Announcements

MDPI will be attending the 64th Annual Spring Meeting of the Japanese Society of Clinical Cytology, which will be held from 9 to 11 June 2023 in Nagoya, Japan, at the Nagoya Congress Center.

The conference is the official annual meeting of the Japanese Society of Clinical Cytology (JSCC), which is an academic organization consisting of physicians specializing in cytology and cytotechnologists who perform cytology for the purposes of cancer diagnosis and screening. Physicians specializing in cytology that belong to the society include gynecologists, surgeons, internists, and pathologists as well as cytotechnologists.

In light of current trends, the theme of this annual meeting is “Be fascinated with the mastery of cytology!—Mastering the art and passing it on to the next generations”. Cytology is deeply related to cervical cancer screening in Japan. Raising the screening rate, improving and adhering to the screening management guidelines, including colposcopy, and increasing the vaccination rate are important issues for the eradication of cervical cancer. These preventive strategies for cervical cancer will be propagated in this meeting.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Cells;
• Cancers;
• Diagnostics;
• Medicina;
• Medical Sciences.

Please do not hesitate to reach out (cells@mdpi.com) if you plan on attending this conference. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you might have.

For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://www.c-linkage.co.jp/jscc2023/index.html.

Conference: ATS (American Thoracic Society) Conference 2023
Date: 21–23 May 2023
Location: Washington DC, USA

MDPI will be attending ATS 2023 as an exhibitor; we welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest ideas with us.

This conference has been organized by the American Thoracic Society, and it will showcase the latest advances and discoveries in respiratory science, patient care and global respiratory health. At the conference, specialists will share and discuss the latest research and its applications to clinical, basic, and translational science in pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• JCM;
• Medicina;
• Clinics and Practice;
• JPM;
• Cancers;
• Medicines;
• Healthcare;
• Metabolites;
• Children;
• Brain Sciences.

If you are planning to attend this conference, please do not hesitate to talk with us online. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person at booth #2606, and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://conference.thoracic.org/.

Conference: 20th International Congress of the European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (ESCAP 2023)
Date: 29 June–1 July 2023
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

MDPI will be attending ESCAP 2023 as an exhibitor; we welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest ideas with us.

This conference is organized by the European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The theme of the conference is “Mental health of children and adolescents”. At the conference, specialists will share and discuss the latest research and applications of environmental and chemical substances in relation to society.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Children;
• Behavioral Sciences;
• JCM;
• JPM;
• Medicina;
• Adolescents;
• Disabilities.

If you are planning to attend this conference, please do not hesitate to start an online conversation with us. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://www.escap2023.eu/.

The AI & Robotics in Medicine Conference 2023 is delivering a conference with the goal of education, knowledge sharing, and network creation in AI and robotics in medicine.

The conference focuses on physician education and collaboration between various expert groups with a view of what the future will bring for processes of care, research, and education with an introduction of novel technologies.

It brings together eligible speakers, experienced professionals, and an inspiring program designed to open dialogue, raise questions, and prepare for the future of health.

Conference website: https://www.noh.ai/.

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.

If you are interested in creating more open access journals with us to publish cutting-edge research, please send your journal proposal application to newjournal-committee@mdpi.com.

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.

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.

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.

To meet the demands of Medicina's rapid growth, as well as to guarantee the publication of high-quality articles and their free distribution within the community, we are recruiting academic editors worldwide to join our Editorial Board. Please contact us if you would like to participate in editorial work as an Editorial Board Member.

Medicina considers submissions focusing on (but not limited to) the following:

• Cardiology and cardiovascular medicine;
• Pulmonology;
• Obstetrics and gynecology;
• Neuroscience;
• Orthopedics and sports medicine;
• Dentistry;
• Surgery;
• Oncology and cancer research;
• Hematology;
• Endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism;
• Gastroenterology and hepatopancreatobiliary medicine;
• Nephrology and urology;
• Immunology;
• Dermatology;
• Otolaryngology;
• Translational medicine;
• Infectious disease;
• Geriatrics/aging;
• Intensive care/anesthesiology;
• Genetics;
• Ophthalmology;
• Public, environmental, and occupational health;
• Pharmaceutical science and pharmacology.

