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.

In September 2018, two societies chose to establish a cooperation with MDPI journals.

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:

The Spanish Society of Medicinal Chemistry (SEQT) is a multidisciplinary, non-profit body created in 1977. It integrates all Professionals, Companies, and Organizations whose activity is related to Spanish Pharmaceutical R+D.

The goals of the SEQT are to promote the development of this field through the organization of scientific meetings that will stimulate professional contacts at both national and international levels and to contribute to the training of advanced graduate students in the field.

The SEQT is incorporated within the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC, www.efmc.info), which groups the majority of graduates and professionals working in Pharmaceutical R+D.

The SEQT has honorary members, foundation members, full members, and protective members (pharmaceutical companies) that belong to the academic milieu, to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC, national research centers), and to private companies.

International Coenzyme Q10 Association (ICQ10A) is a nonprofit association, which aims to promote basic and applied research on the biomedical aspects of coenzyme Q10 in order to diffuse knowledge on basic biochemistry and genetics, and on the preventive and/or therapeutic effects of coenzyme Q10. The Association is motivated by a general interest in the biochemical, genetics, medical, and pharmaceutical fields worldwide, relating to the peculiar collocation of coenzyme Q10 in cellular bioenergetics, the pathogenesis and therapy of coenzyme Q10 deficiency syndrome, the field of antioxidant defense, and other fields where coenzyme Q10 has demonstrated functions. It is therefore important for the Association to coordinate international efforts aimed at furthering knowledge on these subjects and optimizing the use of coenzyme Q10 in preventive and therapeutic fields.

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/

In September 2018, the Spanish Society of Medicinal Chemistry (SEQT) chose Molecules as its preferred journal and became an affiliated society member of the journal. As part of this collaboration, all members of SEQT enjoy a discount on the article processing charges (APC) when submitting articles to Molecules.

The Spanish Society of Medicinal Chemistry (SEQT) is a multidisciplinary, non-profit body created in 1977. It integrates all Professionals, Companies, and Organizations whose activity is related to Spanish Pharmaceutical R+D.

The goals of the SEQT are to promote the development of this field through the organization of scientific meetings that will stimulate professional contacts at both national and international levels and to contribute to the training of advanced graduate students in the field.

The SEQT is incorporated within the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC), which groups the majority of graduates and professionals working in Pharmaceutical R+D.

The SEQT has honorary members, foundation members, full members, and protective members (pharmaceutical companies) that belong to the academic milieu, to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC, national research centers), and to private companies.

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.

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.

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 Molecules received an updated Journal Impact Factor of 3.098 in the June 2018 release of the Journal Citation Reports®. The journal's 5-Year Impact Factor is 3.268. Molecules now ranks 68/171 (Q2) in the category 'Chemistry, Multidisciplinary' and 133/292 (Q2) in 'Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.'

Overview of Citation Metrics:

• Journal Impact Factor, 2 yrs (2017): 3.098
• 5-Year Impact Factor (2017): 3.268
• CiteScore, 3 yrs (Scopus): 3.27
• SJR Scimago Journal Rank 2017(SJR): 0.855
• Source Normalized Impact 2017 (SNIP): 1.146

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Molecules:

MDPI will be attending the 8th Tokyo Conference on Advanced Catalytic Science and Technology (TOCAT8), to be held in Yokohama, Japan, 5–10 August 2018.

Catalysis Society of Japan will organize this meeting as a continuation of TOCAT (1990), TOCAT2 (1994), TOCAT3 (1998), TOCAT4 (2002), TOCAT5 (2006), TOCAT6/APCAT5 (2010), and TOCAT7 (2014). The past seven TOCAT conferences have earned a good reputation as a new series of international conferences on catalysis that has significantly filled the gap between research and technology in catalysis. Stimulating closer ties between academia and industry and encouraging young researchers in the field of catalysis are the central concept of this conference. This conference should greatly contribute to exchanging new ideas and technologies and promoting developments of new outstanding catalysts and systems under the scope that catalysis is a highly and eagerly demanded technology in industries and for sustainable society and drives innovation in many other fields.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

Catalysts
Processes
Energies
Molecules
Materials

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #8). 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://www.shokubai.org/tocat8/index.html.