About Frontiers in Neuroscience

Frontiers in Neuroscience — Journal Profile

Frontiers in Neuroscience is a large, multidisciplinary, open-access journal covering the whole of neuroscience, from genes and cells through brain systems to behaviour and disease. It is published by Frontiers Media S.A. of Lausanne, Switzerland, and it was one of the founding journals of the Frontiers family, with open-access publication recorded as starting in 2007 in its Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) record. The identifiers on this JournalsWorld record are electronic ISSN 1662-453X and ISSN 1662-4548; DOAJ records 1662-453X as the electronic ISSN and 1662-4548 as the print-form ISSN, and OpenAlex records exactly the same pair for this source, so the two numbers together anchor the journal's identity. The journal's own description presents it as a leading multidisciplinary title that publishes research across a wide range of specialities and disciplines within neuroscience, aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of brain function from genes to behaviour, and seeks to tighten the links between the many domains of neuroscience while advancing conceptual and technological development in the field. That breadth is the single most important fact about the journal: it is not a niche title for one method or one disorder, but a broad church organised into specialty sections, each with its own editors, inside one journal.

Quick Facts

Identity and How to Recognise This Journal

Frontiers in Neuroscience belongs to the Frontiers journal family, in which each journal is led by a Field Chief Editor and divided into specialty sections led by Specialty Chief Editors, supported by large boards of associate and review editors. Frontiers' own quality and impact page for this journal names Idan Segev of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as Field Chief Editor, with Larry Abbott of Columbia University and Jon H. Kaas of Vanderbilt University named as Assistant Field Chief Editors on the same page. Because Frontiers has launched many similarly named titles, careful identification matters. This journal is the broad neuroscience title with ISSNs 1662-453X and 1662-4548. It is a different journal from Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience, Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience and Frontiers in Neuroergonomics, each of which has its own ISSNs, editors and article collections and all of which also appear as separate records in journal directories. A citation to "Front. Neurosci." with one of this journal's two ISSNs belongs here; a citation to one of the sister titles does not, even when the subject matter looks very close.

The journal's article addresses follow the Frontiers pattern, with DOIs in the 10.3389/fnins series — the example licence-display article in the DOAJ record is 10.3389/fnins.2016.00453 — and the "fnins" element is a quick practical check that an article really appeared in this journal rather than in a sister title. The journal publishes in English, as recorded in DOAJ, and its DOAJ subject classification places it under Neurosciences, Biological Psychiatry and Neuropsychiatry in the Library of Congress scheme, with keywords covering the neurosciences, the central nervous system, cognitive neuroscience, neurodegeneration and brain health.

History and Development

Frontiers in Neuroscience dates from the first wave of the Frontiers project. DOAJ gives 2007 as the year its open-access publishing began, and the stored JournalsWorld record likewise gives publication coverage beginning in 2007. Frontiers itself was founded in Lausanne as an open-access publisher built around community-led journals, an interactive review model and, later, research topics — curated collections of articles across sections and journals devoted to a single theme. Frontiers in Neuroscience grew inside that model from a new open-access title into one of the largest venues in the field. The scale is visible in the figures Frontiers itself published in its quality and impact analysis for the journal: 11,390 articles published, 577 research topics and 5,860 editors at the time of that analysis. OpenAlex, at the time of checking for this profile, counted 19,894 works and 498,454 citations for the source — figures that should be read as a live index total rather than a publisher's own count, but which confirm the same picture of a very large, heavily cited journal. One caution on the OpenAlex record: it gives a first-publication year of 1900 for this source, which is plainly an indexing artefact for a journal founded in 2007, and it should not be repeated as history. The trustworthy start date is 2007, supported by both DOAJ and the journal's own coverage.

The journal's growth also mirrors the growth of neuroscience itself. When it began, open-access mega-journals organised by specialty section were still a new idea in the life sciences; by the 2010s the model had become a major route for publishing imaging, computational, cellular and clinical neuroscience side by side. Frontiers in Neuroscience was also an early home for work that crossed traditional boundaries — brain-computer interfaces, neuroprosthetics, large-scale recording, computational modelling of neural circuits and data-driven studies of brain disorders — because its section structure allowed new specialities to be added without launching a new journal each time.

