have prepared a DOI application function in Encyclopedia. Once a DOI application is approved, the entry website will announce the DOI number and a pdf version with DOI information will be automatically created.

We look forward to your contributions and hope you will make use of this service. Find more about the service at: https://encyclopedia.pub/

Our editors and colleagues are attending the 22nd International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS 2018). The conference is being held at the Kaohsiung Exhibition Center in Kaohsiung, Taiwan from 11 to 15 November 2018, organized by the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society (CBMS).

µTAS 2018 continues a series of Conferences that are the premier forum for reporting research results in microfluidics, microfabrication, nanotechnology, integration, materials and surfaces, analysis and synthesis, and detection technologies for life science and chemistry. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:

Micromachines

Applied Sciences

International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)

Sensors

Biosensors

Technologies

Diagnostics

Journal of Multidisciplinary Science (J)

If you're attending the conference too, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #350). 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://cbmsociety.org/conferences/microtas2018/

 

We are delighted to announce that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is now a participant of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). Authors funded by the BMGF can enjoy discounts on the APC, while the funder covers the costs of eligible articles centrally. BMGF also has access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information as well as Grant ID details for easy identification and additional transparency.

We hope that funded authors find the programme beneficial and we are happy to offer our IOAP to other funders that need a streamlined workflow of compliance checking and APC coverage. 

To claim their discount, BMGF funded authors should choose the particular funder and add their Grant ID upon online submission of their manuscript.

For any questions about the BMGF agreement, please contact the funder at [email protected] or the MDPI IOAP team at [email protected].

This week, James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo were awarded the 2018 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine "for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation." As early as the 1990s, both immunologists discovered proteins that act as brakes on the T cells, ensuring the regulation that keeps autoreactive T cells in check.

Subsequent research found that blocking these so-called immune checkpoints through the use of checkpoint inhibitors shows promising results for cancer treatment, by ramping up the body's immune system and causing a stronger attack against tumor cells. In immunotherapy, doctors now have a viable alternative to chemotherapy and radiotherapy in treating some types of cancer, especially at advanced stages of infestation and including metastasis, even though instances of autoimmune reaction in immunotherapy are not yet fully understood.

Recent research has been looking into the potential of inhibitors blocking PD-1, the T cell protein discovered by Tasuku Honjo in 1992. A group at University of Calgary "investigated the ability for immune checkpoint blockade to enhance the efficacy of oncolytic reovirus (RV) for the treatment of breast cancer" (article published by Ahmed A. Mostafa et al. in Cancers). Simona De Rosa et al. investigated PD-L1/PD-1 expression in gastric cancer cells (article here). One group in Nice, France, studied the characteristics of lung adenocarcinomas in elderly patients in another article published in Cancers.

Diagram depicting the anticancer mechanism of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors
(Source: Figure 1 in S.M. Abdin et al., Cancers 2018,
doi:10.3390/cancers10020032).

In an article published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS), Xin Sun et al. give "some structural guidance" for the design of an antibody effective in blocking the PD-L1 immune suppressor. Shifaa M. Abdin et al. provide an overview of checkpoint inhibitors in their review paper entitled "Tackling Cancer Resistance by Immunotherapy: Updated Clinical Impact and Safety of PD-1/PD-L1 Inhibitors" (Figure 1 to the right).

In order to improve response rates in patients, targeting additional checkpoints such as LAG-3, BTLA or TIM-3 may prove effective, as discussed in an IJMS review paper by Robert J. Torphy et al. Other studies are looking into resistance mechanisms in tumor cells. Once these mechanisms are better understood, adjuvant treatments can help "improve the efficacy of immunotherapy and [...] expand its scope" (review paper by J. Rieth and S. Subramanian: "Mechanisms of Intrinsic Tumor Resistance to Immunotherapy").

One more recent review paper entitled "Tune Up In Situ Autovaccination against Solid Tumors with Oncolytic Viruses" (Teresa Nguyen et al.) lays out different strands of use of oncolytic viruses in cancer treatment, one of them being their combined use with checkpoint inhibitors.

A number of papers published in last year's Special Issue on "Targeting Immune Checkpoints and Immunotherapy" (guest-edited by Dr. William Chi-shing Cho) dealt with aspects of immunotherapy as well:

➤ "Targeting Immune Cell Checkpoints during Sepsis" (Naeem K. Patil et al.)
➤ "Synergies of Targeting Tumor Angiogenesis and Immune Checkpoints in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer and Renal Cell Cancer: From Basic Concepts to Clinical Reality" (Andreas Pircher et al.)
➤ "PD-1/PD-L1 Blockade Therapy for Tumors with Downregulated MHC Class I Expression"
(Michal Šmahel)
➤ "Promising Targets for Cancer Immunotherapy: TLRs, RLRs, and STING-Mediated Innate Immune Pathways" (Kai Li et al.)

If you are interested to publish your research on related topics, we welcome your submission to the Special Issue on "Signaling Pathways and Immune Checkpoint Regulation in Cancer" (guest-edited by Prof. Dr. Georgios Rassidakis) in our oncology journal Cancers.

  

Recently, it was announced that a group of European funders supported 10 principles that will help to expand open access, known as Plan S. MDPI warmly welcomes this move as a step towards achieving more open and accessible communication of research across all disciplines. Some aspects remain to be clarified, however the details given so far match the aims and values that MDPI has held over the past two decades.

We believe that open access publishers should be active participants in discussions around Plan S, particularly regarding potential new business models and practical aspects of implementation. MDPI supports APCs as a transparent unit of payment for article publishing, however we are committed to exploring other measures and recently signed the Jussieu Call. Sustainability is a key value for MDPI, and future funding models should have at their heart the sustainability of knowledge and research dissemination. Plan S provides an opportunity for funders and publishers to directly discuss funding of open access journals in ways that are beneficial to all parties involved.

In July 2018, the Epigenetics Society chose Epigenomes and IJMS as its preferred journals and became an affiliated society member of these journals. As part of this collaboration, all members of Epigenetics Society will enjoy a discount on the article processing charges (APC) when submitting articles to IJMS. Epigenomes currently offers free publication to all accepted submissions. However, should an APC be applied to this journal in the future, all Epigenetics Society members will enjoy also discount when submitting articles to Epigenomes.

The Epigenetics Society is an international scientific society open to all those interested in the epigenetics of any organism and all aspects of epigenetics, including:

• DNA methylation;
• DNA hydroxymethylation;
• Chromatin modification;
• Chromatin higher-order structure and remodeling and remodeling
• Non-coding RNA related to chromatin structure or DNA modification.

