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Frontiers Media SA is a publisher of
peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...
,
open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
,
scientific journal In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Content Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such as s ...
s currently active in
science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
,
technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
, and
medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...
. It was founded in 2007 by Kamila and
Henry Markram Henry John Markram (born 28 March 1962) is a South African-born Israeli neuroscientist, professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland and director of the Blue Brain Project and founder of the Human Brain Proj ...
, and has since expanded to other academic fields. Frontiers is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, with other offices in London, Madrid, Seattle and Brussels. In 2022, Frontiers employed more than 1,400 people, across 14 countries. All Frontiers journals are published under a
Creative Commons Attribution License A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...
. As of 2022, Frontiers publishes over 185 academic journals, including 48 journals indexed within the
Science Citation Index Expanded The Science Citation Index Expanded – previously entitled Science Citation Index – is a citation index originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and created by Eugene Garfield. It was officially launched in 1964 and ...
, and 4 journals indexed within the
Social Sciences Citation Index The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) is a commercial citation index product of Clarivate Analytics. It was originally developed by the Institute for Scientific Information from the Science Citation Index. The Social Sciences Citation Index is ...
, with a total of 51 journals ranked with an
impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as i ...
. Frontiers journals are included in the
Directory of Open Access Journals The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a website that hosts a community-curated list of open access journals, maintained by Infrastructure Services for Open Access (IS4OA). It was launched in 2003 with 300 open access journals. The proje ...
(DOAJ). Frontiers is also a member of the
Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association The Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) is a non-profit trade association of open access journal and book publishers. Having started with an exclusive focus on open access journals, it has since expanded its activities to include ...
(OASPA), a participating publisher and supporter of the
Initiative for Open Citations The Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) is a project launched publicly in April 2017, that describes itself as: "a collaboration between scholarly publishers, researchers, and other interested parties to promote the unrestricted availability of ...
, and a member of the
Committee on Publication Ethics The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) is a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to define best practice in the ethics of scholarly publishing and to assist editors and publishers to achieve this. Mission COPE educates and su ...
(COPE). In 2015, Frontiers Media was classified as a possible
predatory publisher Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy, and withou ...
by
Jeffrey Beall Jeffrey Beall is an American librarian and library scientist, best known for drawing attention to "predatory open access publishing", a term he coined, and for creating what is now widely known as Beall's list, a list of potentially predatory op ...
.


History

The first journal published was ''Frontiers in Neuroscience'', which opened for submission as a
beta version A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...
in 2007. In 2010, Frontiers launched a series of another 11 journals in
medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...
and
science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
. In February 2012, the Frontiers Research Network was launched, a
social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
ing platform for researchers, intended to disseminate the open access articles published in the Frontiers journals, and to provide related conferences, blogs, news, video lectures and job postings. In February 2013, the
Nature Publishing Group Nature Portfolio (formerly known as Nature Publishing Group and Nature Research) is a division of the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in scien ...
(NPG) (now
Nature Research Nature Portfolio (formerly known as Nature Publishing Group and Nature Research) is a division of the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in scien ...
) acquired a controlling interest in Frontiers Media, however collaboration between the Nature Publishing Group and Frontiers ended in 2015. ''
Frontiers for Young Minds ''Frontiers for Young Minds'' (FYM) is an online non-profit, open access academic journal that publishes STEM articles "edited by kids for kids." UC Berkeley professor of psychology and neuroscience Robert Knight launched the journal at the 2013 So ...
'' was launched in November 2013 during the Annual Meeting of the
Society for Neuroscience The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) is a professional society, headquartered in Washington, DC, for basic scientists and physicians around the world whose research is focused on the study of the brain and nervous system. It is especially well kn ...
in collaboration with NPG as a web-based science journal that involves young people in the review of scientific articles with the help of scientists who act as mentors. In early September 2014, Frontiers received the ALPSP Gold Award for Innovation in Publishing from the
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) is an international trade association of non-profit publishers created in 1972. It is the largest association of scholarly and professional publishers in the world, with nearl ...
. In October 2015, Frontiers (in collaboration with NPG) launched Loop, a research network that is open to be integrated into any publisher's or academic organization's website, and Loop soon included a collaboration with
ORCID The ORCID (; Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a nonproprietary alphanumeric code to uniquely identify authors and contributors of scholarly communication as well as ORCID's website and services to look up authors and their bibliographic ...
to link and synchronize researcher profile information. The
Technical University of Madrid The Technical University of Madrid or sometimes called Polytechnic University of Madrid ( es, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, UPM) is a public university, located in Madrid, Spain. It was founded in 1971 as the result of merging different Te ...
was the first university to link their Loop profile to their institutional website. In 2019, Frontiers joined the
Initiative for Open Citations The Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) is a project launched publicly in April 2017, that describes itself as: "a collaboration between scholarly publishers, researchers, and other interested parties to promote the unrestricted availability of ...
. In May 2020, Frontiers Media launched its Artificial Intelligence Review Assistant software to external editors. The software helps identify conflicts of interest and plagiarism, assesses manuscript and peer review quality, and recommends editors and reviewers, although the software does not flag all forms of conflict of interest, such as undisclosed funding sources or affiliations.