As an Editorial Board Member, you will be responsible for the following:

• Prescreening submissions and making decisions on whether they should be accepted for processing;
• Suggesting interesting topics in your research field;
• Editing a Special Issue on a topic related to your research;
• Publishing/inviting/recommending one paper free of charge per year;
• Promoting Medicina and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences. 

Journal information
Published since 1920, Medicina (ISSN: 1648-9144) is a peer-reviewed monthly scientific journal of the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Lithuanian Medical Association, Vilnius University, Rīga Stradiņš University, the University of Latvia, and the University of Tartu.

The journal’s main focus is on reviews as well as clinical and experimental investigations. The journal aims to advance knowledge related to problems in medicine in developing countries as well as developed economies, to disseminate research on global health, and to promote as well as foster the prevention and treatment of diseases worldwide. Medicina publications cater to clinicians, diagnosticians, and researchers, and serve as a forum in which to discuss the current status of health-related matters in addition to their impact on a global and local scale.

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!

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.

MDPI will be attending the 27th Congress of the Chinese Pediatric Society, held in Changsha, China, from 15–18 December 2022.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Children (leading journal);
• JPM;
• Medicina;
• Audiology Research;
• JCM;
• Healthcare;
• Diagnostics;
• Metabolites;
• Cancers;
• Nutrients. 

If you plan on attending this conference, feel free to stop by our booth: #B67. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions that you may have. 

For more information about the conference, please see the following link: https://nccps2022.tiemeeting.com/CN.

MDPI will be attending the 15th European Public Health Conference 2022, held in Berlin, Germany, from 9 to 12 November 2022. The theme of Berlin 2022 is “Strengthening Health Systems: Improving Population Health and Being Prepared for the Unexpected”. This conference will aim to explore ways in which the public health community can rally around the principle of bringing about better population health. Meanwhile, the conference committee wants the discussions at the 15th EPH Conference to contribute to resilient health systems, universal health coverage (UHC), a well-trained and highly qualified clinical and public health workforce, and governance structures that take a stand and shape health systems globally.

During this conference, MDPI (at booth #13) will welcome researchers from different backgrounds to visit and share their latest ideas with us.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• IJERPH;
• Medicina;
• JCM;
• EJIHPE;
• Epidemiologia;
• Behavioral Sciences;
• Healthcare;
• Women;
• MPs;
• Nursing Report;
• COVID;
• Diseases;
• Data;
• Adolescents.

If you plan on attending this conference, feel free to stop by our booth at #13. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have.

For more information about the conference, please see the following link: https://ephconference.eu/index.php.

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!

We are pleased to announce a new Section entitled “Health Humanities” in Medicina (ISSN: 1648-9144, IF: 2.948). This Section aims to enable the rapid publication of contributions in the fields of exploring connections between medicine, health sciences, and the arts. 

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Philosophy of medicine;
• Medical epistemology;
• Medical ethics;
• Bioethics;
• Gender and health;
• History of medicine;
• Narrative medicine;
• Medical anthropology;
• Sociology of health and illness;
• Medicine and art;
• Education in health humanities. 

We are now recruiting Editorial Board Members (EBMs) for the Section “Health Humanities”. 

The main responsibilities of Editorial Board Members include:

• Pre-screening and making decisions on new submissions related to your research interests;
• Setting up at least one Special Issue during your term on a topic related to your research interests;
• Providing input or feedback regarding journal policies;
• Helping to promote the journal among your peers or at conferences;
• Attending board meetings to suggest journal development strategies;
• Reviewing manuscripts. 

If you are passionate about participating in the cutting-edge research in this field, please do not hesitate to contact us (medicina@mdpi.com). 

Medicina Editorial Office

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:

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)

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:

Source: 2021 CiteScores™ (Elsevier)

It is our pleasure to welcome the following 21 recognized researchers, who recently joined the Editorial Board of Medicina (ISSN: 1648-9144).