Membership in the society is free and includes a monthly e-newsletter with “Abstracts in the Press,” conference news, job postings, and other announcements.

We are happy to announce the establishment of an Open Access (OA) agreement with Qatar National Library (QNL). QNL is committed to supporting and helping Qatar authors publish OA at no cost. Through this national agreement, QNL will cover the Article Processing Charges (APC) of manuscripts published by Qatar-based corresponding authors in MDPI journals.

Eligible corresponding authors affiliated with Qatar research centers and universities are prompted to choose QNL as part of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system. The program will be selected automatically if authors submit their papers using their institutional email and/or a computer registered with the institution’s IP range. QNL will then crosscheck the information and confirm the APC funding.

Qatar authors that have their APC covered by QNL are advised to include the following sentence in their acknowledgments: "The publication of this article was funded by Qatar National Library".

For more information, please visit Open Access at QNL or email the QNL Open Access team at [email protected].

We are pleased to inform that the International Journal of Molecular Sciences received an updated Journal Impact Factor of 3.687 in the June 2018 release of the Journal Citation Reports®. The journal's 5-Year Impact Factor is 3.878. IJMS now ranks 90/292 (Q2) in the category 'Biochemistry & Molecular Biology' and 52/171 (Q2) in 'Chemistry, Multidisciplinary.'

Overview of Citation Metrics:

• Journal Impact Factor, 2 yrs (2017): 3.687
• 5-Year Impact Factor (2017): 3.878
• CiteScore, 3 yrs (Scopus): 3.86
• SJR Scimago Journal Rank 2017 (SJR): 1.260
• Source Normalized Impact 2017 (SNIP): 1.124

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for IJMS:

Source: data according to Journal Citation Reports®, 2018 release, a Clarivate Analytics product; and Scopus journal metrics.

In May 2018, the Australian Society of Plant Scientists (ASPS) chose IJMS and Plants as its preferred journals and became an affiliated society member of the journals.

As part of this collaboration, all affiliated ASPS members enjoy a discount on the article processing charges (APC) for any article published in IJMS and Plants. The Australian Society of Plant Scientists (ASPS) is an incorporated society that promotes Plant Science in Australia, and provides professional support within the community of teachers and researchers in plant sciences. J.G. Wood was the original Foundation President of the Society and in collaboration with R.N. Robertson, brought the concept of the Society to fruition.

We are pleased to report IJMS received a CiteScore of 3.86 for 2017. The metric reflects citation activity in 2017 in Scopus for papers published in the period 2014‒2016.

For the full details in the current CiteScore release, please see the journal's Source profile. To check the full list of MDPI journals receiving CiteScores, please see here.

The 2017 CiteScore™ data is available now, based on citation data in the Scopus® database. The current CiteScore reflects citation activity in 2017 for articles published in 2014‒2016. Please note that the list below includes journals assigned a CiteScore in this year’s release. For a full list of journals indexed in Scopus, please see our journal list.

Thirteen of our journals received a CiteScore which is in the top 10% of the distribution in at least one of the categories (marked with * in the table below), while a further 32 journals exhibit scores that are in the first quartile of the respective categories.

To access the full data for MDPI journals, please see here. More data can also be found in SJR Scimago Journal & Country Rank.

Unlike CiteScores and the widely used Journal Impact Factors, the Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) metrics are normalized in order to correct for differences in citation practices between scientific fields. Therefore, the SNIP allows direct comparison between journals specialized in different fields.

According to 2017 data, MDPI publishes six journals with an average citation impact, or SNIP, in excess of 1.500. These journals are Biomolecules, Cancers, Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM), Marine Drugs, Remote Sensing and Sensors (see the last column in the table below).

