Review Editor Guidelines - Frontiers

Review Editor Guidelines
www.frontiersin.org
September 2011

Table of contents
Table of Contents
1. About Frontiers ................................................................................................................... 3
2. Frontiers Editorial Boards ................................................................................................. 4
2.1 Numerical Goals ......................................................................................................... 5
3. Your Role as Review Editor ............................................................................................... 6
3.1 Your Role in the Peer-Review ................................................................................... 6
3.1.1 Review Guidelines ................................................................................................... 6
3.1.2 Get Familiar with the Online Review ....................................................................... 9
3.2 Organize a Research Topic ..................................................................................... 11
Organize Your Own Research Topic!.................................................................................. 11
4. Article Publishing Fees .................................................................................................... 12
4.1 Article Publishing Fees ........................................................................................... 12
4.2 Frontiers Publishing Grant and Waivers ............................................................... 13
4.3 What do the Fees Cover? ........................................................................................ 13
5. Contacts ............................................................................................................................ 14
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Frontiers Editorial boards
1. About Frontiers
Welcome to Frontiers!
Frontiers is more than just an Open Access publisher: it is a pioneering approach to the world of
academia, catapulting scholarly publishing into a new generation.
1 st Generation: the common “Reader-Pay” or “Restricted Access” Model
2 nd Generation: the improved “Author-Pay” or “Open Access” Model
3 rd Generation: the collaborative “Open Repository” or “Universal Access” Model
4 th 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.
Thank you for joining! It is a privilege to have you on board.
Please, take 15 minutes to get to know Frontiers by reading these guidelines –
this will save you an enormous amount of time later, and will guarantee the
success of your specialty.
www.frontiersin.org
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About this Package
2. Frontiers Editorial Boards
The Editorial Boards at Frontiers are composed by the 4 following editorial roles:
1. A Field Chief Editor (FCE), who invites and appoints ~20 Specialty Chief Editors;
2. Each of the Specialty Chief Editors (SCE) in turn invites and appoints ~10-15
Associate Editors.
3. Each Associate Editor (AE) invites and appoints ~10-15 Review Editors (you).
4. The Review Editors (RE) are the referees of the articles.
Each editor is in charge of overseeing the duties of the editors he/she appointed.
A journal’s editorial board will be complete with approximately 2000-3000 editors (note that,
unlike other journals, Frontiers includes Review Editors into the Editorial Boards, listed with their
name and affiliation).
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Frontiers Editorial boards
2.1 Numerical Goals
Month
1
Month
2
Month
3
Month
4
Month
5
…
Month
12
EDITORIAL BOARDS
Specialty Chief
Editors
1 …
Associate Editors 10 20 …
Review Editors - 50 100 200 …
ARTICLES
Specialty Grand
Challenges
1 …
Inaugural Articles
SCE: 1 SCE: 1
- -
(submitted)
AE: 10 AE: 20
- … - -
Total Articles
(published)
- - - - 10 …
10-15
per
month
Month
24
Sustainable:
120 per year
Successful:
180 per year
= numerical target reached
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Checklist
3. Your Role as Review Editor
Your primary role as Review Editor is to referee the peer-reviews of submitted manuscripts.
Besides refereeing manuscripts, as an active member of a Frontiers Editorial Board you are
recommended to contribute to the success of your Specialty by:
Submitting your articles on regular bases
Organizing a Research Topic (recommended within the first year)
3.1 Your Role in the Peer-Review
Review Editors are the referees of manuscripts during the peer-review process. Along with
Associate Editors, they are the key persons of the Frontiers Review, since they are responsible
for certifying the validity and accuracy of publications, and for helping authors to improve the
quality of their research.
The highest possible quality and objective review of articles is the foundation of this publishing
system. Frontiers prides itself in its objective high quality review system and the role of review
editors is, therefore, central in Frontiers.
Review editors are acknowledged publicly on all published articles
3.1.1 Review Guidelines
Frontiers Reviews significantly redefine the assignments for both authors and editors in order to
guarantee the most accurate, efficient and impartial reviews in academic publishing.
