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We will be publishing some interviews with authors of F1000Research papers on this blog. Today we hear from Jürgen Schnermann, Chief of the Kidney Disease Branch at NIDDK/NIH. His group recently published a paper in F1000Research “Nephron filtration rate and proximal tubular fluid reabsorption in the Akita mouse model of type I diabetes mellitus”. In the interview below, he talks about his work, his experience with F1000Research, and the importance of reproducibility checks in scientific research.

Could you tell us the topic of your paper?

Diabetes mellitus is often associated with an increase in renal function that may be causally related to the later development of diabetic renal disease. This is a rather important issue because diabetic nephropathy is the most common cause of end-stage renal failure. In some experimental models of diabetes the stimulation of renal function is thought to be caused by a physiological mechanism that responds to an increased fluid reabsorption along the proximal part of the nephron with an increase of glomerular filtration. Our data do not support this hypothesis in a genetic mouse model of type I diabetes in that proximal reabsorption was found to be essentially normal despite the fact that glomerular filtration increased.

Why did you choose to submit this work to F1000Research?

I have been associated with the physiology section of F1000 for a number of years and have seen this enterprise grow and expand into other areas like open access publishing. Generally I find the mushrooming of these new outlets somewhat troubling, but the F1000Research approach seemed unique in several aspects so that I was simply curious to try it out. Among these novel approaches is the non-anonymous review process that might stimulate the exchange of opinions in a civil and productive way. I hope that F1000Research will thrive, but this is of course not guaranteed, and it will depend among other things on its inclusion in searchable databases like PubMed. [Ed. – F1000Research has been accepted for inclusion in PubMed.]

How did you experience the submission and publication process at F1000Research?

The submission and publication process can only be described as exhilarating. To see a paper in 5 days in a professional layout after dealing with courteous and efficient staff is quite astounding.  Two useful referee reports appeared in less than 2 weeks supporting the notion that peer review can be done openly. Some of the software was not all that user-friendly, but I am sure that this will improve. In addition I am not convinced that the inclusion of experimental documentation beyond detailed methodological description is necessarily helpful, but I guess time will tell.

The data from your study are publicly available and re-usable. What sort of follow-up analysis do you hope other researchers will do with your published data?

I would hope that this paper stimulates a continuing re-assessment of the causes of renal hyperactivity in models of early diabetes and perhaps even in humans.  The essence of the present results is not quite in accordance with some current beliefs, and this is a reminder that much of critical research in physiology may need a reproducibility check. At the very least such a check might be an important follow-up.