A year in review
2021 Progress Report
2021 - a game-changing year in science
The coronavirus pandemic, our response, and our recovery will come to define this period in our history. But what will 2021 be remembered for? As well as the pandemic, the prevailing memory of last year will also be the fact that science, and more specifically open science, delivered solutions for one of the biggest challenges we have faced.
Key figures
3rd most-cited publisher
Frontiers is an award-winning open science platform and leading open access scholarly publisher.
Frontiers ranks as the 3rd most-cited publisher among the 20 largest publishers with an average of 4.8 citations per article, an increase from 3.9 citations in the previous year.
Analysis of the world's 20 largest publishers by volume, ranked by average number of citations in 2020 received by articles published in 2017, 2018 and 2019 (Dimensions, 2021). Frontiers ranked 3rd most-cited with an average of 4.8 citations per article.
273,000 published articles
In 2021, Frontiers published over 85,000 articles. An increase of 77% compared to 48,000 in 2020. To date, Frontiers has published 273,868 peer-reviewed articles - all openly accessible to the world.
1.5 billion article views and downloads
Frontiers articles have been viewed and downloaded more than 1.5 billion times from all over the world.
In 2021 alone, Frontiers articles received over 400 million views and 100 million downloads.
Special Jury Prize at the 2021 Vaud International Business Awards
The Swiss award recognizes Frontiers’ role in creating jobs and successfully contributing to the reputation and prosperity of the Canton Vaud.
Highlights from our 2021 Frontiers Forum
The 2021 Frontiers Forum Speaker Series was viewed over 6 million times online. Keynotes included Former US Vice President and Nobel Laureate, Al Gore, on the sustainability revolution and Nobel prize winner and best-selling author, Prof Esther Duflo, and her evidence-based approach to economics to address poverty, Covid-19, and climate change.