Name: Dr. Chi-Ting Horng
Affiliation: Foo-Yin University Hospital, Pingtung, Taiwan
Interests: traditional Chinese herbs for treating ocular diseases; aero-ophthalmic medication; complementary and alternative medicine for eye diseases

Name: Dr. Alberto Lo Gullo
Affiliation: Department of Medicine, Garibaldi Hospital, 95100 Catania, Italy
Interests: rheumatic disease; cardiovascular disease; vasculitis; arterial stiffness

Name: Prof. Dr. João Miguel Marques dos Santos
Affiliation: Institute of Endodontics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, 3000-075 Coimbra, Portugal
Interests: pulp biology and regeneration; biocompatibility; bioactivity; bioceramic materials; endodontics; chlorhexidine; animal models

Name: Dr. Maria Sofia Cotelli
Affiliation: Neurology Unit, Valle Camonica Hospital, Brescia, Italy
Interests: neurodegenerative diseases; cognition disorders; neuromuscular disease

Name: Prof. Dr. Santina Cottone
Affiliation: Nephrology and Dialysis Unit with Hypertension Centre, Department of Health Promotion Sciences, Maternal & Infant Care, Internal Medicine & Medical Specialties (PROMISE), University of Palermo, “Paolo Giaccone” University Hospital, 90127 Palermo, Italy
Interests: chronic kidney disease pathophysiology; primary and secondary forms of arterial hypertension; pathophysiology of arterial hypertension; endothelium; atherosclerosis; cardiovascular risk in chronic kidney disease

Name: Prof. Dr. Diego Garbossa
Affiliation: Department of Neuroscience "Rita Levi Montalcini", Neurosurgery Unit, University of Turin, 10126 Turin, Italy
Interests: surgery; neuron; neurobiology; neurobiology and brain; physiology; neurodegeneration; neuroanatomy; immunohistochemistry; neurodegenerative diseases; brain diseases; neuropharmacology

Name: Prof. Dr. Jun Yang
Affiliation: Department of Nutrition and Toxicological Science, Hangzhou Normal University School of Public Health, Hangzhou, China
Interests: DNA damage response; carcinogenesis; genotoxin; cell cycle; cell death

Name: Dr. Lucia Billeci
Affiliation: Institute of Clinical Physiology, National Research Council of Italy (CNR-IFC), Pisa, Italy
Interests: neuroscience; neurophysiology; neuroengineering; neurodevelopment disorders; digital health

Name: Dr. Edward A. Bittner
Affiliation: Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
Interests: airway management; anesthesia education; anesthesia for general surgery; burn injury; critical care; post-anesthesia care

Name: Prof. Dr. Olaf Dammann
Affiliation: Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
Interests: philosophy of epidemiology and health data science

Name: Dr. Signe Mežinska
Affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia
Interests: medical ethics; public health; reproductive ethics; medical research ethics

Name: Prof. Dr. Eugenijus Gefenas
Affiliation: Center for Health Ethics, Law and History, Institute of Health Sciences, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania
Interests: medical ethics; human research ethics; bioethics; medical humanities

Name: Prof. Dr. Lars P. Kamolz
Affiliation: Division of Plastic, Aesthetic and Reconstructive Surgery, Department of Surgery, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria
Interests: burn; burn care; hand surgery; wound healing; reconstructive surgery

Name: Prof. Dr. Seung-Gu Yeo
Affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Soonchunhyang University Hospital, Bucheon 14584, Korea
Interests: cancer; oncology; radiation therapy; intensity-modulated radiotherapy; rectal cancer; breast cancer; concurrent chemoradiotherapy; concurrent immunoradiotherapy 

Name: Prof. Dr. Carl Erb
Affiliations: 1. Private Institute for Applied Ophthalmology, Eye Clinic at Wittenbergplatz, Berlin, Germany
2. Glaucoma Center (under construction), Salymbekov University International Medical Faculty, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
Interests: glaucoma; cataract surgery; clinical ophthalmology; retinal diseases; aqueous humor; ocular blood flow; perimetry; color vision; dry eye; neuroprotection; glaucoma surgery

