Frontiers Media, publishing model and reputation (overview)

An overview of the Swiss open-access publisher Frontiers Media, founded in 2007, which ran over 220 journals by 2023 on an author-pays model. It was added to Beall’s list of possible predatory publishers in October 2015 (the list itself was shut down in January 2017, reportedly under pressure that included Frontiers), and its special-issues and rapid-acceptance practices have repeatedly drawn peer-review-quality criticism. In January 2023 the French institute Inria labelled Frontiers a “grey-zone publisher” urging vigilance, and Zhejiang Gongshang University excluded Frontiers articles, alongside those of MDPI and Hindawi, from researcher evaluation; high-profile failures include a 2024 retraction of an article carrying AI-generated figures. Used as a citable anchor for the grey-zone-publisher phenomenon.