CiteScore Data for MDPI Journals

Journal	Rank (Quartile)	Category	Link	CiteScore 2017	2016	2015	SNIP 2017
Aerospace	43/116 (Q2)	• Aerospace Engineering	Link	1.23	-	-	1.152
Agriculture	69/309 (Q1) 91/398 (Q1) 78/255 (Q2)	• Agronomy and Crop Science • Plant Science • Food Science	Link	1.93	-	-	1.133
Agronomy	46/309 (Q1)	• Agronomy and Crop Science	Link	2.38	-	-	1.115
Algorithms	22/46 (Q2) 61/125 (Q2) 60/107 (Q3) 64/114 (Q3)	• Numerical Analysis • Computational Mathematics • Computational Theory and Mathematics • Theoretical Computer Science	Link	1.03	1.15	1.07	0.749
Animals	12/154 (Q1) * 48/367 (Q1)	• General Veterinary • Animal Science and Zoology	Link	2.02	1.46	1.66	1.099
Antibiotics	6/68 (Q1) * 62/263 (Q1) 55/230 (Q1) 31/108 (Q2) 47/134 (Q2) 139/398 (Q2)	• General Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics • Infectious Diseases • Pharmacology (medical) • Microbiology (medical) • Microbiology • Biochemistry	Link	2.85	1.65	-	0.975
Antibodies	43/143 (Q2) 61/164 (Q2) 85/189 (Q2)	• Drug Discovery • Immunology and Allergy • Immunology	Link	2.85	-	-	0.844
Antioxidants	23/119 (Q1) 35/169 (Q2) 100/398 (Q2) 119/367 (Q2) 102/264 (Q2)	• Clinical Biochemistry • Physiology • Biochemistry • Molecular Biology • Cell Biology	Link	3.42	-	-	1.361
Applied Sciences	48/270 (Q1) 15/66 (Q1) 31/116 (Q2) 18/53 (Q2) 151/434 (Q2) 186/535 (Q2)	• General Engineering • Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes • Instrumentation • Process Chemistry and Technology • General Materials Science • Computer Science Applications	Link	1.90	-	-	0.801
Biology	12/177 (Q1)* 32/186 (Q1) 10/40 (Q1)	• General Agricultural and Biological Sciences • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology • General Immunology and Microbiology	Link	3.48	3.02	2.78	0.961
Biomolecules	31/398 (Q1) * 41/367 (Q1)	• Biochemistry • Molecular Biology	Link	5.72	1.67	3.08	1.542
Biosensors	20/119 (Q1)	• Clinical Biochemistry	Link	3.59	2.83	2.37	1.122
Brain Sciences	47/111 (Q2)	• General Neuroscience	Link	2.56	-	-	0.695
Cancers	26/323 (Q1) * 23/191 (Q1)	• Oncology • Cancer Research	Link	5.82	5.02	4.07	1.567
Catalysts	32/151 (Q1) 21/46 (Q2)	• Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Catalysis	Link	3.23	3.44	3.45	0.954
Crystals	76/272 (Q2) 140/434 (Q2) 127/398 (Q2) 26/64 (Q2)	• General Chemical Engineering • General Materials Science • Condensed Matter Physics • Inorganic Chemistry	Link	1.97	1.89	1.47	0.745
Diagnostics	49/119 (Q2)	• Clinical Biochemistry	Link	2.43	-	-	0.788
Diversity	30/124 (Q1) 14/52 (Q2) 83/306 (Q2) 11/29 (Q2)	• Nature and Landscape Conservation • Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous) • Ecology • Ecological Modelling	Link	2.15	2.03	1.96	1.300
Electronics	109/644 (Q1) 26/148 (Q1) 42/224 (Q1) 50/259 (Q1) 23/96 (Q1)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Hardware and Architecture • Control and Systems Engineering • Computer Networks and Communications • Signal Processing	Link	2.97	-	-	1.227
Energies	6/73 (Q1) * 31/192 (Q1) 103/644 (Q1) 4/16 (Q1) 47/140 (Q2)	• Control and Optimization • Energy Engineering and Power Technology • Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Energy (miscellaneous) • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment	Link	3.11	2.50	2.87	1.340
Entropy	35/202 (Q1)	• General Physics and Astronomy	Link	2.41	1.87	1.99	1.189
Forests	17/129 (Q1)	• Forestry	Link	2.31	2.06	1.76	0.990
Future Internet	132/259 (Q3)	• Computer Networks and Communications	Link	1.25	-	-	-
Games	132/187 (Q3) 78/110 (Q3) 305/418 (Q3)	• Statistics and Probability • Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty • Applied Mathematics	Link	0.61	0.87	0.57	1.038
Genes	21/91 (Q1) 74/311 (Q1)	• Genetics (clinical) • Genetics	Link	3.49	3.62	3.18	0.374
Geosciences	32/182 (Q1)	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	1.97	1.67	1.29	0.856
Information	143/251 (Q3)	• Information Systems	Link	1.16	0.78	0.94	1.146
Insects	27/135 (Q1)	• Insect Science	Link	1.85	1.81	1.38	0.719
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	80/478 (Q1) 34/106 (Q2)	• Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health • Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis	Link	2.41	2.38	2.42	0.931
International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	7/69 (Q1) * 61/535 (Q1) 20/163 (Q1) 9/64 (Q1) 26/151 (Q1) 89/367 (Q2) 17/46 (Q2)	• Spectroscopy • Computer Science Applications • Organic Chemistry • Inorganic Chemistry • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Molecular Biology • Catalysis	Link	3.86	3.73	3.37	0.998
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJGI)	79/605 (Q1) 22/82 (Q2) 13/36 (Q2)	• Geography, Planning and Development • Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) • Computers in Earth Sciences	Link	2.10	1.62	1.52	1.062
Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM)	10/841 (Q1) *	• General Medicine	Link	7.07	-	-	1.535
Journal of Functional Biomaterials (JFB)	43/199 (Q1) 23/77 (Q2)	• Biomedical Engineering • Biomaterials	Link	3.47	-	-	1.344
Journal of Low Po- wer Electronics and Applications (JLPEA)	301/644 (Q2)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering	Link	1.12	0.98	0.83	0.367
Journal of Personalized Medicine (JPM)	54/189 (Q2)	• Medicine (miscellaneous)	Link	2.61	-	-	0.944
Land	50/124 (Q2) 129/306 (Q2) 36/65 (Q3)	• Nature and Landscape Conservation • Ecology • Global and Planetary Change	Link	1.44	-	-	0.658
Life	4/94 (Q1) * 70/561 (Q1) 40/186 (Q1) 20/80 (Q2)	• Palaeontology • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology • Space and Planetary Science	Link	3.16	2.95	1.68	0.935
Marine Drugs	17/146 (Q1)	• Drug Discovery	Link	4.58	3.83	3.66	1.537
Materials	83/434 (Q1)	• General Materials Science	Link	3.02	3.26	3.11	1.285
Membranes	5/18 (Q2) 15/53 (Q2) 4/10 (Q2)	• Chemical Engineering (miscellaneous) • Process Chemistry and Technology • Filtration and Separation	Link	2.69	2.19	2.95	0.880
Metabolites	47/209 (Q1) 103/398 (Q2) 127/367 (Q2)	• Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism • Biochemistry • Molecular Biology	Link	3.35	-	-	0.925
Metals	155/434 (Q2)	• General Materials Science	Link	1.87	-	-	0.955
Micromachines	105/554 (Q1) 154/644 (Q1) 64/224 (Q2)	• Mechanical Engineering • Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Control and Systems Engineering	Link	2.31	1.83	1.78	0.987
Minerals	33/175 (Q1) 45/208 (Q1)	• Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology • Geology	Link	2.21	2.13	1.77	1.149
Molecules	4/25 (Q1) 25/172 (Q1) 18/104 (Q1) 31/163 (Q1) 30/151 (Q1) 31/146 (Q1) 55/160 (Q2)	• Chemistry (miscellaneous) • Pharmaceutical Science • Analytical Chemistry • Organic Chemistry • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Drug Discovery • Molecular Medicine	Link	3.27	3.09	2.65	1.146
Nutrients	11/255 (Q1) * 9/112 (Q1) *	• Food Science • Nutrition and Dietetics	Link	4.35	4.29	4.07	1.403
Pathogens	38/263 (Q1) 20/108 (Q1) 9/40 (Q1) 40/164 (Q1) 110/367 (Q2)	• Infectious Diseases • Microbiology (medical) • General Immunology and Microbiology • Immunology and Allergy • Molecular Biology	Link	3.52	-	-	1.166
Pharmaceuticals	14/172 (Q1) * 33/160 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science • Molecular Medicine	Link	4.12	4.90	3.64	1.370
Pharmaceutics	21/172 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science	Link	3.68	3.83	2.68	1.092
Photonics	30/116 (Q1) 80/270 (Q2) 53/160 (Q2)	• Instrumentation • Radiology Nuclear Medicine and Imaging • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics	Link	1.96	-	-	0.817
Plants	73/561 (Q1) 48/389 (Q1) 44/306 (Q1)	• Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics • Plant Science • Ecology	Link	3.13	-	-	0.969
Polymers	17/142 (Q1) 63/359 (Q1)	• Polymers and Plastics • General Chemistry	Link	3.30	3.74	3.37	1.213
Religions	26/389 (Q1) *	• Religious Studies	Link	0.56	-	-	0.676
Remote Sensing	13/182 (Q1) *	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	4.03	3.56	3.76	1.559
Resources	19/142 (Q1) 39/261 (Q1)	• Nature and Landscape Conservation • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law	Link	2.69	-	-	1.387
Scientia Pharmaceutica	92/172 (Q3)	• Pharmaceutical Science	Link	0.86	-	-	0.513
Sensors	9/116 (Q1) * 25/160 (Q1) 100/644 (Q1) 19/104 (Q1) 113/398 (Q2)	• Instrumentation • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics • Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Analytical Chemistry • Biochemistry	Link	3.23	2.78	2.21	1.550
Social Sciences	81/213 (Q2)	• General Social Sciences	Link	0.60	-	-	0.445
Sustainability	61/605 (Q1) * 55/261 (Q1) 60/140 (Q2)	• Geography, Planning and Development • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment	Link	2.37	1.96	1.78	1.030
Symmetry	44/327 (Q1) 17/45 (Q2) 16/40 (Q2) 14/25 (Q2)	• General Mathematics • Computer Science (miscellaneous) • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous) • Chemistry (miscellaneous)	Link	1.32	1.12	0.95	0.802
Toxins	18/106 (Q1) 21/111 (Q1)	• Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis • Toxicology	Link	3.32	3.34	3.76	1.136
Vaccines	5/230 (Q1) * 13/263 (Q1) * 18/302 (Q1) * 11/146 (Q1) * 32/189 (Q1)	• Pharmacology (medical) • Infectious Diseases • Pharmacology • Drug Discovery • Immunology	Link	4.88	1.23	3.76	1.255
Viruses	29/263 (Q1) 16/68 (Q1)	• Virology • Infectious Diseases	Link	3.88	3.60	3.74	1.130
Water	66/605 (Q1) 37/191 (Q1) 43/199 (Q1) 193/398 (Q2)	• Geography, Planning and Development • Water Science and Technology • Aquatic Science • Biochemistry	Link	2.29	2.05	1.96	1.007

