Quality
Only the best science can solve the world’s biggest challenges - that’s why our peer review is so important.
A rigorous and transparent review
Your research deserves a thorough and fair review, one that truly supports you to make improvements and publish the highest quality final article. Our collaborative process connects authors directly with reviewers to have a constructive conversation about the manuscript.
Each article we publish goes through this transparent review process, handled by the most relevant experts in their field.
Our peer review is rated as excellent
We asked visitors to our website to share their thoughts about our unique peer review process. More than half of respondents rated it as excellent.
Survey question | How do you rate the quality of Frontiers’ peer review?
Data source: Frontiers’ survey, January to December 2022
“I found the experience of working with our editor, reviewers and production team to be excellent. Everyone was highly professional, competent, respectful, and generous. Our manuscript was much improved in the process.”
Vita Rabinowitz
Frontiers author, City University of New York
Speed
We offer one of the most efficient systems among academic publishers
Your research is published faster
We know you want to publish your research quickly, so that other researchers can access, read, and start to build on your work.
Frontiers’ publishing platform is custom-built to be fast, efficient, thorough, and to provide a great experience.
Our collaborative review forum guides authors, reviewers, and editors smoothly through the review process and alerts them when any action is required.
This, along with a focus on process optimization, has resulted in an average time from submission to acceptance of 73 days in 2022, down from 77 days in 2021.
Revolutionizing how high-quality research
is published
With the latest custom-built technology and artificial intelligence, we’re pushing boundaries to create a faster, more efficient peer review.
Our artificial intelligence review assistant (AIRA) was an industry-first, and it means we can balance the need for speed with our unwavering focus on high quality.
AIRA supports our reviewers and editors by making automated quality checks - from assessing language accuracy and the integrity of figures, to detecting plagiarism and conflicts of interest.
“The Frontiers team works tirelessly with editors to streamline the article management process, using state-of-the-art AI tools and information portals to fast-track the editing, review and decision-making process.”
Matthew McCabe
Specialty Chief Editor, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence
Did you know?
Our artificial intelligence assistant can now make up to 20 quality checks in just a few seconds.
Most authors, reviewers, and editor rate their experience as excellent or good
Our peer review platform was built in-house and is under continual development - so we can be sure it responds to your needs.
In 2022 we asked 126,506 accepted authors, handling editors and reviewers how they would rate their recent experience of our peer review process.
Data source: Frontiers’ surveys, January to December 2022
Submissions, acceptances, and rejections
Our peer review is designed to be thorough and efficient, so you receive a fair decision on your manuscript as soon as possible.
In 2022 the rejection rate for articles was on average 40% across all Frontiers journals, and as high as 79% in some journals.
Data source: Frontiers’ peer review 2022
Our support through desk rejection
Each year, thousands of articles that don’t meet our rigorous quality standards are rejected by our in-house research integrity team before they reach the peer review stage. This means our editors and reviewers aren’t burdened with low-quality articles and can focus on making great research even better.
The graph below shows what percentage of rejected articles are done so by editors, and what percentage by our research integrity team. By the last quarter of 2022, 54% of rejected articles were rejected at the desk review stage.
Data source: Frontiers’ peer review 2022