
Journal Menu
► ▼ Journal Menu-
- Toxins Home
- Aims & Scope
- Editorial Board
- Reviewer Board
- Topical Advisory Panel
- Instructions for Authors
- Special Issues
- Topics
- Sections & Collections
- Article Processing Charge
- Indexing & Archiving
- Editor’s Choice Articles
- Most Cited & Viewed
- Journal Statistics
- Journal History
- Journal Awards
- Society Collaborations
- Conferences
- Editorial Office
Journal Browser
► ▼ Journal BrowserNeed Help?
Announcements
6 May 2023
Toxins Webinar | Fungal Metabolites: From Toxins to Therapeutics, Held on 12 May 2023

On 12 May 2023, MDPI and the journal Toxins (ISSN: 2072-6651) organized a webinar of the Toxins series, titled “Fungal Metabolites: From Toxins to Therapeutics”. The webinar focused on the study of mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites produced by various filamentous fungi infecting plants and crops. It is now known that mycotoxins, through their biological activities, play crucial roles in fungi biology and ecology. Mycotoxins also have consequences for animal and human health through the ingestion of contaminated food and feeds, with animals/humans in that case being collateral casualties and not primary targets.
Dr. Marc Maresca and Dr. Isabelle Oswald gave an opening introduction first. Then, Prof. Sarah De Saeger introduced the mycotoxin bioanalysis: from human biomonitoring towards exposomics. Dr. Carine Al Ayoubi developed the evaluation of the mutagenicity and metabolism of the emerging mycotoxin versicolorin A, a precursor of aflatoxin B1. Dr. Hamza Olleik talked about whether fungal cyclo-depsipeptides are toxic or therapeutic. Lastly, Dr. Ana Olívia De Souza presented fungi from Brazilian biodiversity as a source of bioactive secondary metabolites.
Please note that this webinar is associated with a Topic in the Toxins journal: “Editorial Board Members’ Collection Series: Fungal Metabolites: From Toxins to Therapeutics”.
You can watch the recorded webinar at the following link: https://youtu.be/6PkHxGxDOds.
Webinar Chair and Keynote Speakers:
- Dr. Marc Maresca, Institut des Sciences Moléculaires de Marseille (ISM2)–BiosCiences–UMR, CNRS Aix Marseille Université, France;
- Dr. Isabelle Oswald, Research Center in Food Toxicology (Toxalim), Toulouse, University of Toulouse, France;
- Prof. Sarah De Saeger, Department of Bioanalysis, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium;
- Dr. Ana Olívia De Souza, Development and Innovation Laboratory, Instituto Butantan, Sao Paulo, Brazil;
- Dr. Carine Al-Ayoubi, UMR 1331 TOXALIM, INRAE, Toulouse, France;
- Dr. Hamza Olleik, Institut des Sciences Moléculaires de Marseille, Marseille, France.
27 March 2023
Toxins Webinar | Cyanobacterial Toxins: Toxins Production and Risk Assessment, Held on 12 April 2023

On 12 April 2023, MDPI and the journal Toxins (ISSN: 2072-6651) organized a webinar of the Toxins series, entitled “Cyanobacterial Toxins: Toxins Production and Risk Assessment”. The webinar focused on cyanotoxins’ impacts, namely on irrigation waters, and on the recent cyanotoxin reports uncovered in Portugal. The webinar provided new perspectives, highlighted current impacts, and encouraged new challenges in global research on cyanotoxins.
Dr. Alexandre Campos first developed the cyanotoxins risk assessment on irrigation waters. Dr. Cristiana Moreira showed us the impacts of cyanotoxins on Portugal. After all of the presentations, Prof. Vitor Vasconcelos organized the discussion (Q&A) session. The chair and speakers answered questions raised by scholars one by one. The webinar then came to a successful conclusion.
Please note that this webinar is associated with a Special Issue in the Toxins journal: “Cyanobacterial Toxins: Toxins Production and Risk Assessment”. The deadline is 20 July 2023.
You can watch the recorded webinar at the following link: https://youtu.be/utBHM4rGswo.
Webinar Chair and Keynote Speakers:
- Prof. Vitor Vasconcelos, Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, Portugal;
- Dr. Alexandre Campos, Blue Biotechnology and Ecotoxicology Group, CIIMAR, Portugal;
- Dr. Cristiana Moreira, Blue Biotechnology and Ecotoxicology Group, CIIMAR, Portugal.
13 March 2023
MDPI’s Newly Launched Journals in December 2022
As a leading open access publisher, MDPI provides scholars with a high-quality and rich academic exchange platform by continuously expanding into new and exciting research areas.
In December 2022, MDPI launched five new journals, covering multiple subjects such as life sciences, biology, medicine and pharmacology, social sciences and humanities. These new journals are being edited by established scholars across the world.
Journal |
Founding Editor-in-Chief |
Journal Topics (Selected) |
Prof. Dr. Fabio Gresta, University of Messina, Italy| Editorial | view inaugural issue |
grass/forage/turf production; grassland management; pasture monitoring; grazing and livestock; grass agro-ecosystems| view journal scope | submit an article |
|
Prof. Dr. Christos G. Athanassiou, University of Thessaly, Greece| Editorial | view inaugural issue |
pesticides; fungicides; herbicides; fertilizers; soil conditioners| view journal scope | submit an article |
|
Prof. Dr. Stephen H. Safe, Texas A&M University, USA| Editorial | view inaugural issue |
receptor structure; receptor function; receptor signaling; receptor expression and regulation; receptor interactions with drugs| view journal scope | submit an article |
|
Dr. Jean Jacques Vanden Eynde, University of Mons-UMONS, Belgium| Editorial | view inaugural issue |
drug discovery; medicinal chemistry; preclinical and clinical research; marketed drugs; intellectual property and regulatory affairs| view journal scope | submit an article |
|
Prof. Dr. Heather Kanuka, University of Alberta, Canada| Editorial | view inaugural issue |
higher education; tertiary education; policy and practice in higher education; educational leadership in higher education; educational administration and management in higher education| view journal scope | submit an article |
If you are interested in creating more open access journals with us to publish cutting-edge research, please send your journal proposal application to [email protected].
7 March 2023
Displaying Co-Authors’ Email Addresses on the Webpage of Published Papers
MDPI is pleased to announce that we now display the co-authors’ email addresses in addition to the corresponding author’s email address on the webpage of published papers, protected by Captcha. For more information about this change, please visit the journal’s instructions for authors page.
We believe this change will facilitate academic discussions and advance our cause of open science and research. The corresponding authors are responsible for communicating with their co-authors and indicating in our system (https://susy.mdpi.com/) if co-authors would prefer for their email addresses not to be displayed.
22 February 2023
Toxins | Google Scholar Metrics Released
We are pleased to announce that Toxins (ISSN: 2072-6651) ranked fifth in the latest release of the Google Scholar Metrics under the subcategory “Toxicology”.
The h5-index of Toxins is 69, and the h5-median is 91. We express our gratitude to all the editors, reviewers, authors and readers of Toxins. Thank you for all your support for the journal.
Please feel free to contact us at [email protected] if you have any questions or suggestions for Toxins. For more information about our rank in Google Scholar Metrics, please visit the website: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&vq=med_toxicology.
16 February 2023
Increasing Visibility for Preprints.org – Clarivate adds the Preprint Citation Index to the Web of Science

On 9 February 2023, Clarivate, a global leader in providing trusted insights and analytics, added the Preprint Citation Index to the Web of Science platform, streamlining the research process by allowing researchers to locate and link to preprints alongside other trusted content in the database.
The Preprint Citation Index will act as a bridge to connect cutting-edge preprints with peer-reviewed journal articles published within the Web of Science Core Collection. Alerts can be easily set to monitor new research across several repositories and authors will also be able to include preprints on their Web of Science Research Profile to more accurately display their various research outputs.
As of its launch, the Preprint Citation Index will provide nearly two million preprints from various repositories, including MDPI’s own Preprints.org.
MDPI's Preprints Platform – Preprints.org
To advance Open Science and the fast dissemination of research, MDPI offers researchers a free multidisciplinary preprint platform. Preprints.org accepts submissions from all research areas and offers authors high visibility, permanent archiving, article-level Metrics and immediately citable content by assigning a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to all preprints.
During submission to any MDPI journal, authors have the option to share their research as a preprint. After an initial screening, the manuscript is available online in 48 hours or less. Once online, preprints can be downloaded, shared, commented on, and cited, providing authors maximum visibility.
We invite you to join the ranks of the over 100k researchers using Preprints.org and share your research.
For more information, please visit Preprints.org.
4 February 2023
Toxins | Issue Cover Articles in 2022
The articles below have been selected as cover articles for 2022 by the Editorial Office of Toxins (ISSN: 2072-6651). You can find the specific cover information at the following link:
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/14. We hope that they provide insights and references for scholars in related fields.
|
1. “Trial Assay for Safe First-Aid Protocol for the Stinging Sea Anemone Anemonia viridis (Cnidaria: Anthozoa) and a Severe Toxic Reaction” by Ainara Ballesteros, Janire Salazar, Macarena Marambio, José Tena, José Rafael García-March, Diana López, Clara Tellez, Carles Trullas, Eric Jourdan, Corinne Granger et al. Toxins 2022, 14(1), 27; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins14010027 Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/14/1/27 |
|
2. “Khat, a Cultural Chewing Drug: A Toxicokinetic and Toxicodynamic Summary” |
|
3. “Cytotoxicity and Effects on the Synapsis Induced by Pure Cylindrospermopsin in an E17 Embryonic Murine Primary Neuronal Culture in a Concentration- and Time-Dependent Manner” |
|
4. “Multiplex Detection of 24 Staphylococcal Enterotoxins in Culture Supernatant Using Liquid Chromatography Coupled to High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry” |
|
5. “Ochratoxin A and Sterigmatocystin in Long-Ripened Grana Cheese: Occurrence, Wheel Rind Contamination and Effectiveness of Cleaning Techniques on Grated Products” |
|
6. “Liza ramada Juveniles after Exposure to the Toxic Dinoflagellate Vulcanodinium rugosum: Effects on Fish Viability, Tissue Contamination and Microalgae Survival after Gut Passage” |
|
7. “Exploring the Utility of Recombinant Snake Venom Serine Protease Toxins as Immunogens for Generating Experimental Snakebite Antivenoms” |
|
8. “Pooled Analysis of Real-World Evidence Supports Anti-CGRP mAbs and OnabotulinumtoxinA Combined Trial in Chronic Migraine” |
|
9. “In Silico Evaluation of Sesquiterpenes and Benzoxazinoids Phytotoxins against Mpro, RNA Replicase and Spike Protein of SARS-CoV-2 by Molecular Dynamics. Inspired by Nature” |
|
10. “Evaluation of a Novel Synthetic Peptide Derived from Cytolytic Mycotoxin Candidalysin” |
|
11. “Early Detrusor Application of Botulinum Toxin A Results in Reduced Bladder Hypertrophy and Fibrosis after Spinal Cord Injury in a Rodent Model” |
|
12. “Bioactivity Profiling of In Silico Predicted Linear Toxins from the Ants Myrmica rubra and Myrmica ruginodis” |
1 February 2023
Toxins Webinar | Biological Activities and Potential Applications of Phytotoxins, 9 February 2023

Date: 9 February 2023
Time: 10:00 am CET | 4:00 am EST | 5:00 pm CST Asia
Webinar ID: 871 9573 7956
Webinar Secretariat: [email protected]
Keywords: fungal pathogens; secondary metabolites; phytotoxins; biological activities; biopesticides
Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/3316738791133/WN_O7wPRUh_SBmGoGjRcrjDkA
Chair:
|
Dr. Marco Masi |
Department of Chemical Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, Italy |
|
Invited Speakers:
|
Dr. Alessio Cimmino |
Department of Chemical Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, Italy |
|
|
Dr. Pierluigi Reveglia |
Sustainable Agriculture Institute: CSIC, Spain |
|
|
Dr. Jesus Zorrilla |
Allelopathy Group, Department of Organic Chemistry, Institute of Biomolecules (INBIO), University of Cadiz, Spain |
|
|
Dr. Roberta Di Lecce |
Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, Italy |
|
Interested in contributing to the topic?
The Special Issue below is open for submission. Please do not hesitate to send in your article.
Special Issue: “Biological Activities and Potential Applications of Phytotoxins”
Guest Editor: Dr. Marco Masi
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 April 2023
We are looking forward to your participation in our event!
22 December 2022
Special Issue Mentor Program
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative—the MDPI Special Issue Mentor Program.
This program will enable early career researchers (who must hold a Ph.D. in a related field) to experience editing a Special Issue in MDPI journals, under the mentorship of our experienced Editorial Board Members or other experienced scientists. The mentor program will provide an excellent opportunity for early career scientists to gain editorial experience, and to cultivate their ability to edit scientific research.
The mentee’s responsibilities include:
- Proposing a Special Issue title and assisting the mentor in preparing a summary (around 200–400 words) and 3–10 keywords describing the background, importance, and goal of the Issue;
- Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
- Preparing a list of scholars who may be interested in the Issue and personally e-mailing invitations on behalf of Guest Editors;
- Writing an editorial for the online Special Issue together with the mentor.
The mentor’s responsibilities include:
- Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
- Performing editorial control of the Special Issue and quality control of the publications, both of which must be carried out in a timely manner;
- Providing suggestions to younger scholars if they have any doubts or concerns regarding submissions;
- Organizing video calls with young scholars and the Editorial Office regularly to discuss problems and improvement suggestions for the Special Issue;
- Making and submitting decisions regarding submissions with the assistance of mentees.
Certificates and awards:
After the Special Issue closes, the Editorial Office will provide official certificates for all the mentors and early career researchers.
If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Editorial Office of a journal you choose, and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail. The full list of MDPI journals is as follows: https://www.mdpi.com/about/journals.
In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, we will continue to welcome all Special Issue proposals focusing on hot research topics.
14 December 2022
"Thanks a Million!" – One Million Articles Published in MDPI Journals
MDPI has just become the first open access (OA) publisher to reach the milestone of one million articles published. That is one million articles freely available to all, to circulate and build upon! We are proud to share this special moment with the global scientific community.
This landmark has been reached thanks to the immeasurable support of more than 600,000 expert reviewers, 66,000 editorial board members and 6700 hard-working colleagues across MDPI’s global offices.
Within more than 25 years of publishing, our journals received 2.1 million manuscripts and generated 4.6 million peer review reports to get to one million papers published.
Reaching the milestone of one million articles published reinforces our mission to remove any existing barriers and to make scientific research accessible to all. Since its inception, MDPI’s goal has been to create reliable processes to make science open. This is a path towards facilitating the dissemination of novel insights in scientific communities.
Regular feedback from authors and reviewers shows that our service is greatly appreciated and needed. At the same time, the feedback helps us identify areas for further improvement.
As it stands, a significant share of published research findings remain closed access. More than half of the content published with the most well-known legacy publishers stays behind a paywall, and that is not including articles published in hybrid OA journals, or made available months or years after publication.
A new policy announced by the US administration in August 2022 requires that, as of January 2026, all US federally funded research be made freely and immediately available after publication. While the new policy does not mandate articles be published under an open access license, it is aligned with the open access movement in removing all barriers to research. Similarly, some of the most advanced research institutions in the world intend to have all funded research articles published in open access by 2025.
MDPI is proud to be the leading agent of the transition to open access.
"Thanks a Million" to all the contributors!
14 December 2022
Editorial Board Members from Toxins Featured in the 2022 Highly Cited Researchers List Published by Clarivate

Recently, ClarivateTM revealed its 2022 list of Highly Cited Researchers™—individuals at universities, research institutes and commercial organizations.
The scientists who were selected for this year’s list of Highly Cited Researchers have published highly cited papers in the 11-year period from January 2011 to December 2021, with citation frequency in the top 1% of academic subjects and the same year of publication in the Web of ScienceTM database. Based on Web of Science Citation data, 6938 researchers from across the globe who have demonstrated a disproportionate level of significant and broad influence in their chosen field or fields over the last decade have been awarded Highly Cited Researcher 2022 designations. The list is truly global, spanning 69 countries or regions and spread across a diverse range of research sciences and social sciences.
According to statistics, two members of the Editorial Board of Toxins (ISSN: 2072-6651) have been selected into the list of Highly Cited Researchers of Clarivate in 2022. They are being recognized for their high-quality scientific research achievements and outstanding contributions to professional fields. The Toxins journal office sincerely congratulates all elected Editorial Board Members and hopes that they continue to have an academically productive relationship with the journal.
Name |
Affiliation |
Prof. Dr. Joseph Jankovic |
Baylor College of Medicine, USA |
Dr. Liang Chen |
Yunnan University, China |
14 December 2022
Interview with Mr. Keith Lyons—Winner of Toxins 2021 Best Paper Award
Winning Article: “Diet Breadth Mediates the Prey Specificity of Venom Potency in Snakes”
Authors: Keith Lyons, Michel M. Dugon and Kevin Healy
Photo: Keith attending the British Ecological Society’s 2019 conference at Waterfront Hall, Belfast, where he presented his research on snake venom evolution, which was later published in Toxins.
While studying at the University of Galway (formerly the National University of Ireland, Galway) as an Environmental Science student, Mr. Keith Lyons’s interest in venomous animals quickly became apparent to Dr. Michel Dugon during his second year Zoology lab demonstrations. Seeing his keen interest, Dr. Dugon offered Mr. Lyons a research scholarship for the duration of the summer of 2017, working as an intern with the Noble False Widow spider, Steatoda nobilis, and its venom. Mr. Keith Lyons enjoyed his time working with Dr. Dugon and his team so much that he continued the internship on a voluntary basis for three years, publishing a Steatoda records paper, working with venomous invertebrates and reptiles from Ireland and abroad, e.g., Morocco, and aiding Dr. Dugon in running Eco-Explorers, a STEAM voluntary outreach program that educates the public about native and exotic animals and their ecology. He also worked on his final year undergraduate project with Dr. Dugon, investigating the venoms of two native centipede species (Lithobius forficatus and Lithobius variegatus), the first detailed study of both species’ venom potencies.
As of November 2022, Mr. Keith Lyons is a University of Galway Macroecology Ph.D. student working with his primary supervisor Dr. Kevin Healy and co-supervisor Dr. Dugon. As part of his Ph.D. research, Mr. Lyons continues to work with venom by investigating factors that influence the potency and evolution of different species’ venoms through phylogenetic comparative methods, median lethal dose 50% (LD50) and median effective dose 50% (ED50) experiments. As of November 2022, he has published two studies in Toxins (ISSN: 2072-6651), one discussing how diet breadth drives the evolution of potency in snake venom and the other on how venom optimization and high potency makes Steatoda nobilis a successful invasive spider.
We want to congratulate Mr. Keith Lyons, Mr. Michel M. Dugon and Mr. Kevin Healy for winning the Toxins 2021 Best Paper Award.
Interview with one of the authors–Mr. Keith Lyons:
1. Could you please briefly introduce the main research content of the winning paper?
While venoms have been found to have prey-specific potencies, the role of diet breadth (also known as the number of different taxa found in a species natural diet) on venom potencies has yet to be tested at large macroecological scales. We performed a phylogenetic comparative analysis of 100 snake species and their venom LD50s, collected from the scientific literature, to determine if the evolution of prey-specific venom potencies is a result of the breadth of a species’ diet.
2. Could you describe the difficulties and breakthrough innovations encountered in this research?
The main challenge of the study was compiling the biological data pertaining to snake diet and venom potency. It took a very long time to complete and countless literature searches often yielded little to no data. Despite the large size of the dataset we produced in the end, biological data relating to snakes are very limited. This is a trend we observed in spiders and other venomous groups, showing the importance of producing and compiling this kind of data.
3. How was your experience submitting to Toxins?
Submitting my research to Toxins was a smooth process. I appreciated this as it was my first time submitting research as the lead author. Everyone I corresponded with during the submission process was accommodating and helpful. The deadlines were reasonable throughout, and processing was quick.
4. How do you think Open Access impacts authors?
In the short term, no author is elated about having to pay publication fees, even with waivers (although waivers are greatly appreciated). However, once that obstacle is overcome, I feel it is worth it in the long term for authors, as greater accessibility means increased readership, which ultimately leads to more citations and interest in your research. I believe a significant part of why my snake venom research is performing so well because it was published in an Open Access journal. The benefits associated with increased accessibility are likely the reason behind Open Access publishing becoming more popular among the scientific community.
5. Any suggestions that you have for Toxins, or anything else that you want to talk about?
I would like to thank everyone involved with the journal Toxins for not only selecting my research as the “Issue Cover” for Volume 12 Issue 2 of their journal but also for the 2021 Best Paper (Research Article) Award. It means a lot to my Ph.D. supervisors and me, and we are very grateful for the interest shown in our research.
8 December 2022
MDPI Sustainability Foundation: New Look and Nominations for the 2023 Sustainability Awards Now Open
We are pleased to announce that the website of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation has been revamped! For the past couple of months, our UX UI team and front-end developers have been working hard to launch the website in time for the opening of the Sustainability Awards nominations.
The website is not the only thing that has had a remodeling. Indeed, the format of the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award (ESLA) has been updated. ESLA is now a competition open to individual researchers or start-ups founded by researchers under the age of 35. Nominee applications will go through 2 rounds of selection until the final 3 are decided. The finalists will then be invited to give pitch presentations during the Award Ceremony to win either first place (10,000 USD) or runner-up (2 x 5000 USD).
The World Sustainability Award, on the other hand, remains the same: a total prize money of 100,000 USD is up for grabs by senior individual researchers or groups of researchers from the international research community.
Nominations for both the World Sustainability Award and the Emerging Sustainability Leader award are now open! Check out our new website for more information on how to nominate.
7 December 2022
Meet Us at the 88th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Mycotoxicology, 6 January 2023, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

Conference: The 88th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Mycotoxicology
Date: 6 January 2023
Venue: Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Research Council, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
MDPI will be attending the 88th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Mycotoxicology as the exhibitor. This meeting will take place on 6 January 2023 in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
The 88th annual meeting is organized by the Japanese Society of Mycotoxicology (http://www.jsmyco.org). In addition to general lectures and poster presentations, there will be special lectures, symposiums, and luncheon seminars.
Special lecture: “Use of useful brewing bacteria such as aspergillus”
Symposium: “Challenge the elucidation of biological interactions”
The following MDPI journals will be represented:
If you are planning to attend 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 and booth, please visit the following website: https://www.jsmyco.org/conference/top.html.
17 November 2022
Interview with Prof. Dr. Jean-Denis Bailly—Winner of Toxins 2021 Best Paper Award
Name: Prof. Dr. Jean-Denis Bailly
Email: [email protected]
The Winning Paper: “Aflatoxin Biosynthesis and Genetic Regulation: A Review”
Prof. Dr. Jean-Denis Bailly is a veterinarian. He defended his Ph.D. in 1995 and was hired as an associate professor in food safety at the National Veterinary School of Toulouse in 1996 and became a full-time professor in 2014. He has worked on mycotoxicology for more than 20 years with a focus on fungal biodiversity and its evolution and the biotic and abiotic factors controlling mycotoxin production. For several years, he has worked on the development of a strategy to inhibit AFB1 synthesis by using plant extracts. The aim is to inhibit toxin production without interfering with fungal growth in order not to create an ecological vacuum that could benefit other pathogenic organisms, nor lead to resistance appearance since there is no selective pressure on the fungi.
We want to congratulate Prof. Dr. Jean-Denis Bailly for winning the Toxins 2021 Best Paper Award.
The following is an interview with Prof. Dr. Jean-Denis Bailly:
1. Could you please briefly introduce the main content of the winning paper?
The main aim of this review is to present an exhaustive overview of all parameters that may interfere positively or negatively with aflatoxin B1 biosynthesis. AFB1 production is the result of complex biosynthetic pathways involving many genes that are themselves controlled by many environmental parameters.
This review mostly relies on the Ph.D. work of Dr. Isaura Caceres. She worked under my supervision on the identification of natural extracts able to inhibit aflatoxin B1 production in Aspergillus flavus. She was recently hired as an associate professor at the University of Bordeaux.
2. Could you describe the difficulties and breakthrough innovations in this research field?
AFB1 is probably the most important mycotoxin as a public health issue. It is carcinogenic in humans and this is also a natural contaminant leading to the highest number of DALYs (disability-adjusted life years) worldwide.
Understanding the molecular mechanisms that influence the production of this highly toxic food contaminant may help in identifying ways to prevent its biosynthesis and therefore improve food safety by targeting the environmental responses that lead to a decrease or suppression in toxin production.
However, secondary metabolism in fungi is very complex and varied, and many genes have been shown to interfere with AFB1 synthesis. It is challenging to identify the direct connections between these genes and their function and the AFB1 cluster gene.
3. How was your experience submitting to Toxins?
I had already submitted several papers to Toxins, which has become a highly recognized scientific journal in the field of natural toxins and especially mycotoxins. The submission process is quite easy and peer-review process is extremely rapid, which is very much appreciated.
4. How do you think Open Access impacts authors?
Open Access makes papers easily accessible, which favors their citation in other works. This is also a good way to make research available to all researchers, regardless of their country and funding resources.
14 November 2022
Editorial Board Members from Toxins Featured in Stanford’s List of the World’s Top 2% Scientists

