MDPI INSIGHTS: The CEO's Letter #17 - OA Week, Basel Open Day, Beijing Graphene Forum

Opening Thoughts

Open Access Week: Forging the Future of Open Access through Global Reach and Collaboration

From 21 to 27 October, we celebrated International Open Access Week (OAW), highlighting the importance of making research accessible to everyone. This campaign reinforced our commitment to advancing open access (OA) and showcased how we are helping research communities worldwide adopt OA as their standard.

 

“OA publishing is now a cornerstone of global research”

Throughout the week, we featured MDPI’s efforts to support quality open research through blog posts on topics such as how Research Integrity Promotes OA Practices, our Preprints.org platform, and supporting societies with different OA models. These initiatives capture our commitment to making research more inclusive and accessible to all.

OA publishing is now a cornerstone of global research, with more researchers choosing OA over traditional paywalled models, and embracing new, community-driven models.

Benefits of Open Access and Open Research

• Accelerated Discoveries: OA speeds up scientific progress by allowing immediate access to findings, enabling researchers to build on each other’s work faster.
• Community-Led Innovation: Open research empowers communities to manage their own platforms, creating collaboration and shared knowledge.
• Increased Visibility: OA broadens the reach of your research, leading to greater recognition, collaboration, and impact.
• Cross-Disciplinary Connections: By removing financial and geographical barriers, OA unites diverse fields, sparking innovation across disciplines.

MDPI Singapore Celebrates Open Access Week

MDPI Singapore also hosted its first-ever OAW event at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre, bringing together academics, researchers, and students to discuss the future of open scholarship. Conversations focused on the potential of new publishing models, alternative funding strategies, and the importance of communicating research to wider audiences.

As OA evolves, MDPI remains a committed partner in advancing open science and creating a transparent, inclusive research environment. For a full recap of the week’s highlights and resources, visit our campaign page.

Impactful Research

MDPI Connection to Nobel-Winning Protein Research

David Baker, an American biochemist, and Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper, two scientists from Google DeepMind, have been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their groundbreaking advancements in better understanding the structure of proteins, the molecular engines of life’s processes.

One half of the prize was awarded to Professor David Baker from the University of Washington for his development of revolutionary protein design software enabling the creation of novel proteins for vaccines, nanomaterials, and sensors. Prof. Baker co-authored a 2016 paper in MDPI’s Toxins journal on protein-based therapeutics.

Meanwhile, DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper received recognition for AlphaFold, the AI model that predicts protein structures from amino acid sequences, fulfilling a long-held scientific dream.

“We congratulate this year’s Nobel laureates for their groundbreaking contributions to the study of life”

 Nobel Prize Laureates Entrust MDPI with Their Research

As at October 2024, 45 Nobel laureates had contributed to more than 115 articles across

35 MDPI journals. The privilege of hosting the research of such contributors, who significantly influence the open access movement, resonates deeply with our editorial teams.

We are proud to list the names of Pierre Agostini, Hiroshi Amano, Werner Arber, Aaron Ciechanover, Robert H. Grubbs, Oliver Hart, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Michael Houghton, Harald zur Hausen, Katalin Karikó, Jean-Marie Lehn, Gérard Mourou, Ferid Murad, Shuji Nakamura, William Nordhaus, Kostya S. Novoselov, Giorgio Parisi, Charles M. Rice, Alvin E. Roth, Donna Strickland, K. Barry Sharpless, George F. Smoot, Anne L’Huillier, Drew Weissman, Kurt Wüthrich, Ada Yonath, Tomas Lindahl, Thomas C. Südhof, Stanley B. Prusiner, Roger Kornberg, Robert F. Engle, Richard J. Roberts, Ōmura Satoshi, Kenneth J. Arrow, John B. Goodenough, Jennifer Doudna, Hamilton Othanel Smith, Eric R. Kandel, Carlo Rubbia, Bernard Feringa, Barry J. Marshall, Anthony J. Leggett, Andrew Victor Schally, and David Baker.

Notable MRNA Published in Cells

On 7 October 2024, the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.

MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function. Some interesting papers about microRNA research are published in the MDPI journal Cells. I invite you browse through the notable papers related to microRNA research in Cells.

