Article evaluation services provider Faculty of 1000 (F1000), UK, has announced the publication of initial articles on F1000 Research, the innovative open access publishing programme in biology and medicine. These articles also feature a novel inline data viewer, and a new method of article citation.
F1000 Research’s revolutionary vision has been inspiring debate across the scientific community since the beginning of the year. Its informed contribution to the wider discussion about open access publishing has advanced to a new level this week with the publication of its first few articles. A call for papers has been issued and further articles will be published on the current consultation site while the publishing model and editorial systems are fine-tuned in preparation for a complete launch later this year.
All submissions to F1000 Research will go through a fast initial review by the in-house editorial team who will check to ensure that articles are sensible, intelligible, and written in good English. Each article will then be published with the status ‘awaiting peer review’.
On publication, the article will be sent to 3-5 expert referees who will be asked to state, firstly, whether the work seems scientifically sound. These responses will be displayed immediately alongside the article and its citation, and will be updated as new referee responses arrive. Subsequently, referees will be asked to provide more detailed comments and feedback, which will also be displayed with the article.
Authors will be encouraged to revise their articles in response to referee comments and each article version will be citable with its own DOI. A novel article citation mechanism, developed with the assistance of the F1000 Research Advisory Panel and the leading indexers, will capture the article version number and referee status.
Once an article receives two positive referee responses, it will be indexed. Scopus, Embase and Google Scholar have agreed to index F1000 Research content immediately, and discussions aimed at putting in place similar arrangements with other major indexers are ongoing. Should an article receive no positive reviews it will not be indexed and will be removed from the default search on the site.
These first articles showcase a novel inline data viewer that has been developed in conjunction with figshare. It enables readers to preview data files without having to download them, and allows all readers, even those without suitable viewers for these files, to view the datasets in a ‘friendly’ format.
All publishing charges are waived for 2012. Moderate author processing charges will be introduced in 2013.
More than 200 of the most eminent names in biology and medicine have joined the international Advisory Panel, and more than 1000 global experts sit on the newly formed Editorial Board.
