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Basic questions
Selection of Faculty Members
Quality control/Bias/Negative comments
Rating system/Top 10s
Selection of articles
Access to full text
"What can it do for me?" questions
"How does it compare with..?" questions
Future plans
Basic questions
What is Faculty
of 1000 Biology?
Faculty of 1000 Biology is a revolutionary
new online research service that comprehensively and systematically highlights
and evaluates the most interesting papers published in the biological sciences,
based on the recommendations of a faculty of over 2300
of the world's leading scientists.
Why is it called "Faculty
of 1000 Biology"?
When Vitek Tracz (chairman
of Science Navigation
Group) came up with the original idea, he envisaged a virtual "faculty"
consisting of 1000 of the world's top scientists highlighting and evaluating the
most interesting papers they read each month. Subsequently, it turned out that
we needed more like 2300, but the name stuck.
Who is behind Faculty
of 1000 Biology?
Faculty of 1000 Biology is published by Vitek
Tracz (chairman of Science
Navigation Group) --- who created the Current Opinion series, Current Biology
(all now owned by Elsevier Science), and the open access publisher BioMed
Central (now owned by Springer) --- and by Dave Weedon, who built and ran
the Current Opinion biology series for many years. The Deputy Managing Director
for Faculty of 1000 Biology, who is responsible for the day-to-day management
of Faculty of 1000 Biology, is Kathleen Wets --- who
was the Senior editor of Current Opinion in Neurobiology for many years.
When was Faculty of 1000 Biology launched?
January 2002. Later that year, it won the ALPSP
award for publishing innovation.
Is it archived?
It's like PubMed, in that all the content stays on
the site and is searchable.
How much does it cost?
2010 prices:
Individual subscriptions are £150
per annum. The cost of an institutional licence
depends on a number of factors - including whether the institution is academic
or corporate, as well as the size
and type of institution or organization. Faculty of 1000 Biology was launched
in January 2002 and, as of January 2008, more than 90% of the world's top academic
institutions subscribe. The service is free to low-income countries via the World
Health Organisation's HINARI scheme.
Is any of the content free?
It's free to search and browse all of F1000. In addition, the Top 10 and "Hidden Jewels" lists are all free: see http://www.f1000biology.com/top10/ and http://www.f1000biology.com/top10/jewels/ , respectively -- use the drop-down menus to select a list for a specific faculty. Individuals can set up a free 3-week trial and academic institutions can request a free 1-month trial.
Can I search F1000 Biology using PubMed MeSH headings?
Yes. There are two ways to search F1000 Biology using PubMed MeSH headings: 1)
Set up PubMed linkout for your institution (see http://www.f1000biology.com/about/linkout).
Then search PubMed restricted to F1000 Biology by searching for loprovf1000 [filter]
within PubMed; 2) Use the "PubMed on F1000" option in F1000's Advanced search
(http://www.f1000biology.com/search/pm/advanced)
and tick the checkbox to restrict the search to F1000 (bottom right of the shaded
search box). You can then use the full power of PubMed search syntax (e.g. MeSH
searching etc.) in the drop-down menus to the left of each blank search field.
NB This approach will require knowing the appropriate MeSH headings (i.e. rather
than being able to browse the headings and see all the possible subheadings).
Selection of Faculty
Members How are Faculty Members selected?
Biology is divided into 18 Faculties. There are three
types of Faculty Member. The Heads of Faculty for each subject (eg
Frederick Alt, Douglas Fearon and Pippa Marrack for Immunology) were elected/selected
on the recommendation of large numbers of scientists we talked to. They divided
their Faculty into Sections and then selected the Section Heads (to run
each section within the subject). There are ~2-3 Section Heads per section. They,
in turn, identified the sub fields within their Section and then selected the
Faculty Members for each subsection, which were also checked with the Heads
of Faculty. We asked the Section Heads to select their Faculty Members on the
basis of various criteria: (a) that the number of Faculty Members be proportionally
representative of the number of papers published within that field; (b) that the
selected Faculty Members be well respected by their peers and perceived as being
fair-minded; and (c) that there be a good representation of genders and nationalities,
as well as of senior and young scientists.
Can anyone submit an evaluation?
No, only invited members of Faculty of 1000 Biology, to ensure a balanced and
high quality service.
What do Faculty Members get paid for their efforts?
Faculty Members are not paid. Instead they receive a free subscription to Faculty
of 1000 Biology, to its sister site Faculty of 1000 Medicine, as well as access to The Scientist.