Stanford University has recently published an update of the list of the top 2% most widely cited scientists—the World’s Top 2% Scientists.
The time node of the statistical data of this list is from 1960 to 2022, and it is divided into two lists: "Lifetime Scientific Influence Ranking" and "2022 Annual Scientific Influence Ranking". The "Lifetime Scientific Influence Ranking" counts the comprehensive influence performance of scientists during their careers, and the "2022 Annual Influence Ranking" focuses on highlighting the academic influence of scientists in the previous year. This ranking, considered the most prestigious worldwide, is based on the bibliometric information contained in the Scopus database and includes more than 200,000 researchers from the more than 10 million scientists considered to be active worldwide, with 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields taken into account.
We are pleased to share that 54 Editorial Board Members from Toxins (ISSN: 2072-6651) were featured in Stanford University World’s Top 2% Scientists list in 2022.
Name |
|
Prof. Dr. Alberto Ritieni |
Prof. Dr. Ketan Patel |
Prof. Dr. Aldo Laganà |
Prof. Dr. Klaus Aktories |
Prof. Dr. Allan Cembella |
Prof. Dr. Laura Anfossi |
Prof. Dr. Azzam A. Maghazachi |
Prof. Dr. Ligang Zhou |
Prof. Dr. Andreja Rajkovic |
Prof. Dr. Sophie Liabeuf |
Prof. Dr. Annie Pfohl-Leszkowicz |
Dr. Ludger Johannes |
Prof. Dr. Antonio F. Logrieco |
Prof. Dr. Luis M. Botana |
Dr. Antonio Moretti |
Dr. Marc Maresca |
Prof. Dr. Björn Meijers |
Dr. Marco Masi |
Dr. Bojana Žegura |
Prof. Dr. Miklós Mézes |
Dr. Bruno Goud |
Prof. Dr. Philippe Guerre |
Prof. Dr. Carmela Fimognari |
Prof. Dr. Paola Battilani |
Prof. Dr. Cesare Montecucco |
Prof. Dr. Peiwu Li |
Prof. Dr. R. Manjunatha Kini |
Dr. Peter A. Keyel |
Dr. Dominic Raj |
Dr. Michel R. Popoff |
Prof. Dr. Dirk Dressler |
Prof. Dr. Richard A. Manderville |
Prof. Dr. Antonio Evidente |
Dr. Andreas Rummel |
Prof. Dr. Federica Cheli |
Prof. Dr. Sarah De Saeger |
Prof. Dr. Florian Lang |
Prof. Dr. Stephan Pflugmacher |
Prof. Dr. Walter A. Hall |
Prof. Dr. Xiulan Sun |
Dr. Hiroshi Watanabe |
Prof. Dr. András Székács |
Dr. Irina Vetter |
Prof. Dr. Timothy L. Cover |
Dr. Isabelle P. Oswald |
Dr. Ting Zhou |
Prof. Dr. Jean E. Crabtree |
Dr. Wolfgang Wüster |
Prof. Dr. John D. Groopman |
Prof. Dr. Yidong Wu |
Prof. Dr. Joseph Jankovic |
Prof. Dr. Yonghua Xiong |
Prof. Dr. Juan Ferré |
Prof. Dr. Wentao Xu |
The latest Stanford rankings reflect the significant influence and research excellence of the scientists, who are committed to furthering their knowledge for the benefit of the world.
We would like to congratulate our Editorial Board Members on their excellent achievement and thank them for their immense contribution to the scientific progression and development of Toxins.
28 September 2022
Peer Review Week 2022 – Research Integrity: Creating and Supporting Trust in Research

Peer Review Week began 19 September 2022 under the theme of “Research Integrity: Creating and Supporting Trust in Research”. Through various blog articles, podcast, and webinar, we discussed this crucial subject throughout the week, celebrating the essential role peer review plays in maintaining research quality.
To begin, we held a Webinar on the topic. Professor Peter W. Choate and Dr. Emmanuel Obeng-Gyasi joined Dr. Ioana Craciun, one of MDPI’s scientific officers, for an in-depth discussion.
We invite you to view the event recording:
During the week, the MDPI Blog in a series articles highlighted how good Peer Review safeguards research integrity. The following topics were covered:
- Peer Review Week 2022
- Research Integrity
- What We’ve Learned About Peer Review Reports
- 4 Steps to the Perfect Peer Review Report
- How to Write the Perfect Peer Review Report: An Interview
- Inviting Great Peer Reviewers
In a new edition of Insight Faster, an MDPI podcast, we were delighted to talk to the co-chairs of the Peer Review Week committee, Jayashree Rajagopalan (Senior Manager of Global Community Engagement for CACTUS) and Danielle Padula (Head of Marketing and Community Development at Scholastica) to get their take on this year’s event and its related topics.
You can find the Podcast here.
We hope you enjoy the contents!
28 June 2022
2021 Impact Factors - Released
The 2021 citation metrics have been released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), and we’re pleased to announce the following results for MDPI journals:
Journal | Impact Factor | Rank | Category |
Antioxidants | 7.675 | Q1 | Food Science & Technology |
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | |||
Chemistry, Medicinal | |||
Cells | 7.666 | Q2 | Cell Biology |
Nutrients | 6.706 | Q1 | Nutrition & Dietetics |
Cancers | 6.575 | Q1 | Oncology |
Pharmaceutics | 6.525 | Q1 | Pharmacology & Pharmacy |
International Journal of Molecular Sciences | 6.208 | Q1 | Biochemistry & Molecular Biology |
Q2 | Chemistry, Multidisciplinary | ||
Marine Drugs | 6.085 | Q1 | Chemistry, Medicinal |
Pharmacology & Pharmacy | |||
Biomolecules | 6.064 | Q2 | Biochemistry & Molecular Biology |
Batteries * | 5.938 | Q2 | Electrochemistry |
Energy & Fuels | |||
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | |||
Viruses | 5.818 | Q2 | Virology |
Biosensors | 5.743 | Q1 | Chemistry, Analytical |
Instruments & Instrumentation | |||
Q2 | Nanoscience & Nanotechnology | ||
Journal of Fungi | 5.724 | Q1 | Mycology |
Q2 | Microbiology | ||
Nanomaterials | 5.719 | Q1 | Physics, Applied |
Q2 | Chemistry, Multidisciplinary | ||
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | |||
Nanoscience & Nanotechnology | |||
Metabolites | 5.581 | Q2 | Biochemistry & Molecular Biology |
Foods | 5.561 | Q1 | Food Science & Technology |
Drones * | 5.532 | Q2 | Remote Sensing |
Remote Sensing | 5.349 | Q1 | Geosciences, Multidisciplinary |
Imaging Science & Photographic Technology | |||
Q2 | Remote Sensing | ||
Environmental Sciences | |||
Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research | 5.318 | Q2 | Business |
Antibiotics | 5.222 | Q1 | Pharmacology & Pharmacy |
Q2 | Infectious Diseases | ||
Pharmaceuticals | 5.215 | Q1 | Pharmacology & Pharmacy |
Q2 | Chemistry, Medicinal | ||
Biology | 5.168 | Q1 | Biology |
Fermentation | 5.123 | Q2 | Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology |
Toxins | 5.075 | Q1 | Toxicology |
Q2 | Food Science & Technology | ||
Bioengineering * | 5.046 | Q2 | Engineering, Biomedical |
Polymers | 4.967 | Q1 | Polymer Science |
Journal of Clinical Medicine | 4.964 | Q2 | Medicine, General & Internal |
Vaccines | 4.961 | Q2 | Immunology |
Medicine, Research & Experimental | |||
Molecules | 4.927 | Q2 | Chemistry, Multidisciplinary |
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | |||
Microorganisms | 4.926 | Q2 | Microbiology |
Journal of Functional Biomaterials * | 4.901 | Q2 | Engineering, Biomedical |
Materials Science, Biomaterials | |||
Biomedicines | 4.757 | Q2 | Medicine, Research & Experimental |
Pharmacology & Pharmacy | |||
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | |||
Plants | 4.658 | Q1 | Plant Sciences |
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health | 4.614 | Q1 | Public, Environmental & Occupational Health (SSCI) |
Q2 | Public, Environmental & Occupational Health (SCIE) | ||
Environmental Sciences (SCIE) | |||
Membranes | 4.562 | Q1 | Polymer Science |
Q2 | Engineering, Chemical | ||
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | |||
Chemistry, Physical | |||
Pathogens | 4.531 | Q2 | Microbiology |
Catalysts | 4.501 | Q2 | Chemistry, Physical |
Toxics | 4.472 | Q2 | Toxicology |
Environmental Sciences | |||
Gels | 4.432 | Q1 | Polymer Science |
Journal of Cardiovascular Development and Disease | 4.415 | Q2 | Cardiac & Cardiovascular Systems |
Chemosensors | 4.229 | Q1 | Instruments & Instrumentation |
Q2 | Chemistry, Analytical | ||
Q3 | Electrochemistry | ||
Genes | 4.141 | Q2 | Genetics & Heredity |
Diagnostics | 3.992 | Q2 | Medicine, General & Internal |
Agronomy | 3.949 | Q1 | Agronomy |
Plant Sciences | |||
Land | 3.905 | Q2 | Environmental Studies |
Sustainability | 3.889 | Q2 | Environmental Sciences (SCIE) |
Environmental Studies (SSCI) | |||
Q3 | Green & Sustainable Science & Technology (SCIE) | ||
Q4 | Green & Sustainable Science & Technology (SSCI) | ||
Sensors | 3.847 | Q2 | Instruments & Instrumentation |
Chemistry, Analytical | |||
Engineering, Electrical & Electronic | |||
Materials | 3.748 | Q1 | Metallurgy & Metallurgical Engineering |
Q2 | Physics, Applied | ||
Physics, Condensed Matter | |||
Q3 | Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | ||
Chemistry, Physical | |||
Biomimetics * | 3.743 | Q2 | Engineering, Multidisciplinary |
Q3 | Materials Science, Biomaterials | ||
Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease * | 3.711 | Q1 | Tropical Medicine |
Q2 | Parasitology | ||
Q3 | Infectious Diseases | ||
Lubricants * | 3.584 | Q2 | Engineering, Mechanical |
Fractal and Fractional | 3.577 | Q1 | Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications |
Water | 3.530 | Q2 | Water Resources |
Q3 | Environmental Sciences | ||
Micromachines | 3.523 | Q2 | Instruments & Instrumentation |
Physics, Applied | |||
Chemistry, Analytical | |||
Q3 | Nanoscience & Nanotechnology | ||
Journal of Personalized Medicine | 3.508 | Q2 | Medicine, General & Internal |
Health Care Sciences & Services | |||
Agriculture | 3.408 | Q1 | Agronomy |
Processes | 3.352 | Q2 | Engineering, Chemical |
Separations | 3.344 | Q2 | Chemistry, Analytical |
Magnetochemistry | 3.336 | Q2 | Chemistry, Inorganic & Nuclear |
Q3 | Chemistry, Physical | ||
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | |||
Brain Sciences | 3.333 | Q3 | Neurosciences |
Buildings | 3.324 | Q2 | Construction & Building Technology |
Engineering, Civil | |||
Forests | 3.282 | Q1 | Forestry |
Energies | 3.252 | Q3 | Energy & Fuels |
Life | 3.251 | Q2 | Biology |
Coatings | 3.236 | Q2 | Materials Science, Coatings & Films |
Physics, Applied | |||
Q3 | Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | ||
Animals | 3.231 | Q1 | Agriculture, Dairy & Animal Science |
Veterinary Sciences | |||
Journal of Intelligence * | 3.176 | Q2 | Psychology, Multidisciplinary |
Fishes | 3.170 | Q1 | Marine & Freshwater Biology |
Q2 | Fisheries | ||
Healthcare | 3.160 | Q2 | Health Policy & Services (SSCI) |
Health Care Sciences & Services (SCIE) | |||
Inorganics * | 3.149 | Q2 | Chemistry, Inorganic & Nuclear |
Insects | 3.139 | Q1 | Entomology |
Atmosphere | 3.110 | Q3 | Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences |
Environmental Sciences | |||
Current Oncology | 3.109 | Q3 | Oncology |
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information | 3.099 | Q2 | Geography, Physical |
Q3 | Computer Science, Information Systems | ||
Remote Sensing | |||
Diversity | 3.029 | Q2 | Biodiversity Conservation |
Ecology | |||
Tomography | 3.000 | Q3 | Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging |
Current Issues in Molecular Biology | 2.976 | Q3 | Biochemistry & Molecular Biology |
Medicina | 2.948 | Q3 | Medicine, General & Internal |
Symmetry | 2.940 | Q2 | Multidisciplinary Sciences |
Horticulturae | 2.923 | Q1 | Horticulture |
Machines | 2.899 | Q2 | Engineering, Mechanical |
Engineering, Electrical & Electronic | |||
Systems * | 2.895 | Q2 | Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary |
Applied Sciences | 2.838 | Q2 | Engineering, Multidisciplinary |
Physics, Applied | |||
Q3 | Chemistry, Multidisciplinary | ||
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | |||
Children | 2.835 | Q2 | Pediatrics |
Minerals | 2.818 | Q2 | Mining & Mineral Processing |
Mineralogy | |||
Geochemistry & Geophysics | |||
Universe | 2.813 | Q2 | Astronomy & Astrophysics |
Q3 | Physics, Particles & Fields | ||
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering | 2.744 | Q1 | Engineering, Marine |
Q2 | Oceanography | ||
Engineering, Ocean | |||
Entropy | 2.738 | Q2 | Physics, Multidisciplinary |
Fire * | 2.726 | Q2 | Forestry |
Q3 | Ecology | ||
Metals | 2.695 | Q2 | Metallurgy & Metallurgical Engineering |
Q3 | Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | ||
Electronics | 2.690 | Q3 | Engineering, Electrical & Electronic |
Computer Science, Information Systems | |||
Physics, Applied | |||
Crystals | 2.670 | Q2 | Crystallography |
Q3 | Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | ||
Aerospace | 2.660 | Q1 | Engineering, Aerospace |
Mathematics | 2.592 | Q1 | Mathematics |
Photonics | 2.536 | Q3 | Optics |
Actuators | 2.523 | Q2 | Instruments & Instrumentation |
Q3 | Engineering, Mechanical | ||
Veterinary Sciences | 2.518 | Q2 | Veterinary Sciences |
Behavioral Sciences * | 2.286 | Q3 | Psychology, Multidisciplinary |
Axioms * | 1.824 | Q2 | Mathematics, Applied |
For more information on Impact Factors and what it means to index academic journals, please visit our related blog posts.
* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2022
Source: 2021 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports TM (Clarivate, 2022)
17 June 2022
Toxins | Special Issue Mentor Program

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative—the Special Issue Mentor Program.
This program intends to provide an opportunity for early career scientists to enhance their editing, networking, and organizational skills and to work closely with our journal to gain more editorial experience. Early career scientists who have novel ideas for new Special Issues of Toxins (ISSN: 2072-6651) will act as Guest Editors under the mentorship of an experienced scientist; this mentor could be a member of the Toxins Editorial Board or may be from other well-established research institutes or laboratories, etc.
The mentee’s responsibilities include:
- Providing a CV, including a list of publications;
- Proposing a Special Issue title and a short introduction;
- Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
- Writing an editorial for the online Special Issue;
- Reviewing and making decisions for submissions under the mentorship of our Editorial Board Members.
The mentor’s responsibilities include:
- Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
- Co-editing the Special Issue with younger scholars and performing quality control of publications in the Special Issue;
- Providing suggestions to younger scholars if they have doubts or concerns regarding submissions;
- Organizing video calls with young scholars and the office regularly to discuss problems and improvement suggestions for the Special Issue.
Certificates and awards:
When the Special Issue is closed, the Editorial Office will provide official certificates for all the mentors. Younger scholars will be prioritized as candidates for Toxins Young Investigator Awards in future editions.
If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Toxins Editorial Office ([email protected]), or complete and submit the form at the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journalproposal/sendproposalspecialissue/toxins. We will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail after receiving your application.
In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, Toxins continues to welcome all Special Issue proposals based on hot research topics as usual.
Toxins Editorial Office
9 June 2022
2021 CiteScores - Released