The mandate for review editors is to ensure that the results are valid, the analysis is flawless
and the quality as high as possible. The significance of articles is automatically evaluated postpublication.
Frontiers reviews typically consist of two phases:
1. Independent Review: The Review Editors assess the paper independently from each
other and the authors, according to a standardized review template.
2. Interactive Review: Authors and Review Editors can interact with each other through
real-time comments in the discussion forum. The Associate Editor (and if required the
Specialty Chief Editor) can enter the Review Forum and oversee this process.
Find this content also on the Frontiers website in your account.
The Review Process
Following manuscript submission, a whole board invitation is send to the Associate Editors of
the relevant Frontiers Specialty to take on the manuscript editorial assignment. After a
preliminary content check, the assigned Associate Editor may either decide to send the
manuscript out for review or recommend it for immediate rejection to the Specialty Chief Editor.
In the latter case, the Specialty Chief Editor may confirm the Associate Editor’s
recommendation of immediate article rejection due to the following reasons:
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Checklist
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 Editor’s 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.
Independent Review Phase
The Review Editors shall submit the standardized Independent Review Report via the online
review forum. The associate editor is automatically notified as soon as each of the Independent
Review Reports is submitted.
During the Independent Review phase, the review editors assess the paper independently from
each other and the authors, according to our standardized review template.
Once all Review Editors have submitted an Independent Review Report, the Associate Editor is
responsible for activating the successive phase of the Frontiers Review, i.e. the Interactive
Review Forum. Even if the Independent Review Reports are unfavorable to the authors, the
Interactive Review Forum must be activated to allow authors the opportunity of rebuttal.
Interactive Review Phase
Once the associate editor activates the Interactive Review Forum, authors are immediately
notified to enter the forum, where they are able to view the review comments, and have up to
two months to prepare responses and/or a revised manuscript resubmission, if necessary.
The associate editor monitors the discussions occurring between authors and review editors
within this forum, and ensures not only the timeliness, but also the constructiveness of the
participants’ interaction. Should a dispute arise at this stage, the associate editor must act as a
mediator, working with all parties involved to resolve the issues and even inviting new Review
Editors for further opinions. If the disagreement persists, the specialty Chief Editor is then
obliged to enter the Interactive Review Forum, examine the situation and take a final decision,
as to whether the review should be ended by article rejection or continued by a new set of
editors.
When a disagreement cannot be resolved to the satisfaction of a Review Editor, the latter is in
full right to withdraw from the review at any phase, in which case the Associate Editor will invite
another Review Editor.
At this stage, a manuscript may be rejected for the following reasons:
an objective error is found that cannot be corrected;
experiments are found to be invalid;
authors are unable or unwilling to address issues raised by the Review Editors.
The review is complete once all review comments are addressed to the Review Editors'
satisfaction.
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Checklist
Article Acceptance/Rejection
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
Editor’s recommendation to reject the article and insist to call in further Review Editors to
continue the review process.
The Assignment of Associate and Review Editors to a Manuscript
A key philosophy at Frontiers is to constantly move responsibility for publishing scientific papers
down rather than up the chain. It would be a big step for publishing if we could increase the
integrity of the peer-review system! At the same time, we have a huge responsibility to authors
when their valuable work is submitted. Unnecessary time delays are not acceptable.
In all editing/review invitations, the Associate/Review Editors are requested to confirm that they
don’t have any conflicts of interest. Moreover, to further guarantee the transparency of the
review, the names of the Associate and Review Editors involved are disclosed on all published
articles, without exceptions.
The assignment of Review and Associate Editors to the review of a manuscript is composed of
the following steps:
1. During submission, the authors indicate an Associate Editor whom they trust to be both
knowledgeable and unbiased for editing their manuscript.
2. The authors may list up to three Review Editors who might have a conflict of interest to
be excluded from the review process.
3. The Associate Editor selected by the authors is asked to edit the manuscript. If the
Associate Editor does not accept this invitation within two days, the journal’s entire
Associate Board is invited.
