The Frontiers Tiering System is an efficient and transparent method to select outstanding research articles and make them more accessible to the wider research communities up to the general public

When articles are first accepted for publication in Frontiers, they are published in the appropriate online Specialty Section or Specialty Journal, as tier 1 articles. Based on automatic Frontiers Impact Metrics, the top 10% articles in a tier are democratically selected for review as prestigious higher tier articles.

At tier 2 level, they are referred to as either Focused Reviews or Frontiers Commentaries. The authors of the selected articles are therefore invited to revise their research article in a review style focused on the original discovery and with the support of the Frontiers peer review. Focused Reviews and Frontiers Commentaries aim at the broader audience of a field community and are published quarterly in the prestigious tier 2 sections of Field Journals.

The system is designed to gradually distill the most outstanding research through the succession of the Frontiers tiers, evaluated democratically for its academic excellence and social relevance. While climbing up the tier journal system, the research gains more and more visibility and addresses an increasingly broader public.