The Faculty of 1000 Biology Evaluation System

The F1000 Biology Evaluation System
Faculty members are asked to evaluate and comment on the most interesting papers they read each month.

Although the Comments for each paper are individually attributed, its F1000 factor (see below) is consensual and incorporates both the ratings it receives and the number of times it is selected by different Faculty members.

For each paper they select, the Faculty member:

1. Writes a brief Comment explaining the main findings and why they find the paper interesting. These comments are structured, and the aim is to have the first sentence intelligible to a general biology audience. Faculty members often mention related seminal research articles within their comments, giving the reader the ability to link to other relevant papers.
   
   
2. Assigns a Rating

	Recommended F1000 Factor 3.1	"Recommended": Recommended reading for a section (i.e. of specialist interest) (F1000 Biology rating of 3)
	Must Read F1000 Factor 6.2	"Must read": Must read for more than one subject/section (i.e. of general interest) (F1000 Biology rating of 6),
	Exceptional F1000 Factor 10.7	"Exceptional": A landmark paper representing the top 1% of publications (F1000 Biology rating of 9).

The ratings assigned to each paper is then used to calculate its F1000 factor (see below), which also takes into account the number of Faculty members who have picked the same paper.

3. Classifies it into any of seven paper types
   
   New finding
   Technical advance
   Interesting hypothesis
   Important confirmation
   Controversial findings
   Refutation
   Novel Drug Target
   
   
4. Categorizes it to all relevant F1000 Biology sections
   
   For example, a paper on the mitotic spindle would be categorized into the "Cytoskeleton" and "Cell growth and division" sections. See list of Faculties and Sections.

The F1000 Factor

Faculty members assign to each paper they select ratings of Recommended, Must Read or Exceptional, which correspond to F1000 Factors of 3, 6 and 9, respectively. If a paper has more than one evaluation, its F1000 Factor is calculated by the following formula:

F1000 Factor = Mean of Highest Two Scores + (Sum of All Scores/30)

For example, a paper picked by three Faculty members, two give it a rating of Must Read and the third a rating of Exceptional, would give it a F1000 Factor of

(6+9)/2 + (6+6+9)/30 = 8.2

This corresponds to an "Exceptional" rating badge.

The New Icon

The 'new' icon indicates evaluations (comments) added to F1000 Biology in the past 7 days and is placed next to the name of the Faculty member who made the new evaluation. This helps identify new content on the site. NB The new icon does not necessarily indicate a new paper to the site, just a new evaluation.