Toxic culture with predatory business practices
Pros
Remote Laptop performs well Nice colleagues
Cons
Where do I begin. Frontiers operates as a predatory open-access mill masquerading as a legitimate academic publisher. The business model is built entirely on exploitation — of researchers desperate to publish, of volunteer reviewers who receive nothing, and of employees who are gaslit into believing they’re part of something meaningful. The workplace culture is systemically toxic. Management rules through intimidation. Speak up about wage theft (yes, unpaid overtime is rampant)? HR — which exists solely to protect the company, not employees — will document you as the problem. There is zero psychological safety. Burnout is not a side effect here; it’s a feature. Staff turnover is staggering, which leadership dismisses rather than investigates. This is a hostile work environment by any reasonable definition. The company has faced regulatory scrutiny and repeated accusations of fraud from the academic community — predatory APCs, fake peer review, and journals that exist purely for revenue extraction. Employees are expected to defend these practices with a straight face. Leadership is shielded by willful negligence and a complete lack of fiduciary responsibility to either staff or the scientific community they claim to serve. The Frontiers slogan is “Creating solutions for healthy lives on a healthy planet” which at this point is borderline satire. They are using AI for basically everything, and AI data centres are causing major environmental issues and damaging human health. And the treatment of staff is appalling.