The 2021 citation metrics have been officially released in Scopus!
We are pleased to announce that 182 MDPI journals are included, of which:
● 21 journals received their first CiteScore.
● 85% of journals increased their CiteScore from 2020.
● 155 journals (85%) ranked above average, in at least one category.
The following 65 MDPI journals (36%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category:
Journal |
CiteScore |
Quartile |
Category |
10.1 |
Q1 |
Genetics |
|
10.0 |
Q1 |
Biomedical Engineering |
|
8.1 |
Q1 |
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics (miscellaneous) |
|
7.9 |
Q1 |
Electrical and Electronic Engineering |
|
7.9 |
Q1 |
Nutrition and Dietetics |
|
7.4 |
Q1 |
General Earth and Planetary Sciences |
|
7.2 |
Q1 |
Computer Science Applications |
|
6.9 |
Q1 |
Inorganic Chemistry |
|
6.9 |
Q1 |
Computer Networks and Communications |
|
6.7 |
Q1 |
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology |
|
6.6 |
Q1 |
General Chemical Engineering |
|
6.6 |
Q1 |
Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis |
|
6.6 |
Q1 |
Infectious Diseases |
|
6.5 |
Q1 |
Food Science |
|
6.5 |
Q1 |
Civil and Structural Engineering |
|
6.4 |
Q1 |
Nature and Landscape Conservation |
|
6.4 |
Q1 |
Instrumentation |
|
6.1 |
Q1 |
Management Information Systems |
|
5.9 |
Q1 |
Chemistry (miscellaneous) |
|
5.7 |
Q1 |
Polymers and Plastics |
|
5.6 |
Q1 |
Engineering (miscellaneous) |
|
5.5 |
Q1 |
General Environmental Science |
|
5.5 |
Q1 |
Urban Studies |
|
5.4 |
Q2 |
Computer Networks and Communications |
|
5.3 |
Q1 |
Food Science |
|
5.3 |
Q1 |
Plant Science |
|
5.2 |
Q1 |
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics |
|
5.2 |
Q1 |
General Engineering |
|
Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity |
5.1 |
Q1 |
Development |
5.0 |
Q1 |
Chemistry (miscellaneous) |
|
5.0 |
Q1 |
Control and Optimization |
|
5.0 |
Q1 |
Geography, Planning and Development |
|
5.0 |
Q1 |
Geography, Planning and Development |
|
4.9 |
Q1 |
Forestry |
|
4.9 |
Q1 |
Control and Optimization |
|
4.9 |
Q1 |
Soil Science |
|
4.8 |
Q1 |
General Earth and Planetary Sciences |
|
4.8 |
Q1 |
Mechanical Engineering |
|
4.8 |
Q1 |
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health |
|
4.8 |
Q1 |
Geography, Planning and Development |
|
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health |
4.5 |
Q1 |
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health |
4.5 |
Q1 |
Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation |
|
4.4 |
Q1 |
Mathematical Physics |
|
4.4 |
Q1 |
General Medicine |
|
4.3 |
Q1 |
General Mathematics |
|
4.2 |
Q1 |
Surgery |
|
4.1 |
Q1 |
Health Professions (miscellaneous) |
|
4.1 |
Q1 |
Plant Science |
|
4.0 |
Q1 |
General Engineering |
|
4.0 |
Q1 |
Forestry |
|
4.0 |
Q1 |
Education |
|
3.9 |
Q1 |
General Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics |
|
3.9 |
Q1 |
Applied Mathematics |
|
3.8 |
Q1 |
Development |
|
3.8 |
Q1 |
Architecture |
|
3.8 |
Q1 |
Metals and Alloys |
|
3.5 |
Q1 |
Communication |
|
3.4 |
Q1 |
General Social Sciences |
|
2.9 |
Q1 |
General Mathematics |
|
2.8 |
Q1 |
Analysis |
|
2.7 |
Q1 |
General Veterinary |
|
2.6 |
Q1 |
Algebra and Number Theory |
|
1.8 |
Q1 |
Conservation |
|
1.0 |
Q1 |
Religious Studies |
|
0.9 |
Q1 |
Philosophy |
Source: 2021 CiteScores™ (Elsevier)
2 June 2022
MDPI’s 2021 Outstanding Reviewer Awards in “Biology & Life Sciences”—Winners Announced
In order to acknowledge our reviewers, who so generously dedicate their time to reviewing papers and demonstrate diligence, professionalism, and timeliness when reviewing manuscripts, MDPI journals regularly offer outstanding reviewer awards to scholars who participate in the peer-review process.
We are proud to recognize winners for the year 2021 in the “Biology & Life Sciences” category for their outstanding contributions among extensive competition by presenting them with an Outstanding Reviewer Award.
We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all the winners on their achievement.
MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.
- Enrico Vito Perrino, CIHEAM, Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari, Italy
- Dhirendra Kumar, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, USA
- Carlos A. Viegas, Univesity of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal
- Yuri Shavrukov, Flinders University, Australia
- Bipin Gaihre, Mayo Clinic, USA
- Craig D. Workman, University of Iowa, USA
- Vivian Ciaramitaro, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA
- Yang Zhang, University of Minnesota, USA
- Bonam Srinivasa Reddy, Université de Paris, France
- Homma Takujiro, Yamagata University, Japan
- Hwang, In Koo, Seoul National University, South Korea
- Kobeissy Firas, University of Florida, USA
- Rebelo, Sandra, University of Aveiro, Portugal
- Günter Gollmann, University of Vienna, Austria
- Stephan Koblmüller, University of Graz, Austria
- Emiliano Mori, Istituto di Ricerca sugli Ecosistemi Terrestri, Italy
- Joshua D. Klein, Agricultural Research Organization—The Volcani Center, Israel
- Ana Cristina S Figueiredo, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
- Carmelo Peter Bonsignore, Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, Italy
- Klaus H. Hoffmann, University of Bayreuth, Germany
- Ivan Milosavljević, University of California, USA
- Remigiusz Bachor, University of Wrocław, Poland
- Nguyen Phuoc Long, Inje University College of Medicine, South Korea
- Chi Chen, University of Minnesota, USA
- Jadwiga Hamułka, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Poland
- Grace Campbell, University of Sydney, Australia
- Nicholas Norwitz, Harvard Medical School, USA
- Stefan Kabisch, Charité University Hospital Berlin, Germany
- Luis Rodrigo, University of Oviedo, Spain
- Carlos Viegas, Univesity of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal
- Arvind Sharma, The University of Queensland, Australia
2 June 2022
MDPI’s 2021 Young Investigator Awards in “Biology & Life Sciences”—Winners Announced
MDPI’s Young Investigator Awards recognize promising junior researchers, acknowledge their contributions, and enhance communication among scientists. We are proud to present the 2021 winners in the “Biology & Life Sciences” category. The winners were selected by the journals’ editors.
We warmly congratulate the awarded young investigators for their outstanding contributions.
MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.
- Carlos Guzmán, University of Cordoba, Spain
- Katharina Hohlbaum, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
- Uri Ben-David, Tel Aviv University, Israel
- Enrico Lunghi, Institute of Zoology Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China
- Guodong Zhang, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
- Luke Bell, Temperate Horticulture, University of Reading, UK
International Journal of Molecular Sciences:
- Alessandro D’Urso, University of Catania, Italy.
- Apostolos Zaravinos, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
- Cesar de la Fuente-Nunez, University of Pennsylvania, USA
- Maria Teresa Caccamo, Messina University, Italy
- Tiziana Bonifacino, University of Genoa, Italy
- Federico Baltar, University of Vienna, Austria
- Rebecca Drummond, University of Birmingham, UK
- Miriam Oses-Ruiz, Public University of Navarre, Spain
Life:
- João Pedro da Silva Machado Lobo, University of Porto, Portugal
- Vincenzo Russo, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Italy
- Gabriele Rocchetti, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Italy
- Fiona Lavelle, Queen's University Belfast, UK
- Matthew Snelson, Monash University, Australia
- Si Ming Man, Australian National University, Australia
- Jasper Fuk-Woo Chan, University of Hong Kong, China
- Stefania Sut, University of Padova, Italy
- Mohamed Ahmed El-Esawi, Tanta University, Tanta, Egypt
- Nicholas M. Provine, University of Oxford, UK
- Nicholas S. Heaton, Duke University, USA
2 June 2022
MDPI’s 2021 Travel Awards in “Biology & Life Sciences”—Winners Announced
We are proud to recognize the winners of MDPI’s 2021 Travel Awards in the “Biology & Life Sciences” category for their outstanding presentations and to present them with the prize.
MDPI journals regularly offer travel awards to encourage talented junior scientists to present their latest research at academic conferences in specific fields, which helps to increase their influence.
The winners mentioned below were carefully selected by the journal editors based on an outline of their research and the work to be presented at an academic conference.
We would like to warmly congratulate the winners of 2021 Travel Awards and wish them the greatest success with their future research endeavors. MDPI will continue to enhance communication among scientists.
- Zahra Bitarafan, Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO), Norway
- Nikolaos Tsoulias, Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy (ATB), Germany
- Michela Verni, University of Bari, Italy
- Philipp Demling, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
- Jagveer Singh, Punjab Agricultural University, India
- Ibrar Hussain, State University of Londrina, Brazil
- Francis Muchaamba, University of Zurich, Switzerland
- Tanja Eisemann, SBP Medical Discovery Institute, USA
- Mrinalini Dey, National Institute for Health Research, UK
- Ben Kirk, University of Melbourne, Australia
- Kirrilly Pursey, University of Newcastle, Australia
- Dieuwertje Kok, Wageningen University, the Netherlands
- Hanna Huber, University of Bonn, Germany
- Marlene Lages, University of Porto, Portugal
- Zohra S. Lassi, University of Adelaide, Australia
- Rik Olde Engberink, Amsterdam University Medicial Center, the Netherlands
- Sarah Warkentin, University of Porto (ISPUP), Portugal
- Álvaro Hernáez, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Norway
- Leila Abdelhamid, Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, Virginia Tech, USA
- Maria Michela Cesare, University of Siena, Italy
- Kaisa Hiippala, University of Helsinki, Finland
- Vanessa Silva, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, Portugal
- Hejun Liu, Scripps Research Institute, USA
- Tomokazu Tamura, Princeton University, USA
- Cecilie Knudsen, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
- Laura Biessy, Cawthron Institute, New Zealand
- Marcelo Mendes Rabelo, University of Florida, USA
- Hee Chun Chung, Seoul National University, South Korea
- Alejandro Marin Lopez, Yale University, USA
2 June 2022
MDPI’s 2021 Best Paper Awards in “Biology & Life Sciences”—Winners Announced
The purpose of our Best Paper Awards is to promote and recognize the most impactful contributions published within MDPI journals.
The editors of each journal carefully selected reviews and research papers through a rigorous judging process based on criteria such as the scientific merit, overall impact, and the quality of presentation of the papers published in the journal last year.
We are honored to present the winners in the subject areas of “Biology & Life Sciences”, who were selected amongst extensive competition, and congratulate the authors for their outstanding scientific publications.
MDPI will continue to provide support and recognition to the academic community.
by Wenchao Liu, Yilin Yuan, Chenyu Sun, Balamuralikrishnan Balasubramanian, Zhihui Zhao and Lilong An
Animals 2019, 9(8), 506, doi 10.3390/ani9080506
by Peter Coals, Dawn Burnham, Andrew Loveridge, David W. Macdonald, Michael ’t Sas-Rolfes, Vivienne L. Williams and John A. Vucetich
Animals 2019, 9(2), 52; doi 10.3390/ani9020052
by Giovanni Sogari, Mario Amato, Ilaria Biasato, Silvana Chiesa and Laura Gasco
Animals 2019, 9(4), 119; doi 10.3390/ani9040119
by Mark L. Chiu; Dennis R. Goulet; Alexey Teplyakov and Gary L. Gilliland
Antibodies 2019, 8(4), 55; doi 10.3390/antib8040055
by Luca Frattaruolo, Gabriele Carullo, Matteo Brindisi, Sarah Mazzotta, Luca Bellissimo, Vittoria Rago, Rosita Curcio, Vincenza Dolce, Francesca Aiello and Anna Rita Cappello
Antioxidants 2019, 8(6), 186; doi 10.3390/antiox8060186
by Chunhe Gu, Kate Howell, Frank R. Dunshea and Hafiz A. R. Suleria
Antioxidants 2019, 8(9), 405; doi 10.3390/antiox8090405
by Spyridon A. Petropoulos, Ângela Fernandes, Maria Inês Dias, Ioannis B. Vasilakoglou, Konstantinos Petrotos, Lillian Barros and Isabel C. F. R. Ferreira
Antioxidants 2019, 8(8), 293; doi 10.3390/antiox8080293
by Rubén Domínguez, Mirian Pateiro, Mohammed Gagaoua, Francisco J. Barba, Wangang Zhang and José M. Lorenzo
Antioxidants 2019, 8(10), 429; doi 10.3390/antiox8100429
by Michael H. Hastings, Elizabeth S. Maywood and Marco Brancaccio
Biology 2019, 8(1), 13; doi 10.3390/biology8010013
by Gail D. Schwieterman, Daniel P. Crear, Brooke N. Anderson, Danielle R. Lavoie, James A. Sulikowski, Peter G. Bushnell and Richard W. Brill
Biology 2019, 8(3), 56; doi 10.3390/biology8030056
by Shuichi Nakamura and Tohru Minamino
Biomolecules 2019, 9(7), 279; doi 10.3390/biom9070279
by Dmitrii Usoltsev, Vera Sitnikovaandrey Kajava and Mayya Uspenskaya
Biomolecules 2019, 9(8), 359; doi 10.3390/biom9080359
by Gerhard Liebisch, Josef Ecker, Sebastian Roth, Sabine Schweizer, Veronika Öttl, Hans-Frieder Schött, Hongsup Yoon, Dirk Haller, Ernst Holler, Ralph Burkhardt and Silke Matysik
Biomolecules 2019, 9(4), 121; doi 10.3390/biom9040121
by Anna Janaszewska, Joanna Lazniewska, Przemysław Trzepiński, Monika Marcinkowska and Barbara Klajnert-Maculewicz
Biomolecules 2019, 9(8), 330; doi 10.3390/biom9080330
by Heng Sheng Sow, Jiang Ren, Marcel Camps, Ferry Ossendorp and Peter ten Dijke
Cells 2019, 8(4), 320; doi 10.3390/cells8040320
by Dinender K. Singla, Taylor A. Johnson and Zahra Tavakoli Dargani
Cells 2019, 8(10), 1224; doi 10.3390/cells8101224
by Laura M. Doyle and Michael Zhuo Wang
Cells 2019, 8(7), 727; doi 10.3390/cells8070727
by Yu Han, Xuezhou Li, Yanbo Zhang, Yuping Han, Fei Chang and Jianxun Ding
Cells 2019, 8(8), 886; doi 10.3390/cells8080886
by Sarah B. Kingan, Haynes Heaton, Juliana Cudini, Christine C. Lambert, Primo Baybayan, Brendan D. Galvin, Richard Durbin, Jonas Korlach and Mara K. N. Lawniczak
Genes 2019, 10(1), 62; doi 10.3390/genes10010062
by Katherine E Bohnsack, Claudia Höbartner and Markus T Bohnsack
Genes 2019, 10(2), 102; doi 10.3390/genes10020102
by Laura M. Boykin, Peter Sseruwagi, Titus Alicai, Elijah Ateka, Ibrahim Umar Mohammed, Jo-Ann L. Stanton, Charles Kayuki, Deogratius Mark, Tarcisius Fute, Joel Erasto, Hilda Bachwenkizi, Brenda Muga, Naomi Mumo, Jenniffer Mwangi, Phillip Abidrabo, Geoffrey Okao-Okuja, Geresemu Omuut, Jacinta Akol, Hellen B. Apio, Francis Osingada, Monica A. Kehoe, David Eccles, Anders Savill, Stephen Lamb, Tonny Kinene, Christopher B. Rawle, Abishek Muralidhar, Kirsty Mayall, Fred Tairo and Joseph Ndunguru
Genes 2019, 10(9), 632; doi 10.3390/genes10090632
by Elamin Hafiz Baillo, Roy Njoroge Kimotho, Zhengbin Zhang and Ping Xu
Genes 2019, 10(10), 771; doi 10.3390/genes10100771
by Lida Fuentes, Carlos R. Figueroa and Monika Valdenegro
Horticulturae 2019, 5(2), 45; doi 10.3390/horticulturae5020045
by Marta Guarise, Gigliola Borgonovo, Angela Bassoli and Antonio Ferrante
Horticulturae 2019, 5(1), 13; doi 10.3390/horticulturae5010013
by Rik Clymans, Vincent Van Kerckvoorde, Eva Bangels, Wannes Akkermans, Ammar Alhmedi, Patrick De Clercq, Tim Beliën and Dany bylemans
Insects 2019, 10(7), 200; doi 10.3390/insects10070200
by Marc Kenis, Hannalene du Plessis, Johnnie Van den Berg, Malick Niango Ba, Georg Goergen, Koffi Eric Kwadjo, Ibrahim Baoua, Tadele Tefera, Alan Buddie, Giovanni Cafà, Lisa Offord, Ivan Rwomushana and Andrew Polaszek
Insects 2019, 10(4), 92; doi 10.3390/insects10040092
by Rafael R. da Costa, Haofu Hu, Hongjie Li and Michael Poulsen
Insects 2019, 10(4), 87; doi 10.3390/insects10040087
International Journal of Molecular Sciences:
by Rüdiger Hardeland
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2019, 20(5), 1223; doi 10.3390/ijms20051223
by Elise Lévy, Nadine El Banna, Dorothée Baïlle, Amélie Heneman-Masurel, Sandrine Truchet, Human Rezaei, Meng-Er Huang, Vincent Béringue, Davy Martin and Laurence Vernis
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2019, 20(16), 3896; doi 10.3390/ijms20163896
by Beatriz Herrero-Fernandez, Raquel Gomez-Bris, Beatriz Somovilla-Crespo and Jose Maria Gonzalez-Granado
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2019, 20(21), 5293; doi 10.3390/ijms20215293
by Claudia Beaurivage, Elena Naumovska, Yee Xiang Chang, Edo D. Elstak, Arnaud Nicolas, Heidi Wouters, Guido van Moolenbroek, Henriëtte L. Lanz, Sebastiaan J. Trietsch, Jos Joore, Paul Vulto, Richard A.J. Janssen, Kai S. Erdmann, Jan Stallen and Dorota Kurek
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2019, 20(22), 5661; doi 10.3390/ijms20225661
by Maiko Okano, Masanori Oshi, Ali Linsk Butash, Eriko Katsuta, Kazunoshin Tachibana, Katsuharu Saito, Hirokazu Okayama, Xuan Peng, Li Yan, Koji Kono, Toru Ohtake and Kazuaki Takabe
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2019, 20(17), 4197; doi 10.3390/ijms20174197
by Shaista Afroz, Rieko Arakaki, Takuma Iwasa, Masamitsu Oshima, Maki Hosoki, Miho Inoue, Otto Baba, Yoshihiro Okayama and Yoshizo Matsuka
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2019, 20(3), 711; doi 10.3390/ijms20030711
Life:
by Márió Gajdács, Zoltán Bátori, Marianna Ábrók, Andrea Lázár and Katalin Burián
Life 2020, 10(2), 16; doi 10.3390/life10020016
by Carla Ferreira, Catarina Almeida, Sandra Tenreiro and Alexandre Quintas
Life 2020, 10(6), 86; doi 10.3390/life10060086
by Ronald D. Hills, Benjamin A. Pontefract, Hillary R. Mishcon, Cody A. Black, Steven C. Sutton and Cory R. Theberge
Nutrients 2019, 11(7), 1613; doi 10.3390/nu11071613
by Harri Hemilä and Elizabeth Chalker
Nutrients 2019, 11(4), 708; doi 10.3390/nu11040708
by Humaira Jamshed, Robbie A. Beyl, Deborah L. Della Manna, Eddy S. Yang, Eric Ravussin and Courtney M. Peterson
Nutrients 2019, 11(6), 1234; doi 10.3390/nu11061234
by Israr Kha, Naeem Ullah, Lajia Zha, Yanrui Bai, Ashiq Khan, Tang Zhao, Tuanjie Che and Chunjiang Zhang
Pathogens 2019, 8(3), 126; doi 10.3390/pathogens8030126
by Spyridoula-Angeliki Nikou,Nessim Kichik, Rhys Brown, Nicole O. Ponde, Jemima Ho, Julian R. Naglik and Jonathan P. Richardson
Pathogens 2019, 8(2), 53; doi 10.3390/pathogens8020053
by Steven Batinovic, Flavia Wassef, Sarah A. Knowler, Daniel T.F. Rice, Cassandra R. Stanton, Jayson Rose, Joseph Tucci, Tadashi Nittami, Antony Vinh, Grant R. Drummond, Christopher G. Sobey, Hiu Tat Chan, Robert J. Seviour, Steve Petrovski and Ashley E. Franks
Pathogens 2019, 8(3), 100; doi 10.3390/pathogens8030100
by Muhammad Hammad Saleem, Johan Potgieter and Khalid Mahmood Arif
Plants 2019, 8(11), 468; doi 10.3390/plants8110468
by Ida Linić, Dunja Šamec, Jiří Grúz, Valerija Vujčić Bok, Miroslav Strnad and Branka Salopek-Sondi
Plants 2019, 8(6), 155; doi 10.3390/plants8060155
by Marie Agatha Mohn, Besarta Thaqi and Katrin Fischer-Schrader
Plants 2019, 8(3), 67; doi 10.3390/plants8030067
by Chiara Biselliandrea Volante, Francesca Desiderio, Alessandro Tondelli, Alberto Gianinetti, Franca Finocchiaro, Federica Taddei, Laura Gazza, Daniela Sgrulletta, Luigi Cattivelli and Giampiero Valè
Plants 2019, 8(8), 292; doi 10.3390/plants8080292
23 March 2022
Toxins | Top 10 Downloaded Articles in 2021
1. Muscle Tone Physiology and Abnormalities
Jacky Ganguly et al.
Toxins 2021, 13(4), 282; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins13040282
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/13/4/282
2. Botulinum Toxin: An Update on Pharmacology and Newer Products in Development
Supriyo Choudhury et al.
Toxins 2021, 13(1), 58; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins13010058
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/13/1/58
3. Physical and Chemical Methods for Reduction in Aflatoxin Content of Feed and Food
Péter Sipos et al.
Toxins 2021, 13(3), 204; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins13030204
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/13/3/204
4. The Food Poisoning Toxins of Bacillus cereus
Richard Dietrich et al.
Toxins 2021, 13(2), 98; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins13020098
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/13/2/98
5. Aflatoxin Detoxification Using Microorganisms and Enzymes
Yun Guan et al.
Toxins 2021, 13(1), 46; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins13010046
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/13/1/46
6. Botulinum Toxin in Movement Disorders: An Update
Joseph Jankovic et al.
Toxins 2021, 13(1), 42; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins13010042
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/13/1/42
7. Wasp Venom Biochemical Components and Their Potential in Biological Applications and Nanotechnological Interventions
Aida A. Abd El-Wahed et al.
Toxins 2021, 13(3), 206; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins13030206
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/13/3/206
8. Cannabis: A Toxin-Producing Plant with Potential Therapeutic Uses
Zeinab Breijyeh et al.
Toxins 2021, 13(2), 117; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins13020117
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/13/2/117
9. Association of Polygenic Risk Score and Bacterial Toxins at Screening Colonoscopy with Colorectal Cancer Progression: A Multicenter Case-Control Study
Alfonso Piciocchi et al.
Toxins 2021, 13(8), 569; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins13080569
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/13/8/569
10. Effective Locations for Injecting Botulinum Toxin into the Mentalis Muscle; Cadaveric and Ultrasonographic Study
Da-Yae Choi et al.
Toxins 2021, 13(2), 96; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins13020096
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/13/2/96
30 January 2022
2021 Outstanding Toxicologist Award for Women—Winner Announced
The editorial team of Toxins (ISSN: 2072-6651) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2021 Outstanding Toxicologist Award for Women: Christina Schroeder, at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, USA.
Dr. Schroeder’s research focuses on biodiscovery and peptide engineering in venom-derived toxins to investigate ion channels involved in pain and cancer. She completed her Ph.D. in Pharmacology at the University of Queensland, Australia, on the structure–activity relationships of omega-conotoxins targeting calcium channels. She completed her postdoctoral training at the Scripps Research Institute, USA, the University of Queensland, and the University of New South Wales, Australia. In 2014 she was granted research funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia, and in 2017 she was awarded a Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council, allowing her to pursue independent research at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, at the University of Queensland. She has published more than 80 articles on the discovery, structure, and function of animal toxins targeting ion channels and submitted 28 NMR-obtained toxin structures to the PDB. Her most noteworthy work contributed to the understanding of the importance of toxin–membrane binding for sodium channel inhibition and the development of bivalent toxins with dual pharmacology, specifically targeting sodium channels involved in pain. In 2020, she joined the Chemical Biology Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, USA, as a Stadtman investigator, and she holds an adjunct Associate Professor position at the University of Queensland, Australia.
We would like to congratulate the winner in recognition of her excellence in research related to toxicology. We look forward to her future academic contributions.
22 December 2021
Toxins | 27th Meeting on Toxinology of the French Society of Toxinology (SFET)—Best Oral Communication Award and Best Poster Award Winners
The editorial team of Toxins (ISSN: 2072-6651) would like to congratulate the winner of the Best Poster Award, Ms. Anne-Cécile Van Baelen, and the winner of the Best Oral Communication Award, Dr. Barbara Ribeiro, at the 27th Meeting on Toxinology of the French Society of Toxinology (SFET).
|
|
Left: Ms. Anne-Cécile Van Baelen, doctoral fellow from SIMoS, CEA de Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, Fance;
Right: Dr. Barbara Ribeiro postdoctoral fellow from the Institute du Thorax, Nantes, France.
The following are the titles of their work:
“Characterization of Innovative Animal Toxins for the Functional Study of Angiotensin Receptors”
Authors: Anne-Cécile Van Baelen, Nicolas Gilles, Denis Servent and Philippe Robin
Affiliation: Université Paris-Saclay, CEA Départment Médicaments et Technologies pour la Santé (DMTS), SIMoS, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
“Functional Impact of BeKm-1, a High-Affinity hERG Blocker, on Cardiomyocytes Derived from Human-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells”
Authors: Stephan De Waard, Jérôme Montnach, Barbara Ribeiro, Sébastien Nicolas, Virginie Forest, Flavien Charpentier, Matteo Elia Mangoni, Nathalie Gaborit, Michel Ronjat, Gildas Loussouarn, Patricia Lemarchand and Michel De Waard
Affiliation: L’unité de recherche de I’institut du thorax Inserm UMR 1087 / CNRS UMR 6291 Nantes, France
22 November 2021
722 MDPI Editorial Board Members Receiving "2021 Highly Cited Researchers" Distinction
It is our great honor to congratulate the Editorial Board Members and Editors in MDPI's journals who have been distinguished as 2021 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate, according to Web of Science data. We herewith express our gratitude for the immense impact the named researchers continue to make on scientific progress and on our journals' development.
Clarivate's annual list of Highly Cited ResearchersTM identifies the most highly cited scientists for the past decade. Their impactful papers are among the top 1 per cent in the citation distribution of one or more of 22 fields analyzed in the "Essential Science Indicators", distinguishing them as hugely influential among their peers.
Abate, Antonio Abatzoglou, John T. Abbaszadeh, Mostafa Acharya, U. Rajendra Acharya, Viral V. Agarwal, Ravi P. Ahn, Myung-Ju Airoldi, Laura Ali, Imran Allakhverdiev, Suleyman I. Aluko, Rotimi E. Anasori, Babak Andersson, Dan I. Andes, David Anker, Stefan D. Apergis, Nicholas Ariga, Katsuhiko Arqub, Omar Abu Aschner, Michael Assaraf, Yehuda G. Astruc, Didier Atala, Anthony Atanasov, Atanas G. Atangana, Abdon Bahram, Mohammad Bakris, George L. Balandin, Alexander A. Baleanu, Dumitru Balsamo, Gianpaolo Bando, Yoshio Banks, William A. Bansal-Travers, Maansi Barba, Francisco J. Barros, Lillian Basit, Abdul W. Baskonus, Haci Mehmet Bassetti, Matteo Battino, Maurizio Bell, Jordana T. Bellomo, Nicola Benediktsson, Jon Atli Benelli, Giovanni Benjakul, Soottawat Bhatnagar, Amit Biddle, Stuart J. H. Biondi, Antonio Biondi-Zoccai, Giuseppe Bjarnsholt, Thomas Blaabjerg, Frede Blaschke, Thomas Blay, Jean-Yves Blumwald, Eduardo Blunt, John W. Boffetta, Paolo Bogers, Marcel Bonomo, Robert A. Bowman, David M.J.S. Boyer, Cyrille Brestic, Marian Brevik, Eric C. Buhalis, Dimitrios Burdick, Jason A. Byrd, John C. Cabeza, Luisa F. Cai, Xingjuan Cai, Jianchao Calhoun, Vince D. Calin, George Cao, Jinde Cao, Guozhong Carvalho, Andre F. Castellanos-Gomez, Andres Cerqueira, Miguel Ângelo Parente Ribeiro Chang, Jo-Shu Chang, Chih-Hao Chastin, Sebastien Chau, Kwok-wing Chemat, Farid Chen, Xiaobo Chen, YangQuan Chen, Jianmin Chen, Chaoji Chen, Min Chen, Qi Chen, Jun Chen, Xi Chen, Peng Chen, Yulin Chen, Bo Chen, Chen Chen, Zhi-Gang Chen, Wei-Hsin Chen, Gang Chen, Yongsheng Chen, Xiang Chen, Yimin Chen, Runsheng Chen, Lidong Chen, Shaowei Chen, Qian Chen, Yu Chen, Shuangming Chiclana, Francisco Cho, Sun Young Choi, Wonyong Chowdhary, Anuradha Choyke, Peter L. Cichocki, Andrzej Corella, Dolores Corma, Avelino Cortes, Javier Cortes, Jorge Costanza, Robert Crommie, Michael F. Cui, Yi Cui, Haiying Cui, Qinghua Cummings, Kenneth Michael Dai, Shifeng Dai, Sheng Daiber, Andreas Davis, Steven J. Dawson, Ted M. de la Fuente-Nunez, Cesar Decker, Eric Andrew Dekel, Avishai Demaria, Marco Deng, Yong Deng, Xiangzheng DePinho, Ronald A. Desneux, Nicolas Dimopoulos, Meletios-Athanasios Ding, Aijun Dionysiou, Dionysios D. Dokmeci, Mehmet Remzi Dolgui, Alexandre Dong, Fan Dou, Shi Xue Dou, Letian Du, Qian Du, Bo Dube, Shanta Rishi Dufresne, Alain Dummer, Reinhard Dupont, Didier Edwards, David Elaissari, Abdelhamid Elhoseny, Mohamed Ellahi, Rahmat Ellis, Erle C. ElMasry, Gamal Esteller, Manel Estévez, Mario Fabbro, Doriano Facchetti, Antonio Fan, Zhanxi Fang, Chuanglin Fasano, Alessio Fečkan, Michal Felser, Claudia Feng, Liangzhu Fensholt, Rasmus Ferdinandy, Péter Fernandez-Lafuente, Roberto Ferreira, Isabel C. F. R. Filippi, Massimo Fisher, Helen Fortino, Giancarlo Fosso Wamba, Samuel Franceschi, Claudio Fujita, Hamido Fujita, Masayuki Gai, Francesco Gaisford, Simon Galanakis, Charis M. Galluzzi, Lorenzo Galvano, Fabio Gan, Ren-You Gan, Lihua Gandomi, Amir H. Gao, Bin Gao, Feng Gao, Minrui Gao, Huijun Gao, Wei Gao, Huile Garbe, Claus Garcia, Hermenegildo Gasbarrini, Antonio Gasco, Laura Gautret, Philippe Geng, Yong Gerdts, Gunnar Geschwind, Daniel H. Ghadimi, Noradin Ghaffari, Roozbeh Ghamisi, Pedram Giampieri, Francesca Glick, Bernard R. Gnant, Michael Goel, Ajay Gogotsi, Yury Goldewijk, Kees Klein Gong, Jinlong Gong, Yongji Govindan, Kannan Granato, Daniel Grancini, Giulia Green, Douglas R. Grosso, Giuseppe Gu, Ke Guan, Cao Guastella, Adam J. Guerrero, Josep M. Gui, Guan Guizani, Mohsen Guo, Zaiping Gupta, Rangan Gutzmer, Ralf Haase, Dagmar Habibi-Yangjeh, Aziz Hagemann, Stefan Hagger, Martin Hamblin, Michael R. Hammoudeh, Shawkat Han, Heesup Hanes, Justin Harrison, Roy M. Hartung, Hans-Peter Hasanuzzaman, Mirza He, Jr-Hau He, Hongwen He, Jiaqing He, Debiao Henseler, Jörg Herrera, Francisco Herrera-Viedma, Enrique Hetz, Claudio Ho Kim, Jung Holmes, Elaine Hossain, Ekram Hsueh, Po-Ren Hu, Xiaosong Hu, Wenbin Huang, Jianping Huang, Hongwei Huang, Yu Huang, Jianying Huang, Peng Huang, Baibiao Huang, Shaoming Hubacek, Klaus |
Iqbal, Hafiz M. N. |
Saad, Fred |
The full list of 2021 Highly Cited Researchers can be accessed at the following webpage in the Web of ScienceTM https://recognition.webofscience.com/awards/highly-cited/2021/.
--- Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) is a Clarivate product.
16 November 2021
Topical Advisory Panel Established to Support Editorial Board
Academic editors play a crucial role in leading our journals and ensuring that each article undergoes a robust and timely peer-review. With the launch of Topics this year and addition of Topic Editors to our family of academic editors, we decided it would be a good time to restructure our academic boards, thus providing more clarity and support for each role. MDPI is pleased to announce the launch of a new position—Topical Advisory Panel Member, that will replace the previous position of Topics Board Member. The Topical Advisory Panel will be comprised of early career researchers eager to gain experience in editorial work.
The main responsibility of the new members of the Topical Advisory Panel is to regularly provide support to Guest Editors, Topic Editors, and Section Board Members. The responsibilities of the Topical Advisory Panel are available here: https://www.mdpi.com/editors.
Each year, the members’ performances are evaluated, and outstanding members are promoted to the Editorial Board by the Editor-in-Chief.
To qualify as a Topical Advisory Panel Member, applicants must:
- Have expertise and experience in the field related to the journal;
- Have received a Ph.D. in the last 10 years, approximately;
- Have at least 6-8 published papers in the last 5 years as first author or corresponding author;
- Currently hold an independent research position in academia or a government institute.
If you are interested in this role, please contact the editorial office by email.
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
25 October 2021
Open Access Week 2021 | It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity, 25–31 October
Founded in 1996, MDPI was one of the first fully Open Access publisher. Over 25 years MDPI has grown to become the largest Open Access publisher globally, publishing over 160,000 articles across more than 350 journals in 2020. At the core, MDPI was founded in response to a pressing need of fast publication and inclusion. The scholar was set at the centre of the publication process for the first time. Acting as a service provider, rather than a product provider, MDPI exists to help scientists achive their objective to disseminate research results. At MDPI, we believe scientists deserve a better service from the publishing world.
The International Open Access Week (Open Access Week), founded by the SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Alliance and student partners in 2008, has been successfully running for 13 years. As an advocate and pioneer of open access publishing, MDPI actively responds to the call of International Open Access Week. This year’s theme of “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity” highlights the Recommendation’s call for equitable participation from all authors and readers.
For the last 25 years, MDPI has been committed to disseminating open research. Here is a video showing MDPI’s Commitment to Equity, Inclusion and Diversity for More than 25 Years.
International Open Access Week is an important opportunity to catalyze new conversations, create connections across and between communities that can facilitate this co-design, and advance progress in the building of more equitable foundations for opening knowledge—discussions and actions that need to be continued, year in and year out. MDPI has always aimed to provide professional and efficient publishing services to scholars around the world.
Our mission is to make scientific research accessible to everyone; this year, we interview and hold discussions with open science ambassadors on how to build an equal and inclusive environment for open science. Academic editors help us collaborate with more institutions to advocate for open access ideas.
Besides this, our scientific community is a key driver of our success and MDPI’s remarkable growth. Despite the pandemic, we have prepared online conferences and workshops to gather scholars from different communities.
The Basel Sustainable Publishing online forum provides an equal opportunity for stakeholders and researchers from multi-cultural environments to exchange ideas and eliminate barriers to participation.
Conference date: 25 October 2021, online
Conference website: https://bspf2021.sciforum.net/
Main topics: MDPI discusses the current dilemma of open access science from various perspectives such as governments, libraries, and publishers, and related measures on how to change the status quo of discrimination from a global perspective.
We aim to support equality, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications. We collaborate with universities and key laboratories and have scholarly communications with researchers, teachers, and students on open access workshops.
- 25 October 2021
Energies journal and Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- 28 October 2021
Machines journal and State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong University
- 29 October 2021
Processes journal and Beijing Institute of Technology
- 29 October 2021
Coatings journal and Wuhan University of Technology
MDPI is committed to providing open access and high-quality publishing services for scholars and promoting rapid dissemination of academic achievements. We hope to promote the practices and policies of open access publishing and diversify the dissemination of academic achievements.
23 September 2021
2020 MDPI Top Reviewer Award—Winners Announced