List of journals

The Frontiers journals use
open peer review Open peer review is the various possible modifications of the traditional scholarly peer review process. The three most common modifications to which the term is applied are: # Open identities: Authors and reviewers are aware of each other's ident ...
, where the names of reviewers of accepted articles are made public. In February 2016, the series contained 54 journals, a number that grew to more than 80 by 2020. The collection of all the journals in the series is sometimes considered a
megajournal A mega journal (also mega-journal and megajournal) is a peer-reviewed academic journal, academic open access journal designed to be much larger than a traditional journal by exercising low selectivity among accepted articles. It was pioneered by ''P ...
, as is the
BioMed Central BioMed Central (BMC) is a United Kingdom-based, for-profit scientific open access publisher that produces over 250 scientific journals. All its journals are published online only. BioMed Central describes itself as the first and largest open a ...
series. Some journals, such as ''Frontiers in Human Neuroscience'' or ''Frontiers in Microbiology'' are considered megajournals on their own. The journals published by Frontiers are: as well as


Indexing and abstracting

The National Publication Committee of Norway has assigned Frontiers Media an institutional-level rating of "level 0" in the
Norwegian Scientific Index CRIStin (Current Research Information System in Norway) is the national research information system of Norway, and is owned by the Royal Ministry of Education and Research. CRIStin documents all scholarly publications by Norwegian researchers, an ...
since 2018, indicating that the publisher is "not academic", however individual Frontiers journals have separate journal-level ratings. As of 2022, 96 Frontiers journals are listed in the Norwegian Scientific Index, of which 2 have a rating of "level 2" (top 20% of all journals in their field), over 88 have a rating of "level 1" (standard academic), 1 has a rating of level X (possibly predatory), and 5 have a rating of "level 0" (not academic). As of 2022, Frontiers publishes over 185 academic journals, including 48 journals indexed within the
Science Citation Index Expanded The Science Citation Index Expanded – previously entitled Science Citation Index – is a citation index originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and created by Eugene Garfield. It was officially launched in 1964 and ...
, and 4 journals indexed within the
Social Sciences Citation Index The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) is a commercial citation index product of Clarivate Analytics. It was originally developed by the Institute for Scientific Information from the Science Citation Index. The Social Sciences Citation Index is ...
, with a total of 51 journals ranked with an
impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as i ...
. Furthermore, as of 2021, 9 Frontiers Media journals have been selected for inclusion in
MEDLINE MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering medic ...
. In broader databases, Frontiers has over 130 journals indexed in the
Directory of Open Access Journals The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a website that hosts a community-curated list of open access journals, maintained by Infrastructure Services for Open Access (IS4OA). It was launched in 2003 with 300 open access journals. The proje ...
(DOAJ), over 60 journals listed in
PubMed Central PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published in biomedical and life sciences journals. As one of the major research databases developed by the National Center f ...
(PMC), over 70 journals listed in
Scopus Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. Scopus covers nearly 36,377 titles (22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles) from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top-l ...
and over 65 journals indexed in Web of Science.


Controversies


Editorial concerns

In May 2015, Frontiers Media removed the entire
editorial board The editorial board is a group of experts, usually at a publication, who dictate the tone and direction the publication's editorial policy will take. Mass media At a newspaper, the editorial board usually consists of the editorial page editor, a ...
s of ''Frontiers in Medicine'' and ''Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine'' after
editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, orga ...
s complained that Frontiers Media staff were "interfering with editorial decisions and violating core principles of medical publishing". In total 31 editors were removed. Following this incident,
Nature Publishing Group Nature Portfolio (formerly known as Nature Publishing Group and Nature Research) is a division of the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in scien ...
ended its collaboration with Frontiers with the intent "never to mention again that
Nature Publishing Group Nature Portfolio (formerly known as Nature Publishing Group and Nature Research) is a division of the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in scien ...
has some kind of involvement in Frontiers." In June 2015,
Retraction Watch Retraction Watch is a blog that reports on retractions of scientific papers and on related topics. The blog was launched in August 2010 and is produced by science writers Ivan Oransky (Former Vice President, Editorial ''Medscape'') and Adam Mar ...
referred to the publisher as one with "a history of badly handled and controversial retractions and publishing decisions". According to researchers referenced in a 2015 blog post quoted by Allison and
James Kaufman James C. Kaufman is an American psychologist known for his research on creativity. He is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. Previously, he taught at the California State University, Sa ...
in the 2018 book '' Pseudoscience: The Conspiracy Against Science'' "Frontiers has used an in-house journals management software that does not give reviewers the option to recommend the rejection of manuscripts" and the "system is setup to make it almost impossible to reject papers". In 2017, further editors were removed, allegedly for their rejection rate being high. In December 2017, Adam Marcus and
Ivan Oransky Ivan Oransky is the co-founder of Retraction Watch, a blog reporting scientific retractions, and a writer in residence at New York University's Arthur Carter Journalism Institute. Oransky graduated from New York University with a medical degree an ...
of
Retraction Watch Retraction Watch is a blog that reports on retractions of scientific papers and on related topics. The blog was launched in August 2010 and is produced by science writers Ivan Oransky (Former Vice President, Editorial ''Medscape'') and Adam Mar ...
wrote in the magazine ''
Nautilus The nautilus (, ) is a pelagic marine mollusc of the cephalopod family Nautilidae. The nautilus is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and of its smaller but near equal suborder, Nautilina. It comprises six living species in t ...
'' that the acceptance rate of manuscripts in Frontiers journals was reported to be near 90%. In 2022, the editors of a special issue with the online journal ''Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics'' voiced their concerns about the editorial practices at Frontiers, including flaws in the peer review process, unwillingness to discuss these concerns, and forbidding the editors from writing about their concerns in the editorial of the special issue.


Inclusion in Beall's list

In October 2015, Frontiers was added to librarian
Jeffrey Beall Jeffrey Beall is an American librarian and library scientist, best known for drawing attention to "predatory open access publishing", a term he coined, and for creating what is now widely known as Beall's list, a list of potentially predatory op ...
's list of "Potential, possible, or probable"
predatory open-access publishers Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy, and withou ...
. The inclusion was met with backlash among some researchers. Daniël Lakens, researcher at the
Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven), abbr. TU/e, is a public technical university in the Netherlands, located in the city of Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its BSc a ...
, said "articles people have published in Frontiers are no longer judged based on their own quality, but are now seen as less valuable because Frontiers is on Beall's list". At the time, the
Committee on Publication Ethics The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) is a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to define best practice in the ethics of scholarly publishing and to assist editors and publishers to achieve this. Mission COPE educates and su ...
(COPE) said that "there have been vigorous discussions about, and some editors are uncomfortable with, the editorial processes at Frontiers" but that "the processes are declared clearly on the publisher's site and we do not believe there is any attempt to deceive either editors or authors about these processes".COPE October 2015 News Index
/ref> Frontiers is a COPE member and one of its employees sits on COPE's council. In July 2016 Beall recommended that academics not publish their work in Frontiers journals, stating "the fringe science published in Frontiers journals stigmatizes the honest research submitted and published there", and in October of that year Beall reported that reviewers have called the review process "merely for show". Beall deleted his blacklist in January 2017. In September 2016, Frontiers demanded that the university where Beall worked force him to retract his claims. Pressure by Frontiers was reported to be a large factor in the controversial shutdown of Beall's List.


Controversial articles

In April 2013, ''
Frontiers in Psychology ''Frontiers in Psychology'' is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal covering all aspects of psychology. It was established in 2010 and is published by Frontiers Media. The editor-in-chief is Axel Cleeremans ( Université libre de Bruxelle ...
'' retracted a controversial article linking
climate change denialism Climate change denial, or global warming denial, is denial, dismissal, or doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change, including the extent to which it is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, or th ...
and " conspiracist ideation"; the retraction was itself also controversial and led to the resignations of at least three editors. In late September 2014, ''Frontiers in Public Health'' published a controversial article that supported
HIV denialism HIV/AIDS denialism is the belief, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Some of its proponents reject the existence of HIV, while oth ...
; three days later the publisher issued a statement of concern and announced an investigation into the review process of the article. It was eventually decided that the article would not be retracted but instead was reclassified as an opinion piece. It has since been retracted. In November 2016, a paper linking vaccines to autism was retracted from a Frontiers journal. In 2021, a provisionally accepted controversial paper in ''Frontiers in Pharmacology'' on
COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
and the use of the antiparasitic drug
ivermectin Ivermectin (, '' EYE-vər-MEK-tin'') is an antiparasitic drug. After its discovery in 1975, its first uses were in veterinary medicine to prevent and treat heartworm and acariasis. Approved for human use in 1987, today it is used to treat inf ...
was ultimately rejected by the editors as it contained "unsubstantiated claims and violated the journal's editorial policies". This drew anger from the authors of the paper, who called the move "censorship".
Retraction Watch Retraction Watch is a blog that reports on retractions of scientific papers and on related topics. The blog was launched in August 2010 and is produced by science writers Ivan Oransky (Former Vice President, Editorial ''Medscape'') and Adam Mar ...
noted that this was not the first time Frontiers provisionally accepted and then rejected a controversial paper. A study published in ''Frontiers in Virology'' in February 2022 said that
Moderna Moderna, Inc. ( ) is an American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that focuses on RNA therapeutics, primarily mRNA vaccines. These vaccines use a copy of a molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA) to produ ...
had patented a 19 nucleotide genetic sequence uniquely matching a part of the
SARS-CoV-2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the respiratory illness responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had a ...
spike protein three years prior to the pandemic, arguing it was evidence that the virus was manufactured as part of a lab leak conspiracy. The study has been widely derided for its misunderstanding of statistical likelihood, particularly as the 19 nucleotide sequence is not unique to SARS-CoV-2, and is also found in organisms like bacteria and birds. Craig Wilen, an immunobiology professor of the
Yale School of Medicine The Yale School of Medicine is the graduate medical school at Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was founded in 1810 as the Medical Institution of Yale College and formally opened in 1813. The primary te ...
, likened the study to "complete garbage" and a "conspiracy theory" rather than legitimate research.


References


External links

* {{Portal bar, Science, Switzerland Publishing companies established in 2007 Swiss companies established in 2007 Open access publishers