Kostova (pictured) has worked for more than 15 years in the scholarly publishing industry, and was vice-president for scholarly communications at Outsell Inc, the consulting and market research firm.

Prior to that, she served as executive editor at Wiley’s Global Research division, where she managed a portfolio of journals published on behalf of leading scholarly societies in the life sciences.

Her tenure at Wiley’s was preceded by serving as senior acquisitions editor at Oxford University Press, where she oversaw the press’s digital and scholarly reference publishing programme in the humanities and social sciences. She holds a doctorate in French literature and has taught at both Columbia and Rutgers universities. 

Kostova served as the chair of the generations fund committee and as a member of the finance committee at the Society for Scholarly Publishing. 

Commenting on Kostova’s appointment, Frontiers’ chief publishing officer Dr Mirjam Eckert said: “Julia’s deep understanding of the scholarly publishing landscape makes her incredibly well placed to lead our US editorial strategy and to connect with our US-based researcher community.

“With her considerable experience, I am certain Julia will strengthen Frontiers’ success in the States to make science open.”