This is an interesting discussion, and I’m pasting here an email I had written to a Frontiers editor when asked to be involved in arranging a ‘research topic’, which I see as a ‘bordering on cynical’ device for generating income. For this reason, I do not submit nor review for Frontiers even though I am funded for covering publication costs.
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In my field, the ‘research topics’ initiative, I think, is having potentially damaging effects. It seems the barrier for contacting a potential ‘topics’ organizer is quite low, perhaps necessitating as much as publishing one prior work in the area (My ex-research assistant was contacted!). Then, we get posts on mailing lists inviting the community to contribute ‘papers’ to a frontiers issue, which turns out to be a ‘topic’. From that point on, I suspect the topic organizers feel some pressure to accept at least some papers, and I end up seeing quite a bit of sub-par work. What bothers me is that I see no reason for Frontiers to filter work, because at the end of the day it earns money from accepted papers. There is an enormous amount of topics: more than 70 different ones just in ‘frontiers in physiology [H.B: updated: 133 as of Feb 1, 2014, of them 32 currently accepting abstracts]’. Multiply that by X papers per topic by Y $$ per paper and frontiers is surviving the economic crisis.. So beyond the hype, I see ‘topics’ as a system for Frontiers to recruit articles by leveraging scientists’ need to be ever more visible in a competitive environment where success for one’s idea in the ‘idea marketplace’ can benefit from visibility in any form.
