image: Frontiers is featured in Nature magazine. view more
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Frontiers, a community driven open-access publisher and research networking platform for scientists, is featured on the inside cover of this week's Nature, with endorsements from Nobel laureates and other leading researchers. The magazine also includes an interview with Frontiers' co-founder and CEO, Dr. Kamila Markram, a neuroscientist from the renowned Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL).
In 2013, Frontiers joined the Nature Publishing Group family in a strategic alliance to advance Open Science. The Frontiers Open-Science platform, which facilitates open-access publishing with a research networking platform, empowers researchers to advance the way science is evaluated, communicated and shared.
The publisher has taken the bold step to improve the peer-review process and focuses entirely on the objective merits of scientific papers. "The current peer-review process is frustrating for scientists. It is often biased, political and destructive. We decided to bring value and credibility back to peer review," says Markram in the interview, published in the print version of Nature magazine.
To address these concerns, Frontiers developed an online community-based interactive review forum to allow discussions in real-time between reviewers and authors, and to make the process more transparent, efficient and fair. Frontiers also innovates in article and author metrics, social networking and a growing ecosystem of open-science tools to empower researchers in their work.
Markram believes that Open Science is the future: "There has been a powerful drive for more open, transparent and democratic processes in science by researchers, funders and governments. Scholarly publishing is undergoing a radical transformation to facilitate these important changes and we believe the key to this revolution is Open Science."
Why is Open Science such a priority? "Science as we know it is transforming rapidly; collaboration is being taken to a whole new level, big data is becoming commonplace, new tools are needed to read and understand papers, and all this is happening at an accelerated pace. There is a growing need for integration and explanation. For publishers it's not sufficient anymore to "just" provide a way to review and produce articles," she explains.
Frontiers is one of the largest and fastest growing open-access publishers in the world. The "Frontiers in" series of journals published 5,000 peer-reviewed articles in 2012. It includes 33 open-access titles in science, engineering and medicine, and this number is projected to nearly double over the next two years in a drive to cover all academic fields. Frontiers is supported by over 30,000 editors and reviewers, and its website receives over 5 million views every month.
About Frontiers
Frontiers is a community driven open-access publisher and research networking platform. Launched and run by scientists since 2007, and based in Switzerland, Frontiers empowers researchers to advance the way science is evaluated, communicated and shared in the digital era. Frontiers joined the Nature Publishing Group family in 2013.
The "Frontiers in" series of journals publish around 500 peer-reviewed articles every month, which receive 5 million monthly views and are supported by over 25,000 editors and reviewers around the world. Frontiers has formed partnerships with international organizations such as the Max Planck Society and the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS). For more information, please visit: http://www.frontiersin.org