I noticed that over the past months a number of unreliable reviews, both negative (i.e., fear and loathing) and positive, have been posted here. It's a pity, as previous ones were quite thoughtful and accurate. Here are some thoughts of mine. The tasks in the editorial side of the office used to be (not sure right now, but guess can't be too different) pretty boring, mechanical, and unrewarding. Pay is low by Swiss standard but most of the crowds (precisely for that reason probably) aren't Swiss; since salary (for permanent positions) is still better than in most EU countries, low wage tends to be an overlooked issue. Crowds get more sensitive to the topic when they get acquainted with the Swiss job market situation. Some recent reviews tried to dismiss complaints about Frontiers being a predatory published. Irrespective of whether Frontiers is such a thing, it might be worth keeping in mind that the perception of the value of Frontiers has gotten worse in academia and, I guess, beyond academia. This means that what working at Frontiers adds to the marketability and appeal of your CV has also decreased. Further, whilst arguably Frontiers is not a predatory publisher, I think that there are some serious issues that need to be highlighted. Whilst Frontiers has advocated open access in the past 10 years, little to nil has been done to advocate other aspects of open science, increasing transparency of research, data-sharing, and reproducibility of findings. Competitors, like Plos, have done much better on this side.
