First Articles Now Live on F1000 Research

London, United Kingdom, July 18, 2012 --(PR.com)-- 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 (please see http://f1000research.com/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.

F1000 Research challenges traditional models by defining new standards for speed, peer review, and the sharing of data. Features include:

* immediate publication
* rapid, formal, and completely open peer review process post-publication
* acceptance of null/negative and replication/refutation findings
* publication and refereeing of datasets as separate data articles

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 (http://figshare.com). 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 information can be found at: http://f1000research.com.

Commenting on this significant development, Dr Rebecca Lawrence, Publisher for F1000 Research, said: "We are very excited to announce the publication of our first articles on F1000 Research. We would like to thank everyone who has helped us get this far, not least our Advisory Panel and Editorial Board. The discussion continues on Twitter at @F1000Research, and we invite the research community to join us as the project takes shape."

More than 200 of the most eminent names in biology and medicine have joined the international Advisory Panel (see all members at: http://f1000research.com/advisory-panel), and more than 1000 global experts sit on the newly formed Editorial Board (see http://f1000research.com/editorial-board). The project has received great support from the wider scientific community, sparking extensive discussions about the future of scholarly publishing.

To find out more about F1000 Research, please contact Rebecca Lawrence at rebecca.lawrence@f1000.com. For more information, visit http://f1000research.com.

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.

About F1000
Faculty of 1000 is a unique online service that selects, rates, and evaluates important articles based on the opinions of global leaders in biology and medicine. The distinguished international Faculty identify articles that impact their research, providing a rapidly updated, authoritative guide to the life science literature. Find out more at http://f1000.com.

About F1000 Research
F1000 Research is a new fully Open Access publishing program across biology and medicine. It is addressing the major issues afflicting scientific publishing today: timely dissemination of research, peer review, and sharing of data. Diverging from traditional journal publishing, F1000 Research offers immediate publication; open, post-publication peer review; open revisioning of work including ongoing updates; and encourages raw data deposition and publication. In addition, F1000 Research is accepting a broad range of article formats and content types.