Frontiers is a player in innovation
• Article level metrics
• Reviewer recognition
• Platform development
• Peer-review process
• Profiles and research networking
Products and services require data
2000 “The Database is the journal !”2015 “The Journal is one view of the database !”
Impactful papers are less concentrated
“[…] throughout most of the 20th century the link between the IF and papers’ citations was growing stronger, but, as predicted, this link has been weakening steadily since the beginning of the digital age.”
G.A. Lozano, V. Larivière, Y. Gingras, “The Weakening Relationship Between
the Impact Factor and Papers’ Citations in the Digital Age,” JASIST, 63(11):2140–2145 (2012).
Content is international, interdisciplinary, collaborative
Adams, J. (2013). Collaborations: The fourth age of research. Nature 497, 557-560 (30 May 2013)
0
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
140,000
160,000
180,000
Specialty Sections: where are the gaps?
Specialty Section Expansion
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Humanities and Social Sciences
• Subject areas will include Sociology, Library and Information Science, Communications, Business, and Management
• Schools of thought need to be considered
• Fees for Open Access
• Monographic
Ready for open access !
Frontiers (the Magazine)
• The summit of the Tiering mechanism
• Editorial Board of Frontiers Chief Editors
• Will accept direct submissions, too
• All open access, no APCs
Research Topics build Journals
• Ultimate niche publication• Flexible, aesthetic, functional• Social • Reopening successful topics
A focus for platform development
Research Topics: Quality Control
(1) Potential Topic Editors vetted by in-house team
(2) All Topic Editors and Topics approved by Specialty Chief Editors
(3) Associate Editor “oversight” assignment
(4) Full access to monitoring tools
(5) Final validation stage for all papers
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
18 Frontiers journals have Impact Factorsand rank highly in their JCR categories – despite large publishing volumes!
3.62.9
3.94.2 4.2 3.1 4.2
3.8 3.83.4
2.6 3.1 3.0 2.9 2.8 2.1
2.2
3.4
Editorial Boards
(1) Engages the community
(2) Maps the community across all specialties
(3) Allows Frontiers to provide a better service
(4) Expansion into new markets (China)
(5) Expansion of existing boards (AEs and REs)
(6) Editors as Authors
Projection: Articles published USA and China
0
100,000
200,000
300,000
400,000
500,000
600,000
700,000
800,000
900,000
1,000,000
2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020
China United States
Frontiers: Submissions from China
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Editorial Board Expansions
0
10,000
20,000
30,000
40,000
50,000
60,000
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Total Editors
Total Editors
22%
140% 76%
290%
92%20%
42%
47%
Editors as authors (Editor participation rate)
0
10,000
20,000
30,000
40,000
50,000
60,000
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
14%
16%
18%
18%16%
16%
27%
Editors as Authors (as Percent of submissions)
0
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
14,000
16,000
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Non-Editors
Editors
46%52%56%60%68%76%
Platform Improvements
(1) Evolving web environment
(2) Quality controls reinforced
(3) Dashboard views
(4) Semantic selections
(5) Plugging into Loop
(6) Text and data mining
Quality Controls reinforced
(1) Associate Editor control of selection
(2) Semantic algorithms in AE selection
(3) Grouping of AEs together into areas of competence
(4) Dashboard view of manuscript listing
(5) Final validation stage
Semantic selectionsNew manuscript
submitted
We extract the title and the abstract
We search in our confirmed publications database the closest
publications to the one submitted
Then, from that results we extract the authors and aggregate the score for each of them and we propose the most suitable reviewers
Text and Data Mining through APIs
“OpenMinTed aspires to the creation of an infrastructure that fosters and facilitates the use of text mining technologies in the scientific publications world […]”
Support by Jacobs Foundation as of April 2014
Fully linked to Frontiers journals
Financial, Editorial and IT support
Young Minds Blog on Scientific American as of October 2014
Frontiers Travel Awards
30 Awards of € 3’000 go to
10 Specialty Chief Editors
8 Associate Editors
8 Review Editors
4 Guest Associate Editors
Conclusions
(1) Content will be tightly integrated into social networks
(2) Research Topics will lead trends in interdisciplinary research
(3) Open Science principles will be broadly accepted
(4) Technology + data is the winning formula