On the Frontier of Pain Education Research

The Frontier of Innovative Publishing

Frontiers is a world leading open access publisher and one of the most-cited scientific publishers in the world. Frontiers is innovative having developed an Open Science Technology platform that includes a Collaborative Peer Review Platform, a Digital Editorial Office, article-level metrics and an Artificial Intelligence Review Assistant. Frontiers produces a wealth of ‘community-driven’ journals, such as Frontiers in Pain Research, that are sustained by researchers who serve as independent editors and reviewers. Frontiers’ Collaborative Peer-Review process differs from traditional journals because it enables real-time interactions between authors and reviewers via an online forum to catalyse and safeguard rigorous, constructive, and transparent peer-review.

The Frontier of What You Don’t Know

Previously, Kate, Dr James Milligan, Prof. Michelle Briggs and myself published a scoping review of literature that resulted in the development of a conceptual model for pre-registration pain education, and a meta-ethnography that elicited concepts from patient experience to inform the development of future pain education. We found that educators faced barriers and challenges deciding on the content and type of delivery of pain teaching to meet the needs of learners. We argued that systematic evaluation of pain education content and methods is essential in public and professional contexts, and that research and scholarship on the topic was desperately needed.

At the Frontier of Knowledge

One means of uniting research experts to investigate ‘hot topics’ and stimulate collaboration and the generation of new knowledge and perspectives is via Frontiers’ Research Topics. These are collections of papers (articles) on state-of-the-art themes in the field that are defined, led, and managed by renowned researchers acting as topic editors. The purpose of our Research Topic is to address barriers to the education of health care professionals, including competencies, and evidence-based approaches to overcoming these barriers, and advances in patient and public education.

Within days of our Research Topic being released we received interest from world-leaders in the field of pain education from around the world wishing to contribute scholarship and research. You can follow the progress of our Research Topic including our call for contributions here.