How we publish
Researcher-centric
Frontiers was founded by scientists, and our focus has always been to empower researchers in the publishing process. Our journals are driven and peer-reviewed by active researchers, who are experts in their fields and have been appointed to the editorial boards according to strict selection criteria. The strong research community representation across our journals ensures that the direction of science is shaped collectively and collaboratively.
Transparency and Accountability
All articles we publish are peer-reviewed, and the names of the handling editor and reviewers are featured on the final publication. Featuring the reviewers' names alongside the authors ensures accountability, provides credibility to the quality of the peer review, and is a way of recognizing their dedication and contribution.
Dedicated Support Teams
Our editors are fully supported by the Frontiers team of publishing experts who take responsibility for the quality of our publishing program – from recruiting editorial board members to carrying out quality checks on each submission. We collaborate with our editors to ensure we stay true to our mission, uphold our standards and work according to our values.
Custom-built Technology
Our open science publishing platform is at the heart of our publishing operations. We want researchers working at the cutting-edge of science to benefit from the latest technology to validate and disseminate their findings. Leveraging software tools allows us to provide a rigorous, fast, and efficient service. This also allows our editors to focus on the scientific content and improves manuscripts during peer review.
Rigorous Peer Review
Editorial decisions at Frontiers are guided by clear acceptance and rejection criteria during a single anonymized, rigorous peer review. Editorial independence of acceptance decisions is assured by the involvement of external experts as editors and reviewers. Our in-house publishing professionals quality-control and monitor the process, may reject manuscripts at any point during the review and validate final editorial decisions to ensure our quality standards and policies are being adhered to.
Open Access
All articles published by Frontiers are immediately and permanently accessible online free of charge and published under a Creative Commons CC-BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and the source are credited. Open access publishing is, however, not free of costs and we operate a gold open access model with article processing charges for accepted papers. Our guiding principle is that any quality research paper is published while running a sustainable operation. Read more about our fee policy.
Journal Structure
Frontiers' journals and editorial boards are structured to ensure rigor and the publication of high-quality research, as well as to support collaboration and future growth. Academic journals on our platform are referred to as field journals.
Each field journal is a collection of core communities, defined by specialty sections. Each specialty section operates as an independent editorial unit with its own editorial board. Organizing the journals into specialty sections supports journal growth by enabling field chief editors to strategically develop new sections as the field advances.
This cross-disciplinary approach is also applied to our Research Topics – multidisciplinary article collections to which relevant journals can participate.
Quality Control
We're aware of the potential impact of published research both on future research and on society. That's why each Frontiers article strives for the highest quality, thanks to genuinely collaborative interactions between authors, editors, and reviewers, who include many of the world's best scientists and scholars.
Editorial Board Quality
Only leading experts and established members of the research community are appointed to Frontiers' editorial boards. Chief editors, associate editors, and review editors are all listed with their names and affiliations on the journal pages and are encouraged to publicly list their publication credentials.
Pre-peer Review Quality
Each submission must pass several quality checks before it moves into peer review. These quality checks are conducted by our research integrity team and aided by custom-built AI to assess quality more effectively. Our artificial intelligence review assistant (AIRA) checks every manuscript for language quality, the integrity of the figures, the detection of plagiarism, and potential conflicts of interest, among others.
Post-publication Quality
The Frontiers platform enables post-publication commenting and discussions on papers and hence the possibility to critically evaluate articles even after the peer-review process. Frontiers has a community complaints protocol to handle all cases where serious concerns have been raised, including ethical concerns, researcher error, or misconduct.