Emerging Swiss publisher Frontiers acquired by Nature Publishing Group

NPG, publisher of Nature, acquires the majority of share of Frontiers. Founded by scientists from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 2007, Frontiers is one of the fastest growing open access publishers, more than doubling articles published year on year. Frontiers now has a portfolio of open access journals in 14 fields of science and medicine, and published over 5,000 OA articles in 2012.

NPG and Frontiers will work together to empower researchers to change the way science is communicated, through open access publication and open science tools. Frontiers, led by CEO and neuroscientist Kamila Markram, will continue to operate with its own platform, brands, and policies.

Working with NPG, the journal series "Frontiers in" will significantly expand in 2013-2014. Currently, sixty-three journals published by NPG offer open access options or are open access and NPG published over 2000 open access articles in 2012. Bilateral links between nature.com and frontiersin.org will ensure that open access papers are visible on both sites.

Frontiers and NPG will also be working together on innovations in open science tools, networking, and publication processes.

"Frontiers is innovating in many ways that are of interest to us and to the scientific community," said Dr Philip Campbell Editor-in-Chief, Nature. "Referees and handling editors are named on published papers, which is very unusual in the life sciences community. Nature has experimented with open peer review in the past, and we continue to be interested in researchers' attitudes. Frontiers also encourages non-peer reviewed open access commentary, empowering the academic community to openly discuss some of the grand challenges of science with a wide audience."

Frontiers is based at EPFL in Switzerland, and works out of Innovation Square, a technology park supporting science start-ups, and hosting R&D divisions of large companies such as Logitech & Nestlé.