Viruses Ten-Year Anniversary
A special issue of Viruses (ISSN 1999-4915).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 July 2020) | Viewed by 195591
Special Issue Editor
Interests: HIV dynamics and replication
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Viruses was launched by MDPI in 2009. At that time, open access journals were a relatively novel phenomenon, and much of my time as Editor-in-Chief was initially spent explaining the concept of open access and why it is a viable publication model. During the ensuing decade, open access has clearly caught on. There are now innumerable open-access journals, and while many are of dubious quality, funding agencies around the world are increasingly requiring that the research they support be published in an open-access format (1, 2). In 2009, Viruses published only 70 papers; this number swelled to 391 in 2017 and 1441 in 2020. The journal’s impact factor, which was 1.5 in 2011, increased to 3.761 in 2017 and 5.048 in 2020. I am particularly proud of the journal’s outreach activities: we sponsor annual travel awards for students and postdocs and a biennial Viruses Young Investigator Award (3). In 2016, 2018, and 2020, we organized international virology conferences, held in Basel, Switzerland (2016) and Barcelona, Spain (2018 and 2020), and we are currently planning the Viruses 2022 conference, to be held virtually. We now have in place affiliation agreements with a number of virology societies from three continents, including: the American Society for Virology (ASV), Spanish Society for Virology (SEV), Canadian Society for Virology (CSV), Italian Society for Virology (SIV-ISV) and Australasian Virology Society (AVS). These agreements benefit the membership of the societies while at the same time increasing the profile of Viruses and promoting virology research globally. The progress that Viruses has made since 2009 would not have been possible without the dedication of the editorial staff and a stellar group of Associate Editors and Editorial Board members.
The past decade has also witnessed enormous developments in the field of virology. A curative therapy for hepatitis C virus (HCV) has been developed (4), and vaccines for human papillomavirus (HPV) are now widely available (5). Progress in a range of technologies, from high-throughput deep sequencing to cryo-electron microscopy, have made possible transformative insights into virus replication at the molecular, cellular, structural, and population levels. Despite this progress, events over the past decade—including global outbreaks of Ebola virus, Zika virus, the MERS coronavirus, and of course the global COVID-19 pandemic—have served as constant reminders that viruses will continue to pose a significant threat to human health.
This 10-year anniversary issue brings together a number of leading authors across plant, insect, and animal virology and prion research to share their research and insights. This Special Issue celebrates both the first decade of Viruses and the progress made in the field of virology over the past decade.
References
- https://www.ukri.org/funding/information-for-award-holders/open-access/
- http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/open-science-open-access
- https://www.mdpi.com/journal/viruses/awards
- http://www.who.int/hepatitis/news-events/hep-c-scale-up/en/
- http://www.who.int/immunization/diseases/hpv/en/
Dr. Eric O. Freed
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Viruses is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
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