Frontiers Research Foundation Science Park PSE-D | 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland Tel +41(0)21 693 92 02 | Fax +41(0)21 693

92 01 www.frontiersin.org

October 20, 2010

FRONTIERS ASSOCIATE EDITOR APPOINTMENT

Dear Prof , We are very pleased and honored that you have accepted the position and the challenge to serve as Associate Editor of Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience. This letter formalizes your appointment. Frontiers aims to change the world of academic research publishing to ensure high quality peer-reviewing, equal opportunity to publish and read, drive integration across disciplines, provide a spectrum of services for researchers and research-related organizations, and systematically translate advanced research knowledge to increase public understanding. The Frontiers vision is a comprehensive full-service system for all entities concerned with academic research. The "Frontiers in" journal series operates as open access journals and, therefore, adopts the standard open access business model where authors pay the Article Publishing Fees (APF) to allow anyone to read their article for free (author-pay/reader-free). The APF cover a range of costs involved in high quality academic publishing (please see the About section on the website for further details). Frontiers has successfully pioneered its equal-opportunity publishing model in the field of Neuroscience and now aims to offer this model to fields across all of academia. The vision of Frontiers is to build the complete Tree of Academia and create a single platform for integration across fields. Your profile, status in the academic community, and experience make you the ideal person serve as an Associate Editor of "Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience". Associate Editors in Frontiers are the guardians of the peer-review system and, therefore, your role and judgment is extremely important. As a Frontiers Associate Editor, you take the final decision of accepting a paper for publication, i.e., you do not need to consult with the Chief Editor in order to accept an article. Your final decision, however, can only be made after all Review Editors (i.e., referees) unanimously agree to the publication of an article. Frontiers does not operate a democratic system during the expert peer-review only after publication; hence unanimity is required when accepting or rejecting a paper. You may, however, not reject a paper on your own. You will need to make a recommendation for rejection to your Chief Editor, which you may only make if there is unanimous agreement among the Review Editors to reject the paper. The Chief Editor reviews whether the paper was handled in a fair and unbiased manner and takes the final decision whether or not to reject the paper. Page 1 of 4

Frontiers Research Foundation Science Park PSE-D | 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland Tel +41(0)21 693 92 02 | Fax +41(0)21 693 92 01 www.frontiersin.org

The Associate Editor of an article, as well as the Review Editors who were chosen to referee the paper, will be disclosed when an article is accepted for publication and acknowledged on the published paper. This introduces responsibility and accountability to the peer-review system and also ensures maximal collaboration between authors and editors during the review and joint efforts to ensure the highest possible quality for any Frontiers article. There is no editor disclosure if the paper is rejected, which protects the editors from "unhappy" authors. Initially, the Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience specialty section will handle all articles submitted to it under the name of the field that it is associated with. During this period in which Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience is a section (before becoming an official journal) it will operate exactly as an official journal with its own website and dedicated editors, with the exception that all articles accepted for publication by your section will be published with the citation of Frontiers in Neuroscience, where Neuroscience is the name of the field journal to which the article was submitted. When Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience becomes an official journal, articles will be published as Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience articles. While this is essentially a volunteer appointment, it requires from you a strong commitment to devote the time and energy required to realize the Frontiers vision for your specialty. As an Associate Editor of Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience, it is required that you: 1. within 1 month of your appointment build a Review Editorial Board of a minimum of 20 top-class experts that are qualified to review papers you expect to be editing. NOTE: in the Frontiers system, the entire Review Editorial Board can be invited to review each paper submitted, with the paper being assigned to the first two Review Editors that accept to handle it. This ensures that papers go into review within minutes, that the most motivated reviewers referee papers, radically increases the quality of the reviews, enhances the interactivity with the authors, generally speeds up the entire review process by a factor of 2 and frees the Associate Editor to focus on the actual review process. There are challenges to this method such as Review Editors that are not the most appropriate experts or have a conflict of interest accepting reviews, but Frontiers is moving towards a strategy of trust and responsibility, and asks Review Editors to acknowledge that none of these issues are verified as a condition for acceptance. . In the remote event that these high standards and expectations of integrity are not maintained, the Associate Editor always has the option to revoke Review Editors. It this, therefore, critical that your Review Editorial Board is as extensive and complete as possible for this system to work efficiently. 2. submit an inaugural article to your specialty within 3 months after your appointment. This is a mandatory requirement of your appointment because authors simply will not submit to a new journal without your leading article. The article may be of any type e.g. original research, review, perspective, hypothesis and theory, etc., of any length. There is no article publishing charge for your inaugural article. This is an extremely important obligation to fulfill as soon as possible because it creates the momentum and will guarantee the success of Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience;