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high-quality academic publishing. Over 369,916 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2020. 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 of all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year, the MDPI Top Reviewer Award was announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise and dedication, and their high-quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2020 MDPI Top Reviewer Award:
- Adriana Burlea-Schiopoiu;
- Alban Kuriqi;
- Álvaro González-Vila;
- Alessandro Alaimo;
- Alexey Beskopylny;
- Alexander Yu Churyumov;
- Alberto Fernández-Isabel;
- Andrea Mastinu;
- Antonios N. Papadopoulos;
- Anton Rassõlkin;
- Antonio Humberto Hamad Minervino;
- Arkadiusz Matwijczuk;
- Artur Słomka;
- Baojie He;
- Bartłomiej Potaniec;
- Bojan Đurin;
- Camilo Arturo Rodriguez Diaz;
- Carmelo Maria Musarella;
- Chiachung Chen;
- Chiman Kwan;
- Cristian Busu;
- Danil Pimenov;
- Dan-Cristian Dabija;
- Delfín Ortega-Sánchez;
- Demetrio Antonio Zema;
- Denis Butusov;
- Elena Lucchi;
- Gaurab Dutta;
- Livia Anastasiu;
- M. R. Safaei.
For more information about how to become a reviewer of MDPI journals, please see: www.mdpi.com/reviewers.
22 September 2021
MDPI Joins SDG Publishers Compact
UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. In 2020 the SDG Publishers Compact was launched, aimed to inspire publishers and accelerate progress to achieve the 17 goals by 2030. Members of the programme are committed to support the publication of materials that will promote and inspire actions towards SDGs.
MDPI is an eager advocate of SDGs and has already been supporting the programme by creating Special Issues and publishing a series of books on SDGs prior to joining the Compact in 2021. MDPI's Sustainability Foundation initiated the World Sustainability Awards in 2016. We fully support UN's goals to promote sustainable actions that make the world a better place for all and, as part of its commitment, we will focus our actions on SDG10: Reduced Inequalities whilst promoting all 17 SDGs. For more details, please visit the programme’s website: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sdg-publishers-compact/.
Joining this initiative was a unanimous decision. MDPI has in its core values the dissemination of science for all, breaking the wall between research access and under-represented members of the scientific community and the general population. To support this initiative further and continue to support under-represented scientists, MDPI will take a series of actions that will be announced once ready.
The first action MDPI takes is to nominate Dr. Liliane Auwerter as the coordinator of the programme. Dr. Auwerter studied Environmental Process Technology (UTFPR, Brazil), obtained her MSc degree in Water and Environmental Engineering (University of Surrey, UK) and in 2020 completed her PhD in self-healing low-friction materials for water transport (Imperial College London, UK), always focusing on diverse scientific projects that would potentially bring sustainability to industrial processes. As a student in Brazil, she engaged in volunteering activities focused on environmental education and took part in the Millennial Development Goals meetings held at the university.
For more information, please contact:
Dr. Liliane Auwerter
Scientific Officer
[email protected]
16 September 2021
Welcoming New Editorial Board Members of Toxins
We are very honored that 43 new editorial members have joined Toxins since April. We would like to welcome these recognized researchers:
Dr. Thomas Durek, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia;
Prof. Dr. Shihua Wang, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, China;
Prof. Dr. Wentao Xu, China Agricultural University, China;
Dr. Sonia Marin-Sillue, University of Lleida, Spain;
Prof. Dr. Miklós Mézes, Szent Istvan University, Godollo, Hungary;
Prof. Dr. Maurizio Brigotti, Università di Bologna, Italy;
Dr. Steve Morton, NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, USA;
Prof. Dr. Juan Ferré, Universitat de València, Spain;
Prof. Dr. Allan Cembella, Universität Bremen, Bibliothekstraße, Germany;
Prof. Dr. Jean-Denis Bailly, Université de Toulouse, France;
Prof. Dr. Cristina Juan García, University of Valencia, Spain;
Prof. Dr. Sabine Schorr-Galindo, Université de La Réunion, France;
Prof. Dr. Harald Genth, Hannover Medical School, Germany;
Prof. Dr. Marylène Poirié, Sophia Agrobiotech Institute, INRAE, France;
Prof. Dr Thomas M. Harris, Vanderbilt University, USA;
Dr. Mark Poli, US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, USA;
Dr. Triantafyllos Kaloudis, Athens Water Supply & Sewerage Company, Greece;
Prof. Dr. Antonio Evidente, University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy;
Dr. Marco Masi, University of Naples, Italy;
Prof. Dr. John Leslie, Kansas State University, USA;
Prof. Dr. Borden Lacy, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, USA;
Dr. Rosario Iglesias, University of Valladolid, Spain;
Prof. Dr. Mandar Jog, University of Western, Canada;
Prof. Dr. Alfonso Fasano, University of Toronto, Canada;
Prof. Dr. Jun Chen, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Science, China;
Dr. Ken Teter, University of Central Florida, USA;
Dr. Jacob Galan, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, USA;
Prof. Dr. Eric Oswald, Toulouse University Hospital, France;
Dr. Imourana Alassane-Kpembi, Université de Montréal, Canada;
Dr. Nolwenn Hymery, Université de Brest, France;
Prof. Dr. Ana Juan-Garcí, University of Valencia, Spain;
Prof. Dr. András Székács, National Agricultural Research and Innovation Centre, Hungary;
Dr. Mark McClain, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, USA;
Prof. Dr. Jang-Seu Ki, Sangmyung University, Korea;
Dr. Marie-Yasmine Dechraoui Bottein, University of Copenhagen, Denmark;
Dr. Shupeng Yang, Institute of Apicultural Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China.
10 September 2021
Recruiting Volunteer Reviewers for Toxins
Toxins has recently been receiving an increasing number of interesting paper submissions. We would like to invite you to review manuscripts for Toxins (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/toxins).
Volunteer reviewers of Toxins will enjoy the following benefits:
- All reviewers will receive a personalized review confirmation certificate in appreciation of their efforts;
- All reviewers will be considered for the outstanding reviewer award granted annually by the Toxins Editorial Board and Editorial Team, to gratefully acknowledge the work they have done;
- Those reviewers who provide timely, thorough, and rigorous peer review reports will receive a discount voucher that can be applied to their future publications in any MDPI journal;
- All reviewers will be included in the journal’s annual reviewer acknowledgements;
- Proactive and cooperative volunteer reviewers may be offered the opportunity to join the Editorial Board of the journal (subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief);
- All reviewers can build their profile on Publons and have their reviewing activity automatically added for participating journals.
If you are interested in joining us as a volunteer reviewer, please click on the link below to apply:
https://susy.mdpi.com/volunteer_reviewer_info/update.
After your registration has been approved, you will be able to see a list of manuscripts that are recruiting reviewers.
If you have any other questions, please contact the Toxins Editorial Office ([email protected]). We look forward to hearing from you.
3 August 2021
Announcement on Japanese Consumption Tax (JCT)
This serves to announce to our valued authors based in Japan that value-added tax, or consumption tax will now be imposed on article processing fees and other service fees for all papers submitted, or resubmitted (assigned new paper IDs), effective from 15 August 2021. The change is in accordance with the Japanese "Act for Partial Revision of the Income Tax Act and Other Acts" (Act No. 9 of 2015), which includes a revision of consumption taxation on cross-border supplies of services such as digital content distribution.
For additional information from the National Tax Agency please see here ("Cross-border supplies of electronic services").
Contact: Setsuko Nishihara, MDPI Tokyo
30 June 2021
2020 Impact Factors - Released
The 2020 citation metrics have been officially released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR)!
We are pleased to announce that 85 MDPI journals are included, of which:
- 10 journals received their first impact factor
- 96% of journals increased their impact factor from 2019
- 32 journals (38%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category
Journal | Impact Factor | Rank | Category |
Cancers | 6.639 | Q1 | • Oncology |
Cells | 6.600 | Q2 | • Cell Biology |
Pharmaceutics | 6.321 | Q1 | • Pharmacology & Pharmacy |
Antioxidants | 6.313 | Q1 | • Food Science & Technology |
• Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | |||
• Chemistry, Medicinal | |||
Biomedicines | 6.081 | Q1 | • Medicine, Research & Experimental |
• Pharmacology & Pharmacy | |||
• Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | |||
International Journal of Molecular Sciences | 5.924 | Q1 | • Biochemistry & Molecular Biology |
Q2 | • Chemistry, Multidisciplinary | ||
Pharmaceuticals | 5.863 | Q1 | • Pharmacology & Pharmacy |
• Chemistry, Medicinal | |||
Journal of Fungi | 5.816 | Q1 | • Mycology |
• Microbiology | |||
Nutrients | 5.719 | Q1 | • Nutrition & Dietetics |
Biosensors | 5.519 | Q1 | • Chemistry, Analytical |
• Instruments & Instrumentation | |||
Q2 | • Nanoscience & Nanotechnology | ||
Marine Drugs | 5.118 | Q1 | • Chemistry, Medicinal |
• Pharmacology & Pharmacy | |||
Biology | 5.079 | Q1 | • Biology |
Nanomaterials | 5.076 | Q1 | • Physics, Applied |
Q2 | • Chemistry, Multidisciplinary | ||
• Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | |||
• Nanoscience & Nanotechnology | |||
Viruses | 5.048 | Q2 | • Virology |
Journal of Personalized Medicine | 4.945 | Q1 | • Medicine, General & Internal |
• Health Care Sciences & Services | |||
Metabolites | 4.932 | Q2 | • Biochemistry & Molecular Biology |
Biomolecules | 4.879 | Q2 | • Biochemistry & Molecular Biology |
Remote Sensing | 4.848 | Q1 | • Geosciences, Multidisciplinary |
Q2 | • Remote Sensing | ||
• Imaging Science & Photographic Technology | |||
• Environmental Sciences | |||
Gels * | 4.702 | Q1 | • Polymer Science |
Antibiotics | 4.639 | Q2 | • Infectious Diseases |
• Pharmacology & Pharmacy | |||
Toxins | 4.546 | Q1 | • Toxicology |
• Food Science & Technology | |||
Vaccines | 4.422 | Q2 | • Immunology |
• Medicine, Research & Experimental | |||
Molecules | 4.412 | Q2 | • Chemistry, Multidisciplinary |
• Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | |||
Foods | 4.350 | Q2 | • Food Science & Technology |
Polymers | 4.329 | Q1 | • Polymer Science |
Journal of Clinical Medicine | 4.242 | Q1 | • Medicine, General & Internal |
Toxics | 4.146 | Q2 | • Toxicology |
• Environmental Sciences | |||
Catalysts | 4.146 | Q2 | • Chemistry, Physical |
Microorganisms | 4.128 | Q2 | • Microbiology |
Membranes | 4.106 | Q1 | • Polymer Science |
Q2 | • Engineering, Chemical | ||
• Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | |||
• Chemistry, Physical | |||
Genes | 4.096 | Q2 | • Genetics & Heredity |
Fermentation * | 3.975 | Q2 | • Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology |
Journal of Cardiovascular Development and Disease * | 3.948 | Q2 | • Cardiac & Cardiovascular Systems |
Plants | 3.935 | Q1 | • Plant Sciences |
Life | 3.817 | Q2 | • Biology |
Diagnostics | 3.706 | Q2 | • Medicine, General & Internal |
Current Oncology | 3.677 | Q3 | • Oncology |
Materials | 3.623 | Q1 | • Metallurgy & Metallurgical Engineering |
Q2 | • Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | ||
• Chemistry, Physical | |||
• Physics, Applied | |||
• Physics, Condensed Matter | |||
Sensors | 3.576 | Q1 | • Instruments & Instrumentation |
Q2 | • Chemistry, Analytical | ||
• Engineering, Electrical & Electronic | |||
Pathogens | 3.492 | Q2 | • Microbiology |
Agronomy | 3.417 | Q1 | • Agronomy |
• Plant Sciences | |||
Chemosensors | 3.398 | Q2 | • Instruments & Instrumentation |
• Chemistry, Analytical | |||
Q3 | • Electrochemistry | ||
Land | 3.398 | Q2 | • Environmental Studies |
Brain Sciences | 3.394 | Q3 | • Neurosciences |
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health | 3.390 | Q1 | • Public, Environmental & Occupational Health (SSCI) |
Q2 | • Public, Environmental & Occupational Health (SCIE) | ||
• Environmental Sciences (SCIE) | |||
Tomography | 3.358 | Q2 | • Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging |
Fractal and Fractional * | 3.313 | Q1 | • Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications |
Sustainability | 3.251 | Q2 | • Environmental Sciences (SCIE) |
• Environmental Studies (SSCI) | |||
Q3 | • Green & Sustainable Science & Technology (SCIE) | ||
• Green & Sustainable Science & Technology (SSCI) | |||
Water | 3.103 | Q2 | • Water Resources |
• Environmental Sciences | |||
Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research | 3.049 | Q3 | • Business |
Energies | 3.004 | Q3 | • Energy & Fuels |
Agriculture | 2.925 | Q1 | • Agronomy |
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information | 2.899 | Q2 | • Geography, Physical |
• Computer Science, Information Systems | |||
Q3 | • Remote Sensing | ||
Micromachines | 2.891 | Q2 | • Instruments & Instrumentation |
• Physics, Applied | |||
Q3 | • Chemistry, Analytical | ||
• Nanoscience & Nanotechnology | |||
Coatings | 2.881 | Q2 | • Materials Science, Coatings & Films |
• Physics, Applied | |||
Q3 | • Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | ||
Children | 2.863 | Q2 | • Pediatrics |
Processes | 2.847 | Q3 | • Engineering, Chemical |
Separations | 2.777 | Q3 | • Chemistry, Analytical |
Insects | 2.769 | Q1 | • Entomology |
Animals | 2.752 | Q1 | • Agriculture, Dairy & Animal Science |
• Veterinary Sciences | |||
Symmetry | 2.713 | Q2 | • Multidisciplinary Sciences |
Atmosphere | 2.686 | Q3 | • Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences |
• Environmental Sciences | |||
Applied Sciences | 2.679 | Q2 | • Engineering, Multidisciplinary |
• Physics, Applied | |||
Q3 | • Chemistry, Multidisciplinary | ||
• Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | |||
Photonics | 2.676 | Q2 | • Optics |
Buildings * | 2.648 | Q2 | • Construction & Building Technology |
• Engineering, Civil | |||
Healthcare | 2.645 | Q2 | • Health Policy & Services (SSCI) |
Q3 | • Health Care Sciences & Services (SCIE) | ||
Minerals | 2.644 | Q2 | • Mining & Mineral Processing |
• Mineralogy | |||
• Geochemistry & Geophysics | |||
Forests | 2.634 | Q1 | • Forestry |
Crystals | 2.589 | Q2 | • Crystallography |
Q3 | • Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | ||
Entropy | 2.524 | Q2 | • Physics, Multidisciplinary |
Diversity | 2.465 | Q2 | • Biodiversity Conservation |
Q3 | • Ecology | ||
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering | 2.458 | Q2 | • Oceanography |
• Engineering, Marine | |||
• Engineering, Ocean | |||
Medicina | 2.430 | Q2 | • Medicine, General & Internal |
Machines * | 2.428 | Q2 | • Engineering, Mechanical |
Q3 | • Engineering, Electrical & Electronic | ||
Electronics | 2.397 | Q3 | • Engineering, Electrical & Electronic |
• Computer Science, Information Systems | |||
• Physics, Applied | |||
Fishes * | 2.385 | Q2 | • Fisheries |
• Marine & Freshwater Biology | |||
Metals | 2.351 | Q2 | • Metallurgy & Metallurgical Engineering |
Q3 | • Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | ||
Horticulturae * | 2.331 | Q1 | • Horticulture |
Veterinary Sciences * | 2.304 | Q1 | • Veterinary Sciences |
Universe | 2.278 | Q3 | • Physics, Particles & Fields |
• Astronomy & Astrophysics | |||
Mathematics | 2.258 | Q1 | • Mathematics |
Magnetochemistry | 2.193 | Q3 | • Chemistry, Inorganic & Nuclear |
• Chemistry, Physical | |||
• Materials Science, Multidisciplinary | |||
Current Issues in Molecular Biology | 2.081 | Q4 | • Biochemistry & Molecular Biology |
Actuators | 1.994 | Q3 | • Instruments & Instrumentation |
• Engineering, Mechanical | |||
Aerospace * | 1.659 | Q2 | • Engineering, Aerospace |
* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2021
Source: 2020 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ® (Clarivate, 2021)
15 June 2021
Toxins | 2020 Young Investigator Award—Winner Announced
Dear Colleagues,
As Editor-in-Chief of Toxins, I am pleased to announce that the following applicant has been selected as the winner of the Toxins 2020 Young Investigator Award.
Dr. Andreas Hougaard Laustsen
Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
With so many high-quality applicants, the evaluation process and final decision were challenging. We would like to thank all the applicants for submitting their fascinating range of research topics. On behalf of the Assessment Committee, I congratulate the winner on his accomplishment.
Prof. Dr. Jay W. Fox
Editor-in-Chief, Toxins
On behalf of the Toxins 2020 Young Investigator Award Evaluation Committee
21 May 2021
Toxins | “Biotoxin Research” Youth Forum, 9–11 June 2021, Beijing, China
Biotoxins seriously threaten human and animal health, and are directly related to food safety. It has been a research hotspot in the fields of agriculture, food and public health. In order to strengthen China’s biotoxin research, especially academic exchanges among young researchers, the "Biotoxin Research" Youth Forum will be held from June 9–11 in Beijing, China.
1. Conference topics
The meeting will be organized around the following three topics:
1.1. Detection, Monitoring and Early Warning of Biotoxins (Convenors: Qi Zhang and Wentao Xu)
1.2. Toxicological Evaluation and Risk Assessment of Biotoxins (Convenors: Xiulan Sun and Meng Wang)
1.3. Safety Control of Biotoxins (Convenors: Fuguo Xing and Peilong Wang)
2. Conference Organization
Organizer:
National Science and Technology Innovation Alliance for Mycotoxin Prevention and Control
Institute of Food Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Oil Crops Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Participation Unit:
Toxins (MDPI)
Beijing Meizheng Biotechnology Group
Shanghai Yirou Information Technology Co., Ltd. (Continuous update...)
Main sponsor:
Mars Global Food Safety Center, Beijing Qinbang Biotechnology, Beijing Zhongjian Baotai, Qingdao Pribolab, Agilent Technologies, Shanghai Xiongtu Biotechnology, Hebei Elisa (Continuous update...)
3. Academic Advisory Committee
Director: Peiwu Li (Academician)
Deputy Director: Fengzhong Wang (Director)
Committee: Yongning Wu, Shuo Wang, Zhixian Gao, Shiping Tian, Ying Chen, Zhonghua Ma, Yang Liu, Changpo Sun, Jianrong Shi and Aibo Wu
4. Youth Academic Committee (in alphabetical order)
Boqiang Li, Erqi Guan, Fei Shen, Fuguo Xing, Hongyin Zhang, Jianhong Xu, Jin Mao, Jun Tian, Liangbin Hu, Meng Wang, Qi Zhang, Qiugang Ma, Xiaolin Zhang, Xiulan Sun, Wentao Xu, Wei Guo, Wei Wang, Yan Wang, Yueju Zhao and Zhongjie Zhang
5. Organizing Committee
Aibo Wu, Qi Zhang, Fuguo Xing, Meng Wang, Peilong Wang, Wentao Xu, Wei Guo, Mengning Ren, Yanjia Wen, Gang Wang, Jing Jin, Xu Li, Bolei Yang, Junning Ma and Bowen Tai
6. Schedule
- 9 June 2021
All day: Conference registration, exhibitions set up
- 10 June 2021
Morning:
Opening ceremony
Leader's speech:
- Fengzhong Wang (director)
- Leader of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs
Expert report:
- Peiwu Li (Academician, Invited)—(45 min)
- Shiping Tian (Professor) Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences—(25 min)
- Zhonghua Ma (Professor), College of Agriculture and Biotechnology, Zhejiang University—(25 min)
- Ren Lai (Professor), Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences—(25 min)
- Jinglin Wang (Professor) Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, Academy of Military Medical Sciences—(25 min)
Afternoon:
Expert report:
- Aibo Wu (Professor) Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences—(25 min)
- Yang Liu (Professor), School of Food Science and Engineering, Foshan University of Science and Technology—(25 min)
- Changpo Sun (Professor) Standard Quality Center, National Grain and Material Reserve Bureau—(25 min)
- Jianrong Shi (Professor) Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences
- Hongyin Zhang (Professor) School of Food and Bioengineering, Jiangsu University
To be continued...
- 11 June 2021
Session Report
Morning:
Topic 1: Rapid Detection of Biotoxins
Topic 2: Toxicity Evaluation of Biotoxins
Topic 3: Comprehensive Prevention and Control of Biotoxins
Afternoon:
Topic 4: Biotoxins Monitoring and Early Warning
Topic 5: Risk Assessment of Biotoxins
Topic 6: Safe Detoxification of Biotoxins
7. Contacts
Academic Contact:
Fuguo Xing 010-62811868, 15801607126
Gang Wang 010-62819472, 15501150911
Jing Jin 010-62819472, 15210682859
Bowen Tai 010-62819472, 13269858921
Chenxi Zhang 010-62819472, 15701575736
Email: [email protected]
Exhibitor Contact:
Xu Li 010-62819472,13811976783
Bolei Yang 010-62819472, 18519373787
Mailing address: Institute of Food Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, No. 2, Yuanmingyuan West Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100193, China
Email: [email protected]
Preparatory Group for the Youth Forum on Biotoxin Research
6 May 2021
Toxins | 2021 Travel Award—Winners Announced
Dear Colleagues,
As Editor-in-Chief of Toxins, I am pleased to announce that the following three applicants have been selected as the winners of the Toxins 2021 Travel Award.
- Cecilie Knudsen
A Ph.D. student at the Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
- Laura Biessy
A Ph.D. student at the Cawthron Institute, New Zealand
- Marcelo Mendes Rabelo
A postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida, USA
With so many high-quality applicants, the evaluation process and final decision were challenging. We would like to thank all the applicants for submitting their fascinating range of research topics. On behalf of the assessment committee, I congratulate the winners on their accomplishments.
Prof. Dr. Jay W. Fox
Editor-in-Chief, Toxins
On behalf of the Toxins 2021 Travel Awards Evaluation Committee
29 April 2021
Congratulations to Best Speaker Award Winners at the 7th Venoms to Drugs Conference, Daydream Island, Whitsunday, 2021 (Sponsored by Toxins)
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate the winners of the Best Speaker Award, Benjamin J. Tombling and Nisharnthi M. Duggan, at the 7th Venoms to Drugs Conference.
See the image of the awardees below (from left to right): Glenn King (Program Committee), Nisharnthi M. Duggan from Richard Payne’s lab at the University of Sydney (Best Speaker Award Winner), Paul Alewood (Convenor), Benjamin J. Tombling from David Craik’s lab at the University of Queensland (Best Speaker Award Winner), and Richard Lewis (Program Committee).
Here are the titles and abstracts of their work:
To Affinity and Beyond: Engineering Sub-optimal Peptide Drug leads Using Bioactive Cyclisation
Benjamin J. Tombling
Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Innovations in Peptide and Protein Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld 4072, Australia
Peptides are regarded as promising next-generation therapeutics. However, to facilitate the translation of bioactive peptides into the clinic, optimisation strategies are almost always required. Peptide cyclisation strategies have been used to improve the drug-like properties of linear peptides. Until now, the primary focus has been on the use of ‘inert’ peptide linkers with respect to a biological target. Here, we show that affinity can be significantly improved by enriching the linker with functional amino acids, a concept termed bioactive cyclisation. We engineered a peptide inhibitor of PCSK9, a target for the clinical management of hypercholesterolemia, to demonstrate this concept. The identification of an optimised cyclisation linker from library screening produced a cyclic peptide with 100-fold improved affinity over the sub-optimal parent peptide. Furthermore, the cyclic peptide efficiently restores cholesterol metabolism in functional human liver cell assays, demonstrating a clear relationship between affinity and efficacy. The combination of thermodynamic binding analysis, SAR, NMR and MD studies confirmed the cyclisation linker forms favourable interactions with PCSK9, which are responsible for enhanced activity. A comprehensive analysis of bioactive peptides suggests many have underdeveloped affinities and we propose that implementing bioactive cyclisation linkers is a valuable addition to the armamentarium of peptide optimisation tools. This work was recently published in Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (DOI: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.0c01766)
Brief Introduction of Benjamin J. Tombling: Benjamin completed his undergraduate studies in chemistry at The University Edinburgh before moving to Brisbane, Australia, where he recently finished his PhD under the supervision of Dr Conan Wang and Professor David Craik at The University of Queensland. His research has focused on establishing a platform of technologies to enhance the drug-like properties of underdeveloped peptide drugs leads, predominately for the development of inhibitors of PCSK9—a validated therapeutic target for the clinical management of hypercholesterolemia. However, a major incentive behind his work is that the strategies developed have the potential to be broadly applied throughout peptide drug design, including the engineering of toxin-derived peptides. Outside of the lab, he has a keen interest for watching and playing a variety of sports, and he enjoys spending time at the beach and cooking up a BBQ, taking advantage of the sunny days that Australia has to offer.
Total Chemical Synthesis of Venom and Salivary Proteins via Ligation Technologies
Nisharnthi M. Duggan, Sameer S. Kulkarni, Timothy S. Chisholm, Emma E. Watson and
Richard J. Payne
School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, NSW, Australia
The therapeutic potential of venom polypeptides and proteins is well recognised, with several venoms and venom-derived molecules approved for clinical use [1]. This has led to a significant demand for technologies to rapidly and efficiently access these biomolecules, especially when production through recombinant expression is low yielding, or for those bearing functionally important post-translational modifications (PTMs) [2]. We have developed a range of ligation technologies that enable the rapid chemical synthesis of peptides and proteins, with or without PTMs [3]. This talk will highlight the use of solid phase peptide synthesis and native chemical ligation in the synthesis of neuroprotective, cysteine-knot, funnel-web spider venom-derived peptide Hi1a, as well as the optimisation of oxidative folding [4]. A more recently developed methodology is the diselenide-selenoester ligation reaction [5,6]. This technology enables the fusion of peptide fragments with unprecedented kinetics and can be coupled with in situ deselenisation chemistry to afford native polypeptides and proteins [6,7]. The power of the DSL methodology will be highlighted via two examples: 1) the one-pot synthesis of anti-thrombotic salivary protein thrombostasin and 2) the total synthesis of a library of modified anti-thrombotic sulfoproteins, each of which could be assembled, purified and quantified for a bioassay within a few hours [8].
- King, G. F. Expert Opin Biol Ther. 2011, 11, 1469-1484.
- Kulkarni, S. et al. Nature Rev. Chem. 2018, 2, 0122.
- Thompson, R. E. et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2014, 136, 8161-8164.
- King, G. F. et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2016, 114, 3750-3755.
- Mitchell, N. J. et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2015, 137, 14011-14014.
- Kulkarni, S. et al. Nature Protocols, 2019, 14, 2229-2257.
- Mitchell, N. J. et al. Chem. 2017, 2(5), 703-715.
- Watson, E. E. et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 2019, 16, 13873-13878.
Brief Introduction of Nisharnthi M. Duggan: Nisha is a PhD candidate at The University of Sydney, working for Professor Richard Payne in the area of organic chemistry and chemical biology. She graduated from Monash University in 2016 with a Bachelor of Science (Advanced, Hons I), including an honors research project focusing on synthetic methodology with Professor David Lupton. In 2017, Nisha took a break from her studies to undertake research at the ANU with Professor Michael Sherburn, and then briefly worked as an experimental scientist at CSIRO in Melbourne before moving to Sydney to commence her PhD in 2018. Throughout her PhD, Nisha has worked on the synthesis of venom and salivary peptides that may be used to treat stroke and thrombotic disease.
28 April 2021
Book Builder—Compile a Customized E-Book from Your Favorite MDPI Open Access Content
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.
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)
15 April 2021
MDPI Celebrates Company Milestone With 25th Anniversary Page
"We exist to help scientists achieve their own objectives"