They also receive hand-tailored industry-leading literature alerting tools to
guide them to the latest research in their field. In addition, regularly submitting
Faculty Members can sponsor an academic institution in
a lower-middle income country to receive a free subscription to the service
(academic institutions in low-income countries automatically receive a free
subscription).
Quality
control/Bias/Negative comments Do the evaluations
get checked?
Each evaluation is checked and often edited by in-house staff
before publication. In addition, the Section Heads are there as a means of quality
control.
How is bias dealt with?
Faculty of 1000 Biology was
carefully designed to try to avoid such problems: we make it clear that Faculty
Members cannot pick papers for which they are an author, all their comments are
attributed, and, in addition, they are asked to declare their competing interests.
With nearly 2,300 Faculty Members, it is difficult for one individual to exert a
significant effect. Faculty of 1000 Biology is based on a peer nomination process
and Section Heads periodically check the evaluations. In addition, ALL evaluations
made by any one Faculty Member are listed on their Biography
page.
Do you publish negative evaluations?
The purpose
of Faculty of 1000 Biology is to highlight good papers, but some evaluations include
constructive criticism as well, as this
example shows. Also, if Faculty Members think that a paper selected by another
Faculty Member should not be on the site or is insufficiently critical, they can
make a "Dissenting Opinion". You can view an example of a Dissenting
Opinion (nb these are rare). Currently, papers cannot be evaluated in the
first instance if comments are negative on balance.
Rating
system/Top 10s What is the F1000 Factor and rating
system?
The F1000 Biology rating system was
designed in consultation with hundreds of scientists before creating Faculty of
1000 Biology. The system we use is meant to indicate how widespread the readership
of a paper would be. There are three ratings: a rating of "Recommended"
is given to a paper of interest to perhaps just one section or subject area (i.e.
of specialist interest); "Must read" papers are of interest to
more than one subject/section (i.e. of general interest); the "Exceptional"
rating is given to a landmark paper representing the top 5% of publications each
year (i.e. of very wide-ranging impact). Ratings are combined into an overall
ranking (or F1000 factor), which reflects a weighted average of all the ratings.
A full explanation is available on the website.
How is the F1000 factor calculated?
See the evaluation
system page for details.
How are the Top 10 lists calculated?
The Top 10 lists are made up from papers picked by at least 2 Faculty Members
in the previous 10-40 days (see explanatory text at the bottom of individual pages,
such as the Top 10 for ALL BIOLOGY, for
more details).
What is a Hidden Jewel?
The aim of the "Hidden
Jewels" feature is to highlight papers from the less-obvious journals
(i.e. journals that not EVERY lab would have a subscription to). Many users tell
us how useful they find the Hidden Jewels and the general impression we get is
that the service seems to do a good job of highlighting papers on the basis of
their scientific merit, regardless of where they are published.
Selection of articles How
do Faculty Members select the articles they evaluate?
Faculty Members
are asked to evaluate and comment on the most interesting research papers they
read each month from any source.
Can Faculty Members select their
own papers?
No. Does Faculty of 1000 Biology
suggest papers to their Faculty Members?
No.
Can Faculty Members
only select recent articles?
No, papers from any time frame are eligible,
but generally Faculty Members pick recent ones.
What's the list of journals covered?
Faculty Members can pick
any primary research paper, in any journal from any date. However, the majority
pick recent papers. In fact to date (June 2006), they have picked articles from
over 1000 journals from a large variety of publishers.
"Most
of the papers seem to come from the obvious journals."
In reality,
about 85% of papers evaluated in Faculty of 1000 Biology are NOT from Nature,
Science or Cell. The only part of the site where you might get that
impression is the Top 10 lists, especially for All
Biology. In fact, articles have been selected from over 1000 journals.
Are the articles only from Nature, Cell and Science?
Only about 15% of evaluated papers are from these three journals, and there are
papers from over 1000 journals on the website.
How many papers do
the Faculty Members evaluate each month?
There is no strict quota system;
instead it depends on how many interesting papers they come across - sometimes
this is four, sometimes it's less.
How many articles have been evaluated
in Faculty of 1000 Biology (to date)?
Over 30,000 (as of October 2006).
The great majority are from 2002 onwards, but Faculty Members can pick earlier
papers.
Access
to full text Is it possible to buy the full text
of an article directly from F1000 Biology?
No, but there should be links
to document delivery services by each evaluation unless you subscribe through
an institution where the librarian has opted not to display this feature.
