Frontiers has launched a new innovative service that allows for complete operational independence in academic publishing for their over 60,000 editors around the world.

The Frontiers Digital Editorial Office launched this week and was built in-house by Frontiers’ team of IT professionals. It was at first specifically designed to assist Frontiers’ Specialty Chief Editors, who come from the world’s leading institutions,  in their editorial tasks and to assist them in quality assurance, as well as to assess the performance of their specialty area.  Created with  feedback from the editors, the new Digital Editorial Office is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and will help them make editorial decisions and supervise the review process.

In 2008, Frontiers was the first publisher to build a Digital Editorial Office that gives editors complete editorial independence and freedom to act in the review process at any time.  The launch of the new Digital Editorial Office is an extension of this original innovation with more advanced usability, features and functions. A  winner of the Gold Prize for the ALPSP Award for Innovation in Publishing, Frontiers was born digital 8 years ago and changed the way publishing is done by custom-building their entire IT ecosystem in-house around collaborative and transparent peer-review and scalable journal management. Frontiers also pioneered Article and Author Impact Metrics to allow instantaneous tracking of readership of an article and the researcher’s impact within the community, and introduced online Loop profiles to bring transparency to publishing.

The cornerstone of the Digital Editorial Office is the dashboard, which presents the Chief Editors with the most relevant data for their specialty such as the number of submissions, the average review time and other key statistics needed to ensure the review of each article is following protocol and moving through Frontiers’ Collaborative Peer Review Process.

To quickly find manuscripts in their specialty, a list view provides the editors with access to the details of the submissions within their specialty. Delayed reviews are highlighted to allow Chief Editors to intervene if needed.

The Frontiers Review Forum, a unique review platform which unites authors, reviewers and the Associate Editor, is only a click away.

One of the key reasons the Digital Editorial Office was built was to reduce the amount of time the editors spent tracking submissions, ensuring the review process was on track and ensuring the highest possible quality standards. Ultimately, it makes the role of the Chief Editor easier as the Digital Editorial Office summarizes the most important tasks required from them at a that moment, which enables them to swiftly help Associate Editors and Reviewers with their assignments.

The launch of the Digital Editorial Office marks another step towards user-centric, technology-driven services created to empower the editors on Frontiers’ editorial boards during the review and publishing process. New features will be incrementally added to it.

Frontiers’ focus is on constantly providing more efficient and high-quality services for scientists. The Digital Editorial Office is a continuation of this mission.