Dear Colleagues,

It is my pleasure to invite you to join the 1st International Electronic Conference on Microbiology (ECM 2020) that is hosted online by: https://ecm2020.sciforum.net/.

ECM 2020 will present the latest research related to prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms, viruses and prions. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

1. Gut Microbiota and Health Disease
2. Foodborne Pathogens and Food Safety
3. Antimicrobial Agents and Resistance
4. Emerging Infectious Diseases
5. Successful Bacterial Clones
6. Cyclic Di-Nucleotide Signaling
7. Ecology and Physiology of Acidobacteria
8. Microbial Characterization and Bioprocess

• Digitalisation and automation for the characterization of microorganisms and bioprocess development
• Expression of difficult to express proteins
• Microbial bioprocess development with synthetic microorganisms (microorganisms which have been created by means of synthetic biology)

9. Microbe-Plant Interactions

• Endophytic microbes: Applications and effects on plant hosts
• Nitrogen-fixing symbioses in plants
• Microbe-plant interactions in plant disease
• Symbioses effects on plant resilience in a changing climate
• A new agriculture employing symbiotic microbes in place of agrochemicals

10. Evolutionary Insights into Parasitism, Pathogenicity, and Drugable Targets in the Alveolata

ECM 2020 seeks to fulfill this need by offering a completely digital (online) method for running a scientific conference. ECM 2020 will allow its participants to share their latest research results and receive near-instantaneous feedback from microbiology researchers throughout the world through online question and answer sessions and discussion groups. In this way, ECM 2020 will serve as a platform for advancing the state-of-the-art in microbiology. There is no cost to participate in ECCS 2020.

All submitted abstracts will be evaluated by the conference committee. Upon acceptance of their abstract, authors will contribute an extended abstract for the conference proceedings and a slide presentation of their work. The authors of the most outstanding contributions will be invited to submit a full manuscript for potential publication in Microorganisms (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/microorganisms).

I hope you will choose to be a part of this exciting conference and present your most transformative research on microbiology.

Conference Secretariat

Ms. Ashlynn Wang
MDPI Branch Office, Wuhan
E-mail: [email protected]

Ms. Jennifer Shi
MDPI Branch Office, Wuhan
E-mail: [email protected]

Ms. Penny Zhang
MDPI Branch Office, Wuhan
E-mail: [email protected]

Submissions should be submitted by the authors online by registering at https://ecm2020.sciforum.net/, and using the “Submit Abstract” function once logged into system.

1. Scholars interested in participating with the conference can submit their abstract (about 200–250 words covering the areas of manuscripts for the proceedings issue) online at this website up to 20 September 2020.
2. The Conference Committee will conduct a pre-evaluation, based on the submitted abstract, of whether the contribution from the authors of the abstract will be welcome for the 1st International Electronic Conference on Microbiology. All authors will be notified by 30 September 2020 about the acceptance of their abstract.
3. If the abstract is accepted for this conference, the author is asked to submit the manuscript optionally along with a PowerPoint and/or video presentation of his/her paper (only PDF), up to the submission deadline of 10 October 2020.
4. The conference proceedings papers and presentations will be available at https://ecm2020.sciforum.net/for discussion during the time of the conference, 2–30 November 2020, and will be published in Journal Proceedings.
5. The open access journal Microorganisms will publish a Special Issue of the conference and accepted papers will be published in the proceedings of the conference itself. After the conference, the Conference Committee will select manuscripts that may be included for publication in the Special Issue of the journal Microorganisms (the submission to the journal is independent from the conference proceedings and will follow the usual process of the journal, including peer-review, APC, etc.).

Manuscripts for the proceedings issue must have the following organization:

First page:

• Title
• Full author names
• Affiliations (including full postal address) and authors’ e-mail addresses
• Abstract (200–250 words)
• Keywords
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results and Discussion
• Conclusions
• (Acknowledgements)
• References

Manuscripts should be prepared in MS Word or any other word processor and should be converted to PDF format before submission. The publication format will be PDF. The manuscript should be at least 3 pages (incl. figures, tables, and references) and should not exceed 6 pages.

