Announcements

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.

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.

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 ioap@mdpi.com.

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 help@jisc.ac.uk. For any queries about MDPI’s institutional agreements and collaborations, you may get in touch with MDPI’s Institutional Engagement team at ioap@mdpi.com, 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