ARTICLE RECOMMENDATIONS

F1000Prime identifies and recommends 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.

Launched in 2002, F1000Prime was conceived as a collaboration of 1,000 international Faculty Members. The name stuck even though the remit of the service continues to grow and the Faculty now numbers more than 5,000 experts worldwide, assisted by 5,000 associates. Their recommendations and evaluation comments form a fully searchable database containing more than 100,000 records and identifying the best research available.

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

On average, 1,500 new recommendations are contributed by the Faculty each month.

REVIEW JOURNALS

F1000Prime Reports is an open access journal that expands on the recommended literature coverage of F1000Prime by publishing unique, peer-reviewed reports to provide context on emerging themes in biology and medicine. F1000Prime Section Heads ensure coverage of the latest advances by selecting topics and nominating authors. The journal is indexed and/or abstracted by PubMed, PubMed Central, Scopus, Embase, Global Health and CAB Abstracts.

Prior to March 2013, F1000Prime Reports was published as two journals: F1000 Biology Reports and F1000 Medicine Reports. Articles published under those titles are available via F1000Prime Reports and citations and URLs continue to be supported.

ACCESSING F1000Prime: SUBSCRIPTION AND OPEN ACCESS PRODUCTS

The core Article Recommendation service of F1000Prime is a subscription product. Users at subscribing academic and corporate institutions receive full access to F1000Prime when using internet facilities provided by their institution, as well as for 60-day roaming periods when they are outside the institution's IP range.

Free trials are available for institutions.

Individual subscriptions are also available at $9.95 per month, with the first month free of charge.

For full information about subscribing to F1000Prime, visit Subscription and registration.

F1000Prime Reports are open access products and as such are universally free to access.

THE F1000 FACULTY

• » F1000Prime 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 F1000Prime 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, F1000Prime 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 included in F1000Prime, and co-write the evaluation comments.
• » Faculty Members are not paid but do receive a free subscription to F1000Prime.

F1000Prime CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

Recommendations/evaluation comments and quality assurance

• » Recommendations and their accompanying evaluation comments are accepted only from Faculty Members, with assistance from their Associate Faculty Members, to ensure a balanced and high-quality service.
• » Faculty Members are asked to evaluate and recommend 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 Associate Faculty Members can also write dissenting opinions if they disagree with the recommendation of an article chosen by one of their Faculty colleagues. Authors of the original article and all Faculty Members who previously recommended it 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, F1000Prime does not suggest articles for inclusion in the article recommendations lists; however, registered subscribers can nominate articles as long as they are not authors of that article.
• » Around 85% of articles recommended by F1000Prime are not from 'top tier' journals (e.g., Nature, Cell, NEJM, Science). To date, articles have been included in F1000Prime's Article Recommendations from more than 3500 journals.

Comments

• » Subscribers who have registered and logged in can post a comment on any article recommendation in F1000Prime. Authors from non-subscribing institutions are offered a free 3-month access period if their article is recommended.
• » 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 a recommendation for (or dissent of) their article, and their status as "Author" will be displayed with their comment. We also alert the Faculty Member who recommended the article in this case, so that they know the author has responded.

Quality control — monitoring bias and negative comments

• » All evaluation comments are reviewed and copyedited by F1000Prime staff before publication. In addition, the Section Heads monitor the quality of contributions within their disciplines.
• » F1000Prime was carefully designed to avoid bias:
  • » Faculty Members and Associate Faculty Members are appointed based on a peer-nomination process.
  • » they cannot recommend articles, posters, or presentations on which they are listed as an author.
  • » their evaluation comments are attributed to them and are linked to their profiles, providing an ongoing record of their work on F1000Prime that is fully transparent to subscribers.
  • » they must sign a statement to indicate that the article has been selected for inclusion in F1000Prime's Article Recommendations entirely on its scientific merit and that they have not been influenced directly or indirectly in the selection of articles 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 declare this in the Disclosures section (rule applied 1 March 2011).
  • » they must disclose any financial or non-financial competing interests. Any disclosures will be assessed by F1000Prime as to whether the recommendation might lead a reasonable person to question the impartiality of the writer. These disclosures are displayed alongside their evaluation comments.
• In fact, with a Faculty of more than 5,000 expert scientists and clinical researchers, assisted by 5,000 associates, it is difficult for one individual to exert a significant effect.
• » The purpose of F1000Prime is to highlight great articles, but some evaluation comments do also include constructive criticism.
• » Dissenting opinions, as described above, can be offered by Faculty Members if they think that an article recommended by another Faculty Member should not be included in F1000Prime or is insufficiently critical.

BENEFITS OF SUBSCRIBING TO F1000Prime

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