Frontiers reviews

- middle and senior management lack experience in leading a profitable business and motivate people - employees at all levels are too sure of themselves and believe that they are quite special - sorry, guys, but getting a PhD or a Master's doesn't make you automatically intelligent, let aside entitle you to have an opinion on EVERYTHING! - project execution is slow and ideas start to stink before they actually get implemented - have to start as an intern even for the most basic and mind-numbing posts - be prepared to work on 10 projects at the same time, have arbitrary deadlines imposed, never hear "hey, you did a good job there!" Don't expect much aid on your work either, unless you make friends with the other employees at your level, and also, don't think that you are the only one working on "that" project; someone else is working on it as well! Oh, and by the way, none of the two ideas will be implemented, since the senior management will probably change their mind and go for plan c

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.