Name: Dr. José Manuel Montes
Affiliations: 1. Psychiatry Service, Hospital Ramón y Cajal, 28034 Madrid, Spain
2. Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), 28034 Madrid, Spain
3. Instituto Ramón y Cajal de Investigación Sanitaria (IRYCIS), 28034 Madrid, Spain
Interests: bipolar; affective disorders; psychosis

Name: Prof. Dr. Hsin-An Chang
Affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei 11490, Taiwan
Interests: psychophysiology; brain stimulation; gene polymorphisms; schizophrenia; affective disorders, anxiety disorders

Name: Dr. Athanasios Marinis
Affiliation: Third Department of Surgery, Tzaneion General Hospital, Zanni & 1 Afentouli, 18536 Piraeus, Greece
Interests: general surgery; emergency surgery; surgical oncology; laparoscopic surgery; colorectal surgery

Name: Dr. Joo Yong Lee
Affiliation: Department of Urology, Severance Hospital, Urological Science Institute, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Interests: urology; urolithiasis; microbiome; urinary tract infection; reconstruction surgery

Name: Dr. Ronald Castelino
Affiliation: School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Interests: kidney disease; medication safety; medicine review; pharmacy services

Name: Dr. Xinhua Xiao
Affiliation: Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China
Interests: type 1 diabetes mellitus; type 2 diabetes mellitus; monogenic diabetes mellitus; maturity-onset diabetes of the young; gestational diabetes mellitus; obesity; the developmental origin of metabolic disease; glycemic variation; gut microbiome; epigenetics and circadian rhythm

We look forward to their contributions to the journal.

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new Section, “Health Humanities”, with the aim of providing a specific venue for this field of research in Medicina (ISSN: 1648-9144). The Section is led by Prof. Dr. Olaf Dammann (Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA) and covers the following topics:

• philosophy of medicine;
• medical epistemology;
• medical ethics;
• bioethics;
• gender and health;
• history of medicine;
• narrative medicine;
• medical anthropology;
• sociology of health and illness;
• medicine and art;
• education in health humanities.

We are now recruiting Editorial Board Members for this Section (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/medicina/sections/Health_Humanities). If you are an active researcher in one of the aforementioned fields and are passionate about publishing cutting-edge research, please do not hesitate to get in touch (medicina@mdpi.com). Alternatively, you may wish to submit your work directly via the following link: https://susy.mdpi.com/user/manuscripts/upload?journal=medicina.

We look forward to collaborating with you.

Medicina (ISSN: 1648-9144) is recruiting Editorial Board Members for the following twelve Sections:

• “Translational Medicine”;
• “Infectious Disease”;
• “Geriatrics/Aging”;
• “Pediatrics”;
• “Immunology”;
• “Intensive Care/ Anesthesiology”;
• “Genetics”;
• “Nephrology”;
• “Ophthalmology”;
• “Dermatology”;
• “Obstetrics and Gynecology”;
• “Gastroenterology & Hepatology”.

These 12 Sections are now expanding their Editorial Board to cover areas that are less well-represented by the current team. If you are interested in this position or know of potential candidates to recommend, please contact us on medicina@mdpi.com.

Medicina (ISSN 1648-9144; https://www.mdpi.com/journal/medicina) is a well-established, fully open access journal which provides an advanced forum for studies related to medicine. The journal impact factor is 2.430, and it is also indexed in many important databases (Scopus, SCIE (Web of Science), PubMed, MEDLINE, PMC, Embase, and many others). It is currently ranked in the second quartile (Q2) in its JCR category. More details on the Editorial Board of Medicina are available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/medicina/editors. 

As a member of the Editorial Board, you would have one or more of the following duties:

• Making decisions as to whether a manuscript can be accepted or not based on the reports we collect;
• Guest-editing a Special Issue on a topic related to your research interests when it is convenient for you;
• Promoting Medicina and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences.

To apply or request further information, please contact the Medicina Editorial Office (medicina@mdpi.com).

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 Researchers^TM 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.

The full list of 2021 Highly Cited Researchers  can be accessed at the following webpage in the Web of Science^TM https://recognition.webofscience.com/awards/highly-cited/2021/.

--- Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) is a Clarivate product.

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.

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.

Read our anniversary blog post: "Sharing 'Collective Human Knowledge': The Benefits of Open Access Publication"

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.

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.

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
liliane.auwerter@mdpi.com

It is our pleasure to welcome Dr. Konstantinos Dimas, Dr. Jose Antonio de Paz, Prof. Dr. Aron-Frederik Popov, Prof. Dr. Ignatios Ikonomidis, and Prof. Dr. Jack V. Greiner, who are newly appointed Section Editors-in-Chief for Medicina (ISSN: 1648-9144). We look forward to their contributions to the journal.

You can find out more about the Sections in Medicina on the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/medicina/sections.

It is our pleasure to welcome Dr. David Madrid-Costa, Dr. Khalid Al Rasadi, Prof. Dr. Martin Schäfer, and various other prominent academics as new editorial board members for Medicina (ISSN: 1648-9144). We look forward to their contributions to the journal.

You can find out more about the Editorial Board at the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/medicina/editors.

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

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

* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2021

Source: 2020 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ® (Clarivate, 2021)

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.

Why choose MDPI Books?

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)

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.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Medicina 2021 Young Investigator Award, Dr. Veeru Kasivisvanathan and Dr. Andrea Cortegiani.

Dr. Veeru Kasivisvanathan

The 2021 Medicina Young Investigator Award is firstly granted to Dr. Veeru Kasivisvanathan, an Academic Urologist at University College London, UK, whose research focuses on prostate cancer. His work, which supports prostate MRI as an upfront diagnostic test in men with suspected prostate cancer, has contributed to the first main change in the way that we diagnose the disease for 30 years. His remarkable career achievements have led to major advancement in the field of medicine.

Dr. Andrea Cortegiani

The 2021 Medicina Young Investigator Award is also granted to Dr. Andrea Cortegiani, Assistant Professor at the Department of Surgical Oncological and Oral Science at the University of Palermo, Italy, and anesthesiologist at the Department of Anesthesia Intensive Care and Emergency at the University Hospital Policlinico Paolo Giaccone, Palermo, Italy. Dr. Cortegiani has demonstrated strong expertise in research methodology and has produced significant advances in the fields of infections and sepsis in critically ill patients, noninvasive respiratory support and ethics in publishing.

The award consists of 2000 Swiss Francs and a waiver of the 1500 Swiss Francs article processing fee for a manuscript accepted for publication in Medicina.

For more information about Medicina awards, please see the following link: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/medicina/awards.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

MDPI will be attending the conference Neuroscience 2020, which will be hosted in Washington, USA, 24–28 October 2020.

SfN’s 50th annual meeting is the premier venue for the presentation of emerging science in the field of neurosciences, where one can learn from experts, forge collaborations with peers, explore new tools and technologies, and advance their career.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Brain Sciences (leading journal)
• JCM
• Medicina
• Genes
• Children
• Cancers
• Behavioral Sciences
• Cells
• IJERPH
• Disease
• Biomedicines
• JPM
• Pathogens
• Healthcare
• IJMS
• Psych
• Pharmaceuticals
• Clocks&Sleep
• Jounal of Intelligence
• Pharmaceutics

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #208). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person, to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit:

https://www.sfn.org/meetings/neuroscience-2020

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 helen.dobson@jisc.ac.uk.

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 ioap@mdpi.com.

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

MDPI will be attending the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2020(ESC Congress 2020) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 29 Aug–2 Sep 2020.

ESC Congress 2020 will build on the solid foundations of a congress which attracts worldwide cardiology leaders to present and exchange on their knowledge and most important research results. It will focus on the best and latest science but will also emphasize the importance of innovation, introducing topics at the frontiers of cardiovascular medicine and science to the attendees.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• JCM
• Medicina
• JCDD
• Medicines
• JPM
• Healthcare

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth N600). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit here.

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.

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.

MDPI has endorsed Open Pharma’s Position Statement in support of open access publishing with the aim of advancing medical science and ultimately, improving patient care. Open pharma is a group of research funders, healthcare professionals, publishers, academics, and other healthcare stakeholders.