Inside MDPI

Basel Open Day

On 21 October, we held the Basel Open Day at our headquarters, welcoming a group of journal Editors-in-Chief (EiC) and Editorial Board Members (EBMs) for a full-day workshop. The event featured presentations and discussions on MDPI’s latest editorial updates, data integrity policies, society collaborations, and local market insights.

The following MDPI journals were represented during the visit: Physics, Journal of Personalized Medicine (JPM), Sci, Remote Sensing, Animals, Cells, Buildings, Histories, Sensors, and International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH).

This was a great opportunity to showcase our new office space while gathering feedback from leading journal stakeholders. To get everyone on the same page, we took 60 minutes for round-table introductions, which helped set a collaborative tone and ground us in MDPI’s mission of disseminating open science.

“This was a great opportunity to gather feedback from leading journal stakeholders”

The general feedback from the day highlighted positive developments around our editorial and ethics policies, as well as areas for improvement, including flexibility regarding reviewer deadlines. There was a genuine appreciation and push for our ongoing efforts to share more about MDPI, including company updates and promoting high-quality research through our blog, announcements, and social media channels, which we have been growing and expanding.

Our Basel Open Day was a positive experience, bringing together key journal stakeholders and gathering insights to guide MDPI’s continued engagement with the academic community. We look forward to hosting future events of this kind and welcoming more scholars to our headquarters in Basel, Switzerland.

Coming Together for Science

ncRNA 2024 Conference in Basel

I am pleased to share that we held Non-coding RNA World 2024: Exploring Mechanisms, Designing Medicines (ICM 2024) in Basel, Switzerland this past 7–9 October.

The three-day event attracted just over 100 attendees, including two Chairs, 10 invited speakers and two keynotes from Prof. Mauro Giacca and Prof. Ling-Ling Chen. Of the presentations on site, there were 35 posters and 44 oral presentations.

The overall feedback was positive, with people enjoying the intimate event and the unique activities offered, including a guided tour around Basel’s Old Town (a must-see for anyone visiting the city) and a memorable conference dinner.

It was cool to see the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine announced during the conference days. This was exciting for attendees, as the winners discovered a new class of RNA molecules (miRNAs). As one invited speaker put it, “It's exciting to be among fellows when something that important for the field is announced.”

“It's exciting to be among fellows when something that important for the field is announced”

Every attendee receives a conference survey, and I’m always pleased to see a high percentage of ‘Very Satisfied’ responses when asked about ‘treatment from conference personnel’. Kudos to our conference team for meeting our attendees’ needs. These events are a great opportunity for us to reach new audiences, as 92% of the respondents had never been to an MDPI conference, so I am thrilled to see us connecting with a new demographic of your researchers in the RNA field.

A special thank-you to our partnering societies The Epigenetics Society, The French Society of Genetics, LS² / USGEB (Union of Swiss Societies for Experimental Biology), and The RNA Biology Group, as well as to our sponsors New England Biolabs and Arraystar for their support of the ncRNA 2024 conference. I am also pleased to report that we presented two awards, including the Best Presentation Award and two Best Poster Award, recognizing the contributions of our participants.

Upcoming In-Person Event

Find more upcoming MDPI events here.

Closing Thoughts

Beijing Graphene Forum 2024

I am pleased to share that we had a successful time at the Beijing Graphene Forum 2024, which drew around 1,000 attendees, including Konstantin Novoselov (2015 Nobel Prize in Physics) and other high-profile scholars in materials science and chemistry. It was a great opportunity to present MDPI on the big stage, with university presidents from institutions such as Peking University also in attendance.

I had the honour of awarding Prof. Zhongfan Liu, Chairman of the Chemical Science Committee, with a medal and presenting certificates to the members of the Chemical Science Committee; this is an important initiative to help expand MDPI’s journals and influence in China. These are highly respected scholars, and we enjoyed connecting with them over lunch as well.

“This is an important initiative to help expand MDPI’s journals and influence in China”

I also had the chance to speak about MDPI and open access, giving a five-minute speech during the opening ceremony and a 20-minute presentation at the close. MDPI hosted a sub-forum where both academic scholars and MDPI members shared insights, and we engaged with attendees at our MDPI booth.

This was a great opportunity to spotlight MDPI as the main publishing partner for the event, and I was proud to represent us on stage. We also met with scholars to discuss topics such as their publishing needs and institutional policies, open access, impact journals, and IOAP.