Does Faculty of 1000 Biology give me access to the full text of the articles?
Yes, if they are published by open access publishers OR your access is through
an institution that subscribes to the journal, provided your librarian has set
up the links (using PubMed's linkout system to provide
links for their library holdings). Otherwise, access to full-text by third party
services is forbidden by other (non-open access) publishers.
"What can it do for me?" questions How
can Faculty of 1000 Biology help me in my work?
Martin
Raff (a head of the Neuroscience faculty)
says he likes Faculty of 1000 Biology for three main reasons:
1) Identifying
key papers in areas outside area of expertise;
2) Highlighting papers of interest
in journals that he normally doesn't have the time to read;
3) Expert peer
opinion of papers in journals he's read, but providing "2nd opinion"
(confirmation that it WAS that important). He says, "Normally,
I would just miss those papers. I never spent time in the library. I read/skim
maybe 20 journals and that's it. If the paper wasn't in those journals, I would
never see it unless it was referenced in somebody else's work". What
makes Faculty of 1000 Biology unique?
Faculty of 1000 Biology is a rapid
online service that highlights and evaluates the most important papers across
biology on the basis of the opinions of over 2300 of the world's top scientists. The
vast majority of biologists surveyed so far see a pressing need for such a service,
which they perceive as providing a useful 'winnowing' that should help life scientists
keep up with progress across a broad range of biology. It should also help to
combat the often invidious issue of journal hegemony, because the papers selected
will be accorded high status on their individual merit rather than by association
with a particular journal's image or impact factor.
I use PubMed and
ISI and they cover everything - why do I need Faculty of 1000 Biology?
In your own research area, you need to see everything and PubMed and/or ISI can
be the best. According to the hundreds of scientists we've
talked to who use the site, the central value of Faculty of 1000 Biology is as
a guide to the most interesting papers in adjacent research areas from recognised
experts.
What are the useful services Faculty of
1000 Biology provides?
See our key features
but in addition:
(1) Many libraries make use of PubMed's
linkout system to provide links for their library holdings. A library can
set up its holdings file as part of linkout, and then activate links to the fulltext
of those holdings by providing users with a PubMed link of the form. In order
to display Faculty of 1000 Biology links too, simply add 'F1000 Biology' into
the list of holdings files to be displayed.
(2) Each evaluated article also
features a link to the PubMed abstract of that article, if available.
(3)
Evaluated articles have links to related articles on F1000 Biology and their citations
within Google Scholar.
(4) It is also possible to download articles of interest
using EndNote, Ref. Manager, Refworks & Bibtex.
"How does it compare with..?" questions How
does Faculty of 1000 Biology compare with Impact factors and Citation scores?
Impact Factors
While impact factors arguably identify the most noteworthy
journals, they cannot easily identify the most noteworthy individual papers. Nevertheless,
the quality of a research paper is often judged by the impact factor of the journal
in which it appears - although not every paper in a high impact journal is interesting,
and, more to the point, not every interesting paper is published in a high impact
journal. By contrast Faculty of 1000 Biology rates individual papers according
to their merit, irrespective of where they are published. More than a third of
papers awarded the top "Exceptional" rating by members of Faculty of
1000 Biology are from journals other than Nature, Science
and Cell. Conversely, between 20% and 25% of eligible papers from these
three journals are not recommended by members of Faculty of 1000 Biology. Citation
scores
(1) There is often a very long lag between a paper's publication
and it having a citation score, so citation scores are more a tool for retrospective
analysis rather than a rapid alerting service like Faculty of 1000 Biology.
(2) Unlike Faculty of 1000 Biology, citation scores don't tell you why
a paper is interesting.
(3) Citation scores and F1000 factors have some key
similarities and differences:
While both are subjective, the citation score
is based on whether anonymous scientists cite the paper (eg it can be cited to
criticise it, papers are often cited by their authors, and recent studies suggest
that papers are often cited by people who have not read them), whereas the F1000
factor is based on a positive recommendation by named and hand-picked scientists
who are not the authors. Yes, but do F1000 factors
and citation scores correlate numerically?
Not all the time; as you
can see from the descriptions above they measure different things.
Future plans Are
you going to expand F1000 Biology by adding more faculties?
Yes we are.
We recently added three new Faculties: Physiology and Ecology in 2005 and Pharmacology
& Drug Discovery in 2006. In addition, our sister site -- Faculty
of 1000 Medicine -- launched in 2006.
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Frequently Asked Questions