4. The first Associate Editor to respond is assigned to edit the manuscript.
5. The Associate Editor has seven days to assign two Review Editors.*
6. If two Review Editors have not accepted after a seven-day delay, the journal’s entire
Review Board is invited. Those Review Editors excluded by the authors are excluded
from this invitation.
7. The Associate and Chief Editors can, at any time, invite additional Review Editors
and/or revoke those who have accepted as deemed necessary.
The general guidelines for inviting Associate and Review Editors to join the boards invoke the
recruitment of top ranking researchers in terms of number of papers published and citation
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Checklist
records. Indeed, our records show that the Frontiers editorial boards are composed exclusively
of the top scientists worldwide.
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.
3.1.2 Get Familiar with the Online Review
Below are some screens that show you how to access online your review management page
and carry out your tasks as Review Editor.
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Checklist
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Checklist
3.2 Organize a Research Topic
Research Topics have become very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they
are a collection of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular research topic (including
conferences and workshops).
A Research Topic can be a greatly impacting set of publications, unifying the efforts of some of
the best researchers and encompassing the latest advances in a hot topic – a broad
perspective bringing together key methods and results.
Organize Your Own Research Topic!
Hosting a Research Topic is a great opportunity to boost the visibility of your research interests
and provide a broad perspective on the latest advances in your area. This is also an occasion to
unite the best researchers in your area and intensify collaborations.
The Frontiers Editorial Office shall assist you in every step of the organization, in order to
maximize the final impact while minimizing your concerns.
The main steps in hosting a Research Topic are:
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. All publishing fees are reported in Sec.4.
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
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Appendices
4. Article Publishing Fees
To enable open access to all articles, Frontiers has adopted the author-pay model whereby
authors or research sponsors cover the costs associated with the processing and publication of
their articles. Frontiers will strive to keep costs as low as possible to ensure that publication
costs do not become an obstacle to publishing.
4.1 Article Publishing Fees
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
Frontiers subsidy for
ALL Authors
Subsidy
Final Fee
Additional discounts for
Chief and Associate
Editors*
Additional
Final Fee
Discount
Original Research Article
Clinical Case Study
Hypothesis and Theory Article
Method Article
Review Article € 2,000 € 400 € 1,600 € 320 € 1,280
Any of the above article types
published in a Research Topic € 2,000 € 1,100 € 900 € 180 € 720
Mini Review Article
Perspective Article
CPC € 575 n.a. € 575 n.a. € 575
Any of the above article types
published in a Research Topic € 575 € 85 € 490 n.a. € 490
Clinical Trial Article
Technology Report € 2,000 n.a. € 2,000 n.a. € 2,000
Focused Review*
Frontiers Commentary*
Editorial
Book Review
General Commentary
Opinion Article
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.
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Appendices
4.2 Frontiers Publishing Grant and Waivers
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 What do the Fees Cover?
Frontiers continuously upgrades its advanced IT platform with new functionalities and
services for academic publishing.
Frontiers covers the publishing costs of all tier-rising articles as well as the review costs
of rejected articles.
Frontiers employs professional editors to format your manuscript and produce the
highest quality HTML and PDF.
Frontiers employs XML editors to make your article PubMed-compatible and submits
your article to PubMed Central for indexing; furthermore, Frontiers submits your article
to citation tracking Internet sites such as Google Scholar, MicroScholar, etc., so that the
citation impact of your article can be fully tracked.
Frontiers provides the highest possible secure servers and server technology for
electronic publication and permanent storage of your articles.
Frontiers promotes free dissemination of research and subsidizes publishing costs for
those researchers who cannot afford the publishing fee.
Frontiers awards annual honoraria to field and specialty chief editors at threshold levels
of success of their journals.
Frontiers maintains a dynamic and professional team to support all your editorial, IT and
marketing needs.
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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
Your contact: Angela Adams
E: events@frontiersin.org
Calendar of all events in your area
Online publication of conference abstracts
Publication of conference proceedings
Creation of abstract books
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