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.
31 March 2021
Welcoming New Members to the Editorial Board of Toxins
We welcome the following 34 recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Toxins:
Prof. Dr. Matthew P. Rowe, University of Oklahoma, USA
Dr. Siro Luvisetto, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (IBBC), National Research Council (CNR) of Italy, Italy
Dr. Juan C. Blanco, Marine Research Centre (CIMA), Spain
Prof. Dr. Christine Edwards, Robert Gordon University, UK
Dr. Lorena Tuchscherr, Institute of Medical Microbiology, Germany
Dr. Antonia Susca, Institute of Science of Food Production (ISPA), National Research Council (CNR), Italy
Dr. Houda Berrada Ramdani, Universitat de València (UV), Spain
Dr. Alicia Rodríguez, University of Extremadura, Spain
Prof. Federica Cheli, Coordinating Research Centres (CRC) – Innovation for well-being and Environment (I-WE) - Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
Dr. Zbigniew Adamski, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland
Prof. Dr. Sophie Liabeuf, UPJV University, France
Dr. Francesco Giansanti, University of L’Aquila, Italy
Dr. Massimo Bortolotti, Alma Mater Studiorum—University of Bologna, Italy
Dr. Emiko Sato, Tohoku University, Japan
Prof. Dr. Andrea Bolognesi, University of Bologna, Italy
Dr. Fabrizio Anniballi, Department of Food Safety, Nutrition and Veterinary Public Health, Italy
Dr. Bruno Goud, Department of Cell Biology and Cancer (UMR CNRS 144), Institut Curie, France
Dr. Laurent Marsollier, French Institute of Health and Medical Research, France
Prof. Dr. Antonella Giannantoni, University of Siena, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Santa Maria alle Scotte, Italy
Prof. Dr. Andrea Santamato, Riuniti Hospital, University of Foggia, Italy
Dr. Christina Schroeder, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, USA
Dr. Jeroen Kool, Division of BioAnalytical Chemistry, Amsterdam Institute of Molecular and Life Sciences, The Netherlands
Dr. Sandra Sousa, Institute for Molecular and Cell Biology, Portugal
Dr. Florence Richard-Forget, INRAE, UR 1264 MycSA Mycologie et Sécurité des Aliments. Centre de recherche Nouvelle-Aquitaine-Bordeaux, France
Prof. Ren Lai, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Prof. Dr. Ligang Zhou, China Agricultural University, China
Prof. Dr. Yidong Wu, Nanjing Agricultural University, China
Dr. Peter A. Keyel, Texas Tech University, USA
Prof. Dr. Moo-Seung Lee, Korea University of Science and Technology, Korea
Dr. Stéphanie Simon, Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, INRAE, Département Médicaments et Technologies pour la santé, France
Prof. Dr. José Miguel Ferreras, Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Physiology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Valladolid, Spain
Prof. Dr. Lucía Citores, Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Physiology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Valladolid, Spain
Prof. Dr. Sofia N. Chulze, Research Institute on Mycology and Mycotoxicology (IMICO), National Scientific and Technological Research Council from Argentina (CONICET), Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto (UNRC), Argentina
Prof. Dr. Daniel Gillet, Section of Molecular Engineering for Health (SIMoS), JOLIOT, CEA, Université Paris-Saclay, France
Further details about the Editorial Board can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/toxins/editors.
17 March 2021
Toxins | Congratulations to GT-Toxins Award Winner at the 6th German Pharm-Tox Summit, Digital, 2021
The Editorial Team of Toxins would like to congratulate the winner of the GT-Toxins Award, Katharina Sessler, at the 6th German Pharm-Tox Summit.
Here is the title and abstract of her work:
The Enzyme Subunit SubA of Shiga Toxin-Producing E. coli Strains Demonstrates Comparable Intracellular Transport and Cytotoxic Activity as the Holotoxin SubAB
K. Sessler 1, P. Papatheodorou 1, F. Wondany 2, M. Krause 3, S. Noettger 1, D. Bernhard 3, J. Michaelis 2, H. Schmidt 3, H. Barth 11 University Ulm Medical Center, Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Ulm, Germany
2 University Ulm, Institute of Biophysics, Ulm, Germany
3 University of Hohenheim, Institute of Food Science and Biotechnology, Hohenheim, Germany
Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) strains are bacterial pathogens, which are mainly found in the gastrointestinal tract of farm and wildlife animals. The bacteria can be transmitted to humans via food and causes diarrheal and extraintestinal diseases. In addition to the Shiga toxin, some STEC strains also produce a second toxin, namely the subtilase cytotoxin (SubAB) [1]. SubAB belongs to the family of AB5 toxins, consisting of an enzymatically active A subunit (SubA) and separate B subunits (SubB), which mediate cell binding and uptake of SubAB. Inside the host cell, SubAB is transported via a retrograde pathway into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), where it cleaves the glucose-regulated protein GRP78. SubAB-induced GRP78 cleavage activates a cellular stress response eventually resulting in cell death [1]. We previously demonstrated that SubA, without SubB, binds and intoxicates HeLa cells [2], whereas the cellular and molecular mechanisms behind this remained unclear. In the present study, we found that even in the absence of SubB, SubA is internalized into cells, reaches the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and cleaves the chaperone GRP78. Furthermore, SubA-induced GRP78 cleavage in cells is prevented by the pre-treatment of cells with brefeldin A (BFA), which inhibits the transport of protein toxins into the ER. Obviously, SubA contains a yet undescribed ER localization signal, predicted by the software scanProsite™ as a SEEL motif at the C-terminus. Hence, a SubA mutant, lacking the SEEL motif (SubAΔC344), was generated, which exhibited no cytotoxicity alone, but only together with SubB, when tested on HeLa and HCT116 cells. Fluorescence microscopy revealed that SubAΔC344 is generally taken up into cells, but further investigations regarding substrate cleavage have shown that SubAΔC344-induced GRP78 cleavage was delayed when compared to wildtype SubA. We therefore assume that the SEEL motif plays a crucial role in guiding SubA into the ER [3]. Furthermore, we confirmed our findings in the human intestinal mini-gut organoid system. Our results not only contribute to a better understanding of the mode of action of the subtilase cytotoxin, but also raise the question whether a B component-independent cytotoxic effect of the A component is also true for other bacterial AB5 toxins.
- Paton AW et al. (2010), Toxins (Basel) 2(2):215–228.
- Funk J et al. (2015), Infect Immun 83(6):2338–2349.
- Sessler K et al. (2021); Arch. Toxicol. (in press)
10 March 2021
Journal Selector: Helping to Find the Right MDPI Journal for Your Article
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)
5 March 2021
Toxins | 2020 Outstanding Reviewer Award—Winners Announced
We are pleased to announce the winners of the Toxins 2020 Outstanding Reviewer Award. The Toxins Editorial Board and Editorial Team would like to gratefully acknowledge the time and energy dedicated by reviewers to checking the manuscripts submitted to Toxins. It is due to their efforts that the high quality of the journal and quick turnaround is maintained.
The following awardees have been selected by the Editor-in-Chief of Toxins, Prof. Dr. Jay W. Fox. Each of them will receive a customized gift and a certificate to recognize their outstanding work:
Dr. Kirill S. Antonets
Affiliation: Laboratory for Proteomics of Supra-Organismal Systems, All-Russia Research Institute for Agricultural Microbiology (ARRIAM), Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Faculty of Biology, St. Petersburg State University (SPbSU), Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Research Interests: bioinformatics; structural biology; bacterial genomics; transcriptomics; molecular biology of host–pathogen interactions
"I would like to thank the Toxins Editorial Board for this Award and for their efforts in providing fast, convenient and transparent processing of manuscripts and reviews."
Dr. Alberto Rico-Yuste
Affiliation: Department of Analytical Chemistry, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
Research Interests: molecular imprinted polymers; optical chemosensors; food analysis; mycotoxins; spectroscopy; fluorescence
“First of all, I would like to thank the committee for considering me worthy of this award. I consider that reviewing articles is an important part of scientific work.At the same time that it helps to improve the quality of the journals and of the articles that appear in them, it allows to increase the critical capacity of the reviewer. In addition, it is a way to learn and broaden one's knowledge. The publication of an article is the result of a lot of work and I believe that it is everyone's job that their contribution to the scientific society has more weight. That is why I must also thank my mentors for instilling in me the importance of carrying out this type of review with great professionalism and thoroughness.”
For more information about Toxins awards, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/toxins/awards.
24 December 2020
Welcoming New Members to the Editorial Board of Toxins
It is our pleasure to welcome the following 3 recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Toxins:
Prof. Dr. Aibo Wu
CAS Key Laboratory of Nutrition, Metabolism and Food Safety, Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Interests: mycotoxins; microbial molecular biology; fungal biology; molecular microbiology
Prof. Dr. Michael Richardson
Institute of Biology Leiden, Leiden University
Interests: evo-devo; reptiles; evolution; chick embryo
Prof. Dr. Yukako Fujinaga
Department of Bacteriology, Kanazawa University
Interests: Clostridium botulinum; botulinum toxin; clostridial neurotoxins
We look forward to their contributions to the journal.
15 December 2020
MDPI adopts C4DISC principles to improve diversity and inclusion in scholarly communications
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.
14 December 2020
Article Layout and Templates Revised for Future Volumes
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.
11 December 2020
2020 "Highly Cited Researchers" on MDPI Journal's Editorial Boards
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. |
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.
19 November 2020
Toxins Series Webinars: Join us for our two webinars on November 26th and 27th

In this webinar, we will present some examples of fungal phytotoxins that could be used as potential bioherbicides and of phytotoxins produced by pathogenic fungi of agrarian plants. Furthermore, the importance of the absolute configuration assignment and the main methodology used for its determination will be presented as well as some examples of their total synthesis.
Chair: Marco Masi
Date: 26th November 2020
Time: 1:00pm CET | 6:00am CST
Webinar ID: 984 7644 1392
Register for Free Here: https://sciforum.net/conference/Toxins-1
This webinar will project the SDGs of Agenda 2030 by presenting some examples of natural antioxidants present in food that can alleviate the effects of mycotoxins in vitro, the study of the increased presence of mycotoxins in wheat associated with climate change, and the results obtained in biomonitoring mycotoxins in children’s urine.
Date: 27 November 2020
Time: 9:00am CET | 2:00am CST | 4:00pm UTC+8
Chair: Ana Juan- García
Webinar ID: 886 5296 8196
Register for Free Here: https://sciforum.net/conference/Toxins-2
For any questions about the webinar, please send an email to [email protected]
28 September 2020
Welcoming New Members to the Editorial Board of Toxins
We welcome the following 7 recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Toxins:
Dr. Shinichiro Kurosawa, Boston University School of Medicine, USA
Prof. Dr. Somshuvra Mukhopadhyay, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Prof. Dr. Philippe Guerre, Université de Toulouse, France
Prof. Dr. Ketan Patel, University of Reading, United Kingdom
Prof. Dr. Ketan Patel, University of Reading, United Kingdom
Dr. Thérèse Malliavin, Institut Pasteur and CNRS UMR 3528, Unité de Bioinformatique Structurale, France
Dr. Félix Núñez, Universidad de Extremadura, Unité de Bioinformatique Structurale, Spain
We look forward to their contributions to the journal.
Toxins Editorial Office
9 July 2020
Open Access Agreement Between Jisc Collections and MDPI
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].
29 June 2020
Updated Impact Factors Released in the Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate)
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®.
1 June 2020
Congratulations to Best Poster Award Winner at the 5th German Pharm-Tox Summit, Leipzig, Germany, 2020 (Sponsored by Toxins)
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate the winner of the Best Poster Award, Daniel Henkel, at the 5th German Pharm-Tox Summit.
Here are the title and abstract of his work:
Evaluation of Chondroitin Sulfate Proteoglycan-4 and Frizzled-1,2,7 for Cytopathic and Cytotoxic Effects of TcdB from Historic and Hypervirulent Clostridioides difficile Strains
Daniel Henkel 1, Helma Tatge 1, Dennis Schoettelndreier 1, Liang Tao 2,3, Min Dong 2 and
Ralf Gerhard 1
1 Institute of Toxicology, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany
2 Department of Urology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
3 Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Westlake Institute for Advanced Study, Westlake University, Hangzhou, China;
Clostridioides difficile is a gram-positive and spore-forming bacterium that is the main cause of nosocomial, antibiotic-induced diarrhea. The clinical symptoms are caused by two exotoxins that are released by C. difficile (TcdA and TcdB). Both toxins are 300 kDa sized glucosyltransferases that inactivate small intracellular Rho-GTPases by mono-glucosylation. This leads to the destruction of the organisation of the actin cytoskeleton and to the rounding of the cells. This drastic morphological change is a valid and safe method to detect the activity of the toxins.
In order to enter the cells, the toxins first bind to their receptors on the cell surfaces, whereupon they are taken up into the cells by receptor-mediated endocytosis. So far, three receptors have been identified for the main virulence factor TcdB: chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan-4 (CSPG4/NG2), poliovirus receptor like 3 (PVRL3/nectin-3) and the Wnt receptor proteins Frizzled1,2,7 (FZD1,2,7). While the binding regions for CSPG4 and FZD1,2,7 have been identified, the functional binding to PVRL3 and a resulting toxin uptake has not yet been validated. Our investigations, however, show that the contribution of PVRL3 to toxin uptake is negligible.
The CSPG4 and FZD receptor binding domains of TcdB have only been investigated independently from each other, although they are located in close spatial proximity. In our work we have therefore investigated a possible dependence of both receptor binding domains and determined the respective proportion of the receptors on the effect of TcdB. For this purpose, we prepared recombinant TcdB from both the historical strain VPI10463 of Clade I (TcdBVPI) and the hypervirulent strain R20291 of Clade II (TcdBR20). In addition, we have used variants that can no longer bind either to CSPG4 (TcdBΔCROPs), or to FZD1,2,7 (TcdBVPIF1597S) or to either of the two receptors (TcdBVPIΔCROPs F1597S). In addition, we have used HeLa wild-type and HeLa CSPG4-/- cells complementarily in cell rounding assays and cytotoxicity tests. We could show that CSPG4 is the major receptor for both TcdBVPI and TcdBVPI in terms of cytopathic activity, accounting for estimated 70 % and 90 % effect, respectively. Furthermore, CSPG4 mediates almost exclusively the cytotoxic effect in HeLa cells.
In the historical TcdBVPI a phenylalanine (F1597) is essential for binding to FZD1,2,7, which is replaced by a serine in TcdBR20. Consequently, TcdB from the hypervirulent strain does not bind to FZD1,2,7. Against this background, we have prepared the mutant TcdBVPIF1597S, which showed a reduced cytopathic potency identical to that of TcdBR20.
By using toxins that specifically address one of two receptors, and by using HeLa cells, which lack CSPG4 as a receptor, in a complementary approach we evaluated additive function of CSPG4 and FZD1,2,7 for historical TcdBVPI. Both receptor binding sites can independently mediate toxin uptake. Thus, in case of TcdB the two-receptor model means an extension of the target cell spectrum – rather than increased cell specificity. The increased cell specificity is only achieved by the loss of functional FZD binding, as is the case with TcdBR20 from the hypervirulent strain. Our results now allow to attribute the stronger inflammatory effect of the hypervirulent C. difficile strains to the focused effect of TcdBR20 on CSPG4-positive cells, such as immune cells or cells of the enteric nervous system.
13 May 2020
COVID-19 Academic Resources Center

