100,000 Evaluations and Counting: Faculty of 1000 Reaches an Historic Publishing Milestone

London, United Kingdom, January 09, 2011 --(PR.com)-- 1 idea, 10 years, 100s of sections, 1000s of Posters, 10,000 Faculty Members, and 100,000 evaluations: Faculty of 1000 celebrates publishing their 100,000th evaluation.

2010 was a busy year for Faculty of 1000 (F1000). The company became the official publisher of The Scientist magazine and launched F1000.com, which combines content from its previous two sister sites (F1000 Biology and F1000 Medicine) and The Scientist. F1000 also launched F1000 Posters, a new Open Access repository of posters from across biology and medicine.

This January F1000 reached a milestone in its history: the publication of its 100,000th evaluation—and there is more to come.

Faculty of 1000 provides ratings of and commentary on scientific papers. The service is a filter, identifying and evaluating the most significant articles from biomedical research publications. A peer nominated 'Faculty' of scientists and clinicians rate the articles they read, and explain their importance.

The 100,000th evaluation (http://bit.ly/F100K) was written by Mark Hay (http://bit.ly/MarkHay) of the F1000 Ecology Faculty. Dr Hay selected the paper “High CO2 enhances the competitive strength of seaweeds over corals,” originally published in Ecology Letters.

“I picked the Diaz-Pulido et al. paper for evaluation because human activities have fundamentally changed ocean ecosystems world-wide during the 30 years I've been studying them,” said Mark Hay. He continued, “The Diaz-Pulido et al. investigation demonstrated that ocean acidification not only made it harder for corals to calcify, but also enhanced the ability of seaweed competitors to kill corals, causing further, rapid loss of reef corals in complex ways that go far beyond the first-order, obvious effects on coral physiology.”

“Being a part of F1000 allows me to help others more quickly find and use innovative research like the Diaz-Pulido study. Keeping up with the scientific literature is like drinking from a fire-hose; F1000 reduces this to a manageable flow of high-quality, innovative papers that are especially rewarding to read, to know of, and to help discover and promote.”

The Faculty has evaluated articles from more than 3000 different publications. On average, 1500 new evaluations are published each month; this corresponds to approximately the top 2% of all published articles in the biological and medical sciences.

Sarah Greene, F1000 Editor-in-Chief said, “This milestone reflects the dedication of thousands of the world’s top scientists in identifying the critical literature in their research disciplines. I’m especially pleased that this 100,000th evaluation represents the best that post-publication peer review has to offer – a named expert (thank you Mark Hay!) flagging the urgency of a paper published in a specialty journal that otherwise might go unnoticed outside the field of marine ecology. We thank all our Faculty Members for contributing to this fledgling enterprise, which has grown over the past decade into a massive, searchable database of the very best that biology and medical research has to offer.”

To find out more about Faculty of 1000 please contact Eleanor Howell on +44 (0)20 7631 9129 or email press@f1000.com. For more information, visit http://f1000.com.

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