Scope and Subjects

The journal's stated topics of interest include autonomic function and brain energy homeostasis; neural development and degeneration; neuroengineering, including neuromorphic engineering and neuroprosthetics; novel brain imaging methods, from the subcellular level — genetically encoded voltage and ion indicators are the example the journal itself gives — to the whole-brain level, including large-scale micro-electrode arrays and direct imaging of neuronal activity at cellular resolution by functional MRI; and sensory perception and cognition. Its specialty sections, as shown across the journal's own site and its editorial listings, include Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience, Autonomic Neuroscience, Brain Imaging Methods, Brain-Body Interactions, Decision Neuroscience, Neural Technology, Neurodegeneration, Neurodevelopment, Neuroenergetics and Brain Health, Neuroscience Data and Perception Science, among others. Section names change over time as fields develop, so authors should always check the live list on the journal site rather than rely on any directory summary, including this one.

In practical terms, the journal welcomes experimental, computational and translational work: molecular and cellular neuroscience; synaptic transmission and plasticity; systems and circuits; brain imaging and mapping in humans and animals; cognitive and affective neuroscience; neurodevelopment and its disorders; neurodegenerative disease mechanisms and treatment studies; neuropharmacology; neural engineering and rehabilitation technology; and psychiatric and behavioural neuroscience grounded in biology. OpenAlex's topic profile for the source is consistent with that picture, with leading topics including neural dynamics and brain function, functional brain connectivity, neuroscience and neuropharmacology, EEG and brain-computer interfaces, Alzheimer's disease research and treatment, and neural and behavioural psychology. A manuscript does not need to be about a disease to fit: methods papers, data reports, code and technology papers, registered reports and systematic reviews all have recognised article types here, provided the work advances understanding of the nervous system or the tools used to study it.

Editorial Structure and Peer Review

Editorially, the journal follows the Frontiers model. A Field Chief Editor leads the journal; Specialty Chief Editors lead its sections; associate editors handle manuscripts and appoint reviewers; and review editors carry out peer review. Frontiers' own description of its process, repeated on the journal's section pages, is that its rigorous, transparent peer review combines expert review and constructive dialogue to strengthen a manuscript, with decisions taken by external and independent editorial boards. DOAJ records the review model for this journal specifically as single anonymous peer review, records that plagiarism detection is used, and links to the journal's editorial board page and peer-review explanation. Authors should understand what this model means in practice: review is interactive, reviewers' and editors' identities become visible on published articles under the Frontiers approach, and the handling editor's name appears on the article — features that distinguish Frontiers review from the fully closed review used by most traditional neuroscience journals.

The size of the editorial community is part of the journal's design. Frontiers' quality analysis counted 5,860 editors for this journal alone, reflecting the fact that a journal publishing on this scale, across this many specialities, cannot be run by a small board. For authors, the practical consequence is that choosing the right section matters: a manuscript sent to the section whose editors work on its exact problem is far more likely to be handled by a genuine specialist than one submitted to the journal in general terms.

Metrics and What They Mean

At the time of checking, OpenAlex (source S115201632, resolved directly from ISSN 1662-453X) recorded for Frontiers in Neuroscience: 19,894 works, 498,454 citations, an h-index of 225 and an i10-index of 9,932, with a two-year mean citedness of about 4.40. These are OpenAlex figures at checking time and will keep moving as the index updates. Readers comparing them with the older JournalsWorld summary for this post, which carried an h-index of 186, should understand that both numbers come from citation indexes taken at different times; the difference is growth and index revision, not a contradiction in the journal's identity. The journal is also described in its own promotional and directory summaries as indexed in PubMed Central, the Science Citation Index Expanded of Web of Science, and Scopus. Any single metric should be handled with care for a journal of this size: a broad, high-volume journal will accumulate very large totals, and article-level quality varies widely, as it does in every large venue. The h-index and citation totals demonstrate reach and longevity; they are not a promise about any individual article.

Frontiers also publicises speed on the journal site — its journal page has advertised a decision on a manuscript in around 77 days — and DOAJ records an average publication time of 14 weeks. Both figures are publisher-reported averages at the time they were published, not guarantees, and research-topic deadlines or revision rounds can change an individual manuscript's timetable considerably.

Indexing, Archiving and Open Access

Frontiers in Neuroscience is a gold open-access journal: all content is openly and freely readable and downloadable, and the publisher's model is funded by article publishing charges paid on accepted articles rather than by subscriptions, as Frontiers explains on the journal's fees pages. DOAJ lists the journal — a listing verified directly from the DOAJ search API for ISSN 1662-453X at the time of writing — and records that authors retain copyright, that articles are published under a CC BY licence, that the journal has a deposit policy registered with Open Policy Finder, and that long-term preservation is provided through CLOCKSS and PubMed Central. The journal is described as indexed in PubMed Central, Web of Science (SCIE) and Scopus. For authors at institutions with open-access mandates, the combination of a CC BY licence, author copyright retention and PMC deposit is usually the set of facts a funder asks for, and each of them is documented in the DOAJ record rather than merely claimed.

