EVALUATED ARTICLES: POST-PUBLICATION PEER REVIEW

Faculty of 1000 (F1000) identifies and evaluates the most important articles in biology and medical research publications. Articles are selected by a peer-nominated global 'Faculty' of the world's leading scientists and clinicians who then rate them and explain their importance. From the numerical ratings awarded, we have created a unique system for quantifying the importance of individual articles and, from these article ratings, journals. Both articles and journals can then be ranked overall and, importantly, at the subject, or Faculty, level.

Launched in 2002, F1000 was conceived as a collaboration of 1000 international Faculty Members. The name stuck even though the remit of the service continues to grow and the Faculty now numbers more than 10,000 experts worldwide. Their evaluations form a fully searchable database containing more than 100,000 records and identifying the best research available.

Faculty Members and their evaluations are organized into over 40 Faculties (subjects), which are further subdivided into over 300 Sections.

On average, 1500 new evaluations are published each month; this corresponds to approximately 2% of all published articles in the biological and medical sciences.

OTHER SERVICES: REVIEW JOURNALS, F1000 RESEARCH AND F1000 POSTERS

F1000 Medicine Reports and F1000 Biology Reports are open access review journals that add an extra dimension to F1000, providing peer-reviewed reports on emerging themes in biology and medicine. F1000 Section Heads ensure coverage of the latest advances by selecting topics and nominating experts to provide context for the evaluated literature. The journals are indexed and/or abstracted by PubMed, PubMed Central, Scopus, Embase, Global Health and CAB Abstracts.

F1000 Research is a new fully Open Access publishing program across biology and medicine. It is intended to address 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 accepts a broad range of “article” formats and encourages content types that are now routinely rejected such as negative results, case studies, thought experiments, preliminary analyses, and incomplete datasets. Read more

F1000 Posters is an open access repository of conference posters and oral presentation slides in biology and medicine. It provides a permanent, structured environment for the deposition of posters and presentations and in doing so allows researchers to maximize the value of their conference presentations by dramatically increasing access and enabling others to benefit from new research. Like research articles, posters and presentations deposited in F1000 Posters may also be selected by the F1000 Faculty for evaluation within the main F1000 service. Read more

ACCESSING F1000: SUBSCRIPTION AND OPEN ACCESS PRODUCTS

The core article evaluation service of F1000 is a subscription product. Users at subscribing academic and corporate institutions receive full access to F1000 when using internet facilities provided by their institution, as well as for 30-day roaming periods when they are outside the institution's IP range.

Free trials are available for institutions and for individuals who may then recommend the service to the librarian at their institution.

Individual subscriptions are also available at $9.95 per month.

For full information about subscribing to F1000, visit Subscription and registration.

F1000 Reports and F1000 Posters are open access products and as such are universally free to access.

THE F1000 FACULTY

• » F1000 draws on the guidance of an International Advisory Board of world-renowned scientists, which advises on the appointment of Heads of Faculty and on the scope of the F1000 service.
• » Two or three Heads of Faculty for each subject are nominated and elected following discussion with a large group of their peers.
• » Heads of Faculty divide their subject into Sections and then select two or three Section Heads to run each one.
• » Section Heads in turn select groups of Faculty Members to represent topics in their Sections on the basis of these criteria:
  • » that the number of Faculty Members be proportionally representative of the number of articles published within that fields
  • » that the selected Faculty Members be well respected by their peers and perceived as being fair-minded.
  • » that there be good representation across all nationalities and a good mix of older and younger scientists.
• » To ensure sufficient levels of coverage and to identify areas for improvement, F1000 continuously monitors its representation of the various disciplines.
• » Faculty Members can nominate junior colleagues to become Associate Faculty Members.
• » Associate Faculty Members help to select suitable articles to be evaluated, and co-write evaluations.
• » Faculty Members are not paid but do receive a free subscription to F1000.

F1000 CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

Evaluations and quality assurance

• » Evaluations are accepted only from Faculty Members, with assistance from their Associates, to ensure a balanced and high-quality service.
• » Faculty Members are asked to select and evaluate the most interesting research articles they read. They can pick any primary research article from any journal and are not limited to articles indexed in PubMed, nor are they limited to recent publications.
• » Associate Faculty Members are asked to scan the contents of journals within their area of expertise in order to highlight the best articles, helping to ensure comprehensive and systematic coverage of the biomedical literature.
• » Faculty Members and their Associates can also write dissenting opinions if they disagree with the selection and evaluation of an article chosen by one of their Faculty colleagues. Authors of the original article and all evaluators of the article are notified when a dissent is posted and are encouraged to add further comments if they wish.
• » In order to safeguard our Faculty Members' independence, F1000 does not suggest articles for evaluation; however, registered subscribers (and trialists with an active trial) can nominate articles as long as they are not authors on that article.
• » Around 85% of articles evaluated in F1000 are not from 'top tier' journals (e.g., Nature, Cell, NEJM, Science). To date, articles have been evaluated from over 3500 journals.

Comments

• » Subscribers who have registered and logged in can post a comment on any evaluated article in F1000. Authors from non-subscribing institutions are offered a free 3-month access period if their article is evaluated.
• » Subscribers can employ our 'report abuse' mechanism to flag comments they consider defamatory or otherwise abusive. We review all complaints and decide whether to remove the comment and may terminate access based on the abuse. Users found to be reporting comments without good reason may also be banned without warning.
• » Authors are invited to post comments when we alert them to the publication of an evaluation (or dissent) of their article, and their status as "author" will be displayed with their comment. We also alert the Faculty Member who evaluated the article in this case, so that they know the author has responded. Faculty Members and authors can flag their status when they post a comment.

Quality control — monitoring bias and negative comments

• » Each evaluation is reviewed and copyedited by F1000 staff before publication. In addition, the Section Heads monitor the quality of evaluations within their disciplines.
• » F1000 was carefully designed to avoid bias:
  • » Faculty Members and Associate Faculty Members are appointed based on a peer-nomination process.
  • » they cannot evaluate articles, posters, or presentations on which they are listed as an author.
  • » their evaluations and comments are attributed to them and are linked to their profiles, providing an ongoing record of their work on F1000 that is fully transparent to subscribers.
  • » they must sign a statement to indicate that the article has been selected for evaluation entirely on its scientific merit and that they have not been influenced directly or indirectly in the selection of content for evaluation by the authors or any third party. If they have collaborated, held joint grants or published with any of the authors in the past four years, they agree to fully disclose this in the competing interest section.
  • » they must declare any financial or non-financial competing interests. Any declared conflicts will be assessed by F1000 as to whether the evaluation might lead a reasonable person to question the impartiality of the writer. These declarations are displayed alongside their evaluation.
• In fact, with over 10,000 Faculty Members, it is difficult for one individual to exert a significant effect.
• » The purpose of F1000 is to highlight great articles, but some evaluations also include constructive criticism.
• » Dissenting opinions, as described above, can be offered by Faculty Members if they think that an article selected by another Faculty Member should not be included in F1000 or is insufficiently critical.

BENEFITS OF SUBSCRIBING TO F1000

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT F1000

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