We are pleased to announce the results of the first MDPI Writing Prize. We received a large number of entries from across the globe on the theme of “The Global Benefits of Open Research”. It was a pleasure to read so many original, well-researched and well-presented ideas, and the final choice was not an easy one. We are pleased to announce that the winners are as follows:

1st prize (500 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Edmond Sanganyado, Shantou University, China

2nd prizes (250 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Kamala T. Rajahgopal, Asia e University, Malaysia
Yin Zhixuan, Qingdao University of Technology, China

3rd prizes (100 CHF, Swiss knife and certificate)

Alexandra Ticea, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Romania
Ankur Sarker, University of Virginia, USA
Daniel Attoye, United Arab Emirates University, UAE

Congratulations to all of them! The winning entries can be downloaded by clicking on the names above. A compilation of all entries will soon be available as an open access book.

The writing prize is sponsored by the MDPI English editing service.

At MDPI, we always want to keep you up to date. Even for already published articles, some corrections or minor changes may occur. To prevent you from missing any updates, from now on you will be able to access the latest version of any manuscript by clicking on the “check for updates” logo that you can find in the PDF file, even if you have saved the file on your computer.

We are proud to announce that MDPI is now a member of UKSG, the UK´s largest scholarly communications community. Through UKSG, different stakeholders share their knowledge and experience in order to improve the knowledge and information environment for researchers. UKSG´s members include universities, publishers, content providers, intermediaries, and other similar organisations. Members participate in discussions and events on issues around scholarly communications.

The UKSG Annual Conference and Exhibition is a flagship initiative from the UKSG and one of the most stimulating events in the scholarly communications calendar. It is held annually and attracts a large number of delegates. More information is available at https://www.uksg.org/events/annualconference

MDPI is delighted to be a part of this active community and we look forward to making our own contribution. We will continue to support organisations and initiatives that boost collaboration and vision within scholarly communication.

More information about UKSG can be found at https://www.uksg.org/. The full membership list is available at: https://www.uksg.org/members.

The DORA initiative addresses the need for advanced approaches in the evaluation and measurement of the quality of scientific research outputs. It is a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines. MDPI proudly joins a list of more than 400 organizations around the world which support DORA’s recommendations for improving the way the quality of research results is evaluated.

More info can be found at http://www.ascb.org/dora/

MDPI will be attending the Experimental Biology 2018 annual meeting in San Diego, CA, USA from 21 to 25 April 2018, representing the following open access journals:

Antibiotics
Antioxidants
Behavioral Sciences
Bioengineering
Biology
Biomedicines
Brain Sciences
Cancers
Cells
Dentistry Journal
Diagnostics
Diseases
Epigenomes
Fermentation
Genes
High-Throughput
International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)
Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM)
Journal of Developmental Biology (JDB)
Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology (JFMK)
Metabolites
Methods and Protocols
Microorganisms
Non-Coding RNA
Nutrients
Pharmaceuticals
Pharmaceutics
Proteomes
Sports
Veterinary Sciences
Viruses

Experimental Biology is the annual meeting of five societies comprised of more than 14,000 scientists and 25 guest societies.

The areas of primary focus include anatomy; biochemistry and molecular biology; investigative pathology; nutrition; pharmacology; physiology. Attendees represent scientists from academic institutions, government agencies, non-profit organizations and industry.

Conference details:
San Diego Convention Center
San Diego CA
USA
21­–25 April 2018

Do you want to learn more about MDPI open access journals? Don’t miss this opportunity to discuss them with our editors and MDPI delegates. If you are at Experimental Biology 2018, just come visit our booth for a moment to have a chat. We have some gifts for you to take home and will answer any questions that you have about the open access journal (booth # 1034).

For more information, please visit:
http://experimentalbiology.org/2018/Home.aspx

The Steering Committees of the International Symposium on Sensor Science (I3S), the International Symposium on Frontiers in Molecular Science (ISFMS) and the Symmetry Conference are seeking Expression of Interest (EoI) from universities/organizations/individual scholars to host an edition of the conference series. There is no restriction in the geographic areas considered.

