Dear Colleagues,

You are cordially invited to participate in the 2nd International Electronic Conference on Diversity (IECD 2022)—New Insights into the Biodiversity of Plants, Animals and Microbes, sponsored by the MDPI open access journal Diversity. The meeting is an opportunity for researchers in the field of the science of biodiversity to present their research and exchange ideas with colleagues. This is an electronic conference, removing the need to travel and eliminating participation expenses.

The conference will be focused on “New Insights into the Biodiversity of Plants, Animals and Microbes” and will provide a forum for presenting and discussing new results.

IECD2022 will include three sessions:

Session A : Animals Diversity
Session B : Plants Diversity
Session C : Microbes Diversity

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

1. Marine diversity;
2. Animal diversity;
3. Plant diversity;
4. Microbial diversity and culture collections;
5. Chemical biodiversity and chemical ecology;
6. Biodiversity conservation;
7. Biogeography and macroecology;
8. Phylogeny and evolution;
9. Biodiversity loss and dynamics;
10. Mesophotic ecosystem diversity;
11. Invasive species and diversity.

This will be a virtual conference held at www.sciforum.net, a platform developed and sponsored by MDPI to organize and provide technical support for electronic conferences.

The format of the conference is as follows: After abstract acceptance, the authors will submit a pre-recorded video presentation or a series of narrated slides that will be both accessible online and open for discussion, comments, and questions during the entire conference. In addition, this presentation will remain available after the e-conference. Authors are requested to submit a full description of their work in a conference paper that will be peer reviewed and, upon acceptance, probably published in the MDPI Biology and Life Sciences Forum journal. Paper submission is not a requirement for active conference participation.

The participation is free of charge for both authors and attendees. The accepted proceedings papers will probably be published in the MDPI Biology and Life Sciences Forum journal and available online on the MDPI website. Selected extended versions of the papers will be published in a Special Issue of the journal Diversity with a 20% discount on the article processing charge (ISSN 1424-2818; Diversity).

The best conference paper and presentation will receive an award of CHF 500, as well as an offer to publish an extended paper, free of charge, in the Special Issue of Diversity.

We look forward to engaging in exciting discussions and hearing new ideas and perspectives from experts in the field. All participants are welcome to join the online conference.

Kind regards,

Prof. Dr. Michael Wink

Conference Secretariat

Sessions

Submission should be completed online by the authors by registering with https://sciforum.net/ and using the “Start New Submission” function once logged into the system 15 October 2021 30 November 2021.

1. Scholars interested in participating in the conference can submit their abstract (approximately 200–250 words) online at this website until .
2. Based on the submitted abstract, the conference committee will conduct a pre-evaluation of whether a contribution from the authors of the abstract will be welcome for the 2nd International Electronic Conference on Diversity (IECD 2022)—New Insights into the Biodiversity of Plants, Animals and Microbes. All authors will be notified by 26 October 2021 10 December 2021 with regard to the acceptance status of their abstract.
3. If the abstract is accepted for this conference, the author will be invited to prepare a full description of their work (maximum 6 pages), optionally accompanied by a poster/video/PowerPoint presentation, until the submission deadline of 18 January 2022 8 February 2022.
4. The conference proceedings papers and presentations will be available for discussion on during the time of the conference 15–31 March 2022.
5. The accepted proceedings papers will probably be published as one dedicated volume in the MDPI Biology and Life Sciences Forum journal. Publication of proceedings paper is free of charge.
   Note: Before publication, Biology and Life Sciences Forum journal will review accepted papers using the powerful text comparison tool: iThenticate. This procedure aims to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism.
   Submissions with a high repetition rate and lack of novelty will not be published in the conference proceedings.
6. The open access journal Diversity will publish a conference Special Issue, while accepted abstracts will be published in the conference proceedings. After the conference, the conference committee will select abstracts for which extended papers may be included for publication in the Special Issue of the journal Diversity (the submission to the journal is independent from the conference proceedings and will follow the usual process of the journal, including the peer review and application of an APC).

Proceedings Manuscripts

Manuscripts for Proceedings must conform to the following structure:

Title

• Full author names
• Affiliations (including full postal address) and authors’ email addresses
• Abstract (200–250 words)
• Keywords
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results and Discussion
• Conclusions
• (Acknowledgments)
• References

Manuscripts should be prepared in Microsoft Word or any other word processor and should be converted to PDF format before submission. The publication format will be PDF. The manuscript should count at least three pages (including figures, tables and references).

Microsoft Word

Authors must use the Microsoft Word template to prepare their manuscript. Using the template file will substantially shorten the time to complete the copy-editing and publication of accepted manuscripts. Manuscripts prepared in Microsoft Word must be converted into a single file before submission. Please do not insert any graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) into a movable frame which can superimpose the text and create layout-related difficulties.

IECD2022-template.docx

Presentation Slides

Authors are encouraged to prepare a presentation in PowerPoint or a similar software, to be displayed online along with the manuscript. Slides, if available, will be directly displayed on the website using Sciforum.net’s proprietary slides viewer. 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 the PDF format before submission so that our process can easily and automatically convert them for online display.

IECD2022-PPT-template.pptx

Video Presentations

Authors are also encouraged to submit video presentations. The video should be no longer than 5 minutes and be prepared in one of the following formats:

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

Microsoft Word/Presentation Slides/Video Presentations should be submitted by 18 January 2022 8 February 2022.

Presentation of Posters

Posters will be available on the conference website during and after the event. As with papers presented at conferences, participants will be able to ask questions and make comments about the posters. Posters can be presented without an accompanying Proceedings paper and will also be available online on this website during and after the e-conference.

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 are no conflicts, please state here that “The authors declare no conflicts of interest”. This should be conveyed in a separate “Conflicts 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 communications paper to this conference, you retain the copyright of your paper, however, 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).