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As I mentioned in one of my posts last week, we have devised a novel approach to article citation, in conjunction with our Advisory Panel and the major indexers, that will handle the complexities of citing articles that are in an evolving state of refereeing and may have more than one version – if they have been updated in response to referee comments.

This new citation approach is showcased in our first published articles, announced today, and includes three supplementary elements, in square brackets, placed immediately after the article title (to prevent them being accidentally removed on copying):

1. Article version number;
2. Details of the referee status, i.e. number of ‘Approved’ and ‘Not Approved’ referee reviews;
3. A shortened hyperlink to a page that shows the current referee status of the article.

For example:

Smith A, Jones B
This is a very interesting article [v3; ref status: Approved 1, Not Approved 1, https://f1000r.es/123456]
F1000 Research 2012, 1: 23, DOI: 10.3410/f1000research.1-23.v3

Once an article has received a minimum of two positive referee responses, the article will be indexed and the article citation will be amended accordingly:

Smith A, Jones B
This is a very interesting article [v3; ref status: Indexed, https://f1000r.es/123456]
F1000 Research 2012, 1: 23, DOI: 10.3410/f1000research.1-23.v3

If an article receives only negative reviews, it cannot be ‘unpublished’ but, when we have the full platform up and running towards the end of the year, such articles will be removed from the default search on the site and will not be indexed.

More detailed information on other aspects of F1000 Research’s innovative publishing model, and some FAQs, can be found in our Press Pack.