For full reading, please refer to:

International Symposium on Sensor Science (I3S): https://sciforum.net/conference/I3S_EoI
International Symposium on Molecular Science (ISFMS): https://sciforum.net/conference/MolSci_EoI
Symmetry Conference: https://sciforum.net/conference/Symmetry_EoI

Please feel free to contact us at [email protected]

We will be attending the AACR Annual Meeting 2018, to be held in Chicago, IL, USA, 14-18 April 2018. The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is the world's oldest and largest professional association related to cancer research. The AACR gives the opportunity to gain visibility for your organization among more than 21,000 scientists and other cancer professionals who are projected to attend from around the world. Representatives of the following MDPI open access journals will attend:

Antibodies (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/antibodies)
Biomedicines (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/biomedicines)
Cancers (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/cancers)
Cells (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/cells)
Children (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/children)
Diagnostics (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/diagnostics)
Epigenomes (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/epigenomes)
Genes (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/genes)
Healthcare (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/healthcare)
High-Throughput (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/high-throughput)
IJERPH (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph)
JCM (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jcm)
IJMS (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijms)
JPM (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jpm)
Medical Sciences (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/medsci)
Medicines (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/medicines)
Metabolites (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/metabolites)
ncRNA (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ncrna)
Pharmaceuticals (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/pharmaceuticals)
Pharmaceutics (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/pharmaceutics)
Scientia Pharmaceutica (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/scipharm)
Vaccines (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/vaccines)

Please come along to our stand, No.1339, to have a chat with our delegates about the journals, and information on online publishing as well as our editorial procedures. You may also learn more about the various awards offered by the journals, including the Best Paper Awards, the Young Investigator Awards, Travel Awards, etc. Some useful handouts are also available. We look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have.

Conference address:
AACR Annual Meeting 2018
McCormick Place North/South
Chicago, IL, USA

Conference date:
14-18 April 2018

For more information on the conference, please visit:
http://www.aacr.org/Meetings/Pages/MeetingDetail.aspx?EventItemID=136

 

The competition is still open until end of March! Please check out the banner for more details: https://res.mdpi.com/data/english-prize.pdf

We are delighted to announce that UCL Press has adopted MDPI's Journal Article & Management System, JAMS, including production services. JAMS is a modular, integrated editorial platform for academic publishers. It offers flexibility, ease-of-use, and is a fully integrated solution for the end-to-end management of scholarly journals. JAMS is based on the software used to publish MDPI’s portfolio of journals. 

Ian Caswell, UCL Press Journals Manager, says he is "excited to see UCL Press and MDPI partner together to implement the JAMS submission system for all UCL Press journals. The system offered a flexible, efficient and straightforward solution for our processes from author submission to ready for publication. I am grateful for the valuable experience and support MDPI have offered and look forward to developing our programme with an effective submission system in place.” Dr Martyn Rittman, MDPI’s Publishing Services Manager, adds, “We are proud to support one of the UK’s premier university presses in their publishing operation. This is an excellent way for us at MDPI to share our experience and knowledge, and benefit the research community beyond our own journals.”

JAMS combines services that are kept separate for many publishers. The entire editorial process, production and invoicing (e.g. for open access article processing charges) are fully integrated into a single platform. This allows for efficient, fast manuscript processing. For further information about JAMS, see https://www.mdpi.com/publishing_services. 

We are pleased to welcome new participants to MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), designed to help institutions manage the transition to the Open Access publishing model. Researchers affiliated with participating universites benefit from a 10% discount on the Article Processing Charges (APC) for any paper published in an MDPI journal, while the participating library or university incurs no basic fee for participating in the program.

The IOAP set of free services, provided by MDPI to institutions that sign up, include:

• No fee for participants and no obligation to prolong after the initial 12 months. The participants may withdraw from the programme at any time, and we will also keep it free for the library for as long as they continue in the programme.
• Authors affiliated with the university will receive a 10% discount on the APC.
• The institution is granted free access to the MDPI submission system and can receive free alerts of new submissions to our journals.
• By default, authors from the institution will continue to be invoiced directly unless the institution opts for central billing.
• Auto-archiving of papers into the institutions´ repository as long as it supports SWORD 1.3.

More details about the programme and a list of our current participant institutions can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap

Institutions which are interested to participate may do so online at: https://www.mdpi.com/ioap-form

The following North American universities have signed up to the IOAP program recently:

Connecticut College, USA
Emory University, USA
Florida International University, USA
Johns Hopkins University, USA
Mississippi State University, USA
Northeastern University, USA
Rice University, USA
University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada
University of Rhode Island, USA
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA
University of Toronto, Canada
University of Windsor, Canada
University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA
Wellesley College, USA
West Virginia University, USA

Many prestigious institutions from Europe and Asia have joined as well:

Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation, Malaysia
Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic
Gdansk University of Technology, Poland
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Newcastle University, UK
Northumbria University, UK
Southwest University, China
Technical University of Crete, Greece
University Malaya, Malaysia
University of Antwerp, Belgium
University of Cyprus, Cyprus
University of Manchester, UK
University of Reading, UK
University of Sussex, UK
University of Warwick, UK
West Pomeranian University of Technology Szczecin, Poland

We offer a warm welcome to the new participants!

In order to reward the academic community, especially young researchers, and enhance communication among scientists, MDPI journals regularly offer various awards to researchers in specific fields, for example, Young Investigator Awards, Travel Awards, Best Paper Awards, and Best Poster Awards, etc. The awardees range from PhD students to junior scientists.

Currently, the following 44 awards given by MDPI journals are accepting applications. Please click on the award title below to check whether you are eligible for it and start the application process.

Subject	Journal	Award	Intended Awardee
Biology & Life Sciences	Animals	Travel Award 2018	PhD students or postdoctoral researchers
	Antioxidants	Travel Awards 2018	Postdoctoral researchers or PhD students
	Biology	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Forests	2019 Travel award	Postdocs or PhD students
	International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	Outstanding Contribution Awards 2018	Ground-breaking contribution in the fields of Molecular Biology, and Molecular Pathology
	Journal of Fungi (JoF)	Travel Awards 2018	PhD graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows
	Life	Travel Award 2018	PhD students or postdoctoral fellows
	Metabolites	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
	Pharmaceuticals	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
	Toxins	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows
	Viruses	Best Oral Presentation Award 2018	Viruses 2018 participants
	Viruses	Best Poster Award 2018	Viruses 2018 participants
	Water	2018 Young Investigator Award	Young investigators
Chemistry & Materials Science	Biomimetics	Travel Award 2018	Graduate Student or Postdoctoral Trainee / Research Associate
	Catalysts	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
	Chemosensors	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Entropy	Young Investigator Award 2018	Young investigators
	Fibers	2018 Travel award	Postdocs or PhD students
	Magnetochemistry	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs
	Materials	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Metals	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Minerals	Travel Awards 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Sensors	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Sensors	Outstanding Reviewer Awards 2017	Sensors' reviewers in 2017
	Sensors	Young Investigator Award 2018	Young investigators
	Technologies	Travel Award 2018	PhD students
Computer Science & Mathematics	Multimodal Technologies and Interaction (MTI)	Travel Awards 2018	Postdoctoral researchers or PhD students
	ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information(IJGI)	2018 Travel Award	Postdocs
	Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks (JSAN)	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
	Journal of Imaging	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
Engineering	Actuators	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Remote Sensing	Best Paper Awards 2019	Authors
	Machines	Travel Award 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Micromachines	Travel Awards 2018	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Fluids	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
	ChemEngineering	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral researchers and PhD students
Environmental & Earth Sciences	Diversity	Travel Awards 2018	Postdoctoral fellows
	International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	Best Paper Award 2018	Authors who submit from 1 Nov 2017 to 31 Oct 2018
	Resources	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs or PhD students
	Geosciences	Travel Award 2018	Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students
Physical Sciences & Astronomy	Galaxies	Travel Award 2018	Ph.D. students, postdoctoral fellows, or lecturers in cosmology or galaxies physics
	Applied Science	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs
Medicine & Pharmacology; Public Health & Healthcare	Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM)	2018 Travel Award	PhD or postdoctoral fellows
	Medicines	Travel Award 2018	Postdocs