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
6 May 2020
2019 Toxins Young Investigator Award: Winner Announced
2019 Toxins Young Investigator Award
|
Professor Casewell’s research focuses on evolutionary and biomedical aspects of animal toxins. Following the completion of his PhD studies at Bangor University, UK, where he focused on characterising the composition of saw-scaled viper venoms, Nick worked in research and development at an antivenom manufacturing company. Thereafter, he won a research fellowship to investigate the evolution of fish venoms, before moving to Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), UK, in 2014 to take up a faculty position. In 2019, Nick was appointed as Professor of Neglected Tropical Diseases by LSTM, and he also currently holds the position of Wellcome Trust Research Fellow. He has published over 70 papers on animal toxins, and his most notable work relates to understanding the processes that generate toxin variation and how this information can be applied to better inform new treatment strategies for the world’s snakebite victims. |
It was a difficult decision given the number of high-quality applications for the award, and we would like to thank all the applicants from various fields of study for their participation, and all the Award Committee members for their efforts in evaluating the many applications. We congratulate the winner, Prof. Nicholas R Casewell, on his accomplishments. We wish him further success in his career.
For more information about Toxins awards, please visit https://www.mdpi.com/journal/toxins/awards.
6 May 2020
2020 Toxins Travel Award: Winner Announced
We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2020 Travel Award sponsored by MDPI and Toxins. The award was granted to an outstanding young researcher:
2020 Toxins Travel Award
|
Dr. Steve Peigneur is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the lab of Toxicology & Pharmacology at the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium. He has published over 125 articles in peer-reviewed journals. In 2019, he obtained his PhD in Biochemistry at the Federal University of Minas Gerias in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. His research in the field of drug discovery and development mainly focusses on the characterisation of novel ligands for ion channels and receptors, starting from natural sources such as venomous animals and poisonous plants. The aim is to investigate toxins for their therapeutic or insecticidal potential. |
This has certainly been a difficult decision, given the volume of high-quality applications for the awards. We would like to thank all of the applicants for submitting what was collectively such a range of diverse and fascinating research topics and congratulate the winner on his accomplishments.
For more information about Toxins awards, please check: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/toxins/awards
15 April 2020
2019 Toxins Outstanding Reviewer Award: Winner Announced
We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2019 Outstanding Reviewer Award sponsored by MDPI and Toxins. This award was granted to two outstanding reviewers for the quality, timeliness, and volume of their reviews.
2019 Toxins Outstanding Reviewer Award![]() |
Dr. Matthias Koch holds a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry and is Head of the BAM division that focuses on the trace analysis of organic pollutants in food and environmental matrices. His work over the last 20 years has aimed at developing and improving analytical procedures, standardization of methods, and developing reference materials. One of his main research areas in recent years has been the simulation and identification of transformation products, especially for food-related mycotoxins. He authored or co-authored more than 80 peer-reviewed papers. |
2019 Toxins Outstanding Reviewer Award
![]() |
Dr. Sumit Ghosh was awarded his Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from North Dakota State University in the summer of 2012. He then continued his postdoctoral work in the field of Immunology at North Dakota State University, where he investigated the role of B lymphocytes and extracellular matrix components (ECM) components in allergic fungal asthma. He is a Registered Biosafety Professional, Certified Safety Professional l and currently serves on the Publication and Distance Learning Committee of American Biological Safety Association International (ABSA). Additionally, he serves on the editorial board of numerous national and international journals. He is an Environmental Health and Safety Leader with extensive research experience in Biological Safety, OSHA, EPA, DOT regulations, and in-depth knowledge of high-containment labs. He is currently Associate Director of Research Safety/Research Biosafety Officer at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. |
We would like to congratulate the winners and thank them for their dedication and efforts in providing critical feedback to authors and contributing to upholding the standard and integrity of peer review.
For more information about Toxins awards, please check: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/toxins/awards
9 April 2020
Free Open Platforms to Support Academics During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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.
4 April 2020
Congratulations to the Winner of the Toxins Travel Student Award at Venom Week VII, Gainesville, Florid, USA, 2020 (Sponsored by Toxins)
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate the winner of the Toxins Travel Student Award, Roberto Ponce Lopez, at Venom Week VII.
Here are the title and abstract of his work:
Sphingomylinase D-Crotamine Recombinant Fusion Protein as Immunogen for the Production of Antibodies Against Crotamine
Ponce-López, R.1,*, Olvera-Rodríguez, A.1, Borja-Jiménez, M.2, Neri-Castro, E.1, Olvera-Rodríguez, L.1, Alagón, A.1
1 Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Cuernavaca, Morelos, México; [email protected] (P.-L.R.)
2 Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Juárez del Estado de Durango, Gómez Palacio, Durango, México
Background: Crotoxin (molecular weight (MW): ~24 kDa) and crotamine (MW: ~5 kDa) are two of the most studied neurotoxic components found in several rattlesnake venoms (Crotalus spp.). The former compound is well neutralized by antivenoms, whereas the latter is well known for its spastic paralysis symptom provoked in mice with no evidence of neutralization. Recently, it was reported that crotamine is the major toxin found in some neonate and juvenile Mexican rattlesnake venoms such as Crotalus molossus nigrescens (~50%). Currently, the available Mexican pit viper antivenoms neither recognize nor neutralize crotamine from C. m. nigrescens, possibly explained by its low immunogenicity due to its low molecular weight. Sphingomyelinase D (SMD) is a highly immunogenic enzyme (MW: ~30 kDa) found in Loxosceles spp. spider venom. To increase immunogenicity of a low molecular weight toxin, we hypothesized that our novel recombinant fusion protein, composed of crotamine from C. m. nigrescens and sphingomyelinase D from L. reclusa used as carrier, will contribute significantly to the generation of neutralizing antibodies against crotamine, preventing its spastic paralysis and lethality.
Methods: Crotamine cDNA was synthetized from the venom gland mRNA of a C. m. nigrescens individual from Mexico, and one plasmid containing L. reclusa SMD was available in the laboratory. By standard genetic engineering procedures, we cloned in tandem sphingomyelinase D and one crotamine isoform into the expression vector pQE30. This fusion protein was expressed in Origami Escherichia coli. Using the recombinant protein, we performed immunization protocols in rabbits and, during the scheme, we measured ELISA antibody titers to purified crotamine from C. m. nigrescens venom.
Results: The fusion protein was obtained at 3 mg/L of bacterial culture with the expected 37.5 kDa molecular mass as analyzed by SDS-PAGE and Western blot analysis. The fusion protein was lethal in mice (LD50 = 2.8 μg/g weight of mice) showing no effects of spastic paralysis. Based on ELISA and Western blot, serum samples of immunized rabbits reacted to crotamine.
Discussion/Conclusion: The SMD–crotamine fusion protein used as immunogen generates antibodies that recognize crotamine. We are using pre-incubation experiments to analyze the neutralization ability of antibodies to prevent spastic paralysis and lethality from crotamine in mice.
Keywords: crotamine; sphingomyelinase-d; molecular-carrier; recombinant-protein
Acknowledgment: Fordecyt 303045.
25 March 2020
MDPI Comment on the COVID-19 Virus
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.
18 March 2020
MDPI Co-Signed Position Statement on Transformative Agreements
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
16 March 2020
Encyclopedia Outstanding Contributor Awards 2020 - Open for Application
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
- An official certificate;
- 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
- Have a Ph.D. degree;
- Have more than three qualified entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020.
Evaluation Standards
- Number of entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020;
- Quality of entries online (including length, figure quality, and novelty);
- 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.
25 December 2019
Congratulations to the Winners of the Best Poster Award and the Best Oral Communication Award at the 26th Meeting of the French Society of Toxinology (SFET), Paris, France, 2019 (Sponsored by Toxins)
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate the winner of the Best Poster Award, Ludivine LOPEZ, and the Best Oral Communication Award, Geoffrey MASUYER, at the 26th Meeting of the French Society of Toxinology (SFET).
Here are the titles and abstracts of their work:
Title: High-Throughput Screening of Venom for Identification of Active Compound in Ion Channels
Author: Ludivine LOPEZ 1,2,*, Sébastien NICOLAS 1, Lucie JAQUILLARD 2, Jérôme MONTNACH 1, Rémy BEROUD 2, Michel DE WAARD 1
Affiliation:
1 Institut du thorax, INSERM UMR 1087/CNRS UMR 6291, LabEx “Ion Channels, Science & Therapeutics”, 44007 Nantes, France.
2 Smartox Biotechnology, 6 rue des Platanes, 38120 Saint Egrève, France.
Abstract:
Dysfunctions of voltage-gated sodium channels (Nav) have been associated with many pathological conditions such as cardiac diseases, neuropathic pain, and epilepsy. In order to study the role of these channels in diseases or to restore function, specific molecules targeting ion channels are needed. Highly specific molecules for a given isoform of sodium channel are hard to discover with the usual chemical libraries. Animal venoms, and especially spider venoms, contains about tens of peptides acting on ion channels and therefore represent interesting libraries for drug discovery. By screening spider venoms on Nav, we aimed to identify new toxins targeting specifically one channel isoform with the use of an automated patch-clamp (APC) technique (SyncroPatch364, Nanion). For this purpose, all venoms were preliminary fractionated in libraries of 64 fractions and tested on several stable Nav cell lines. APC allows two venoms to be tested at the same time and accelerate the drug discovery process. Fractions of interest are those that reduce sodium peak current (by at least 30%), slow down inactivation, or increase late sodium current. False-positive fractions were excluded based on detection of material in HPLC or mass spectrometry. Until now, two different Nav lines have been tested: Nav1.5 and Nav1.6. Primary screening allows identification of 28 fractions active in at least one isoform. Among them, 24 are specific for one channel (10 for Nav1.5, 14 for Nav1.6). The majority of positive fractions induce a slowdown in inactivation (5 for Nav1.5, 12 for Nav1.6). The selected fractions were re-fractionated with a complementary purification technique until the isolated peptides were obtained. These molecules were tested again for bioactivity and underwent full de novo sequencing, chemical synthesis, and full pharmacological characterization. This study suggests that among the large number of toxins in venoms, a great variety target sodium channels with specificity for each sodium channel isoform, and illustrates how ACP is essential for screening.
Title: A Clostridial-Like Neurotoxin That Selectively Targets Anopheles Mosquitoes
Author: Geoffrey MASUYER 1,2,*, Estefania CONTRERAS 3, Nadia QURESHI 3, Swati CHAWLA 3, Harpal S. DHILLON 3, Ham Lim LEE 4, Jianwu CHEN 3, Pål STENMARK 2,5, Sarjeet S GILL 3
Affiliation:
1 Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, University of Bath, United Kindom.
2 Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Stockholm University, Sweden.
3 Department of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology, University of California Riverside, USA.
4 Unit of Medical Entomology, Institute for Medical Research, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
5 Department of Experimental Medical Science, Lund University, Sweden.
Abstract:
Clostridial neurotoxins are potent toxins that target the nervous system of vertebrates causing paralytic diseases such as tetanus and botulism. Here, we present a new member of this family of toxins, PMP1, a clostridial-like neurotoxin that selectively targets Anopheles mosquitoes, thus expending the range of host species targeted by this family. PMP11 was isolated from Paraclostridium bifermentans strains collected in geographically varied anopheline endemic areas. PMP1 was showed to use a common mechanism of toxicity that disrupts SNARE-mediated exocytosis by cleavage of syntaxin. Our results suggest PMP1 employs a different receptor recognition strategy, illustrated by the high-resolution structure of the PMP1 binding domain. The discovery of PMP1 has a significant impact on our understanding of the clostridial neurotoxin evolution. Importantly, it provides an exciting opportunity for the development of innovative biotechnological tools that can reduce malaria through anopheline control.
25 December 2019
Congratulations to the Winners of the Student Poster Award and Student Talk Award at 20th IST World Congress, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2019 (Sponsored by Toxins)
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate the winner of the Student Poster Award, Jonas Jürgensen, and Student Talk Award, Cebrina Nolan, at the 20th IST World Congress.
Here are the titles and abstracts of their work:
Title: Harnessing Monoclonal Antibodies for Development of a Specific Treatment against Naja nigricollis Envenoming
Author: Jonas Jürgensen
Affiliation: Technical University of Denmark
Abstract:
The African black-necked spitting cobra (Naja nigricollis) is one of the most notorious snake species found on the African continent. Its venom consists of a highly potent mixture of cytotoxins which cause severe local tissue damage in victims, who are left with permanent sequalae after a bite. The availability of antivenom is currently scarce throughout the African continent. Furthermore, due to their heterologous origin and low content of therapeutically active antibodies, these antivenoms have a propensity to cause severe adverse reactions, including serum sickness and anaphylaxis, which could lead to death of the patient.
Recombinant antibodies represent a therapeutic alternative. We are presently developing an antivenom based on recombinant human monoclonal immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies, which are predicted to be safer, cost-competitive, and more efficacious than the existing treatment. Here, we present a subset of this work: Through the utilization of phage display technology, the possibility of discovering and expressing novel human single-chain variable antibody fragments (scFv) against the five most medically relevant venom toxins from N. nigricollis has been demonstrated, with four being cytotoxins and one being phospholipase A2. Out of the 486 monoclonal scFvs analyzed, 164 were considered good binders. Of these, 94 were sequenced, resulting in the identification of 31 unique scFvs. The binding properties of these scFvs will be evaluated, and the most promising leads will be converted into an immunoglobulin G format and assessed in vivo. It is our hope that the work in this project will help enable radical improvement in the treatment of snakebite envenoming.
Title: Investigating the Neuromodulatory Effects of Corazonin in Emerald Jewel Wasp Venom
Author: Cebrina Nolan
Affiliation: University of California, Riverside
Abstract:
The parasitoid jewel wasp, Ampulex compressa, induces hypokinesia (a sleep-like state) and reduced fecundity in its host, the American cockroach Periplaneta americana, through direct envenomation of its central nervous system. A proteomic screening of the venom identified over 250 protein components, with many not having been previously observed in arthropod venoms nor found to play a role in modulating insect locomotion. Of the multitude of toxins identified, the presence and function of corazonin was investigated as it was able to bind to Rhodnius prolixus corazonin receptors. Corazonin is a highly conserved peptidergic neurohormone found within all insect orders except Coleoptera (beetles). Despite its conserved sequence, its function varies greatly between different insect genera. A recent study revealing the involvement of corazonin in the behavior switching of ponerine gamergates to infertile workers was associated with the involvement of Ampulex corazonin in suppressing fecundity. These findings led us to investigate the function of corazonin in the venom via injecting Ampulex corazonin into the brains of virgin females. Following treatment, changes in fecundity were monitored by measuring the relative gene expression of vitellogenin yolk proteins, average ovariole protein content, and average ovariole volume size in stung and corazonin-injected females. Changes in cockroach fecundity were compared to nontreated and saline-injected controls. Both the sting and corazonin injections resulted in significant decreases in vitellogenin gene expression as well as a reduction in average ovariole protein content and ovariole size in virgin female cockroaches. Thus, it is suggested that the role of corazonin in venom may be to suppress ovary development and preserve energy within females. Our findings reveal alternative mechanisms of how venoms can inhibit reproductive abilities as well as provide further insight on the effects of corazonin in the central nervous system of arthropods.
11 October 2019
Introducing SciProfiles, an Academic Social Network
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
2 October 2019
Winners of the 2019 MDPI Writing Prize
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.
20 September 2019
MDPI Now Gives Scholars the Possibility to Endorse and Recommend Articles
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
12 September 2019
ETOX19 Best Paper Awards Sponsored by Toxins
Congratulations to the winners of the Best Poster Award and Best Short Talk Award at the 19th European Workshops on Bacterial Protein Toxins (ETOX19), Davos, Switzerland, 2019, sponsored by Toxins.
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate Charles Ericson—the winner of the Best Poster Award at the 19th European Workshops on Bacterial Protein Toxins (ETOX19).
The title and abstract of Charles Ericson’s work are presented below:
Title: Bacterial Phage Tail-like Structure Harbors Two Effectors with Varying Functions
Author: Charles Ericson
Affiliation: ETH Zürich, Institute of Molecular Biology & Biophysics, 8093 Zürich, Schweiz
Abstract: Many bacteria interact with target organisms using syringe-like structures called contractile injection systems (CIS). CIS structurally resemble headless bacteriophages and share evolutionarily related proteins such as in the tail tube, sheath, and baseplate complex. Recent evidence shows that CIS are specialized in puncturing membranes, and often deliver effectors to target cells. In many cases, CIS mediate trans-kingdom interactions between bacteria and eukaryotes, however, the effectors delivered to these target cells and their mode of action are often uncharacterized. It had been previously shown that an array of extracellular CIS produced by the marine bacteria Pseudoalteromonas luteoviolacea, deemed MACs (metamorphosis associated contractile structures), were able to induce the metamorphosis of the marine tubeworm Hydroides elegans. By cryo-electron tomography imaging and functional assays, we further investigated this interaction between the tubeworms and MACs, and were able to identify an effector protein, termed Mif1, that was found to be sufficient for triggering the metamorphosis. We then established that MACs are able to interact and kill two separate eukaryotic cell lines, fall armyworm Sf9 ovarian cells and J774A.1 murine macrophages. A secondary effector termed Pne1 was found to be responsible for this cell line killing ability. Interestingly, Pne1 was found to not play a role in the metamorphosis of the H. elegans larvae.
We established ex vivo and in vivo models that have identified two separate MAC effectors that interact with different eukaryotic systems. Our insights help to shed light on MACs that appear to have multiple eukaryotic targets. These results also help to define new mechanisms of CIS-mediated bacteria–eukaryote interactions and are a first step toward understanding the roles these structures may be playing in mediating their surrounding environments.
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate Shihono Teruya—the winner of the Best Short Talk Award at the 19th European Workshops on Bacterial Protein Toxins (ETOX19).
The title and abstract of Shihono Teruya’s work are presented below:
Title: Identification of Bordetella Dermonecrotic Toxin Receptor
Author: Shihono Teruya
Affiliation: Department of Molecular Bacteriology, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
Abstract:
Dermonecrotic toxin (DNT), a virulence factor produced by the pathogenic bacteria belonging to the genus Bordetella, is known to exhibit toxin effects by activating Rho small GTPase of target cells. Our research group reported that the toxin was the causative agent for turbinate atrophy in pigs infected with B. bronchiseptica; however, its role in whooping cough—human infection with B. pertussis—is still unknown. In order to address this issue, we attempted to determine DNT-sensitive organs/tissues in host animals through identification of the DNT receptor. As the toxin affects only limited types of animal cells, its receptor is considered to be expressed by a specific tissue with a specific cell function. First, in order to facilitate high-throughput screening for the receptor, we generated a DNT–diphtheria toxin fragment A (DTA) fusion protein that caused cell death on DNT-sensitive cells, but not insensitive cells. Utilizing the combination of DNT–DTA and the CRISPR/Cas9 system, we performed a genome-wide screening for DNT–DTA-resistant cells with loss of function of a gene after introduction of a sgRNA library, and identified Gene X that encodes a transmembrane protein X as a DNT receptor candidate. The cells whose Gene X was specifically knocked out were highly resistant to DNT, and ectopic expression of Gene X restored DNT sensitivity. Furthermore, immunoprecipitation assay and competitive antagonist assays revealed a molecular interaction between X and DNT. These results suggest that X is a receptor for DNT. Since X is highly expressed in neuronal tissues, we consider that DNT may have function as a neurotrophic toxin.
11 September 2019
Create an Entry in Encyclopedia to Get a 100 CHF Voucher in Publishing in MDPI Journals
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].
6 September 2019
Meet us at the 11th Conference of The World Mycotoxin Forum® and the XVth IUPAC International Symposium on Mycotoxins in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 14-16 October 2019

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:
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
6 August 2019
Preprints Reaches 10,000 Posted Articles Milestone
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.
2 August 2019
DeepGreen Partnering with Publishers and Universities in Distributing Open Access Content to Institutional Repositories
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.
17 July 2019
First Basel Sustainable Publishing Forum
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
21 June 2019
Meet Us at WMNP 2019 in Peniche, Portugal, 1–5 September 2019

MDPI will be attending the joint conference XVI International Symposium on Marine Natural Products & XI European Conference on Marine Natural Products in Peniche, Portugal, 1–5 September 2019.
WMNP 2019 is this year’s the most important event in this field, especially for the European scholars studying marine natural products. It will cover all aspects in this field, hosting both experienced experts and active pioneers.
The following MDPI journals will be represented:
If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #Near Conference Hall). 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://wmnp2019.ipleiria.pt/.
20 June 2019
Toxins Receiving 2018 Updated Impact Factor of 3.895
We are pleased to inform that Toxins received an updated Journal Impact Factor of 3.895 in the recent release of the Journal Citation Reports®. The journal's 5-Year Impact Factor is 4.009. Toxins now ranks 14/93 (Q1) in the 'Toxicology' category and 19/135 (Q1) in 'Food Science & Technology'.
Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Toxins:
Source: data according to Journal Citation Reports®, 2018 release, a Clarivate Analytics product; and Scopus journal metrics.
10 May 2019
Congratulations to the Best Poster Award Winner at the 4th German Pharm-Tox Summit, Stuttgart, Germany, 2019 (Sponsored by Toxins)
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate the winner of the Best Poster Award at the 4th German Pharm-Tox Summit—Stefanie Kowarschik.
The title and abstract of her work are presented below:
Title: Binding of the Yersinia pseudotuberculosis Cytotoxic Necrotizing Factor (CNFY) to its Cellular Receptor
Authors: Stefanie Kowarschik and Gudula Schmidt
Affiliation: Institute of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Freiburg, Albertstr. 25, 79104 Freiburg, Germany
Abstract: CNFY is one of the major virulence factors of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. The exotoxin belongs to the AB-like toxin family and shows a high similarity (~ 68%) to the other known CNFs. Their cellular targets are RhoGTPases, which are deamidated at a single glutamine, Gln 63 in RhoA. This glutamine is crucial for GTP hydrolysis. The toxin consists of three domains, an N-terminal, translocation and C-terminal catalytic domain. CNF1 and CNFY are homologous; however, we show that they bind to different cellular receptors. CNF1 is known to bind to Lu/BCAM, but the cellular receptor for CNFY remains unknown. Additionally, CNFY shows a different binding behaviour in cell intoxication studies compared with CNF1. Our data indicate that CNFY binds to HSPGs (heparansulfate proteoglycan), which are highly abundant structures on the cell surface, and it may also bind to a yet unidentified surface protein. Furthermore, differential intoxication of human and murine cell lines correlates with the relative abundance of HSPGs in these cells.
2 April 2019
The Japanese Society of Mycotoxicology (JSMYCO) is Now an Affiliated Society Member of Toxins
In January 2019, the Japanese Society of Mycotoxicology (JSMYCO) became affiliated to Toxins. As part of this collaboration, all members of JSMYCO enjoy a discount on the article processing charges (APC) when submitting articles to Toxins.
The Japanese Society of Mycotoxicology (JSMYCO) works to increase scientific knowledge concerning toxicology, biology, and chemistry related to mycotoxins and mycotoxin-producing fungi, through membership networking, annual meetings, international symposia, seminars and publications.
JSMYCO is a professional organization whose functions are highly relevant to the scope of Toxins. We look forward to collaborating with JSMYCO and publishing state-of-the-art research from its members in this field.
20 March 2019
Fostering Open Access Publishing Worldwide: New IOAP Participants in February and March 2019
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 [email protected].
5 March 2019
MDPI Joins Jisc’s Publications Router Service
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.
1 February 2019
2018 MDPI Top Reviewer Award—Winners Announced
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
24 January 2019
JAMS Journals: A Low-Cost Publishing Platform

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]).
24 January 2019
Popularity of Preprints Continues to Grow
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.
9 January 2019
Open Access Agreement between the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ), the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), and MDPI
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.
2 January 2019
Encyclopedia—the Scholarly Community Encyclopedia

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/
30 October 2018
Institutional Open Access Agreement between Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and MDPI

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].
2 October 2018
MDPI Welcomes Plan S
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.
30 August 2018
MDPI establishes Open Access agreement with Qatar National Library
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].
26 June 2018
2017 Impact Factor Released for Toxins: 3.273
We are pleased to inform that Toxins received an updated Journal Impact Factor of 3.273 in the June 2018 release of the Journal Citation Reports®. The journal's 5-Year Impact Factor is 3.551. Toxins now ranks 25/94 (Q2) in the 'Toxicology' category and 21/133 (Q1) in ‘Food Science & Technology’.
Overview of Citation Metrics:
- Journal Impact Factor, 2 yrs (2017): 3.273
- 5-Year Impact Factor (2017): 3.551
- CiteScore, 3 yrs (Scopus): 3.32
- SJR Scimago Journal Rank 2017 (SJR): 0.955
- Source Normalized Impact 2017 (SNIP): 1.136
Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Toxins :
1 June 2018
Toxins 2017 CiteScore™ Announced - 3.32
We are pleased to report Toxins received a CiteScore of 3.32 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.
31 May 2018
2017 CiteScore™ Metrics Released
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 |
18 May 2018
International Society for Mycotoxicology (ISM) is Now an Affiliated Society Member of Toxins

In April 2018, the International Society for Mycotoxicology (ISM) chose Toxins as its preferred journal and became an affiliated society member of the journal.
As part of this collaboration, all affiliated ISM members enjoy a discount on the article processing charges (APC) when submitting articles to Toxins. The International Society for Mycotoxicology (ISM) aims to increase scientific knowledge concerning biology, chemistry and any sciences/disciplines related to mycotoxins and toxigenic fungi, through membership networking, scientific meetings, symposia, discussions, technical courses and publications.
3 May 2018
Join us at ASM Microbe 2018, Atlanta, GA, USA, 8–10 June 2018

MDPI will be attending ASM Microbe 2018 International Conference during the three day event held from 8–10 June.
ASM Microbe showcases the best microbial sciences in the world and provides a one-of-a-kind forum to explore the complete spectrum of microbiology, from basic science to translation and application. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:
Toxins
Journal of Clinical Medicine
Viruses
Antibiotics
Diseases
Medicines
Fermentation
Veterinary Sciences
Genes
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)
Pathogens
Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease
Vaccines
Microorganisms
If you are also attending this conference, please stop by our Booth: #731. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person, to answer any questions you may have regarding open access publication and our journals. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.asm.org/index.php/asm-microbe-2018.
Date: 8–10 June 2018
Location: Georgia World Congress Center, 285 Andrew Young International Blvd NW, Atlanta, GA 30313, USA
30 April 2018
Winners of the First MDPI Writing Prize
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.
23 March 2018
Check for Updates: A New Function in the Article PDF Version
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.
22 March 2018
Congratulations to the Best Poster Award Winner at the 3rd German Pharm-Tox Summit, Göttingen, Germany, 2018 (Sponsored by Toxins)
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate the winner of the Best Poster Award at the 3rd German Pharm-Tox Summit—Stefan Carle.
Here is the title and abstract of his work:
Title: Exploitation of Non-Toxic Diphtheria Toxin for Molecular Trojan Horse Development
Authors: Stefan Carle, Maximilian Fellermann, Holger Barth
Affiliation: Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Ulm Medical Center, Germany
Abstract:
Molecular transport of therapeutic molecules across cellular membranes is highly limited by their size and charge. Only small, lipophilic molecules can effectively diffuse over such boundaries. Therefore, complex proteins are dependent on active transport mechanisms, such as receptor-mediated endocytosis. This issue is especially relevant for the targeted delivery of drugs and diagnostics to highly restricted body compartments such as the central nervous system and brain, which are further protected by the enclosed endothelium of the blood–brain barrier (BBB). The BBB is an efficient protection for the brain and central nervous system (CNS) against potentially harmful molecules, however, it is also an obstacle for possible drugs targeting pathologies in the brain and CNS. Hence, molecular transporters are needed to circumvent the BBB.
Diphtheria toxin (DT) displays properties that make it a promising candidate for the development of a so called molecular Trojan horse. As an AB-toxin, consisting of an enzymatically active A- and a binding/translocation B-domain, it shows specific uptake in most cell types and is able to deliver N-terminal cargo fusions into the cell. Furthermore, studies suggest that beside transport into cells, also transport across cellular layers is possible.
Here we show a strategy to generate molecular transporters based on an enzymatically inactive, non-toxic DT mutant, called CRM197, which is already in use as a vaccine carrier molecule and has a well validated safety profile. Based on morphological and biochemical evaluation, the enzymatic inactivity was confirmed. Competition assays with wild type (WT) DT demonstrated high receptor specificity. Using fluorescence microscopy, internalization of an N-terminally labeled CRM197 was shown into HeLa cells and human endothelial cells, which is especially interesting, since these cells will be used to generate a BBB model for further transcytosis studies.
15 March 2018
Congratulations to Eleven Journals for Publishing the Tenth Volume in 2018
Congratulations to the journals Cancers, Diversity, Future Internet, Nutrients, Polymers, Pharmaceutics, Remote Sensing, Sustainability, Symmetry, Toxins and Water for publishing their 10th volume in 2018!
We would like to send warm wishes from the Editors-in-Chief of these journals and look to the future. Acknowledgement of our past achievements provides the strongest stimulus for future endeavor.
To date, the journal Cancers has published more than 1000 papers and will receive its first impact factor in June. This milestone could not be achieved without our readers, authors, peer reviewers, editors, and all the people working for the journal who, for years, have contributed their tremendous efforts.
— Prof. Dr. Samuel Mok
Editor-in-Chief of Cancers
Ten years is a long time but a short period for a new journal. When we started Diversity 10 years ago, we had hoped that a journal with such a broad coverage of topics would attract potential authors and good contributions. We are very satisfied that our vision became reality.
Today, Diversity is home to interesting studies on different aspects of diversity mainly in biology, ranging from systematics, phylogeny and evolution, to ecology, biodiversity and conservation issues. I am confident that the next 10 years will witness the further growth of Diversity both in quality and quantity.
— Prof. Dr. Michael Wink
Editor-in-Chief of Diversity
Ten years have passed from the foundation of the “Future Internet” MDPI journal. We have witnessed the positive evolution of our journal, with ever-increasing interest from potential authors. The increasing fundamental eco-systemic importance of the journal’s subjects has also had positive effects. Therefore, the journal is currently evolving to cope with the increasing interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary views.
Past achievements and future prospects give us reason to celebrate ten years since the journal’s foundation. We will also set up a commemorative Special Issue.
— Prof. Dr. Dino Giuli
Editor-in-Chief of Future Internet
It is with great pride that Nutrients enters its 10th year of publication. Through the hard work and dedication of its Editorial Board, journal staff, and individuals who have unselfishly given their time to peer-review manuscripts, the journal has grown to become a leading publisher of nutrition research. During this 10th Anniversary year of Nutrients, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all who have contributed to the journal during its first decade.
— Prof. Dr. Jonathan Buckley
Editor-in-Chief of Nutrients
I am pleased and honored to celebrate the first decade of Pharmaceutics, as the founding Editor-in-Chief. This is also an opportunity for me to thank our authors, readers, reviewers, and editorial board members for their continuous support. We will receive our first impact factor in June 2018, in recognition of the great efforts made in the past ten years. We shall strive to improve the journal in the next ten years.
— Prof. Dr. Yvonnne Perrie
Editor-in-Chief of Pharmaceutics
Since its foundation in 2009, Polymers has evolved into an internationally renowned and successful Open Access journal. The core concept, namely that Open Access publishing can stand for high-quality publications, is working well. On a daily basis, ever since the journal’s foundation, the editorial team and the editorial board dedicate themselves to ensuring a high-quality rigorous peer-review process: only 30 to 50% of the submissions will be published in Polymers. This strategy been complemented by, among other features, the increasing impact factor of Polymers, the most recent one being 3.364. On the occasion of Polymers’ 10th anniversary, we would like to thank all authors who have contributed to the success of the journal by submitting their high-quality research papers. We look forward to your continuous support and the continued growth of the journal in the next decade.
— Prof. Dr. Alexander Böker
Editor-in-Chief of Polymers
MDPI’s Open Access journal Remote Sensing is now one of the top international scientific journal 's in remote sensing science. Well known scientists in the subject, from all over the world, publish in it on a regular basis. It has an outstanding and dedicated editorial team, editorial office, and reviewers. We pride ourselves on publishing high-quality original scientific articles. Our goal remains to become # 1 Journal in Remote Sensing Science.
— Dr. Prasad S. Thenkabail
Editor-in-Chief of Remote Sensing
The tenth anniversary of Sustainability is a momentous milestone, and it has been a privilege for me to be a part of it as Editor-in-Chief. This anniversary demonstrates the growing interest in and recognition of the importance of sustainability. The journal has been able to showcase the many advances made over the last decade in the thinking, methods and applications surrounding sustainability. Recently, the content of the journal has reflected the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that was adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. Sustainability has had a notable impact and expects to have an even greater impact over its next decade through publishing research on new advances in sustainability and fostering critical discussion.
— Prof. Dr. Marc A. Rosen
Editor-in-Chief of Sustainability
Our journal Symmetry celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2018. During the last 10 years, the journal has become one of the leading journals among all multi-science journals. This shows the fundamental role played by the symmetries of nature in natural science. This also reflects the huge number of researchers whose work relates to symmetry. We hope to achieve even better results in the coming years.
— Prof. Dr. Sergei D. Odintsov
Editor-in-Chief of Symmetry
It is my honor as Editor-in-Chief of Toxins to inaugurate the 10th anniversary of the journal’s inception. From the founding EIC, Professor Florian Lang and EIC Vernon Tesh and the many Section EICs and Editorial Board Members, the combined leadership of this effort to provide an outstanding vehicle for the dissemination of the results of high-quality scientific investigations and in-depth, insightful comprehensive reviews has resulted in the flagship journal of toxinology as we know it today. The publication metrics associated with Toxins support this claim by virtue of our increase in manuscript submissions and publications and annual citation rate of articles published in Toxins. Importantly, the impact factor for Toxins remains strong and representative of the significance of the science published in Toxins. As we progress in this anniversary year, we will celebrate the 10th anniversary with a continuation of our acclaimed travel award program for Post-Doctoral Fellows in the field of Toxinology as well as our soon to be announced “Toxins' 10th Anniversary Top Cited Researcher Award” program.
Thus, 2018 will be an exciting year, celebrating the 10th anniversary of Toxins, but also a year of looking forward for the best practices by which the journal can serve the toxinology community. With that in mind, please join us in celebrating the journal by submitting your work to Toxins and as always I welcome your suggestions for the improvement of “our” journal.
— Prof. Dr. Jay W. Fox
Editor-in-Chief of Toxins
Thank you to all the dedicated researchers, reviewers and editors who have made Water a success. The journal has become a popular outlet for cutting-edge research in the broad field of water science, technology, management and governance. The Open Access format has proven to be attractive, and authors highly value the quick handling of papers. After ten years, Water has become an established journal in the field.
— Prof. Dr. Arjen Y. Hoekstra
Editor-in-Chief of Water
To mark the anniversaries, we have established a Special Issue to look back over the previous decade of outstanding accomplishments and highlight innovative frontier research perspectives. We encourage you to keep an eye on the publications in this Special Issue and this journal, and hope you consider it as a venue for your future publications.
13 March 2018
MDPI Becoming a Member of UKSG
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.
1 February 2018
MDPI Signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)
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/
25 January 2018
Meet Us at the ACS National Meeting & Exposition in New Orleans, USA, 18–22 March 2018

