Faculty of 1000 – Four in One!
Posted on 3rd July 2013 by Donatas Zailskas
Description of resource:
Faculty of 1000 (F1000) [1] is the publisher of four unique services: F1000Prime, F1000Trials, F1000Research and F1000Posters. Let’s talk a bit about each of them:
- Faculty of 1000 Prime is a continually updated directory of top articles in biology and medicine, supervised by over 5000 experts who provide the readers with commentaries and explanations. To be short, it is an expert recommendation service. Back in 2002 F1000Prime was the start of the initiative itself as a collaboration of 1000 International Faculty Members – hence the “1000” in the name. Now F1000Prime holds over 100,000 expert recommendations with over 1000 new articles added each month, covers over 40 disciplines and more than 3500 journals. As soon as you enter the page you can start browsing through different categories by clicking “Jump to article recommendations in your field” button. Afterwards at the top of the page you can find the latest recommendations and that week’s top rated articles. Clicking on the article takes you to the abstract and the citation. Of course, to view the full articles you must have an active subscription; the first month is free of charge;
- Faculty of 1000 Trials is dedicated to identifying all the clinical trials and systematic reviews published in the key general medical and specialist journals, however there’s nothing else to say here, because it has yet to be launched; beta-launching is in 2013;
- Faculty of 1000 Research is, as the makers claim, the first Open Science journal for life scientists. In the middle of the page you will see a “Submit an Article” button, but in order to do that, to post comments on already published articles, deposit conference posters or slides you have to register. F1000Research offers immediate publication and a transparent post-publication peer-review as long as the article is scientifically sound. This is very compelling for someone wanting citations, but somewhat fishy when looking at the general concept;
- Faculty of 1000 Posters is an open-access repository for slide presentations and posters. At the top of the page you will see a “Submission of the week” section; lower you will find a “Just posted” section where you can access new posters, slides and other material for free. With each material you will find a short description about the content, name of the event and details about the authors.
Who is it aimed at?
The website is directed towards the work of life scientists and clinicians as well as to everyone searching for articles related to medicine.
How long might it take to complete?
Faculty of 1000 really is a broad resource, I spent quite some time browsing through the webpage, checking various links and still did not even come close to exploring it all – after all, it is a directory, an open-access journal and a file storage system all in one.
What are your opinions of it?
I loved that the page quite frequently provides detailed statistics about the content, members, experts, new recommendations and so on. F1000Prime also dedicates a separate section for quotes previously featured on the F1000Prime homepage – this is actually a very nice feature, because the quotes tend to grab the readers eye easily getting them interested in the article itself. It seems that F1000 is, as all this type of initiatives are, a useful tool for finding information and I do admit that it is a very appealing resource that I plan on getting back to. The website goes extremely easy on the eyes and is simple to navigate making it a convenient and fast resource for medical students and doctors.
References:
[1] Science Navigation Group. FACULTY of 1000 [homepage on the Internet]. London: Faculty of 1000 Ltd; 2000 [cited 30 June 2013]. Available from: http://f1000.com.
No Comments on Faculty of 1000 – Four in One!
Thanks for featuring F1000 here! I’m curious to know, though, why you think of the F1000Research publishing model as “fishy”. What is it that you’re unsure about?
There are many other journals that publish valid or sound science, and only our articles that eventually pass peer review are indexed in external databases.
We’ve also recently (since your post) updated our website, so it’s now more clear on the front page which articles have been indexed (passed peer review) and which ones are still awaiting completion of peer review or are under revision. We have also published an extensive FAQ now, which answers a lot of common questions: http://f1000research.com/faqs …but if you have more questions I’m also happy to answer them.
Eva Amsen
23rd July 2013 at 5:42 pmHello! Thank you for taking interest in my post! I apologize for a late reply, but life got a bit in the way of that.
I was unsure of how many Faculty experts look into a particular article, and which articles have already passed the peer-review process. Also, post-publication peer-review does not preclude pre-publication peer-review. I am aware of the peer-review flaws in general, but why did F1000 decide not to implement them both? In addition to that, I came across a blog post by Phil Davis (http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2010/07/14/post-publication-review/) that goes through a number of studies related to F1000 – that added even more uncertainty.
I might have missed various pieces of information somewhere in the site – it’s quite big to explore. Also, please do not take my post as some sort of an attack towards F1000, it really is a wonderful initiative, obviously caring about the readers and scientists. If I understand correctly and my post really did prompt you to make some changes, then it is a great example of how you all give a lot of effort in improving F1000.
Z.
31st July 2013 at 8:28 pm