The Jussieu Call aims to develop and implement alternative models to meet the aims of open science while promoting bibliodiversity. In particular it wishes to promote new business models for funding open access publication. It was drafted on the Jussieu campus in Paris by a group of French researchers and scientific publishing professionals.

MDPI supports scholarly communities and initiatives that innovate and further promote Open Access publishing. There is a need to explore different frameworks to fund open access in ways that ensure that excessive funds are not diverted from research towards publishing. Many fair funding models already exist, and they can be further developed and extended. These include institutional support, library contributions or subsidies, premium services, participatory funding, etc. For this reason, MDPI has signed up to the Jussieu call and welcomes its aims.

More information can be found at http://jussieucall.org/ (archived here)

The Society for Scholarly Publishing’s popular blog about topics in academic publishing, Scholarly Kitchen, recently interviewed MDPI’s CEO, Dr. Franck Vazquez. He shared some thoughts and information on the past and future of MDPI and open access publishing in general:

“In the long run, we aim to anchor MDPI in research communities. We recently developed and launched the preprint platform Preprints, revamped our free-to-use conference hosting platform Sciforum, and are working on other projects, such as Scilit, our bibliographic database.”

Read the full interview here.

We are delighted to have welcomed 24 new participants to our Institutional Open Access Programme (IOAP) since the beginning of September this year. These are University libraries and Research Institutions located around the world; from the USA and Canada to the UK, and from Norway and Spain to Greece. Well respected Universities, such as the University of Denver, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the University of Arizona in the US, have signed up, while their researchers can now benefit from a 10% discount on the Article Processing Charges (APC) for any papers they publish in MDPI journals, at no cost for the library or the University.

We are more than happy to see the Open Access movement growing stronger and wider every day and we appreciate the vital role which librarians, repository managers, and other scholarly communications professionals play in the field. Our communication with and service to this community is, therefore, one of our principal priorities. The IOAP is our way to support academic and scientific Institutions as well as their scholars in managing, administrating, and publishing research in an Open Access world.

The IOAP set of free services, provided by MDPI to institutions that sign up, include:

• No fee for participants and no obligation to prolong after the initial 12 months. The participants may withdraw from the programme at any time, and we will also keep it free for the library for as long as they continue in the programme.
• Authors affiliated with the university will receive a discount on the article processing charge (APC).
• The institution is granted free access to the MDPI submission system and can receive free alerts of new submissions to our journals.
• By default, authors from the institution will continue to be invoiced directly unless the institution opts for central billing.
• Auto-archiving of papers into the institutions´ repository as long as it supports SWORD 1.3.

More details about the programme and a list of our current participant institutions can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap

Institutions which are interested to participate may do so online at: https://www.mdpi.com/ioap-form

 The full list of the Institutions that signed up in September is as follows:

1. University of Denver, USA
2. University of Colorado Boulder, USA
3. University of Arizona, USA
4. Institute of Metrology of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina
5. Middlebury College, USA
6. Touro College, USA
7. University of New Orleans, USA
8. University of Leicester, UK
9. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
10. University of Strathclyde, UK
11. Cranfield University, UK
12. Hope College, USA
13. Oregon State University, USA
14. Drew University, USA
15. Swansea University, UK
16. University of South Florida, USA
17. University of Georgia, USA
18. Arizona State University, USA
19. University of Southern Mississippi, USA
20. Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada
21. Grinnell College, USA
22. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
23. University of Patras, Greece
24. Public University of Navarre, Spain

MDPI will be attending the ConBio 2017: Consortium of Biological Sciences 2017 in Kobe, Japan, from 6 to 9 December 2017 representing the open access journals:

International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)
Biomedicines
Fermentation
Biology

Do you want to learn more about IJMS and other MDPI open access journals? Don’t miss this opportunity to discuss them with our editors such as Masatoshi Maki, Michihiro Mutoh, Hideyuki Yamawaki, Hideaki Itoh, Hitoshi Shimano, Toshiyuki Fukada as well as MDPI delegates. If you are at ConBio2018, just come visit our booth for a moment to have a chat. We have some gifts for you to take home and will answer any questions that you have about the open access journal. Our booth number is B07, located in Building No. 1.

Conference details:
Kobe Port Island
Japan
6–9 December 2017
http://www.aeplan.co.jp/conbio2017/english/index.html

Congratulations to the authors Javier Monroy and Javier Gonzalez-Jimenez from Universidad de Malaga, Spain, Victor Hernandez-Bennets, Han Fan and Achim Lilienthal from Örebro University, Sweden for publishing the 100,000th peer-reviewed article.

The article is published in the Chemical Sensors section of Sensors.

GADEN: A 3D Gas Dispersion Simulator for Mobile Robot Olfaction in Realistic Environments

Evermore pressing environmental concerns have led global actors and decision-makers to search for stricter emission monitoring approaches. As part of novel monitoring systems, robots with gas and environmental sensors are a promising solution. However, validation of such robotic inspectors is expensive, time consuming, and plagued by repeatability issues. In this article, we present GADEN (the short form for Gas Dispersion Simulator for Mobile Robot Olfaction in Realistic Environments), which combines gas dispersion and robotics simulation in a common framework. Developed under the widely used Robot Operating System (ROS), GADEN enables validation of sensing strategies with gas dispersion being simulated using computational fluid dynamics and filament dispersion theory. GADEN allows simulating complex, realistic, 3D environments for reproducible testing of robotic gas sensing algorithms. Through qualitative and quantitative evaluations, we show that GADEN is a versatile and user-friendly evaluation tool and emphasize its enormous potential for the mobile robot olfaction community.

