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Frontiers news

17 Aug 2015

Freshwater Science section focuses on balancing water needs

At the end of the last year, we started to work on a new, important and promising specialty section in Frontiers in Environmental Science. Today, we are proud to announce the launch of this newest section – Freshwater Science, led by Specialty Chief Editor Prof. Stuart E Bunn from Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink” – Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, by Coleridge. One of society’s great challenges is to balance the water needs for humans and nature. However, it is increasingly evident from recent global analyses that past approaches to water resource management have failed to address the threats to rivers and wetlands from human activities, and that the situation will worsen as demands for water, food and energy rise. Sustainable management of freshwater ecosystems requires a stronger trans-disciplinary approach: in Freshwater Science we welcome original submissions aimed at finding solutions to water quality and water quantity problems affecting rivers, lakes and wetlands (including groundwater-dependent surface water systems). Our ultimate aim is to foster collaboration among water professionals and promote the science to underpin the Sustainable Development goals for freshwater. As in all Frontiers journals, articles will benefit from standardized, rigorous, transparent and collaborative peer review and be published under […]

Open science and peer review

14 Aug 2015

ILLUSTRATION: Beginner’s Guide to Peer Review

By Chloe Schmidt and Katherine Lawson Submitting your first manuscript can be daunting to those who are unfamiliar with the process.  To help clear up any uncertainty surrounding manuscript submission and peer review for first-timers, we’ve put together an illustrated guide of some of the basics. To see the Illustrated Beginner’s Guide to Peer Review in full size, either click on the image or download the PDF at this link:

Young Minds

10 Aug 2015

VIDEO: The motivation behind Frontiers for Young Minds

Frontiers for Young Minds from Frontiers on Vimeo. Frontiers for Young Minds is a non-profit scientific journal written by scientists for young people, but with an innovative twist: the kids themselves assume the role of “peer reviewer.” Distinguished scientists are invited to write about their cutting-edge discoveries in a language that is accessible for a young audience, and it is then up to the kids themselves – with the help of a science mentor – to critique the article and to explain to the authors how to improve the contribution before publication. As a result, Frontiers for Young Minds provides a collection of freely available scientific articles that are not only rigorous, but also shaped for younger audiences by the input of their own peers. Even before the publication of our first 50 articles, the quality of Frontiers for Young Minds was recognized as one of the American Library Association’s 2014 Great Websites for Kids. In this video, Project Manager Amanda Baker explains some of the motivation behind the project and what it hopes to accomplish going forward. The presentation was given in early 2015 as part of an internal seminar series at Frontiers, since which more articles have been […]

Frontiers news

10 Aug 2015

Lasers, colors, pictures

When she was in high school, Dr. Rocío Borrego Varillas’ interest began in Optics. She didn’t know whether she wanted to pursue a research career, or even knew what that meant, but still, an image of herself moving around lenses in a lab was taking shape. She did her PhD at the University of Salamanca, her hometown in Spain, working with ultrashort and ultra-intense lasers. Her project was focused on the optimization of non-linear processes, such as the second-harmonic generation, optical filamentation or supercontinuum generation. They wanted to validate different schemes to enhance the pulses obtained through these processes. For example, how to achieve shorter pulse duration, increase the energy or to modify the color of the laser light for different studies. Rocío is currently doing her postdoc at the Institute Politecnico di Milano (after obtaining the prestigious and competitive Marie Curie fellowship) and is working on generating ultrashort light pulses and applying them to the study of ultrafast phenomena in matter. This is an ambitious project unifying efforts of groups from different fields. Thanks for your time today, Rocío. I think the obvious question to start with is: How did you decide to get into research? Was it a clear election when you finished your […]

Frontiers news

04 Aug 2015

Frontiers thanks 30 editors with travel awards for their outstanding dedication

The backbone of the Frontiers community is our team of 53,000 editors who ensure that every author gets a timely, rigorous and transparent review of their submission to Frontiers. This year for the first time, we are granting travel awards to recognize the exceptional contributions of 30 of these editors. Worth a total of € 90,000, the award scheme will cover the travel, accommodation and registration fees, allowing each of them to attend a scientific meeting or workshop of their choice. “We see this as an effective way to acknowledge the work of editors who have made an outstanding contribution to their community. We wanted to do something special, and thought that allowing them to go to a meeting of their choice would be especially appreciated,” said Fred Fenter, Executive Editor of Frontiers. Frontiers was launched with the vision of putting scientific publishing back into the hands of the scientists, and in just seven years, it has grown to be the 4th leading open access publisher in the world. Its community of editors and authors has published over 34,000 articles across 54 journals to date. “Behind all the award-winning technology lies a very human objective — to engage our editors to […]