Presentation Slides

Authors are encouraged to prepare a presentation in PowerPoint or similar software, to be displayed online along with the manuscript. Slides, if available, will be displayed directly in the website using the proprietary slides viewer at Sciforum.net. Slides can be prepared in exactly the same way as for any traditional conference where research results can be presented. Slides should be converted to PDF format before submission so that we can easily and automatically process them for online display.

Video Presentations

Besides their active participation within the forum, authors are also encouraged to submit video presentations. The video should be no longer than 20 minutes and be prepared in one of the following formats:

• MOV
• MPEG4
• MP4
• AVI
• WMV
• MPEGPS
• FLV

Authors that wish to present only a poster, i.e., without a proceedings paper, can do so in section I. Posters will be available on the conference website during and after the event. Similarly to papers presented at the conference, participants will be able to ask questions and make comments about the posters. Posters that are submitted without a paper will not be included in the proceedings of the conference.

Submission: Manuscripts should be submitted online at https://ecm2020.sciforum.net/ by registering and logging in to this website.

Accepted File Formats

• MS Word: Manuscript prepared in MS Word must be converted into a single file before submission. When preparing manuscripts in MS Word, the 1st International Electronic Conference on Microbiology Microsoft Word template file (see download below) must be used. Please do not insert any graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) into a movable frame which can superimpose the text and make layout very difficult.
• LaTeX: Manuscripts prepared in LaTeX must be collated into one ZIP folder (include all source files and images so that the Conference Secretariat can recompile the submitted PDF). When preparing manuscripts in LaTeX, please use the 1st International Electronic Conference on Microbiology LaTeX template files.

1st International Electronic Conference on Microbiology Microsoft Word template file and LaTex template file

ECM_2020_Word_template.docx
ECM_2020_Latex_template.zip

Manuscript Preparation

• Paper Format: A4 paper format, the printing area is 17.5 cm × 26.2 cm. The margins should be 1.75 cm on each side of the paper (top, bottom, left, and right sides).
• Paper Length: The conference proceedings paper should not be longer than 6 pages. The conference manuscript should be as concise as possible.
• Formatting/Style: The paper style of the journal Proceedings should be followed. You may download the template file to prepare your paper (see above). The full titles of the cited papers must be given. Reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before punctuation; for example [4] or [1–3], and all the references should be listed separately and as the last section at the end of the manuscript.
• Authors List and Affiliation Format: Authors’ full first and last names must be given. Abbreviated middle name(s) can be added. For papers written by various contributors, a corresponding author must be designated. The PubMed/MEDLINE format is used for affiliations: complete street address information including city, zip code, state/province, country, and email address should be added. All authors who contributed significantly to the manuscript (including writing a section) should be listed on the first page of the manuscript, below the title of the article. Other parties who provided only minor contributions should only be listed under Acknowledgments. A minor contribution might be a discussion with the author, reading through the draft of the manuscript, or performing English corrections.
• Figures, Schemes, and Tables: Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color. Full color graphics will be published free of charge. Figure and schemes must be numbered (Figure 1, Scheme I, Figure 2, Scheme II, etc.) and an explanatory title must be added. Tables should be inserted into the main text, and numbers and titles for all tables supplied. All table columns should have an explanatory heading. Please supply legends for all figures, schemes, and tables. The legends should be prepared as a separate paragraph of the main text and placed in the main text before a table, figure, or scheme.

Potential Conflicts of Interest

It is the authors’ responsibility to identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of clinical research. If there is no conflict, please state here “The authors declare no conflict of interest”. This should be conveyed in a separate “Conflict of Interest” statement preceding the “Acknowledgments” and “References” sections at the end of the manuscript. Financial support for the study must be fully disclosed under the “Acknowledgments” section.

Copyright

MDPI, the publisher of the Sciforum.net platform, is an open access publisher. We believe that authors should retain the copyright to their scholarly works. Hence, by submitting a Communication paper to this conference, you retain the copyright of your paper, but you grant MDPI the non-exclusive right to publish this paper online on the Sciforum.net platform. This means you can easily submit your paper to any scientific journal at a later stage and transfer the copyright to its publisher (if required by that publisher).