Page 2 of 4

Frontiers Research Foundation Science Park PSE-D | 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland Tel +41(0)21 693 92 02 | Fax +41(0)21 693 92 01 www.frontiersin.org

3. guide the peer-review of articles that you agree to edit and ensure that the review is carried out according to the Frontiers peer-review guidelines. Frontiers reviewing is focused on objective accuracy and the iterative enhancement of the quality of all valid papers. Papers can be recommended for rejection at the beginning of the review process if it is obvious that the paper is of extremely low quality, but once in the review system, the article must follow the course of the full review. You have sole authority to accept article, and thus you hold the highest responsibility in the Frontiers PeerReview System. Only your Chief Editor has the authority to reject articles and you will need make a recommendation for rejection in the event that an article fails the review process; 4. coach and assist your review editorial board to carry out their role in refereeing articles focusing on objective criteria of validity, accuracy, flawlessness, and enhancing the quality of articles. Less emphasis should be placed on subjective criteria, such as significance, novelty, interest, impact, dogmas, paradigms, etc. Naturally these issues should not be ignored and authors must be asked to make the appropriate corrections to address also subjective issues; 5. make the final decision whether or not a paper is acceptable for publication by ensuring all quality, validity and ethical standards have been met and that all Review Editors agree to the publication; 6. recommend rejection of a paper if Review Editors unanimously agree that an article is not acceptable for publication. The Frontiers Research Foundation plans on making awards to outstanding editing of articles. At the end of each year your Chief Editor will nominate Associate Editors for awards to the Frontiers Research Foundation. No direct honorarium is paid to Associate Editors to ensure that there is no conflict of interest in accepting or rejecting articles. Awards are purely based on the quality of your editorial handling of articles. Frontiers is acutely aware that everyone is concerned about the Impact Factor (IF) of the journal, especially when it takes 3 years for a new journal to be assigned an impact factor. Thus far, we have every indication that Frontiers journals will achieve very high impact factors. This is due to the varied strategies to ensure quality of all Frontiers papers and not by selecting only a very few potentially high impact papers. You can also contribute in various ways to ensure that your section/journal will achieve a high impact.

Page 3 of 4

Frontiers Research Foundation Science Park PSE-D | 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland Tel +41(0)21 693 92 02 | Fax +41(0)21 693 92 01 www.frontiersin.org

Even though Frontiers recognizes the current importance of the IF, Frontiers is also attempting to change this yardstick. You may have realized that this is part of the trap that we have worked ourselves into in the 20th century. Conventional journals engineer their impact factor by strategically and politically selecting which articles to accept for publication, i.e., a highly non-scientific process is used to publish academic results. This led to some misapprehension what counts is the impact of an article and not the journal that it is published in (i.e., what you publish, and not where you publish). Therefore, Frontiers is creating and evolving with you the most advanced technology to track the impact of articles; your impact will be the sum of your articles impact, regardless of where you published. Together as one community we can change this flawed notion that shaped the way we publish academic research, get promoted and obtain grants. Frontiers will also work with you to lobby institutions and organizations to discard the non-scientific measures used and adopt unbiased principles of evaluating and comparing researchers. Finally, as you have begun to see, there are many new features in Frontiers as compared to traditional publishing. You should expect the full range of reactions to these evolutions and revolutions in the publishing process. Rest assured that Frontiers has been structured after many years of thought, discussions and iterations with a vast number of scientists and each and every feature has a role to play in the overall structure. Our record indicates that around 80% of the Editors you invite will accept to join the Editorial Boards, but you get very strong negative reactions from around 1% of scholars. Frontiers has weathered a full range of issues and is ready to help you manage any difficulties you may encounter. We are delighted that you take on this challenge; the Frontiers team will give you its full support and provide you with the appropriate editorial infrastructure. We look forward to working with you to bring academic publishing into the 21st century and to provide the means to support and encourage academic research throughout the world. We expect it to be quite a journey. Remember that publishing your inaugural article as soon as possible is the best way to get Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience off to a rocketing start! With our thanks and warmest regards, Frontiers Research Foundation

Professor Henry Markram President

Page 4 of 4