Since its inception in 1996, MDPI’s efforts have aligned with Open Pharma’s vision of more effective and transparent publishing, collaborating internationally with experts to deliver peer-reviewed online research journals to the scientific community and the general public. MDPI publishes 56 journals in the field of Medicine and Pharmacology and is planning to hold the World Pharma Forum in Basel in 2021.

Published under a Creative Commons License, MDPI’s articles can be freely shared and their content re-used, upon proper attribution. In support of the statement, MDPI will continue to uphold its open access policy and provide fast editorial services to ensure that new medical evidence can be read by everyone, without paywall restrictions.

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

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

1. An official certificate;
2. 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: office@encyclopedia.pub)

Candidate Requirements

1. Have a Ph.D. degree;
2. Have more than three qualified entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020.

Evaluation Standards

1. Number of entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020;
2. Quality of entries online (including length, figure quality, and novelty);
3. 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.

MDPI will be attending the American Thoracic Society (ATS) 2020 Congress in Philadelphia, PA, USA, 15–20 May 2020.

The ATS International Conference is the home of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep professionals, from those in the earliest stages of their careers to those whose research or strides in clinical care has gained them international recognition. Each year, nearly 14,000 of these professionals choose to attend, present, and learn about the latest advances, meet with colleagues from around the world, and strike new collaborations. It is truly where today’s science meets tomorrow’s care.

This international conference is also multidisciplinary. Clinicians and researchers in many other fields attend the conference, thereby enriching conversations that lead to insights that ultimately improve patient care.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• JCM
• IJERPH
• Medicina
• Cancers
• Children
• Brain Sciences
• Medicines
• JPM
• Healthcare

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth 1101). 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://conference.thoracic.org.

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

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.

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

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 office@encyclopedia.pub.

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.

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.

The University of Basel and the MDPI Sustainability Foundation are organizing the First Basel Sustainable Publishing Forum on 9th September 2019.

The aim of this event is to provide background and perspectives on Plan S to Learned Societies, which have to make well-informed decisions to transition their journals to Open Access (OA).

The BSPF will bring together several representatives of Learned societies, Plan S architects as well as representatives from various publishers and publishing platforms. After getting the big picture from cOAlition S, panel discussions will allow to better understand the diverse challenges that Learned societies are facing to transition their journals to OA as well as to identify sustainable, implementable and scalable solutions for successful Open Access transition.

For program details and registration, please follow the link below:
https://sciforum.net/conference/SustainableSolutionsToOpenAccess

We are pleased to inform that Medicina received an updated Journal Impact Factor of 1.467 in the recent release of the Journal Citation Reports®. The journal's 5-Year Impact Factor is 1.288. Medicina now ranks 84/160 (Q3) in the 'Medicine, General & Internal' category.

Evolution of Impact Factor, Citations and Publications for Medicina:

Source: data according to Journal Citation Reports®, 2018 release, a Clarivate Analytics product.

MDPI will be attending the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2019 in Paris, France, 31 August – 4 September 2019.

The ESC Congress is the world’s largest conference in cardiovascular medicine. ESC Congress 2019 will take place in one of the world’s most alluring cities, Paris, and will be organised in conjunction with the World Heart Federation emphasizing the global reach of the event.

ESC Congress 2019 will build on the solid foundations of a congress that attracts worldwide cardiology leaders to present and exchange on their knowledge and most important research results. It will focus on the best and latest science but will also emphasize the importance of innovation, introducing topics at the frontiers of cardiovascular medicine and science to the attendees.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Journal of Clinical Medicine
• Diagnostics
• Cancers
• Pathogens
• Cells
• Children
• Medicina
• Healthcare
• Journal of Personalized Medicine
• Journal of Cardiovascular Development and Disease
• Biomedicines

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth C590). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following link: http://www.escexhibition.org/ESC2019/default.aspx.

