Subject: Requests for Special Topic Proposals
Dear Society Member,
Frontiers in Immunology was just launched a few months ago and it is now the official journal of the
International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS), as you may know. Accordingly, we would like to
make you aware of the possibility for you to propose a Special Topic in your research area. This is an
opportunity for you to ‘take ownership’ of this new scientific publishing paradigm!
Frontiers is an Open Access, Swiss-based international scientific publisher. It was designed and is run by
scientists for scientists - over 15 000 of the highest impact scientists in the world are editors in
Frontiers. You can find out more about Frontiers at: www.frontiersin.org/about.
It is important for us to be able to bring together our peers, competitors as well as colleagues, to focus on
their research areas, hypotheses or questions - normally we do this through small conferences or holding
sessions at major conferences. Frontiers Special Topics was conceived to give researchers the
opportunity to bring their own community together and into focus. Special Topics are not at all the same
as special issues of other journals. Special Issues are usually strategically selected by a publisher
according to their agenda. It is the researcher’s agenda that is important in Frontiers, and articles are not
invited, but carefully selected (as in a conference) from article proposals and rigorously peer-reviewed.
Special Topics are meant to be an encyclopedic coverage of a focused research area with a collection of
a minimum of 10 articles of any type (Original Research, Methods, Hypothesis & Theory, Reviews, etc.).
A Live System: Frontiers created a special IT platform to manage and present Special Topics, making it
easy to host a Special Topic using this platform. Each Special Topic gets a dedicated homepage on the
Frontiers website, where all articles are aggregated. In the upcoming versions of Frontiers, it will be
possible to initiate discussions, blogs, collaborations and share data. It is not a one-off affair. The site can
become a hotbed of continued discussion, and regularly updated with new articles - much like a repeated
annual conference.
E-books: Special Topics will also be compiled into an e-book for widespread dissemination to promote
the focused research area. The e-books can be sent to all major foundations that fund the particular area
of research, to Frontiers’ network of international journalists, and to any list of organizations the
organizers propose.
Encyclopedia: Frontiers has started building a state-of-the-art, freely accessible multimedia research
encyclopedia for release in 2013 that will aggregate Special Topics into an easy readable, navigable and
educational form. The Frontiers Research Encyclopedia will select all those highly successful Special
Topics to define the research categories to be covered, and work with you to make a concise synthesis
for lay consumption. It will become the ultimate reference source for scientists, educators, funders, the
scholarly public, and policy makers (also on iPad and other like systems).
So, Frontiers Special Topics are an opportunity for you to bring your research area to critical mass, to
intensify collaborations, to promote the research area to funders, to make sure that the research area is
represented in the knowledge base of academia, and to make each discovery in science count in the
education of future scholars. As the ultimate continuous reference source by leading scientists, Special
Topic articles will also become highly cited articles.
Like all research published with Frontiers, all Special Topic articles are freely available on the Internet and
submitted to PubMed Central and other archiving facilities. Article contributions to Special Topics receive
reduced article publication fees, which sustain our open access policy and philosophy.
Typically, Frontiers Special Topics are co-hosted by several leading scientists. If you are interested in this
opportunity, please contact the Frontiers Editorial Office (immunology.editorial.office@frontiersin.org)
for further instructions on how to submit your proposal, which will be reviewed by the Specialty Chief
Editors and has to be approved by them. The most important part of your job, as a Special Topics Host
Editor, will be to ‘spread the word’ to all of your friends as to this special publishing opportunity!
All the best regards./Kendall & Seppo
Seppo Meri, MD, PhD, Professor of Immunology, Secretary General, International Union of
Immunological Societies (IUIS), Department of Bacteriology & Immunology, PO Box 21, Haartman
Institute (Haartmaninkatu 3), FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
tel 358-9-191 26758, fax 358-9-191 26382, seppo.meri@helsinki.fi
Kendall A. Smith, M.D., Rochelle Belfer Professor of Medicine & Immunology, Chief, Division Of
Immunology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, 407 East 61st St., RR-503, New York, NY,
10065
tel: 646-962-8166, E-mail: kasmith@med.cornell.edu, URL: www.kendallasmith.us
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