With today’s publications, Frontiers for Young Minds celebrates its expansion into one of its new subject areas: Understanding the Earth and its Resources. This new specialty is led by Specialty Chief Editor Berend Smit of the EPFL and UC Berkeley and will provide articles that help curious young readers better understand the their planet and the influence that they can have on the Earth system.

Specialty Chief Editor Berend Smit

Like all Frontiers for Young Minds articles, these articles will be written by scientists about their own work and then reviewed by a team of kids ages 8-15. 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.

Both the students and the researchers involved have found this process to be rewarding. One of our authors had this to say:

“When Frontiers for the Young Minds approached us to write an article for this new section, we were immediately enthusiastic. This journal is a great way to interest young people for science, but it is also nice to train ‘normal language’ writing. This helps to explain my research to family and friends as well!”

Hans van Franeker, Eindhoven University of Technology

The Understanding the Earth and its Resources specialty will publish articles with the following scope:

We all share a common planet, depending on the Earth as a place to live and as a resource for many aspects of our lives. One of the biggest challenges of our generation is to ensure that we better understand the Earth and use its resources in a responsible way. Science can help us with this challenge, which is the central focus of this section of Frontiers of Young Minds. We hope to attract articles that focus on Earth science, energy, marine science, environmental science (as it pertains to climate and Earth systems), and any other multidisciplinary content with a primary focus relevant to the four key areas. Articles will either explain core principles that serve as the foundations for each area of research or new discoveries at the cutting edge. The Understanding the Earth and its Resources section of Frontiers for Young Minds provides the most up-to-date research to the next generation who will live on, and study, these planet-wide questions.

Read the Articles Here!

Explore some of the recent advances in plastic solar cells and understand how scientists identify materials for making these solar cells more efficient and easier to produce with this article entitled “Plastic solar cells: understanding the special additive”.

Learn about one of the processes that makes it possible for scientists to break down the stems, stalks, and leaves of different plants and use them to create biofuels and other bio-products with the article below.

You can look forward to more articles in this exciting new specialty coming soon.

Find Out More

More information about participating in Frontiers for Young Minds can be found here.

Frontiers for Young Minds is currently accepting submissions in three specialties:

• Understanding Neuroscience

• Understanding the Earth and its Resources

• Understanding Astronomy and Space Science

Researchers interested in submitting Frontiers for Young Minds versions of their work can find author guidelines here.

Please contact kids@frontiersin.org for any additional questions.