 

Read the full article here: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/17/7/1479/htm

We are pleased to inform that the updated Impact Factor of IJMS has been released. According to the Journal Citation Reports® published by Clarivate Analytics in June 2017, the new Impact Factor is 3.226, and the 5-Year Impact Factor is 3.482.

IJMS now ranks 116/286 (Q2) in the category ‘Biochemistry & Molecular Biology’ and 54/166 (Q2) in the category ‘Chemistry, Multidisciplinary’ and thus remains one of the highest ranking Open Access journals in chemistry.

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for IJMS:

We will be attending the ETOX 18: The European Workshop on Bacterial Protein Toxins, which will be held at the Institute Pasteur, Paris, 26-30 June 2017, representing the following open access journals:

Toxins
Pathogens
IJMS
Vaccines
Biomedicines
Biology

Please come along to our booth to talk to our delegates concerning the above journals and the travel awards that you might be interested in. The Editorial Board Members of Toxins, Professors Holger Barth, Emmanuel Lemichez, Cesare Montecucco and Michel R. Popoff will also be there to answer your questions about the journal and publishing. We look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit http://www.etox18.org/.

The CiteScore, the new citation metric for journals covered in the Scopus® database, was released on 1 June 2017, reflecting the citation activity in 2016 for articles published during the three previous years. Please note that the list below does not contain all MDPI journals covered in Scopus. For the CiteScore to serve as a reliable metric at least three volumes of articles need to be indexed in Scopus; journals which have not met this criterion have been omitted here.

Ten MDPI journals received a CiteScore which is in the Top 10% of scores in at least one of the categories, while a further 21 journals exhibit scores that are in the first quartile of the respective categories.

CiteScore Data for MDPI Journals

Journal	Rank	Category	Link	CiteScore 2016	2015	2014
Algorithms	44/112 (Q2) 49/111 (Q2) 19/42 (Q2) 52/113 (Q2)	• Numerical Analysis • Computational Mathematics • Computational Theory and Mathematics • Theoretical Computer Science	Link	1.15	1.07	1.06
Animals	69/343 (Q1) 21/146 (Q1)	• Animal Science and Zoology • General Veterinary	Link	1.46	1.66	0.74
Biology	13/92 (Q1) 34/81 (Q1) 10/75 (Q1)	• General Agricultural and Biological Sciences • General Biochemistry, Gene- tics and Molecular Biology • General Immunology and Microbiology	Link	3.02	2.78	1.74
Biomolecules	234/382 (Q3) 260/353 (Q3)	• Biochemistry • Molecular Biology	Link	1.67	3.08	1.00
Biosensors	36/118 (Q2) 209/2156 (Q1)	• Clinical Biochemistry • General Medicine	Link	2.83	2.37	2.04
Cancers	29/196 (Q1) 27/321 (Q1)	• Cancer Research • Oncology	Link	5.02	4.07	2.31
Catalysts	18/44 (Q2) 27/144 (Q1)	• Catalysis • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry	Link	3.44	3.45	2.17
Crystals	70/270 (Q2) 25/64 (Q2) 118/398 (Q2) 131/424 (Q2)	• General Chemical Engineering • Inorganic Chemistry • Condensed Matter Physics • General Materials Science	Link	1.89	1.47	1.03
Diversity	10/41 (Q1) 9/25 (Q2) 76/291 (Q2) 24/109 (Q1)	• Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous) • Ecological Modelling • Ecology • Nature and Landscape Conservation	Link	2.03	1.96	1.82
Energies	-	-	Link	2.50	2.87	2.66
Entropy	51/198 (Q2)	• General Physics and Astronomy	Link	1.87	1.99	1.69
Forests	17/127 (Q1)	• Forestry	Link	2.06	1.76	1.84
Games	204/398 (Q3) 83/181 (Q2) 48/105 (Q2)	• Applied Mathematics • Statistics and Probability • Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty	Link	0.87	0.57	0.64
Genes	62/300 (Q1) 18/90 (Q1)	• Genetics • Genetics (clinical)	Link	3.62	3.18	1.33
Geosciences	36/169 (Q1)	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	1.67	1.29	1.13
Information	156/237 (Q3)	• Information Systems	Link	0.78	0.94	0.74
Insects	28/131 (Q1)	• Insect Science	Link	1.81	1.38	1.23
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)	67/446 (Q1) 31/102 (Q2)	• Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health • Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis	Link	2.38	2.42	2.47
International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)	23/157 (Q1) 8/64 (Q1) 90/353 (Q1) 22/144 (Q1) 16/44 (Q1) 8/62 (Q1)	• Organic Chemistry • Inorganic Chemistry • Molecular Biology • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry • Catalysis • Spectroscopy	Link	3.73	3.37	3.06
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information	12/29 (Q2) 28/79 (Q2) 96/587 (Q1)	• Computers in Earth Sciences • Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) • Geography, Planning and Development	Link	1.62	1.52	-
Journal of Low Power Electronic Applications (JLPEA)	301/645 (Q2)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering	Link	0.98	0.83	0.83
Life	65/525 (Q1) 36/186 (Q1) 5/92 (Q1) 20/80 (Q2)	• Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics • General Biochemistry, Gene- tics and Molecular Biology • Palaeontology • Space and Planetary Science	Link	2.95	1.68	1.20
Marine Drugs	18/145 (Q1)	• Drug Discovery	Link	3.83	3.66	3.59
Materials	63/424 (Q1)	• General Materials Science	Link	3.26	3.11	2.69
Membranes	103/424 (Q1)	• Materials Science	Link	2.19	2.95	2.42
Micromachines	173/645 (Q2) 69/211 (Q2) 113/526 (Q1)	• Electrical and Electronic Engineering • Control and Systems Engineering • Mechanical Engineering	Link	1.83	1.78	2.10
Minerals	45/206 (Q1) 29/167 (Q1)	• Geology • Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology	Link	2.13	1.77	-
Molecules	32/157 (Q1)	• Organic Chemistry	Link	3.09	2.65	2.62
Nutrients	12/247 (Q1)	• Food Science	Link	4.29	4.07	3.78
Pharmaceuticals	8/168 (Q1) 21/158 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science • Molecular Medicine	Link	4.90	3.64	1.92
Pharmaceutics	19/168 (Q1)	• Pharmaceutical Science	Link	3.83	2.68	2.46
Polymers	13/138 (Q1) 44/354 (Q1)	• Polymers and Plastics • General Chemistry	Link	3.74	3.37	4.10
Remote Sensing	13/169 (Q1)	• General Earth and Planetary Sciences	Link	3.56	3.76	3.23
Sensors	25/96 (Q2) 25/159 (Q1) 124/382 (Q2) 103/645 (Q1)	• Analytical Chemistry • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics • Biochemistry • Electrical and Electronic Engineering	Link	2.78	2.21	2.40
Sustainability	49/129 (Q2) 68/587 (Q1) 56/236 (Q1)	• Renewable Energy, Sustai-nability and the Environment • Geography, Planning and Development • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law	Link	1.96	1.78	1.52
Symmetry	17/42 (Q2) 49/111 (Q2)	• Numerical Analysis • Computational Mathematics	Link	1.12	0.95	1.02
Toxins	16/102 (Q1) 16/108 (Q1)	• Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis • Toxicology	Link	3.34	3.76	2.85
Vaccines	146/184 (Q4) 151/250 (Q3) 93/145 (Q3) 186/299 (Q3) 130/232 (Q3)	• Immunology • Infectious Diseases • Drug Discovery • Pharmacology • Pharmacology (medical)	Link	1.23	3.76	2.85
Viruses	15/68 (Q1) 34/250 (Q1)	• Virology • Infectious Diseases	Link	3.60	3.74	3.80
Water	33/184 (Q1) 48/195 (Q1) 62/587 (Q1) 198/382 (Q3)	• Water Science and Technology • Aquatic Science • Geography, Planning and Development • Biochemistry	Link	2.05	1.96	1.45

