A new section of short reviews called 'Frontiers' was introduced within the Elsevier journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters (EPSL) in 2002 under the Editorship of Alex Halliday from ETH Zurich, Switzerland. These high profile Frontiers articles are written by leading experts and published as the opening pages to regular issues of EPSL. The reason for this development is that the Editors of EPSL believe there is an important niche to be filled with fast communications that bring the scientific community up-to-speed on interesting new areas of science. Frontiers articles are therefore specifically intended for the non-specialist earth and planetary science readership.

In order to reach a broader readership, those without subscriptions to the journal, Frontiers articles will now also be published in a new book series, the EPSL Frontiers series. Volume 1 will contain all 2002 and 2003 Frontiers articles. Future volumes will contain one year of articles each.