Frontiers in Psychology

Frontiers in Psychology

Discipline	Psychology
Language	English
Edited by	Axel Cleeremans
Publication details
History	2010–present
Publisher	Frontiers (Switzerland)
Open access	Yes
License	Creative Commons Attribution
Impact factor	3.8 (2022)
Standard abbreviations ISO 4 (alt) · Bluebook (alt) NLM (alt) · MathSciNet (alt )
ISO 4	Front. Psychol.
Indexing CODEN (alt) · JSTOR (alt) · LCCN (alt) MIAR · NLM (alt) · Scopus
ISSN	1664-1078
OCLC no.	701805890
Links
Journal homepage Online archive

Frontiers in Psychology is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal covering all aspects of psychology. It was established in 2010 and is published by Frontiers Media, a controversial company that is included in Jeffrey Beall's list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory publishers".^[1][2] The editor-in-chief is Axel Cleeremans (Université libre de Bruxelles).

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in Current Contents/Social & Behavioral Sciences,^[3] EBSCO databases, PsycINFO,^[4] and Scopus.^[5]

The journal has a 2022 impact factor of 3.8.^[6] Since 2016, the journal has a score of 2 in the Norwegian Scientific Index,^[7] which "covers the most prestigious and rigorous channels".^[8][9] However, this listing was revised in 2023 to the X list which marks publication channels where there is doubt as to whether they should be approved or not and which The National Board of Scholarly Publishing and The Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills wants feedback from the research community.^[10]

Controversies

In February 2013, Frontiers in Psychology published a study by Stephan Lewandowsky and co-authors which analysed the conspiracy theories offered by the climate blog readers who responded to his 2012 paper about public opinion on climate change.^[11] In March 2014, Frontiers retracted the study, indicating that while they "did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study" they believed that "the legal context is insufficiently clear".^[12] DeSmogBlog said that the main legal concern was whether it was potentially defamatory for the paper to link climate change denialism to conspiracy theorists.^[13] There were public concerns about the "chilling effect" of the decision on research.^[13][14] On 4 April 2014, Frontiers said they retracted the 2013 Lewandowsky article because the authors did not sufficiently protect the rights of people analyzed and named in the article: "Specifically, the article categorizes the behaviour of identifiable individuals within the context of psychopathological characteristics."^[15] An Ars Technica article discussed the controversy, including "apparent contradictions" between Frontiers' March 2014 retraction and their April 2014 statement.^[16]

Due in part to this incident, Frontiers Media was included in Jeffrey Beall's list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory publishers" before Beall decided to shut down his website,^[2][17] though both COPE and OASPA have stated that they have no concerns with Frontiers' membership of their organizations.^[18][19]

References

1. Beall, Jeffrey (2012-01-15). "LIST OF PUBLISHERS". Scholarly Open Access. Archived from the original on 2016-08-01. Retrieved 2016-07-29.
2. Bloudoff-Indelicato M (2015). "Backlash after Frontiers journals added to list of questionable publishers". Nature. 525 (7575): 613. Bibcode:2015Natur.526..613B. doi:10.1038/526613f.
3. "Master Journal List". Intellectual Property & Science. Clarivate Analytics. Retrieved 2018-04-07.
4. "PsycINFO Journal Coverage". American Psychological Association. Retrieved 2018-04-07.
5. "Source details: Frontiers in Psychology". Scopus preview. Elsevier. Retrieved 2018-04-07.
6. "Frontiers in Psychology". 2022 Journal Citation Reports. Web of Science (Social Sciences ed.). Clarivate. 2023.
7. "Frontiers in Psychology". Norwegian Scientific Index. Retrieved 2019-12-04.
8. "Vedtak av endringer på nivå 2 gyldig fra 2019". Norwegian Scientific Index. Retrieved 2019-12-04.
9. "Publication channels, levels and credits". University of Oslo. Retrieved 2019-12-04.
10. "Tidsskrift info | Kanalregisteret". kanalregister.hkdir.no.
11. Lewandowsky, Stephan; Cook, John; Oberauer, Klaus; Marriott, Michael (2013). "Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation". Frontiers in Psychology. 4: 73. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00073. ISSN 1664-1078. PMC 3600613. PMID 23508808. (Retracted, see doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00293, PMID 24683402,  Retraction Watch)
12. Frontiers in Psychology Editorial Office (2014). "Retraction: Recursive fury: conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation". Frontiers in Psychology. 5: 293. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00293. ISSN 1664-1078. PMC 3967708. PMID 24683402.
13. Hannam, Peter (2 April 2014). "'Conspiracist' climate change study withdrawn amid legal threats". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
14. Osborne, Hannah (2 April 2014). "Study Linking Climate Sceptics and Conspiracy Theorists Pulled on Legal Threats". International Business Times. Retrieved 2015-07-27.
15. Zucca, Constanza (4 April 2014). "Retraction of Recursive Fury: A Statement". Frontiers in Psychology. Retrieved 2014-04-05.
16. Timmer, John (2014-04-08). "Legal or privacy problems? Journal changes its tune on climate paper". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2015-07-27.
17. Beall, Jeffrey (2012-01-15). "LIST OF PUBLISHERS". Scholarly Open Access. Archived from the original on 2016-12-22. Retrieved 2016-07-29.
18. "COPE statement on Frontiers". Committee on Publication Ethics. 2015-11-12.
19. Redhead, Claire (2015-12-24). "Frontiers membership of OASPA". oaspa.org. Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association.

External links

• Official website