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COPE statement on Frontiers

Like the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) does now, COPE has a rigorous and stringent process for scrutinizing members before they are accepted and we review this process as needed. Frontiers has been a member of COPE since January 2015. In the interests of complete transparency, we note here also that one of the Frontiers staff, Mirjam Curno, is a member of COPE council—a position she was elected to when she was employed at the Journal of the International AIDS Society in 2012 and which continued (with the agreement of the COPE Council and on becoming an Associate Member of COPE) after she moved to Frontiers; she is now also a trustee of COPE. (NB, She was not involved in drafting this statement.)

We note that there have been vigorous discussions about, and some editors are uncomfortable with, the editorial processes at Frontiers. However, 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.

Publishing is evolving rapidly and new models are being tried out. At this point we have no concerns about Frontiers being a COPE member and are happy to work with them as they explore these new models.