It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the second electronic Conference on Plant Sciences (IECPS2021). This electronic conference will be held online at sciforum.net, a platform developed and maintained by MDPI for hosting conferences. It allows scientists from all over the world to present their latest research in Plant Sciences, receive direct feedback, and engage in discussions with the wider scientific community.

From a human perspective, plants are sessile, blind, and deaf living organisms, and may look solitary like individuals. Often we forget that life on Earth depends almost entirely on these complex organisms. Starting from this statement, IECPS2021 will deepen plant research at all levels, from the molecular through to the whole plant and community scale, also including bioinformatics and modeling approaches. This year, we will particularly highlight the importance of contributions to current topics, such as plant–plant communication, protection of plant biodiversity, and plants in urban environments. For this purpose, we have planned six focused sessions:

• Plant Physiology, Signalling and Communication
• Plant Ecology, Biodiversity and Developmental Biology
• Plant Response to Stresses and Changing Environment
• Phytochemistry and Phytoremediation, Plants in Urban Ecosystems
• Plant Nutrition and Plant–Soil–Microorganism Interactions

IECPS2021 will be an online-only proceeding, which allows participation from all over the world with no requirement for travel or related expenditures. An electronic conference provides a platform for rapid and direct exchanges about the latest research findings and novel ideas. Attending and participating in this online conference is free of charge. The accepted proceedings papers will probably be published in IECPS2021 MDPI Proceedings (Biology and Life Sciences Forum journal), and selected papers will be considered for publication in a Special Issue of Plants (MDPI), a high visibility open access journal, with a 200 CHF discount on the APC.

We are committed to equality and inclusion principles. Therefore, we ask authors to ensure that the papers and presentations are highly accessible to the wider and more diverse scientific community. We encourage submissions from scientists at all career stages and from all backgrounds, and aim for an equal gender balance.

We are looking forward to receiving your contributions to this scientific event and would like to thank you in advance for your active support.

Sincerely,

Prof. Dr. Adriano Sofo

Conference Secretariat
Mr. Leo Zou
Ms. Stefanie Li
email: [email protected]

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

1. Scholars interested in participating in the conference can submit their abstract (about 200–250 words) online at this website until 8 September 2021 8 October 2021.
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 Plant Sciences—10th Anniversary of Journal Plants. All authors will be notified by 22 September 2021 15 October 2021 about the acceptance 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 (max. 6 pages), optionally accompanied by a Poster/PowerPoint/Video Presentation (max. 5 minutes), for the submission deadline of 20 October 2021 2 November 2021.
4. The conference proceedings papers and presentations will be available for discussion on https://iecps2021.sciforum.net/ during the time of the conference 1–15 December 2021.
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 Plants will publish a conference Special Issue. After the conference, the authors will be encouraged to submit a full manuscript to the dedicated Special Issue by which they will receive a 200 CHF discount on the Article Processing Charge.
   Note: The submission to the journal is independent of the conference proceedings and will follow the usual process of the journal, including peer-review, APC, etc.

Proceedings papers

Proceedings papers must be prepared in MS Word using the Proceedings template (see below) and should be converted to PDF format before submission. The manuscript should count at least 3 pages (incl. figures, tables and references) and should not exceed 6 pages. Carefully read the rules outlined in the 'Instructions for Authors' on the journal website and ensure that your manuscript submission adheres to these guidelines.

Manuscripts for the proceedings issue must be organized as follows:

• Title;
• Full author names;
• Affiliations (including full postal address) and authors' e-mail addresses;
• Abstract;
• Keywords;
• Introduction;
• Methods;
• Results and Discussion;
• Conclusions;
• (Acknowledgements);
• References.

IECPS2021-template.docx

Presentation Slides

Authors are encouraged to prepare a presentation in PowerPoint or similar software, to be displayed online along with the manuscript. Slides can be prepared the same way as for any traditional conference. They should be converted to PDF format before submission.

The following organization is recommended for your presentation:

• Length of the presentation: no more than 30 slides;
• Slide 1 (strictly one slide): title, authors’ names, affiliation(s), email addresses of the corresponding authors, and logos of the laboratory and/or institution (not mandatory);
• Slide 2 (strictly one slide): Graphical Abstract, repeat the title of the presentation but avoid other text as much as possible;
• Slide 3 (strictly one slide): Abstract (max. 250 words) and 3–5 keywords separated by semicolons;
• Slide 4 and following slides: should contain Introduction, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions in this sequence;
• Last slide: Acknowledgments, and logos of sponsors (not mandatory).

IECPS2021-PPT-template

Video Presentations

Authors are also encouraged to submit video presentations. This is a unique way of presenting your paper and discussing it with peers from all over the world. Video should be no longer than 5 minutes and prepared with one of the following formats: .mp4 /.webm /.ogg (max size: 250Mb). It should be submitted with the full manuscript before 20 October 2021 2 November 2021.

Tips for authors: If you would like to prepare a video based on your PowerPoint presentation, you may use the "record slide" function in the PowerPoint.

All authors must disclose all relationships or interests that could inappropriately influence or bias their work. This should be conveyed in a separate "Conflict of Interest" statement preceding the "Acknowledgments" and "References" sections at the end of the manuscript. If there is no conflict, please state "The authors declare no conflict of interest." 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).