Announcements

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 emedien@obvsg.at, FWF at Katharina.Rieck@fwf.ac.at, or the MDPI IOAP team at ioap@mdpi.com.

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 support@chronos-oa.com or the MDPI IOAP team at ioap@mdpi.com.

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 openaccess@qnl.qa.

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: