Professional Documents
Culture Documents
www.frontiersin.org
Table of contents
September 2011
www.frontiersin.org
Table of contents
Table of contents
Table of contents ............................................................................................................................................... 3
1.
2.
3.
www.frontiersin.org
Table of contents
1. About Frontiers
Welcome to Frontiers!
Frontiers is more than just an Open Access publisher of scholarly articles: it is a
pioneering approach to the world of academia, catapulting scholarly publishing into a
new generation.
1st Generation: the common Reader-Pay or Restricted Access Model
2nd Generation: the improved Author-Pay or Open Access Model
3rd Generation: the collaborative Open Repository or Universal Access Model
4th Generation: the revolutionary Frontiers Model or Equal Opportunity Model
The concept is based on equal-opportunity validation, evaluation, and publishing of
research articles, as well as free dissemination of scholarly research knowledge.
Frontiers is a publishing concept created by researchers for researchers. At the same
time, it is a new community journal concept, which offers a comprehensive solution
to the publishing problems in scholar communities.
Frontiers is:
The first tiered journal series setup to automatically and democratically distil
scientific excellence and social relevance,
The first real-time journal series for interactive review to increase the speed,
efficiency and quality of the peer-review process,
The first community journal with participative architecture for authors and
readers to present their work, ideas, opinions and activities,
The first author services journal where authors can track, enhance, collaborate,
promote, and build support for their research.
www.frontiersin.org
www.frontiersin.org
www.frontiersin.org
1
2
3
4
5
Month
12
Month
24
10-15
per
month
Sustainable:
120 per year
Successful:
180 per year
EDITORIAL BOARDS
Specialty Chief
Editors
Associate Editors
Review Editors
1
10
-
20
50
100
200
ARTICLES
Specialty Grand
Challenges
Inaugural Articles
(submitted)
Total Articles
(published)
1
-
SCE: 1
AE: 10
-
SCE: 1
AE: 20
-
10
www.frontiersin.org
3.1 Checklist
Please make sure you do all of the following:
www.frontiersin.org
need to help Review Editors understand and work in the Review Forum. This is the next
generation process and is very important in standardizing and raising the quality of
the reviews.
Who should invite Review Editors?
It is most important that you invite Review Editors since you are the one that must
assign Review Editors for newly submitted articles.
How many Review Editors should be invited?
A large database of Review Editors is the key to a successful journal. The journal
automatically becomes capable of handling many more papers, much quicker and
more efficiently. It is also essential in case a whole board invitation of Review Editors is
necessary for the review mandate. This approach also exposes your journal to the top
experts which means that they too will submit articles. So, an important task for you is
to encourage and ensure that you invite at least 15 Review Editors.
How do I select Review Editors?
They should cover all facets of your specialty to ensure that all required expertise are
potentially available for the reviewing of articles and to lower the burden on each
Review Editor.
Sub-divide your specialty.
Identify a representative for each area.
Focus on established and emerging experts.
Ensure balanced geographical representation.
Ensure all areas are represented by experts in the specialty.
How do I invite a Review Editor?
1. Log into your Frontiers account.
2. Go to Journal -> Associate Editor -> Invite New Editor.
3. Now you can type in the email, name and affiliation of a scientist you wish to
invite and click Invite. A pop-up will appear and you will need to select the
journal as well as the role of the person you are inviting. An automatic email
will load onto which you are welcome to add on a personalized message.
4. When you are done, click on Send message and your invitee will receive a
detailed invitation letter with information about the Frontiers concept, a
Frontiers brochure and information on responsabilities as well as benefits. In
this email the invitee will receive links to accept or decline the invitation.
1. On the Associate Editor screen you will be able to view your invitations and see
the status of each one of them (still pending, accepted or rejected).
Once a person has accepted an invitation to join a review editorial board, he/she will
immediately appear on the journals homepage and across the website in the Editorial
Board section.
www.frontiersin.org
you to get your specialty off the ground and convince your community about this
engagement.
Define the overall structure of the Research Topic (title, description, and list of
top colleagues you would like to contact)
Send a call for participation to your top colleagues (recommended).
Select a minimum of 10 abstracts submitted by your colleagues and
spontaneous submitters.
Set a series of deadlines for submission of the full article and reminders.
Manage the review process for all contributing articles.
Follow up very carefully to make sure everybody is on track.
The publishing fee for authors is 900 for regular authors and to 720 for Frontiers
Chief and Associate Editors. All publishing fees are reported at the end of these
guidelines.
Contact the editorial office at researchtopics@frontiersin.org for more detailed
information.
You can find all details and examples of past Research Topics on:
http://frontiersin.org/AboutSpecialTopic.aspx
www.frontiersin.org
www.frontiersin.org
10
An objective error (generally accepted by the community and not one that would be
debatable by some);
An excessive amount of language errors;
Lack of research quality or ethical standards.
The Specialty Chief Editor may, nevertheless, override the Associate Editors recommendation
and decide that the manuscript deserves being reviewed, in which case he/she will assign the
article to a new Associate Editor who agrees to send the article for review.
The Associate Editor then assigns the article to at least two Review Editors, either selected from
the Frontiers Board of Review Editors or appropriately recruited among the experts in the area.
If the Review Editors have not been assigned within 5 days, a whole board invitation is sent to
the Review Editors to fill in the position.
Article Acceptance/Rejection
11
www.frontiersin.org
If the review editors are satisfied with the authors efforts at amending the manuscript, they then
briefly finalize their Interactive Review Reports, which automatically notifies the associate editor
of article acceptance. The associate editor accepts the final version of the manuscript within five
days, and this action does not require the approval of the specialty chief editor.
Once a manuscript is accepted, the authors receive an automated notification informing them of
the acceptance and the provisional PDF will instantly appear online. Review editors are invited
to publish a one-page joint commentary to be linked to the published article, however this is not
mandatory. Payment of the publication fee is required within thirty days of acceptance and
necessary before final publication of the manuscript.
Articles can only be rejected by the chief editor, while the associate editor who handles an
article can only recommend rejecting an article. The chief editor may override an associate
editors recommendation to reject the article and insist to call in further review editors to
continue the review process.
www.frontiersin.org
12
Once the editors are nominated they should be trusted. At Frontiers, thanks to our top-ranking
editors, they can be trusted. Of course, none of us are perfect and we need controls in place to
ensure that the system does not falter. Editors can be revoked and additional ones assigned if
corrective measures are needed. However, we trust that we all know how to make good
decisions - and fix the mistakes we make.
* Exception is made only in cases where the article is subject to a short peer review and therefore may be reviewed by
the Associate Editor alone.
13
www.frontiersin.org
www.frontiersin.org
14
15
www.frontiersin.org
Appendices
4.1
An article publishing fee of 2,000 is the full charge to cover the costs associated with
editing, publishing, archiving, and evaluation of the article, as well as maintaining the
most advanced website in online publishing, covering the costs of climb-tiering and
rejected articles, and supporting the Frontiers academic environment. There are
several subsidies and discounts available. Please refer to the table below for complete
information on Frontiers fees (all fees are in Euros - ).
Article Type
Article
Publishing
Fee
Final Fee
2,000
400
1,600
320
1,280
2,000
1,100
900
180
720
575
n.a.
575
n.a.
575
575
85
490
n.a.
490
2,000
n.a.
2,000
n.a.
2,000
Free
* includes: Field Chief Editor, Assistant Field Chief Editor, Specialty Chief Editor, Assistant
Specialty Chief Editor, Associate Editor, Guest Associate Editor
** tier 2 article types
Additional 50/page are charged after 12 pages. Note that Frontiers does not charge
for color figures, which typically cost about US$500-1000 per figure in most
subscription-based journals.
Moreover, if your article is selected by the Frontiers Evaluation System to be published
as a prestigious tier-climbing Focused Review or Frontiers Commentary, further
publication costs will be sustained by Frontiers.
www.frontiersin.org
16
Appendices
4.2
Authors who demonstrate their inability to bear the publication costs may apply to the
Frontiers Research Foundation for a Frontiers publishing grant, which may cover all or
part of the article publishing fees. This grant will be considered if the article is
accepted for publication. The grant may allow for a full waiver or a partial waiver
depending on the financial capability of the corresponding author of the paper.
Up to 100% waiver if the corresponding author is from a low income country
(2008 GNI per capita less than USD 975) as defined by the World Bank Country
Classification table (see this reference or download the country classification
table from the website).
Up to 50% waiver if the corresponding author is from a lower middle income
country(2008 GNI per capita between USD 976 and USD 3,855) as defined by
the World Bank Country Classification table (see this reference or download the
country classification table).
Waivers may also be granted if the corresponding author can demonstrate a
genuine inability to pay.
The Authors should provide the name of the grant/institution and a short explanatory
paragraph why the publishing fees cannot be afforded.
4.3
17
www.frontiersin.org
Appendices
5. Contacts
Please find below all details about the Frontiers Offices. Do not hesitate to contact us everybody is here to help you make your journal a success!
Correspondence address
Frontiers
Science Park PSE-D
CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
T: +41 21 693 92 02
F: +41 21 693 92 01
Editorial Office
Your contact: Costanza Zucca
E: editorial.office@frontiersin.org
Building of the Editorial Board
Strategies for article drive
Managing of the peer-review process
Tier-2 articles
All inquiries and support for the journals
Production Office
Your contact: Johanna Reichen
E: production.office@frontiersin.org
Production of scholar articles
Referencing of articles (PubMed Central, CrossRef, etc.)
Marketing & Communication
Your contact: Costanza Zucca
E: marketing@frontiersin.org
Promotion of the Frontiers vision and mission guidelines
Open access advocacy
Press releases, communications and announcement mailings
Advertisements
Informative material for your conferences, meetings, etc.
Events Office
E: events@frontiersin.org
Calendar of all events in your area
Online publication of conference abstracts
Publication of conference proceedings
Creation of abstract books
www.frontiersin.org
18