Barcelona, Spain
27 September–1 October 2019

We will be attending the ESMO Congress 2019 in Barcelona, Spain from 27 September to 1 October 2019. The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) is the leading European professional organization for medical oncology. Comprised of 17,000 oncology professionals from over 130 countries, they are the society of reference for oncology education and information. The annual ESMO Congress, which is held every year, is attended by 25,000 participants. The Congress presents the latest scientific developments in basic, translational and clinical cancer research and contextualizes new findings for practical implementation in everyday patient care. Representatives of the following MDPI open access journals will attend:

Cancers (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/cancers)

Diagnostics (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/diagnostics)

Genes (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/genes)

Healthcare (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/healthcare)

IJERPH (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph)

Journal of Clinical Medicine (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jcm)

Journal of Personalized Medicine (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jpm)

Medicina (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/medicina)

Medicines (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/medicines)

Vaccines (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/vaccines)

If you will attend this conference, please stop by our booth (Booth # P433). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and to answering any questions you may have concerning open access publishing and our journals.

For more information about the conference, please visit
https://www.esmo.org/Conferences/ESMO-Congress-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 ioap@mdpi.com.

We are delighted to announce our participation in Jisc’s Publication Router project, as of March 2019.

Publications Router is a Jisc service that automatically sends notifications about research articles to institutions' systems such as their repositories or CRISs, since May 2015. Through this agreement, MDPI will provide Jisc with daily feeds and information regarding published articles, which will be gathered by their system and delivered to institutions also registered to this service. Nearly all of our articles are published within 15 days of acceptance, so institutions will receive them quite promptly.

The feed will include the full text of the published version of record, with no embargo, so the articles can be exposed immediately for public view. They are accompanied by rich metadata, including confirmation of the immediate CC BY licence, minimising the need for any manual intervention or checking.

For more information about Publications Router, you may contact Jisc’s central helpdesk at help@jisc.ac.uk. For any queries about MDPI’s institutional agreements and collaborations, you may get in touch with MDPI’s Institutional Engagement team at ioap@mdpi.com, which would be very happy to hear from further UK institutions.

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high quality academic publishing. Over 97,000 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2018. We are extremely appreciative of all those who made a contribution to the editorial process in this capacity. At the beginning of every year, journal editorial offices publish a list all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year the “MDPI Top Reviewer Awards” are announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise, dedication, high quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2018 MDPI Top Reviewer Awards:

• Ali Behnood
• Andrea Pezzuolo
• Angela Gorgoglione
• Anna D'Auria
• Antonio D'Andrea
• Azhar Abbas
• Bogdan Zagajewski
• Chunhui Chen
• Dominika Głąbska
• Dominika Guzek
• Dragan Pamucar
• Francisco J. G. Silva
• Frank Li
• Gianluca Serafini
• Gyorgy Szekely
• Haozhi Pan
• Helvi Heinonen-Tanski
• José Manuel Gómez-Soberón
• Kathy Lewis
• Klara Kosova
• Luis N. López De Lacalle
• M. Z. Naser
• Malwina Tytła
• Masoume Amirkhani
• Matteo Ghidelli
• Moretti Laura
• Petra Schneider
• Roberto Cerchione
• Spyros Papaefthymiou
• Ştefan Cristian Gherghina

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 (constanze.schelhorn@mdpi.com).

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.

We are delighted to announce the establishment of our national Open Access agreement with the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Through this national agreement, the Austrian institutions listed below as well as FWF will cover the Article Processing Charges (APC) of manuscripts published by eligible corresponding or funded authors in MDPI journals as long as central funds are available.

All participating institutions have gained access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information as well as Funder and Grant ID details for easy identification and additional transparency. At the same time eligible authors are benefited from an APC discount which comes at no cost for the institutions.

Eligible corresponding authors affiliated with the participating institutions are prompted to choose the corresponding Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system. The program will be selected automatically if authors submit their papers using their institutional email address. To claim their discount, FWF funded authors should choose the particular funder and add their Grant ID upon online submission of their manuscript. The institutions will then crosscheck the information and confirm the APC funding.

Eligible authors that have their APC covered by their institution or funder are advised to include the following sentence in their acknowledgments: "Open Access Funding by the [name of the institution/funder]".