We will be attending the 255th ACS National Meeting & Exposition. It is an interdisciplinary forum open to anyone with an interest in Chemistry and the related disciplines. Representatives of the following open access journals will attend:
Agronomy
Applied Sciences
Beverages
Biomimetics
Biosensors
C
Catalysts
ChemEngineering
Chemosensors
Coatings
Energies
Environments
Fibers
Foods
Gels
Inorganics
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (JMSE)
Lubricants
Materials
Mathematics
Metals
Molecules
Nanomaterials
Polymers
Processes
Resources
Safety
Sensors
Separations
Sustainability
Symmetry
Toxins
Water
If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #640). 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.acs.org/content/acs/en/meetings/national-meeting.html?sc=home_meetings_170818_mtg_NO18_od
19 January 2018
Congratulations to the Best Poster Award Winner at 24th Meeting of the French Society of Toxinology (SFET), Paris, 2017 (Sponsored by Toxins)
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate the winner of the Best Poster Award for 24th Meeting of the French Society of Toxinology (SFET)—Dr. Laura Droctove.
*Photo with copyright permission from ©Conventus.
Dr. Droctove's team submitted the following paper for publication in Toxins:
Title: First Insights into the Pharmacodynamics of Mamba Toxins: Promising Therapeutic Candidates to Treat Kidney Cysts by Inhibition of Vasopressin Type 2 Receptor
Authors: Laura Droctove, Manon Lancien, Gilles Mourier, Denis Servent and Nicolas Gilles
Affiliation: CEA Saclay, Service d’Ingénierie Moléculaire des Protéines (SIMOPRO), 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Abstract:
Mambaquaretin-1 is the very first identified member of a group of mamba toxins which target the vasopressin type 2 receptor (V2R). V2R, primarily expressed in the principal cells of the kidney collecting duct, belongs to the G protein-coupled receptor family and regulates fluid osmotic pressure and diuresis through the vasopressin hormone. Mambaquaretins antagonize V2R and this property gives them potential therapeutic applications to treat disorders such as hyponatremia, syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH) or polycystic kidney diseases (PKDs). PKDs are severe genetic diseases which affect 1 in 400 to 1000 people in the world. However, therapeutic strategies are very limited. We demonstrated the efficacy of mambaquaretin-1 to slow down the progression of cysts in a rodent model, validating the toxin as a novel therapeutic strategy. Mambaquaretins promote an aquaretic effect which corresponds to an increase in urine output without any loss of osmoles. The in vivo dose–effect relationship was studied in healthy rats by a unique IP injection at different doses of mambaquaretin-1. The maximal effect is reached in 2 h post-injection and then decreases slowly following a mono- or bi-phasic kinetics of action, depending on the dose. The most suitable dose for a therapeutic development of mambaquaretin-1, 0.003 μmol/kg, was administered daily for 5 days to check a cumulative effect. The other mambaquaretins were compared to the leader toxin. Surprisingly, three of them display a huge discrepancy between their in vitro and in vivo efficacy which could be the consequence of their natural mutations, as they vary from 98 to 70% of sequence similarity to mambaquaretin-1. A pharmacokinetic study is ongoing in order to work out a mambaquaretins dosage system in a blood sample, thus investigating their in vivo behavior.
19 December 2017
Announcing the MDPI English Writing Prize
The competition is still open until end of March! Please check out the banner for more details: https://mdpi-res.com/data/english-prize.pdf
15 December 2017
UCL Press Adopts the MDPI Editorial Platform JAMS

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.
23 November 2017
New Participants in the Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP)
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!
10 November 2017
Available Journal Awards at MDPI
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 |
PhD students or postdoctoral researchers |
|
Antioxidants |
Postdoctoral researchers or PhD students |
||
Biology |
PhD or postdoctoral fellows |
||
Forests |
Postdocs or PhD students |
||
International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS) |
Ground-breaking contribution in the fields of Molecular Biology, and Molecular Pathology |
||
Journal of Fungi (JoF) |
PhD graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows |
||
Life |
PhD students or postdoctoral fellows |
||
Metabolites |
PhD students |
||
Pharmaceuticals |
PhD students |
||
Toxins |
Postdoctoral fellows |
||
Viruses |
Viruses 2018 participants |
||
Viruses |
Viruses 2018 participants |
||
Water |
Young investigators |
||
Chemistry & Materials Science |
Biomimetics
|
Graduate Student or Postdoctoral Trainee / Research Associate |
|
Catalysts |
PhD students |
||
Chemosensors |
PhD or postdoctoral fellows |
||
Entropy |
Young investigators |
||
Fibers |
Postdocs or PhD students |
||
Magnetochemistry |
Postdocs |
||
Materials |
PhD or postdoctoral fellows |
||
Metals |
PhD or postdoctoral fellows |
||
Minerals |
PhD or postdoctoral fellows |
||
Sensors |
PhD or postdoctoral fellows |
||
Sensors |
Sensors' reviewers in 2017 |
||
Sensors |
Young investigators |
||
Technologies |
PhD students |
||
Computer Science & Mathematics |
Multimodal Technologies and Interaction (MTI) |
Postdoctoral researchers or PhD students |
|
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information(IJGI) |
Postdocs |
||
Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks (JSAN) |
Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students |
||
Journal of Imaging |
Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students |
||
Engineering |
Actuators |
PhD or postdoctoral fellows |
|
Remote Sensing |
Authors |
||
Machines |
PhD or postdoctoral fellows |
||
Micromachines |
PhD or postdoctoral fellows |
||
Fluids |
Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students |
||
ChemEngineering |
Postdoctoral researchers and PhD students |
||
Environmental & Earth Sciences |
Diversity |
Postdoctoral fellows |
|
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) |
Authors who submit from 1 Nov 2017 to 31 Oct 2018 |
||
Resources |
Postdocs or PhD students |
||
Geosciences |
Postdoctoral fellows and PhD students |
||
Physical Sciences & Astronomy |
Galaxies |
Ph.D. students, postdoctoral fellows, or lecturers in cosmology or galaxies physics |
|
Applied Science |
Postdocs |
||
Medicine & Pharmacology; Public Health & Healthcare |
Journal of Clinical Medicine (JCM) |
PhD or postdoctoral fellows |
|
Medicines |
Postdocs |
7 November 2017
MDPI has signed the Jussieu Call for Open Science and Bibliodiversity
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)
1 November 2017
MDPI Appoints New Editor-in-Chief for Toxins and Section Editor-in-Chief for "Bacterial Toxins"
MDPI is pleased to announce the appointment of Jay W. Fox as the Editor-in-Chief of Toxins, and Michel R. Popoff as the Section Editor-in-Chief for "Bacterial Toxins". The new 2-year term starts on 1 November 2017.
Jay W. Fox is the Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Dr. Fox currently is engaged in research on carcinogenesis in women with dense breasts focusing on the interaction of stroma and breast epithelium. He is also interested in the secondary or indirect effects of viper envenomation focusing on the roles of venom and host generated damage-associated molecular pattern molecules (DAMPs) in the pathophysiology of snake bites. He has served as the President of the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities, was a member of the Federation of Associations of Experimental Biology, and is currently serving as the President of the International Society on Toxinology.
Michel R. Popoff is Head of the Anaerobic Bacteria and Toxins Unit and the Director of the National Reference Center for Anaerobic Bacteria and Botulism at Pasteur Institute, Paris. His laboratory is focused on Clostridium toxins through genetic and biological activity analysis and has investigated the regulation of toxin synthesis in Clostridium botulinum and Clostridium tetani.
Jay W. Fox and Michel R. Popoff will succeed from Vernon Tesh, whose leadership during 2015 and 2017 firmly established Toxins' reputation on publishing important and high quality studies related to toxinology and all kinds of toxins. Under Jay W. Fox's direction, Toxins will expand its traditional focus on the toxinology and biotoxins, continue to serve the toxinology research community.
6 October 2017
Dr. Franck Vazquez, MDPI CEO, Interviewed by Scholarly Kitchen
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.
19 September 2017
A Warm Welcome to the New IOAP Participants
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:
- University of Denver, USA
- University of Colorado Boulder, USA
- University of Arizona, USA
- Institute of Metrology of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Middlebury College, USA
- Touro College, USA
- University of New Orleans, USA
- University of Leicester, UK
- Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
- University of Strathclyde, UK
- Cranfield University, UK
- Hope College, USA
- Oregon State University, USA
- Drew University, USA
- Swansea University, UK
- University of South Florida, USA
- University of Georgia, USA
- Arizona State University, USA
- University of Southern Mississippi, USA
- Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada
- Grinnell College, USA
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
- University of Patras, Greece
- Public University of Navarre, Spain
23 June 2017
Congratulations for Publishing the 100,000th Peer-Reviewed Article
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
14 June 2017
2016 Impact Factor released for Toxins – 3.030
Toxins now ranks 30/92 (Q2) in the category ‘Toxicology’ it continues to be among the most highly cited open access journals in the field.
Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Toxins :
12 June 2017
Collaboration Established Between Toxins and Mycokey Project

Toxins recently established a partnership with the EU funded project Mycokey. MycoKey is been funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme, Societal challenge 2 “Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research and the bioeconomy challenge” – topic “Biological contamination of crops and the food chain”. Mycokey aims at generating innovative and integrated solutions and supporting stakeholders for an effective and sustainable mycotoxin management along food and feed chains. It will contribute to the reduction of mycotoxin contamination mainly in Europe and China, significant areas due to their increasing mycotoxin occurrence.
The 1st Mycokey International Conference Global Mycotoxin Reduction in the Food and Feed Chain will be held in Ghent, Belgium, 11–14 September 2017. The goal of this conference is to share knowledge at a global level, as well as to provide practical solutions to operators, directly involved in specific food and feed chains. This will be done through the development of tools for the prevention, monitoring, and reduction of mycotoxins in the field or during industrial processing, in a dynamic system able to consider variable data and information.
Toxins will be responsible for publishing the meeting abstracts and full text manuscripts. A Special Issue has been launched in Toxins, with Professors Sarah De Saeger and Antonio F. Logrieco serving as the Guest Editors. More information about the Special Issue can be found here.
12 June 2017
Meet us at ETOX 18: The European Workshop on Bacterial Protein Toxins, Paris, 26-30 June 2017
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/.
6 June 2017
CiteScore™ Metrics Released for Scopus Journals
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 |
17 May 2017
Three New Institutional Memberships Established
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.
5 May 2017
A new section "Uremic Toxins" has been established in Toxins
I'm delighted to announce that a new section "Uremic Toxins" has been established in Toxins. The section will cover all aspects of uremic toxin research, including but not limited to the identification and characterization of uremic toxins, with studies on their biological effects; generation; complications; removal and kinetics during removal; observational and controlled studies on the biological and clinical impact of concentration changes; and studies on the uremic metabolome, proteome, genome and microbiome.
The Editor-in-Chief for the section will be Professor Raymond Vanholder. Dr. Vanholder is Professor Emeritus at Ghent University and chairman of the European Kidney Health Alliance and the European Chronic Diseases Alliance. He has published more than 700 papers on uremic toxicity and various topics related to clinical nephrology.

I'm confident that Dr. Raymond Vanholder's knowledge and experience will help us expand the journal's scope to uremic toxins, and maintain the high quality of the journal in the future.
The section information and editorial board can be found at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/toxins/sections/uremic_toxins.
4 May 2017
MDPI Supports the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC)
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.
2 May 2017
Publons Peer Review Academy Goes Live
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.
24 April 2017
Two New Institutional Memberships Established
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.
6 April 2017
Congratulations to the Best Poster Award Winner in 2nd German Pharm-Tox Summit (Sponsored by Toxins, Heidelberg 2017)

*Photo with copyright permission from ©Conventus.
The winner of the Best Poster Award for 2nd German Pharm-Tox Summit goes to Dr. Astrid Rohrbeck with her work Functional Role of Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD)-Binding Site of C3.
Here is the abstract of the planned paper:
Title: Functional Role of Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD)-Binding Site of C3
Authors: Astrid Rohrbeck, Sandra Hagemann, and Ingo Just
Affiliation: Institute of Toxicology, Hannover Medical School, Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1, D-30625 Hannover, Germany
Abstract:
Clostridium botulinum C3 exoenzyme selectively inactivates low molecular weight GTPases RhoA, B, and C by N-glycosidic ADP-ribosylation, resulting in changes of cellular functions such as motility, endocytosis, proliferation and apoptosis. Although C3 is a mere enzyme devoid of binding and translocation domains, C3 is able to effectively enter cells and inactivate Rho GTPases. However, recent data indicates that C3 is specifically endocytosed by the involvement of the intermediate filament vimentin.
Amino acid sequence alignment of different C3 isoforms revealed that C3 exoenzymes contain a RGD-motif. The Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) tripeptide is the major integrin binding site, present in a variety of integrin ligands. To check whether the RGD-motif of C3 is involved in binding to cells, we first performed a competition assay with C3 and RGD-peptide. Indeed, the GRGDNP peptide resulted in an approximate 50% displacement of C3 from the HT22 cells. Taken together, these findings indicate that the RGD-motif of C3 participates in the binding of C3 to intact cells.
30 March 2017
Credit for Preprints Comments via Publons
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.
20 March 2017
MDPI 2016 Annual Report Released
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.
15 March 2017
New Section Editors-in-Chief for Toxins
It is a great honor to introduce two new Section Editors-in-Chief for Toxins: Prof. Sarah De Saeger and Prof. Vitor Vasconcelos. We gratefully acknowledge the outstanding service of the two out-going Section Editors: Dr. Richard A. Manderville, Section Editor-in-Chief for Mycotoxins; and Dr. John P. Berry, Section Editor-in-Chief for Marine and Freshwater Toxins. The multitude of excellent papers on mycotoxins and marine and freshwater toxins published during the tenure of Dr. Manderville and Dr. Berry attests to their hard work as Section Editors in maintaining high standards for the readers of Toxins. We are confident that Sarah De Saeger and Vitor Vasconcelos' strong academic background and connections will help continue to raise Toxins' prestige and quality.
Prof. Sarah De Saeger will serve as the Editor-in-Chief for the Mycotoxins section. Dr. De Saeger is head of the Laboratory of Food Analysis at Ghent University, Belgium. In the last 3 years, 27 research projects from her laboratory have been granted funding from EU, FAO, EFSA, as well as national funding. The laboratory focuses on four research lines: mycotoxins and human health; detection methods; metabolomics and untargeted analysis; and mycotoxin occurrence. The research covers the characterization (e.g., modified mycotoxins), exposure and screening through biomarkers, as well as the development of innovative detection methods such as molecularly imprinted polymers and biosensors’ next, chromatographic and immuno-based techniques. Research results have been published in more than 200 A1 peer reviewed papers. Sarah De Saeger is coordinating the MYTOX platform.
Prof. Vitor Vasconcelos will serve as the Editor-in-Chief for the Marine and Freshwater Toxins section. Dr. Vasconcelos is a professor at the Faculty of Sciences of Porto University and researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center of Marine and Environmental Research—CIIMAR. He earnt his PhD in Biology at FCUP, Porto. He is currently the Director of the Group of Blue Biotechnology and Ecotoxicology (LEGE lab), studying natural toxins and other bioactive substances and their effects on environmental and human health. His main research efforts focus on the diversity, intoxication dynamics and environmental and human health risks of cyanobacterial toxins. More recently, he has worked on marine emergent toxins and associated organisms: tetrodotoxins, ciguatoxins, palitoxins and analogues. Dr. Vasconcelos is responsible for the LEGE culture collection, comprising more than 400 strains of cyanobacteria of marine and freshwater origin. He has supervised 65 MSC and 25 PhD students. He has published 270 papers in the fields of Toxicology and Biotechnology and has participated in more than 40 projects; currently, he is the coordinator of two projects and participates in two H2020 project on Blue Biotechnology.
15 March 2017
Our 100,000th Article Could be Yours!
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.
3 March 2017
1000 Preprints Online
We are delighted that Preprints now has 1000 papers online since its launch on 3 May 2016.
For more information, see the editorial here.
9 February 2017
Minister and State Secretaries Visit MDPI Office at STP, Belgrade, Serbia
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
7 February 2017
The 6th World Sustainability Forum: Final Press Release
Basel, 29 January 2017
The 6th World Sustainability Forum #WSF2017SA: African universities critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
Jeffrey and Sonia Sachs win first World Sustainability Award.
Universities need to take the lead in solving the greatest challenges the world faces today, particularly in Africa. They need to do this not only through education – teaching the next generation to think critically and creatively to find sustainable solutions – but also through research that cuts across a range of disciplines. To ensure these solutions are implemented, they need to partner with the private sector and with government.
This was the key message from the 6th World Sustainability Forum (WSF2017), which took place in Cape Town on 27 and 28 January 2017. Sponsored by MDPI and the journal Sustainability under the patronage of the Universities of the Western Cape (UWC), Cape Town (UCT), University of Basel and the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa, the conference was attended by key national and international speakers, including world-leading economist Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, senior United Nations (UN) advisor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
The WSF is an annual sustainability conference which addresses research in a range of areas related to sustainable development and sustainability globally. This was the first WSF to take place on the African continent. Discussions at the 2017 conference were driven by the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) adopted as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by the UN in September 2015.
Achieving the SDGs “is the moonshot for our generation,” said Sachs. “Like the moonshot [moon landing] of the 1960s, these are tough, bold and achievable objectives.”
“This is a nasty, tough world we live in, and our world agrees on very little. So when 193 governments agree on something, that is important. And when they agree on something as important as sustainable development, that is really something for us to grab hold of – that is a lifeline.”
There was agreement at the WSF that the SDGs are particularly important for Africa, and that African universities in particular have a role to play in achieving them.
Said Professor Tyrone Pretorius, vice-chancellor of UWC: “The quest for sustainable development can only be met through education. Universities today are the oil that fuels the knowledge economy.”
As part of the drive to develop academic capacity to provide the knowledge needed to meet the SDGs, WSF2017 was preceded by the 1st Postgraduate Forum on Sustainability. “A series of workshops for postgraduate education linked to WSF are important, in order to equip postgraduates with the skills necessary to promote sustainability,” said Professor Thandi Mgwebi, director for research at UWC. A second postgraduate forum will take place alongside the WSF2018 in Beijing.
This capacity development is particularly critical to Africa. Said Sachs: “African universities need to do research to find solutions to Africa’s development challenges, because no other university will.”
The UN set a target of achieving the SDGs by 2030: “I regard this as the breakthrough period to end extreme poverty on the continent,” said Sachs, “and for Africa to become one of the most dynamic centres of the world economy.”
It is a critical time for South African universities, said Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng, deputy vice-chancellor for research and internationalisation at UCT: “Higher education is at a crossroads, and there is much polarisation. We need to think carefully about how this sustainable development agenda is owned by all so that it is inclusionary.”
There was also strong emphasis on public–private partnerships – for universities, business and government to work together to achieve the goals.
Said Professor Francis Petersen, deputy vice-chancellor at UCT and vice-chancellor designate at the University of the Free State: “Business sustainability has become critical, because there is increasing demand and complexity of demand on business from the natural, social and economic environment. Sustainability cannot be a standalone issue, divorced from business as usual. Sustainability needs to be embedded into business.”
Environmental crises and climate change was also high on the WSF agenda. In his keynote address, Sachs noted the irreversibility of the climate- and environmental-related challenges.
“If we don’t get our act together, we lose the chance of safety,” he said.
Said Professor Mark New, pro vice-chancellor and director of the African Climate and Development Initiative at UCT: “We have a fundamental challenge in responding to climate change, and we must go further than just putting a plaster on a wound. We need to address the deep structural issues, to move from our current model of development into climate-compatible development.”
“This requires researchers to find the evidence for the correct development pathways to take, and then support the ability of policymakers at all levels to enable the shift to climate-compatible development planning.”
Said Dr. Aldo Stroebel, executive director of international relations and cooperation at the NRF, in closing: “We have seen over the past two days an urgency towards the next step of thinking, that critical type of framework that we all must engage with, not only from an academic perspective, but further up into the policy environment and into rural-based environments where one can clearly see the links and effectiveness of the work.”
World Sustainability Awards
The first World Sustainability Award and the first Emerging Sustainability Leader Awards were presented by Prof. Thandi Mgwebi, Director of Research at UWC, and Dr. Franck Vazquez, CEO of MDPI, during the ceremony on 27 January 2017 as part of the gala dinner of the 6th World Sustainability Forum in South Africa.after day one of proceedings of the 2017 World Sustainability Forum South Africa.
Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs and Dr. Sonia Ehrlich Sachs are the joint recipients of the first World Sustainability Award. Jeffrey Sachs is a world-renowned economist and senior United Nations (UN) advisor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Sonia Sachs is a paediatrician and public health specialist, and director of the Health Centre at the Centre for Sustainable Development, also at Columbia University.
The joint recipients of the first Emerging Sustainability Leader Award are Dr. Esther Ngumbi and Dr. Xiaosong Hu. Esther Ngumbi is a postdoctoral researcher at Auburn University in Alabama USA and serves as a 2015 Clinton Global University Mentor for agriculture. Xiaosong Hu is a professor at the Chongqing University in China and specialises in automotive control systems and mechanical engineering.
The World Sustainability Award and the Emerging Sustainability Leader Awards are funded to encourage new initiatives and developments in sustainability with the ultimate aim of fostering the transition to sustainable practices and societies.
The World Sustainability Award is funded by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation, and included a monetary prize of USD 100,000 to Jeffrey and Sonia Sachs. The Emerging Sustainability Leader Award is funded by the journal Sustainability, awarded to researchers under 40, and included a monetary prize of USD10,000.
Issued jointly by: UCT Global Strategy and Visibility, Research Office, UWC Communications & Media and MDPI AG
Conference photos are free available at: https://sciforum.net/conference/wsf-6/page/175 Photo credit: Matthias Burkhalter
Carla Bernardo |
Luthando Tyhalibongo |
Matthias Burkhalter |
31 January 2017
Three New Institutional Memberships Established
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.
27 January 2017
6th World Sustainability Forum under way in South Africa
The 6th World Sustainability Forum is currently being held at the Cape Sun Hotel until 28 January 2017.
The Forum will showcase the work of internationally renowned researchers and include more than 150 presentations. During the conference dinner, the World Sustainability Award, associated with a US$ 100,000 prize, will be announced, as well as the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award, associated with a US$ 10,000 prize. The prizes are sponsored by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation and Sustainability, an academic open access journal by MDPI.
Here are some pictures from the forum so far:




