We would like to thank our past and present editorial and production teams and our authors for cooperation in 2020. Despite of COVID-19 challenges in 2020, our journal has recently received acceptations to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and in processing to Ulrichsweb & Ulrichs Periodicals Directory. The Proceedings of Shevchenko Scientific Society. Medical Sciences obtains manuscripts over the world [1-8]. The decision on their publications is based on potentially influential contents of interest to Ukrainian and other medical and healthcare professionals, scientists and medical students after successful critical peer review [9]. All of the editorial staff of The Proceedings of Shevchenko Scientific Society. Medical Sciences sincerely appreciates the authors’ contributions. Among them, the best corresponding authors (based on download counts of their articles and positive social media attention) are Dr. Sandor Szabo (American University Health Science, CA, USA) and Dr. Natalia Matolinets (Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University, Lviv, Ukraine). In 2020, The Proceedings of Shevchenko Scientific Society. Medical Sciences has put all efforts to upgrade the Journal peer review standards, offering regular educational courses/webinars to advance their editorial credentials to better serve the professional interests of the Journal readers. The Proceedings of Shevchenko Scientific Society. Medical Sciences invited new editorial board members and experts for peer review of the manuscripts in 2020, and some of them received multiple invitations. We honestly appreciate the voluntary contribution of all of the members of the editorial team, executive, and editorial boards of PSSS MS and all reviewers as introduced below. Among reviewers, top peer reviewers (based on their contribution of 4 or more reviews) are Dr. Andriy Cherkas (Sanofi-Aventis-Deutschland GmbH – Industriepark Höchst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany), Dr. Nelia Oryshchyn (Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University, Lviv, Ukraine), Dr. Vassyl Lonchyna (University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, Chicago, United States).

Social media platforms are essential for online scholarly activities in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their use is critical in countries of non-mainstream science. This study aimed to evaluate the role of social media in scholarly activities in Eastern Europe. We collected responses from 127 scholars from Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and other Eastern European countries. They mainly reported spending 1-2 hours on social media activities. ResearchGate, Facebook, and LinkedIn were the most popular channels for post-publication article promotion. Only 17.3% of respondents were familiar with metrics generated by Altmetric.com and Plum Analytics. Increasing awareness of the role of social media platforms and metrics for scholarly purposes requires more attention in Eastern Europe

Dear Reader! We express our sincere appreciation to all the authors, reviewers, members of the editorial board, and the editorial staff for their tireless contributions during these difficult years 2020-2021. The preparation of each issue of "The Proceedings of the Shevchenko Scientific Society: Medical Sciences” ensures its continuing development. The Journal is accepted by the Content Selection & Advisory Board of Scopus to the international indexing Scopus; to the international catalog of journals Ulrichsweb & Ulrichs; and to the Norsk Center for Forsknings data. As an open-access journal that undergoes peer review, the Editors have received multiple manuscripts from multiple countries. Information from the website shows that we had readers in 134 countries.