The full text of the agreement is openly available online at: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2536007

For any questions about the agreement, please contact the KEMÖ Consortium at emedien@obvsg.at, FWF at Katharina.Rieck@fwf.ac.at, or the MDPI IOAP team at ioap@mdpi.com.

The Austrian institutions participating in this agreement are:

• Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
• University for Continuing Education Krems
• University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna
• University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria
• University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien
• Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences
• International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
• Institute of Science and Technology Austria
• MCI Management Center Innsbruck
• University of Graz
• University of Linz
• University of Salzburg
• Graz University of Technology
• TU Wien
• University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna
• University of Vienna

This is our first collective agreement with a national library consortium, while the individual institutions around the world participating in our IOAP are now more than 500 - see details here: https://www.mdpi.com/about/ioap. We would be mostly interested in discussing about possible collaborations with other consortia, funders, and institutions in our mutual efforts to accelerate Open Access.

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/

We are delighted to announce that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is now a participant of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). Authors funded by the BMGF can enjoy discounts on the APC, while the funder covers the costs of eligible articles centrally. BMGF also has access to the MDPI online submission system where they can find full article metadata and pricing information as well as Grant ID details for easy identification and additional transparency.

We hope that funded authors find the programme beneficial and we are happy to offer our IOAP to other funders that need a streamlined workflow of compliance checking and APC coverage. 

To claim their discount, BMGF funded authors should choose the particular funder and add their Grant ID upon online submission of their manuscript.

For any questions about the BMGF agreement, please contact the funder at support@chronos-oa.com or the MDPI IOAP team at ioap@mdpi.com.

Recently, it was announced that a group of European funders supported 10 principles that will help to expand open access, known as Plan S. MDPI warmly welcomes this move as a step towards achieving more open and accessible communication of research across all disciplines. Some aspects remain to be clarified, however the details given so far match the aims and values that MDPI has held over the past two decades.

We believe that open access publishers should be active participants in discussions around Plan S, particularly regarding potential new business models and practical aspects of implementation. MDPI supports APCs as a transparent unit of payment for article publishing, however we are committed to exploring other measures and recently signed the Jussieu Call. Sustainability is a key value for MDPI, and future funding models should have at their heart the sustainability of knowledge and research dissemination. Plan S provides an opportunity for funders and publishers to directly discuss funding of open access journals in ways that are beneficial to all parties involved.

We are happy to announce the establishment of an Open Access (OA) agreement with Qatar National Library (QNL). QNL is committed to supporting and helping Qatar authors publish OA at no cost. Through this national agreement, QNL will cover the Article Processing Charges (APC) of manuscripts published by Qatar-based corresponding authors in MDPI journals.

Eligible corresponding authors affiliated with Qatar research centers and universities are prompted to choose QNL as part of our Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) when they submit an article via our online submission system. The program will be selected automatically if authors submit their papers using their institutional email and/or a computer registered with the institution’s IP range. QNL will then crosscheck the information and confirm the APC funding.

Qatar authors that have their APC covered by QNL are advised to include the following sentence in their acknowledgments: "The publication of this article was funded by Qatar National Library".

For more information, please visit Open Access at QNL or email the QNL Open Access team at openaccess@qnl.qa.

We will be attending the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich, Germany from 19th to 23rd October 2018. The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) is the leading European professional organization for medical oncology. Comprising 18,000 oncology professionals from over 150 countries, they are the society of reference for oncology education and information. The ESMO 2018 Congress will provide a scientific and educational program able to directly impact the daily clinical practice of oncologists. This year, the program also features a dedicated nursing track through a collaboration with the European Oncology Nursing Society (EONS). Representatives of the following MDPI open access journals will attend:

Cancers (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/cancers)
Antibodies (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/antibodies)
Epigenomes (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/epigenomes)
Healthcare (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/healthcare)
High-Throughput (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/high-throughput)
Journal of Clinical Medicine (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jcm)
Journal of Personalized Medicine (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jpm)
Medical Sciences (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/medsci)
Medicina (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/medicina)
Medicines (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/medicines)
Vaccines (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/vaccines)