To see the full WSF2017 program and schedule, please see here: https://sciforum.net/conference/wsf-6/page/schedule
19 January 2017
Cape Town to Host the 6th World Sustainability Forum
Cape Town will host the 6th World Sustainability Forum at the Cape Sun Hotel on 27 and 28 January 2017. This prominent event, held for the first time in Africa, will include many illustrious South African and international experts, such as Her Excellency Graça Machel (Sustainable Development Advocate for the United Nations, Mozambique), Joyene Isaacs (HoD Agriculture Western Cape Government), Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University, USA), Max Bergman (SRaM, University of Basel), Mark New (Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of Cape Town), Frans Swanepoel (FutureAfrica, University of Pretoria) and Francis Petersen (Vice-Chancellor-designate, University of the Free State). The Forum will provide a stage for national and international debates on sustainability in South Africa, the African continent, and about international perspectives on sustainability. It brings together researchers and representatives from government and the business sector to discuss a wide-ranging set of issues associated with sustainability, including food security, water and energy scarcity, mining, poverty reduction, climate change, and urbanisation.
The next few decades will be marked by profound changes in the relationships between global economics, national societies, and the environment. We have entered what some call the Anthropocene, an age in which human activity dominates the climate and the environment. These changes will have numerous consequences on societies around the globe. South Africa and Africa will play a central role, for better or worse, in creating opportunities and risks during these changing times as Africa is profoundly influencing and being influenced by global developments.
The adoption of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in September 2015 was accompanied by what insiders considered an optimism they have not experienced in relation to UN resolutions before. The relative efficiency in the drafting, the lack of trenches between East and West, or between North and South, and the unanimity of support of the 193 countries speak volumes. In stark contrast, sustainability seems to go against a changing economic and political tide, where waves of nationalism and protectionism from some of the most powerful countries risk the wellbeing of the rest of the world. The 6th World Sustainability Forum will enable fruitful exchanges, which sensitise South African and international communities to the global urgency and specifics of sustainability.
The Forum will showcase the work of internationally renowned researchers and include more than 150 presentations. During the conference dinner, the World Sustainability Award, associated with a US$ 100 000 prize, will be announced, as well as the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award, associated with a US$ 10 000 prize. The prizes are sponsored by the MDPI Sustainability Foundation and Sustainability, an academic open access journal by MDPI. The World Sustainability Forum is preceded by the Postgraduate Forum on Sustainability, which will introduce more than 100 young scholars from South Africa and the African continent to sustainability research. Both events are organized and sponsored by the University of Cape Town, the University of the Western Cape, the University of Basel, MDPI, and by the National Research Foundation of South Africa.
Contacts:
Scientific Matters: Prof Manfred Max Bergman, Social Research and Methodology Group (SRaM), University of Basel, Switzerland; Email: [email protected]
Press Accreditation and General Enquiries: Mr Matthias Burkhalter, MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland; Email: [email protected]; Tel. +41 61 683 77 34
Follow us on Twitter
#WSF2017SA
6 January 2017
MDPI Supports the OA2020 Initiative
MDPI is now a proud supporter of the OA2020 Initiative.
Open Access 2020 is an international initiative that aims to induce the swift, smooth and scholarly-oriented transformation of today’s scholarly journals from subscription to open access publishing.
MDPI is participating in the upcoming Berlin13 conference in March 2017, where we are contributing to the initiative by aiding in the design of the roadmap which will make OA the default publishing model.
For more information please see here.
5 January 2017
Three New Institutional Memberships Established
We are pleased to announce that the University of Texas at Arlington, USA, the Harbin Institute of Technology, China and TU Darmstadt, Germany, 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.
22 December 2016
Two New Institutional Memberships Established
We are pleased to announce that the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Germany and the University of California, Berkeley, USA, 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.
19 December 2016
MDPI and Wellcome Trust Compliance
The Wellcome Trust has, for a number of years, required that the results of its funded projects are published in open access format. Recently it announced criteria that publishers must fulfil for publication fees to be paid by the Trust. MDPI is pleased to have been added to the list of compliant publishers.
Only publishers who have confirmed their compliance by 16 December 2016 will be eligible to receive payment of APCs by the Wellcome Trust as of 1 April 2017. For more information on the criteria and a full list of publishers that meet them, see here.
13 December 2016
Meet MDPI at the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting
MDPI is currently attending the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting (12–16 December, 2016)
If you are also attending the conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #1147) and meet the representative editors.
Conference details:
2016 AGU Fall Meeting
12–16 December 2016
Moscone Center
747 Howard St
San Francisco, CA 94103, USA
8 December 2016
Three New Institutional Memberships Established
We are pleased to announce that Purdue University, USA, the Universitat Politécnica de Valencia, Spain and the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, 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.
16 November 2016
World Sustainability Award - Final Extension
The deadline for the World Sustainability Award has been extended for one last time! You now have one more month to nominate an individual researcher, group or project! The final deadline for nominations will be December 15, 2016.
For full details, please visit here.
11 November 2016
Three New Institutional Memberships Established
We are pleased to announce that the University of Minnesota, USA, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, 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.
4 November 2016
MDPI Joins the United Nations Global Compact
MDPI has become a member of the United Nations Global Compact to support corporate sustainability and have committed ourselves to the ten principles associated with the Compact.
Sustainability has always been at the core of MDPI’s values, starting with the collection and preservation of rare chemical samples that started in 1996 and led to the first journal, Molecules. Sustainability has become one of our flagship journals and we have supported and organized several conferences and events based on Sustainability, including the upcoming 6th World Sustainability Forum. As a global enterprise, we see it as our duty to promote responsible practices that will ensure a bright future for our planet. Given this, the choice to join the Global Compact was an easy one and we will do our utmost to fully implement it.
3 November 2016
MDPI Now a Member of SPARC Europe
We are delighted to announce that MDPI has become a member of SPARC Europe, an organization that works for open scholarship in Europe, including support of open access publication.
As one of the few publishers to join SPARC Europe to date, MDPI looks forward to making a contribution that puts open scholarship on a positive and sustainable path. We fully support the goals of open scholarship that allow the largest number of people possible to benefit from work of researchers in all disciplines. We hope that our membership will enable us to work with other stakeholders to find the best possible solution.
2 November 2016
World Sustainability Award Deadline Extension
The deadline for the World Sustainability Award has been extended! You now have until November 15, 2016 to nominate an individual researcher, group or project!
For full details, please visit here.
26 October 2016
Four New Institutional Memberships Established
We are pleased to announce that the Wuppertal Institut, Germany, the University of Girona, Spain and Central South University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, 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.
24 October 2016
International Open Access Week 2016
Meet us during International Open Access Week 2016! We will be presenting at various locations in Europe and China.
To get involved and for full details see the complete list of events organised by MDPI here.
18 October 2016
Institutional Membership established with Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain and Aalto University, Finland
We are pleased to announce that the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain and Aalto University, Finland, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
12 October 2016
Institutional Membership Established with Iowa State University and the University of North Texas, USA
We are pleased to announce that the Iowa State University and the University of North Texas, USA, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
7 October 2016
MDPI at Open Access Days in Munich, 10-11 October 2016
Meet MDPI during the Open Access Days held from 10-11 October 2016 at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.
The two-day event will feature experts from the open access sector, scientists from all disciplines, publishing representatives and supporters of scientific research and communication from libraries as well as research institutes and funding institutions. Join us!
For more information about the event and to see the program, visit the event webpage.
7 October 2016
Institutional Membership Established with the University of Sevilla and the University of Alicante, Spain
We are pleased to announce that the University of Sevilla and the University of Alicante, Spain have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
29 September 2016
Institutional Membership Established with the University of Delaware
We are pleased to announce that the University of Delaware, USA, has joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from this university will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
19 September 2016
Peer Review Week 2016
As an open access publisher indebted to the work of our peer reviewers, we are proud to support Peer Review Week 2016. As part of the week's activities and to celebrate this year's theme "Recognition for Review", MDPI will host two webinars that anyone can join.
These webinars will explore the role and value of reviewers and the recognition they receive from a publishers perspective, with examples from MDPI's experience in publishing nearly 80,000 peer reviewed papers, along with evidence from reviewer surveys. It will also touch upon potential changes in how review is carried out and tips for early career researchers who want to be involved in the review process.
Details and links to join can be found below:
Wednesday September 21, 08:00 (CEST)
Friday September 23, 16:00 (CEST)
For more information about all the activites taking place, please visit the Peer Review Week website.
15 September 2016
2017 Toxins Travel Awards

Check details at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/toxins/awards.pdf
6 September 2016
Institutional Membership established with Kansas State University and Northwestern University, USA
We are pleased to announce that Kansas State University and Northwestern Universty, USE, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
5 September 2016
Institutional Membership Established with University College Cork
We are pleased to announce that University College Cork, Ireland, has joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from this university will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
22 August 2016
MDPI New Office Location
We are pleased to announce that MDPI has now moved to a new permanent address:
MDPI AG
St. Alban Anlage 66
CH-4052 Basel
Postfach, CH-4020 Basel
Switzerland
Telephone and fax numbers remain unchanged.
10 August 2016
Institutional Membership established with the University of Texas at Austin, USA, the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland and the University of Granada and the Compultense University of Madrid, Spain
We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in August 2016:
- University of Texas at Austin, USA
- Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland
- University of Granada, Spain
- Compultense University of Madrid, Spain
Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
18 July 2016
Institutional Membership established with Louisiana State University and Florida State University, USA, Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland, University of Rostock, Germany, AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland and Southeast University, China
We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in July 2016:
- Louisiana State University, USA
- Florida State University, USA
- Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland
- University of Rostock, Germany
- AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland
- Southeast University, China
Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
12 July 2016
MDPI Moving to New Office Location in Basel (Switzerland) in August 2016
As of 20 August 2016, MDPI's new address in Basel will be:
MDPI AG
St. Alban-Anlage 66
CH-4052 Basel
Switzerland
Telephone and fax numbers remain unchanged.
St. Alban-Anlage 66 was built from 1947 to 1948 and initially the home of the "Bühler AG", a book printing business.
For more information about this building, see: https://www.mdpi.com/about/headquarters
21 June 2016
"Behind the Scenes of Academic Publishing—A Publisher's Perspective" - MDPI's Lecture at the University of Basel
From the 15-16 September, 2016, MDPI will run a course on Academic Publishing at the University of Basel.
In this two day workshop, MDPI will look in detail at the role performed by academic journal publishers and how they interact with academics. Ethical dimensions, what happens when problems occur and how the publisher coordinates all aspects of the submission process will also be covered.
For more detailed information about the program, trainers and registration please visit the course webpage.
14 June 2016
2015 Impact Factors Released
We are pleased to report the 2015 Journal Impact Factors in the latest Journal Citation Reports® Science Edition, published by Thomson Reuters in June 2016. Twenty out of 25 journals have seen an increase in their Impact Factor and two journals (Crystals and IJGI) received a first Impact Factor. Coatings was recently added to SCIE and will receive its first Impact Factor in next year’s JCR.
Updated Impact Factors for Journals in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)
Journal | 2015 Impact Factor | Details | Category Rank |
Applied Sciences | 1.726 | Link | 83/163 (Q3) in ‘Chemistry, Multidisciplinary’; 129/271 (Q2) in ‘Materials Science, Multidisciplinary’; 64/145 (Q2) in ‘Physics, Applied’ |
Atmosphere | 1.221 | Link | 66/84 (Q4) in ‘Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences’ |
Catalysts | 2.964 | Link | 53/144 (Q2) in ‘Chemistry, Physical’ |
Energies | 2.077 | Link | 43/88 (Q2) in ‘Energy & Fuels’ |
Entropy | 1.743 | Link | 25/79 (Q2) in ‘Physics, Multidisciplinary’ |
Forests | 1.583 | Link | 19/66 (Q2) in ‘Forestry’ |
Genes | 3.242 | Link | 60/165 (Q2) in ‘Genetics & Heredity’ |
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) | 2.035 | Link | 101/225 (Q2) in ‘Environmental Sciences’ |
International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS) | 3.257 | Link | 110/289 (Q2) in ‘Biochemistry & Molecular Biology’; 51/163 (Q2) in ‘Chemistry, Multidisciplinary’ |
Marine Drugs | 3.345 | Link | 13/59 (Q1) in ‘Chemistry, Medicinal’ |
Materials | 2.728 | Link | 63/271 (Q1) in ‘Materials Science, Multidisciplinary’ |
Metals | 1.574 | Link | 18/73 (Q1) in ‘Metallurgy & Metallurgical Engineering’; 145/271 (Q3) in ‘Materials Science, Multidisciplinary’ |
Micromachines | 1.295 | Link | 30/56 (Q3) in ‘Instruments & Instrumentation’ 63/83 (Q4) in ‘Nanoscience & Nanotechnology’ |
Minerals | 1.468 | Link | 9/21 (Q2) in ‘Mining & Mineral Processing; 14/29 (Q2) in ‘Mineralogy’ |
Molecules | 2.465 | Link | 24/59 (Q2) in ‘Chemistry, Organic’ |
Nanomaterials | 2.690 | Link | 64/271 (Q1) in ‘Materials Science, Multidisciplinary’; 36/83 (Q2) in ‘Nanoscience & Nanotechnology’ |
Nutrients | 3.759 | Link | 16/78 (Q1) in ‘Nutrition & Dietetics’ |
Polymers | 2.944 | Link | 20/85 (Q1) in ‘Polymer Science’ |
Remote Sensing | 3.036 | Link | 5/28 (Q1) in ‘Remote Sensing’ |
Sensors | 2.033 | Link | 36/75 (Q2) in ‘Chemistry, Analytical’; 16/27 (Q3) in ‘Electrochemistry’; 12/56 (Q1) in ‘Instruments & Instrumentation’ |
Sustainability | 1.343 | Link | 146/225 (Q3) in ‘Environmental Sciences’; 22/29 (Q4) in ‘Green & Sustainable Science & Technology’ |
Symmetry | 0.841 | Link | 31/63 (Q2) in ‘Multidisciplinary Sciences’ |
Toxins | 3.571 | Link | 16/89 (Q1) in ‘Toxicology’ |
Viruses | 3.042 | Link | 14/33 (Q2) in ‘Virology’ |
Water | 1.687 | Link | 33/85 (Q2) in ‘Water Resources’ |
Journals with First Impact Factors
Journal | 2015 Impact Factor | Details | Category Rank |
Crystals | 2.075 | Link | 13/26 (Q2) in ‘Crystallography’ |
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information | 0.651 | Link | 45/49 (Q4) in ‘Geography, Physical’; 26/28 (Q4) in ‘Remote Sensing’. |
14 June 2016
2015 Impact Factor Released for Toxins – 3.571
We are pleased to inform you that the new Impact Factor of Toxins has been released. According to the Journal Citation Reports®, published by Thomson Reuters in June 2016, the new Impact Factor of Toxins is 3.571, and the 5-Year Impact Factor is 3.942. Compared to last year, the Impact Factor has increased by 22 percent (see figures below).
Toxins now ranks 16/89 (Q1) in the category ‘Toxicology’ and thus remains one of the most relevant Open Access journals in the category. It is ranked third highest among the Open Access journals in this category.
Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Toxins:
26 May 2016
Institutional Membership established with University of Bremen, Germany, Koç University, Turkey, IIASA, Austria and Jilin University and Kunming Institute of Botany, CAS, China
We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in May 2016:
- Unversity of Bremen, Germany
- Koç University, Turkey
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria
- Jilin University, China
- Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
23 May 2016
Institutional Membership Established with the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden and the South China University of Technology, Beijing University of Technology and Southern Medical University, China
We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program in April and May 2016:
- KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
- South China University of Technology, China
- Beijing University of Technology, China
- Southern Medical University, China
Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
26 April 2016
New Section on www.mdpi.com - Latest Books
You may have noticed a new section that is now visible on our home page. This section is called "Latest Books" and showcases recent publications from MDPI Books, our book publishing service.
By clicking on the hyperlink "More Books" you will be taken to the MDPI Books Home Page. There you will find more information about the service, as well as the "Recent Publications" list.
Clicking on any of the book images in this list will take you to detailed information about that book (shown below). Here you can also download a PDF version of the book, or order a hardcover printed copy.
For further information about the MDPI Books service, please visit the webpage or contact [email protected].
31 March 2016
Axioms, Behavioral Sciences, Photonics, Separations and Toxics added to the Emerging Sources Citation Index in Web of Science
We are pleased to announce that the journals Axioms, Behavioral Sciences, Photonics, Separations and Toxics were recently accepted for inclusion in the newly launched Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) in Web of Science.
ESCI serves to highlight promising journals which are still under consideration for the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) or the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).
The Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index
(SSCI), and Web of Science™ (WoS) are Thomson Reuters products.
30 March 2016
Institutional Membership established with the University of Winchester, UK, Silesian University of Technology, Poland and Beijing Jiaotong University and Zhejiang University, China
We are pleased to announce that the University of Winchester, UK, the Silesian University of Technology, Poland and Beijing Jiaotong University and Zhejiang University, China, have joined our Institutional Membership program. Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on article processing charges.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
24 March 2016
New Editorial Office in Barcelona, Spain
We are excited to announce the opening of our new editorial office in Barcelona, Spain. The launch team is led by a Senior Editor and comprises further staff holding doctoral degrees with several years of research experience. The new editorial team will help us to get closer to European research communities and progress Sciforum, the platform to support the scientific community via conference hosting and other functions. They will also help spread the word about Open Access and meet academics at scientific events.
We are in the process of hiring more doctoral and masters graduates to join the editorial team and welcome applications via [email protected]. For contact details about the office, see our contact page.
22 February 2016
Membership Established with the Max Planck Society
We are pleased to announce that the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) has signed an agreement with MDPI to support authors associated with the Max Planck Society (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft). As of 22 February 2016, corresponding authors will receive full funding from the MPDL for articles published in MDPI journals, with a 10% discount applied to the Article Processing Charges. Additional details can be found at our institutional membership page.
Founded in 1948, The Max Planck Society is one of Germany’s leading research organizations, and is currently made up of 83 institutes conducting basic research in natural sciences, life sciences, social sciences and humanities. 18 Nobel laureates have emerged from its ranks of scientists and the society has more than 15,000 publications in scientific journals each year.
19 February 2016
A double blind peer-review procedure has been used for all the manuscripts submitted to Toxins
17 February 2016
Toxins Travel Award Winners 2016
We are pleased to announce that Toxins Travel Awards 2016 were granted to Dr. Kartik Sunagar, Marie Curie Fellow in Dr. Yehu Moran’s lab at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and to Dr. Philipp Wiemann, a post-doctoral researcher in Dr. Nancy Keller’s lab at University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
We thank you for your participation and we look forward to receiving your application for the Travel Awards 2017.
5 February 2016
Institutional Membership Extension: Wageningen University, CSIC, University of Zürich, ETH Zürich, University of Tübingen and Osnabrück University
We are pleased to announce that Wageningen University, the Netherlands, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain, the University of Zürich and ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and the University of Tübingen and Osnabrück University, Germany, have not only renewed their institutional memberships with MDPI after two years of successful cooperation, but have also increased the reduction of the article processing charges (APCs) for affiliated authors to 25%.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
5 February 2016
Institutional Membership established with Brock University, Canada and the University of Pisa, Italy
We are pleased to announce that Brock University, Cananda, and the University of Pisa, Italy, have joined MDPI's institutional membership program: Primary authors from these universities will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 01 February 2016.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
25 January 2016
MDPI Sponsors diss:kurs with the University of Basel
MDPI is pleased to announce its newly established sponsorship of diss:kurs, an event coordinated by the University of Basel to support their doctorate program. For more information about the event and how to register, please visit the diss:kurs webpage.
7 January 2016
New Institutional Memberships Established with Tsinghua University, the Chinese Society of Micro-Nano Technology, Ruhr University Bochum and the University of Ulm
We are pleased to announce that the following institutions have joined MDPI's institutional membership program as of 1 January 2016:
- Tsinghua University, China
- Chinese Society of Micro-Nano Technology (CSMNT)
- Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
- University of Ulm, Germany
Authors affiliated with these institutions will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
5 January 2016
Safety, Fermentation, C-Journal of Carbon Research, Magnetochemistry, Batteries and Horticulturae Released Their First Issue in December 2015
We are pleased to announce that MDPI's open access journals Safety, Journal of Imaging, Fermentation, C-Journal of Carbon Research, Magnetochemistry, Batteries and Horticulturae released their first issue at the end of December 2015.
17 December 2015
Institutional Membership Extension: University of Bern, Switzerland
We are pleased to announce that the University of Bern, Switzerland has not only renewed their institutional membership with MDPI after two years of successful cooperation, but also increased the reduction of the article processing charges (APCs) for affiliated authors to 25%.
17 December 2015
Institutional Membership with the University of Ulm and Helmholtz Zentrum Munich
We are pleased to announce that University of Ulm, Germany and Helmholtz Zentrum Munich, Germany has joined MDPI's institutional membership program:
Primary authors from the University of Ulm and Helmholtz Zentrum Munich will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 1 January 2016. Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
9 December 2015
Membership Established with the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)
We are pleased to announce that Virginia Tech has joined MDPI's institutional membership program. Authors from Virginia Tech will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 1 December 2015. Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
1 December 2015
Membership Established with the Technical University of Denmark and the University of North Florida
We are pleased to announce that the following universities have joined MDPI's institutional membership program:
- Technical University of Denmark (as of 1 November 2015)
- University of North Florida, USA (as of 15 November 2015)
Primary authors from the Technical University of Denmark and the University of North Florida will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
6 November 2015
Awards at MDPI
To encourage further research, MDPI journals regularly offer awards to sponsor assistant professors, junior scientists, postdoctoral researchers and PhD students to attend various conferences.
We are pleased to announce that four journals are currently offering Travel Awards and accepting applications for conferences in 2016. Visit our blog for more information: MDPI Blog
2 October 2015
Membership Established with the University of Freiburg and the University of Regensburg
We are pleased to announce that the following universities have joined MDPI's institutional membership program:
University of Freiburg, Germany
University of Regensburg, Germany
Primary authors from the University of Freiburg and the University of Regensburg will benefit from a 10% discount on the article processing charges as of 1 October 2015 and 1 November 2015.
Additional details can be found on our institutional membership page.
19 June 2015
Updated Impact Factor for Toxins – 2.938
We are pleased to report the 2014 Impact Factor for Toxins. According to the 2015 release of the Journal Citation Reports® Science Edition (published by Thomson Reuters in June 2015), the updated Impact Factor for Toxins is 2.938. It has risen from 2.480 in the previous year (+18%), as illustrated in the figure below. The 5-Year Impact Factor is 3.283. Toxins now ranks 28/87 (Q2) in the category ‘Toxicology’.
Evolution of the Toxins Impact Factor:
Evolution of citations to Toxins:
16 January 2015
Dr. Vernon Tesh Appointed New Editor-in-Chief for Toxins
We are pleased to announce Dr. Vernon Tesh, from the Texas A&M Health Science Center, as the new Editor-in-Chief of Toxins since January 2015. He is a specialist in the pathogenesis of diseases caused by Shiga toxins. Dr. Tesh takes over from Dr. Florian Lang, who has held the position since the journal started six years ago. We are extremely grateful to Dr. Lang for his hard work in growing the journal to its present state. We look forward to continuing to work with him in a different capacity, as he remains on the Editorial Board.
27 January 2014
Toxins Establishes New "Bacterial Toxins" Section
We are pleased to announce that Toxins recently established a new section entitled "Bacterial Toxins". Prof. Dr. Vernon L. Tesh from the Texas A&M University Health Science Center serves as the founding Section Editor-in-Chief. We have invited leading experts to join the Section Editorial Board to review manuscripts and serve as guest editors for special issues. More details regarding the "Bacterial Toxins" section can be found here.
13 September 2012
Toxins Special Issue "Anthrax Toxin" closing up - 14 papers published
We are pleased to report that special issue "Anthrax Toxin" has been successfully closed. 14 papers have been published in this issue.
Dr. Jean-Nicolas Tournier, the Guest Editor of this issue, says "The wide-ranging set of articles from authors all over the world reflects the growing importance of anthrax toxin research studies. The articles cover a comprehensive set of topics that deal with toxins molecular specificity, cellular targets, organ disruption, host effects, as well as therapeutics. These articles reflect the actual knowledge on anthrax toxins and open new perspectives in the field."
A new special issue on this topic is planned to be set up soon for the year 2013, aiming to further encourage scholars in this field to share their research results in a timely way.