We are pleased to announce that the Goethe University of Frankfurt, the Technical University of Hamburg (TU Hamburg-Harburg), as well as the Humboldt University of Berlin, in Germany, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

          

 

As an open access publisher, we are keen to support openness and transparency in the research process. Citation data is very important for assessing the value of individual papers and the contribution of researchers. As such, we support the recently launched Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC). The initiative recognizes that citations should be freely available and machine-readable. By doing so, authors gain the maximum benefit from having their work cited.

MDPI now uploads citation data with metadata uploaded to Crossref when registering digital object identifiers (DOIs) for published papers. We are delighted to take this step to support a truly open research environment.

Getting high quality review reports is critical for any journal’s editorial process. At MDPI we have put in place several measures to motivate reviewers and reward them for their work. We are proud of the quality of reviewer reports we receive and grateful for the hours put in by active researchers from across the globe.

Reviewers of MDPI’s largest journals can get recognition via Publons, a website dedicated to rewarding peer reviewers. They have now taken this one step further and launched the Publons Reviewer Academy to help train reviewers to provide useful feedback. Through the academy, researchers can be trained and tutored in various aspects of how to provide structured feedback that will be of genuine help to editors and authors. We support this initiative and recommend it to potential MDPI reviewers, especially early career researchers. See the Publons announcement for further information.

More information on reviewing for MDPI, including how to volunteer as a reviewer, can be found here.

We are pleased to announce that the following universities have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, USA and the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia. Primary authors from these instititions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.

     

 

Preprints.org is a platform run by MDPI that allows authors to make early versions of manuscripts available before peer review has been completed.

One of the major benefits of putting a preprint online is to get feedback before journal submission. Until now, however, the feedback has been on a voluntary basis. Preprints is delighted to be the first preprint server to collaborate with Publons to acknowledge substantial comments as reviews and give commentators the opportunity to receive credit for their efforts. 

When you add a comment to any article, there is a check box to click for it to appear on Publons. If you have already linked your account it will be passed on automatically. If you don't already have a Publons account, you will be contacted soon afterwards with instructions on how to create one.

We appreciate the enthusiasm and cooperation of Publons in this project and expect it to be of great benefit to authors and commenters alike.

We are pleased to announce that our annual report for the year 2016 has now been published. 

It contains information regarding company and journal performance, conferences and other publishing services that we provided throughout 2016. 

To read the report in full or download a copy, please click here.

After the 20th anniversary of MDPI in 2016, we will reach another milestone this year and will publish the 100,000th peer-reviewed article in one of our 170+ open access journals.

We would like you to be part of this great achievement and so are offering to publish the 100,000th accepted paper free of charge.

To be in with a chance, select a journal in one of our 10 scientific subject areas and submit your paper.

Access the live tracker on published articles here.

 

 

We are delighted that Preprints now has 1000 papers online since its launch on 3 May 2016.

For more information, see the editorial here.

 

Higher citation typically reflects those consistently producing high quality papers and research on hot topics. This list provides the top 10 cited authors indicating the most popular topics and what is at the forefront of scientific endeavors in the field. These authors currently dominate the scientific development direction and are gaining recognition and exposure for their respective institutions.

We are honored to list the top ten cited authors here:

• Dr. Suresh Mathivanan (La Trobe University)
• Dr. Gregor P.C. Drummen (Bio&Nano-Solutions)
• Dr. Dolores Di Vizio (Cedars-Sinai Medical Center & Harvard Medical School)
• Dr. Hanne Mørck Nielsen (University of Copenhagen)
• Dr. Leonie A. Sarubbo (Federal Rural University of Pernambuco & UNICAP & IATI)
• Dr. Stefano Pluchino (University of Cambridge)
• Dr. Masahiko Kuroda (Tokyo Medical University)
• Dr. Andrew F. Hill (La Trobe University)
• Dr. Charles H. Lawrie (Biodonostia Research Institute & University of Oxford)
• Dr. Tuba Esatbeyoglu (University of Kiel)

Earlier this week the Science Technology Park in Belgrade, Serbia was visited by Swiss Secretary of State Dr. Mauro Dell’Ambrogio, as well as Serbian Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government Ana Brnabic, State Secretary Dr. Vladimir Popovic and Mayor of Belgrade Mr. Siniša Mali.

During the visit to the STP they had a short presentation from MDPI’s CEO Dr. Franck Vazquez and IT Manager Mr. Miloš Čučulović, and further discussed important issues such as Open Access and Open education. Dr. Dell'Ambrogio said he was impressed with the potential for development and ideas for business.

For more information please see:

http://bit.ly/2kpIu7k and http://bit.ly/2kpUQfz

   

We are pleased to announce that the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, the University of Manitoba, Canada and the Technical University of Cartagena, Spain, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.

Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.