The story of how Frontiers was much, much worse than I thought

About three years ago, I received an email from Frontiers asking for a manuscript for a special issue on fouling organisms. I happened to have one manuscript that was in limbo, so I decided to submit it as a test. Although it was peer-reviewed, there were no particularly harsh comments, and it was published without much of a sense of accomplishment. It seemed I could choose between Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution or Frontiers in Marine Science, but for some reason, Ecol Evol was cheaper and Mar Sci was more expensive, so I published it in Ecol Evol. At the time, I was able to pay for it with my company's research budget, so it didn't hurt my own pocket, and I felt lucky. However, the peer-review process was so lacking in substance that I began to question the minimum quality assurance it was supposed to provide, wondering, 'Is it even possible to get rejected by Frontiers?' Because of this, and because it costs money, I decided that while I wouldn't stop a co-author if they insisted on Frontiers for a study I was participating in as an 'et al.', I would no longer submit to Frontiers as a lead or corresponding author. That was the impression I had.

Well, since I had already published there, I thought I might as well help out with peer review. One day, I looked at a manuscript that came my way, and my spine chilled when I realized that Frontiers was much, much worse than I had thought. It has already been published and the reviewers' names are public, so I think it's fine to mention the following paper.

This is a commentary paper regarding the following paper previously published in Frontiers.

The original paper, Mao et al. 2024, has a title that translates literally to 'Comparative omics analysis of a new deep-sea barnacle species and shallow-water barnacle species provides insights into deep-sea adaptation,' and it can be interpreted as an attempt to clarify the molecular basis for deep-sea adaptation from a new species of barnacle. However, surprisingly, there is no description of a new species in the text, and the barnacle discussed here was a known species called Vulcanolepas fijiensis. The title of the paper is wrong. Even more surprisingly, the deep-sea barnacle used in this study was not Vulcanolepas fijiensis, but a different genus and species, Neolepas marisindica. Even though they had molecular data and the specimens in hand, they got even such a simple identification wrong. The title claims a new species description, but there is no such description, and the subject species is a different genus and species—this is a level of poor quality rarely seen in recent years. This is the kind of thing that should have been rejected at the editor stage, well before peer review. Now that I know the process is so porous that such a paper can be published, I cannot defend Frontiers, which often sits on the borderline in the predatory journal debate. Since I have had my own papers published there, I was somewhat on the side of defending Frontiers regarding whether it is a predatory journal, but I have to recognize that it is a predatory journal that will publish anything as long as you pay. For this reason, although I had a stance of 'I won't stop a co-author if they insist on Frontiers for a study I am participating in as an et al.,' I intend to argue from now on that we should avoid Frontiers even if I am just part of the 'et al.'

Of course, it is true that the value of a paper should not be judged by the media in which it is published, but rather by the research itself. However, it has become clear that Frontiers' peer review (or rather, handling) process, which should be the minimum quality assurance for that premise, is porous. Because of this incident, I believe that no matter what sensational content is published by Frontiers in the future, I must approach the original papers with a much more skeptical eye than before.