Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A manuscript submitted to a Frontiers journal receives two independent reviewer reports during the first phase. Because both reviewers request clarification on the same methods section, the editor opens the interactive review forum; the authors post a response addressing both points in the same thread, one reviewer replies to confirm it resolves their concern, and the editor moves the manuscript to a decision once both reviewers indicate satisfaction -- all inside the same online forum rather than through separate emailed rounds.
- Is an instance
A reviewer flags an unclear figure legend. Instead of writing this into a formal report that goes back through the editor for relay, the reviewer raises it directly in the interactive forum; the author uploads a revised figure and replies in the same thread, and the exchange is visible to the other reviewer and the editor as it happens.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A journal that collects reviewer reports privately, forwards them to the author as an editor-compiled decision letter, and only allows the author to respond in a separate revision cover letter -- with reviewers and authors never directly addressing each other -- is running traditional mediated peer review, not the Frontiers collaborative model, even if the reviewer identities are eventually disclosed.
Editorial commentary
Frontiers Collaborative Peer Review is the peer-review model used across Frontiers Media’s journal portfolio, built around direct interaction between reviewers and authors rather than the traditional pattern of reviewers writing private reports that an editor relays to the author one round at a time. Frontiers describes its own process as uniting authors, reviewers, and the handling editor in a direct online dialogue intended to enable faster iteration and help the parties reach consensus on what a manuscript needs before a decision is made.
How the process works
Frontiers structures the process in two sequential phases:
- Independent review phase. Each assigned reviewer evaluates the manuscript and submits a report without seeing what other reviewers have written, preserving independent judgment at the outset — this part of the process looks similar to conventional peer review.
- Interactive review phase. Once the handling editor has the independent reports in hand, they can open a shared online review forum. Authors are notified and given access to that forum, where they can see the reviewers’ comments and respond directly. Reviewers, authors, and the editor can then go back and forth in the same thread — asking follow-up questions, proposing specific fixes, and confirming when a concern has been resolved — until the reviewers are satisfied or the editor is ready to make a decision.
A further distinguishing feature is that Frontiers publishes the names of the reviewers and the handling editor alongside the final article, rather than preserving reviewer anonymity indefinitely. Frontiers frames this as encouraging reviewers and editors to engage constructively, since their names will be attached to the published record.
How this differs from traditional peer review
In conventional single-blind or double-blind peer review, reviewers submit reports to an editor, the editor compiles and forwards them (often anonymized) to the author, and the author replies through a separate revision letter — reviewers and authors never address each other directly, and every exchange is relayed through the editor as an intermediary. Frontiers’ model keeps an editor in the loop throughout, but replaces the report-then-relay cycle with a shared forum where the parties can resolve a specific point in one exchange instead of a full review round. The single-blind vs. double-blind vs. open peer review comparison covers how reviewer/author identity disclosure varies across models more broadly; Frontiers’ collaborative process is best understood as a distinct interaction-model dimension layered on top of that identity-disclosure question, since it changes how the parties communicate rather than only whether they know each other’s names.
Why it matters for research administrators and authors
Understanding that a Frontiers-published article went through this model matters when assessing what “peer reviewed” means for a given output: the manuscript was still evaluated by independent expert reviewers, but the revision process that followed involved direct, documented dialogue between author and reviewer rather than editor-mediated correspondence alone. This is a process distinction, not a rigor judgment in either direction — both models are used across legitimate, indexed journals. Editors and reviewers are named on the eventual published article under Frontiers’ model, which is a separate transparency feature from the interactive-forum mechanism itself.
Related terms
See also Peer Review, ANSI/NISO Z39.106-2023 (Peer Review Terminology Standard), the Peer Review guide, and the Peer Reviewer guide. For a look at documented controversies involving Frontiers specifically, see Is Frontiers Peer Reviewed?
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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