The future’s bright! | Discussions – F1000 Research

"After a successful beta release since July 2012, F1000Research has today come out of beta, re-launching on a new publishing platform together with a change of colour to celebrate.  Moving to our own custom-built site will enable us to have much greater flexibility and agility to further develop the site and expand the features available.  At this point, we have mostly just moved across to the new site and added some much-needed basic features.  However, 2013 is going to be a big year for smart tools to enhance the author, referee and reader experience, so watch this space! We have also moved to a much stronger identity with our new burnt orange branding.  This is part of a general restructuring of the various products across Faculty of 1000, and there’ll be more news on that shortly. As we had hoped, the beta phase has been incredibly useful and productive in enabling us to test many of our assumptions about how such a new publishing model could and should work, and how authors and referees in particular would react to it and use it. As a result, we have made numerous changes, many of which I have detailed in previous posts. We have been particularly pleased with the range of article types and topics we have received, as well as the increasing calibre of research being submitted.  Many of our articles have been supported by large, highly respected funding bodies, including the NIH, Wellcome Trust, WHO, NIHR, CORDIS, CNRS, etc.  Furthermore, many of those who have already published with us are now submitting further papers. As might be expected, speed of publication is a big factor for many of our authors who often need to publish quickly in time for a grant application or to avoid their work being scooped by others. I would like to thank those of you that have supported us through our beta phase and provided us with much needed thoughts and feedback. We continue to learn, develop and grow and we therefore urge you to keep on providing your comments and suggestions. If you support our core aims and approach, we also urge you to help us spread the word. And of course to submit!"