Faculty of 1000 Celebrates Ten Years Illuminating Top Biomedical Research Literature

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Earlier this month, Faculty of 1000 marked ten years highlighting the top literature of biology and medical research. Faculty of 1000 (F1000) is a website for researchers and clinicians that provides ratings of and commentary on scientific research papers. The service acts as 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, tag them for further classification, and explain their importance.

On July 4th, 2001, Andrew Lumsden of the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, King’s College London, and F1000 Section Head for Neurodevelopment, became the author of the first F1000 evaluation. Lumsden’s review of “Genetic control of dorsal-ventral identity in the telencephalon: opposing roles for Pax6 and Gsh2” was the first evaluation collected by Vitek Tracz, founder of F1000.

Throughout 2001, many more evaluations were submitted by F1000 faculty members. In 2002, F1000 launched the F1000 Biology. This was followed by F1000 Medicine in 2006, and in October 2010 the two sites were merged to form F1000.com.

F1000 provides rapid post-publication assessment of key articles within days of publication with opinions from peer-nominated experts. The service covers over 3500 journals across 44 different topic areas, including fields such as cardiovascular disorders, neurological disorders, respiratory disorders and genetics and genomics.

The F1000 website is interactive, enabling users to nominate articles for review and add comments. It is also clinically applicable, highlighting articles that change clinical practice, as interpreted by respected leaders in the field. Indexing services cover all the literature in their selected fields. However, none is completely comprehensive, and they give no indication of quality or interest. F1000 is not limited to any one indexing service (although because they specialize in biology and medicine, most articles evaluated by the Faculty can be found in PubMed). On average, 1500 new evaluations are published each month, which corresponds to approximately 2% of all published articles in the biological and medical sciences.

F1000 was conceived as a collaboration of 1000 international Faculty Members, but in the ten years since its inception, the Faculty has grown considerably and now numbers more than 10,000. The fully searchable database contains nearly 110,000 evaluations, which provide insight into the best research in over 300 biology and medical disciplines. The wider F1000 service also features an open access repository of posters and presentations and two F1000 Reports journals — F1000 Reports Biology and F1000 Reports Medicine — that review emerging topics as identified by the Faculty.

Sarah Greene, F1000 Editor-in-Chief commented on the milestone [1]:

We’re delighted that Andrew’s contribution commemorates the occasion. He’s been on board as Section Head of Neurodevelopment for a decade, working with his Faculty to flag and explain the top 3000 papers (and counting) in that field, and showing leadership in countless other ways. We cannot offer enough praise to all the Faculty who have devoted time and brainpower to pioneer this brave new model of transparent peer review. Thanks to their efforts, F1000 has become a hub of discourse around that most sacred entity — the research paper.

F1000 is also the publisher of The Scientist, a magazine for life science professionals with print and digital editions covering a wide range of topics central to the study of cell and molecular biology, genetics, and other life-science fields. The magazine highlights the most important papers, authors, and research trends identified by the F1000 Faculty and keeps readers up-to-date with the latest news, profiles, innovations, culture and career advice.