As we head into our second annual Editor’s Summit this weekend, we wanted to take a look back of some of our editors who have grown with us through the years. It’s not easy to launch a journal and create a vibrant community around it, but time after time, the dedication of our Field Chief Editors has been rewarded with their journals becoming the most cited in their category.

Idan Segev from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is the Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Neuroscience. He was with our co-founders when Frontiers was a concept in 2007. He was also there when Frontiers in Neuroscience launched in 2008 and has watched it grow and evolve over the years.

“For me it’s an exciting place because I don’t know what will happen next. That is the thing about Frontiers. It’s going to be Frontiers all the time, which allows it to move forward,” he says.

Frontiers in Neuroscience has since become the #1 most cited and the #1 largest Open Access publisher of Neuroscience and the #3 most cited and #4 largest Neuroscience publisher overall.

Axel Cleeremans from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and is the Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Psychology. He has been with Frontiers since 2008 and was the second field chief editor to join our editorial board.

“The most rewarding thing about being the Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Psychology has been to see it take off as it has,” he says.

Frontiers in Psychology is the #1 largest and the #2 most cited psychology journal in the world.  Nearly 7,000 articles have been published in the journal and Cleeremans has gathered a community of 5,400 editors. “Playing a significant role in developing the journal, deciding how to split psychology up into different sections, identifying people to head up these sections and to see it all develop has been very rewarding,” he says.

Since the launch of Frontiers in Microbiology in 2010, Martin G. Klotz has been there to oversee and guide its vision and process to ensure each publication is of high quality. Klotz is Dean of Queens College of The City University of New York (CUNY) and is the Field Chief Editor of the journal, which in just four years has become the #5 largest and the #12 most-cited Microbiology journal in the world.

“There really is a value adding process happening where the product is always measurably better than the initial submission,” he says. “I spent a lot of time in not copying existing journals as specialties, but in trying to put things together where people will be forced to talk or work with one another. It’s something I really like about the Frontiers concept.”

Segev, Cleeremans and Klotz are just a few of our esteemed Field Chief Editors who have watched their vision for their journal take off.  This weekend at our Summit, we’ll hear from over 40 of our  chief editors. Each of them continuously inspire and motivate us to be innovative, develop better and more efficient editorial platforms, and find new ways to disseminate research farther and faster.