The Frontiers Evaluation System allows all readers to participate in the evaluation of research articles and thus it is the first system providing a democratic assessment of research. In order for such a system to function, Readers who want their reading statistics to count towards the excellence and relevance scores of published papers are required to submit a comprehensive profile of their professional career. It is not required to register with Frontiers in order to access articles, but it is obligatory if the Reader wishes to contribute to the evaluation of research. More comprehensive profiles will contribute more accurately towards the evaluation process.

The Frontiers Evaluation System

• allows all Readers to participate in the evaluation of research articles.
• automatically establishes research excellence and social relevance scores for articles, Authors and Reviewers.

Impact Scores and Indices
Frontiers uses several impact scores to allow Authors for assessing the performance of their papers and to permit Readers for participating in the evaluation of academic research as well as to help them finding outstanding research.

Frontiers Academic Excellence Score
Evaluates the scientific excellence of an article based on the expertise and experience levels of expert peer Readers.

Frontiers Social Relevance Score
Evaluates the social relevance of an article based on the proximity between a Readers expertise and the article topic.

Frontiers Related Article Index
Evaluates how many related articles where published after the publication of a particular paper.

Articles Ratings by Referees/Editors and Readers
Articles can be rated by experts such as Review and Associate Editors and by the general public.

Article Access Statistics

Article Download Statistics

Citation Statistics

During in the first phase of the Frontiers launch, the evaluation of Frontiers articles, and their concomitant distillation, will depend on ratings, clicks, downloads and citations.

Further ahead the evaluation of Frontiers articles will depend on the Frontiers Academic Excellence and Social Relevance Scores, two genuinely new approaches to evaluate academic publications.

These impact scores also provide the basis for the distillation of published articles and their ascendance through the Frontiers Tier System (see also Frontiers Distillation Process) as they are the most unbiased approach to evaluate research in a fair and democratic way.