Fees

Frontiers publishes its charges openly, by article category. For Frontiers in Neuroscience, the journal's own publishing-fees pages list, at the time of checking: A-type articles CHF 3,150 — covering Original Research, Systematic Review, Methods, Review, Hypothesis and Theory, Clinical Trial, Registered Report and Technology and Code; B-type articles CHF 2,500 — covering Mini Review, Perspective, Case Report, Community Case Study, Conceptual Analysis, Data Report, Brief Research Report, General Commentary and Opinion; and C-type articles CHF 0 — Correction and Editorial. DOAJ independently records that the journal has an APC with a maximum of CHF 3,150, that there are no other charges, and that a waiver policy exists; Frontiers operates fee support and waiver arrangements, and institutional agreements may cover some authors. Because fees change, authors should confirm the current figure for their exact article type on the journal's fees page before submitting, and should never rely on a directory — including this profile — for a final price.

How to Submit

Submission is made online through the Frontiers website, to this journal and to a chosen specialty section, following the journal's author guidelines. Authors should prepare the manuscript in one of the recognised article types listed above, check the target section's scope statement, follow Frontiers' requirements on ethics approvals, data availability, author contributions and conflict-of-interest statements, and be ready for the interactive review process described earlier. Work connected with a Research Topic should be submitted to that topic, which routes it to the topic's editors. Nothing about this journal is print-first: it is an online journal, articles are published continuously once accepted, and the version of record is the online article with its DOI. Researchers who need a subscription journal, or whose funder will not support an APC and who do not qualify for a waiver, should consider that before submitting rather than after acceptance.

Similar and Related Journals

Within the same publisher's family, the closest relatives are the other Frontiers neuroscience titles named earlier — Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience and Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience — which suit work that is firmly inside one of those specialities, while this journal suits broader or cross-cutting work. Outside the family, researchers comparing venues for similar manuscripts commonly consider broad neuroscience journals and large open-access titles such as Scientific Reports, PLOS ONE for methodologically sound work across areas, eNeuro, Neuroscience, IBRO Neuroscience Reports, Brain Sciences and the Journal of Neuroscience for society-published primary research. These are comparisons for orientation only: each title has its own scope, review model, fees and indexing, and none of them is interchangeable with this journal for citation purposes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Frontiers in Neuroscience open access? Yes. It is a gold open-access journal published by Frontiers Media S.A.; articles are free to read, authors retain copyright, and articles are licensed CC BY, as recorded by DOAJ.

What are its ISSNs? Electronic ISSN 1662-453X and ISSN 1662-4548, the pair recorded on this JournalsWorld record, in DOAJ and in OpenAlex.

Is it listed in DOAJ? Yes. A DOAJ search by ISSN 1662-453X returned the journal's full record at the time of checking, including its licence, preservation, review model and fee information.

How much does it cost to publish? At checking time, CHF 3,150 for A-type articles, CHF 2,500 for B-type articles and CHF 0 for C-type articles, per the journal's own fees pages; waivers and institutional arrangements exist, and prices should be re-checked before submission.

Who leads the journal? Frontiers' quality page names Idan Segev of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as Field Chief Editor, supported by specialty chief editors for each section.

Is this the same as Frontiers in Human Neuroscience or Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience? No. Those are separate sister journals with their own ISSNs and editors. This profile covers only the broad title with ISSNs 1662-453X and 1662-4548.

Can I submit a methods or data paper? Yes — Methods, Technology and Code and Data Report are recognised article types, charged at the A-type and B-type rates respectively as listed on the fees pages.

What happened to the older h-index figure of 186 shown for this post? It was an earlier index snapshot. OpenAlex at the time of this profile recorded an h-index of 225; citation metrics grow over time and differ between indexes, so always cite the index and the date when quoting one.

Sources and Verification

This profile is anchored to the live JournalsWorld record for post 2713 (title, slug frontiers-in-neuroscience and the ISSN pair above). Verification sources fetched for this profile: the DOAJ search API record for ISSN 1662-453X (publisher, licence, review model, preservation, APC maximum, publication time, open-access start 2007); OpenAlex source S115201632 resolved from the ISSN endpoint (ISSN pair, host organisation Frontiers Media, works, citations, h-index and topic data at checking time); the journal's own publishing-fees pages on frontiersin.org (APC by article type and the list of article types); and Frontiers' quality and impact page for the journal (Field Chief Editor and editorial counts). Figures are attributed to their source and stated as at the time of checking.