My collapse of confidence in Frontiers journals

Frontiers journals have become a conspicuous presence in academic
publishing since they started
in 2007 with the advent of Frontiers in Neuroscience. When they were first
launched, I, like many people, was suspicious. This was an Open Access (OA) online
journal where authors paid to publish, raising questions about the academic
rigour of the process. However, it was clear that the publishers had a number
of innovative ideas that were attractive to authors, with a nice online
interface and a collaborative
review process that made engagement with reviewers more of a discussion
than a battle with anonymous critics. Like many other online OA journals, the
editorial decision to publish was based purely on an objective appraisal of the
soundness of the study, not on a subjective evaluation of importance, novelty
or interest. As word got round that respectable scientists were acting as
editors, reviewers and authors of paper in Frontiers, people started to view it
as a good way of achieving fast and relatively painless publication, with all
the benefits of having the work openly available and accessible to all.

The publishing model has been highly successful. In 2007, there were 45
papers published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, whereas in 2014 it was 3,012
(data from Scopus search for source title Frontiers in Neuroscience, which includes
Frontiers journals in Human Neuroscience, Cellular Neuroscience, Molecular
Neuroscience, Behavioral Neuroscience, Systems Neuroscience, Integrative
Neuroscience, Synaptic Neuroscience, Aging Neuroscience, Evolutionary
Neuroscience and Computational Neuroscience). If all papers attracted the author
fee of US$1900 (£1243) for a regular article, this would bring in £3.7 million
pounds in 2014: the actual income would be less than this because some articles
are cheaper, but it's clear that the income is any in case substantial,
especially since the journal is online and there are no print costs. But this
is just the tip of the iceberg. Frontiers has expanded massively since 2007 to
include a wide range of disciplines.  A
Scopus search for articles with journal title that includes "Frontiers
in" found over 54,000 articles since 2006, with 10,555 published in 2014.

With success, however, have come growing rumbles of discontent. Questions
are being raised about the quality of editing and reviewing in Frontiers.  My first inkling of this was a colleague told
me he would not review for Frontiers because his name was published with the
article. This wasn't because he wanted confidentiality; rather he was concerned
that it would appear he had given approval for the article, when in fact he had
major reservations.

Then, there have been some very public criticisms of editorial practices at
Frontiers. The first was associated with the retraction of a paper that claimed
climate denialism was associated with a more general tendency to advocate
conspiracy theories. Papers on this subject are always controversial and this
one was no exception, attracting complaints to the editor. The overall
impression from the
account in Retraction Watch was that the editor caved in to legal threats, thereby
letting critics of climate change muzzle academic freedom of speech. This led
to the
resignation of one Frontiers editor**.

Next, there was a case that posed the opposite problem: the scientific
establishment were outraged that a paper on HIV denial had been published, and
argued that it should be retracted. The journal editor decided that the paper
should not be retracted, but instead rebranded it as Opinion – see Retraction
Watch account here.

Most recently, in May 2015 there was a massive upset when editors of the
journals Frontiers in Medicine and Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine mounted
a protest at the way the publisher was bypassing their editorial oversight and
allocating papers to associate editors who could accept them without the
knowledge of the editor in chief. The editors protested and published a
manifesto of editorial independence, leading to 31
of them being sacked by the publisher.   

All of these events have chipped away at my confidence in Frontiers
journals, but it was finally exploded completely when someone on Twitter pointed
me to this article entitled "First
time description of dismantling phenomenon" by Laurence Barrer and Guy
Giminez from Aix Marseille Université, France. I had not realised that
Frontiers in Psychology had a subsection on Psychoanalysis and
Neuropsychoanalysis, but indeed it does, and here was a paper proposing a
psychoanalytic account of autism. The abstract states: "The authors of
this paper want to demonstrate that dismantling is the main defense mechanism
in autism, bringing about de-consensus of senses." Although the authors
claim to be adopting a scientific method for testing a hypothesis, it is
unclear what would constitute disproof. Their evidence consists of interpreting
known autistic characteristics, such as fascination with light, in
psychoanalytic terms. The source of dismantling is attributed to the death
drive. This reads like the worst kind of pseudoscience, with fancy terminology
and concepts being used to provide evidence for a point of view which is more
like a religious belief than a testable idea. I wondered who was responsible
for accepting this paper.  The Editor was
Valeria Vianello Dri, Head of Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry Units in
Trento, Italy. No information on her biography is provided on the Frontiers
website. She lists four publications: these are all on autism genetics. All are
multi-authored and she is not first or last author on any of these*. A Google search
confirmed she has an interest
in psychoanalysis but I could find no further information to indicate that
she had any real experience of publishing scientific papers. There were three
reviewers: the first two had no publications listed on their Frontiers profiles;
the third had a private profile, but a Google search on his name turned up a CV
but it did not include any peer-reviewed publications.

So it seems that Frontiers has opened the door to a branch of pseudoscience
to set up its own little circle of editors, reviewers and authors, who can play
at publishing peer-reviewed science. I'm not saying all people with an interest
in psychoanalysis should be banished: if they do proper science, they can
publish that in regular journals without needing this kind of specialist
outlet. But this section of Frontiers is a disastrous development; there is no
evidence of scientific rigour, yet the journal gives credibility to a pernicious
movement that is particularly strong in France and Argentina, which regards psychoanalysis
as the preferred treatment for autism. Many experts have pointed out that
this approach is not evidence-based, but worse still, in some of its
manifestations it
amounts to maltreatment.  What next,
one wonders? Frontiers in homeopathy?

Like the protesting editors of Frontiers in Medicine, I think the combined
evidence is that Frontiers has allowed the profit motive to dominate. They should
be warned, however, that once they lose a reputation for publishing decent
science, they are doomed. I've already heard it said that someone on a grants
review panel commented that a candidate's articles in Frontiers should be
disregarded. Unless these journals can recover a reputation for solid science
with proper editing and peer review, they will find themselves shunned.

*The Frontiers biography suggests she is last author on a
paper in 2008, but the author list proved to be incomplete.

** Correction: Shortly after I posted this, Stephan Lewandowsky wrote to say that there were 3 editors who resigned over the RF retraction, plus another one
voicing intense criticism