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One of the interesting aspects of F1000Research articles is that you can update them at any time. In February, Jasmina Kurepa and Jan Smalle, of the University of Kentucky, published a paper about an Arabidopsis 26S proteasome mutant that passed peer review within just a few weeks. However, in June, they updated their paper with new experiments, and added Yan Li as an additional author. This quite nicely illustrates how a paper can be updated, even after it is already indexed, and we decided to ask Jan Smalle a few questions about the paper and the process. (Incidentally, to be notified of future updates to F1000Research articles, you can use the “track” feature, described yesterday.)

 

What is your paper about?

This paper describes an unusual intragenic suppressor mutation in Arabidopsis that reverts the previously described cytokinin insensitive 26S proteasome mutant rpn12a-1. This work validates the importance of the 26S proteasome for cytokinin responses. In addition, our results are relevant for the 3’ transcript processing research field.

 

Figure 1 from the paper: Decreased sensitivity of rpn12-1 to cytokinins is restored by the sor1 mutation.

 

You received two “approved” referee reports very quickly after submitting the first version of your paper. Why did you decide to update your paper with more experiments?

Although both reviewers were positive about this work, they also did raise a number of valid concerns. We are happy that we have updated our paper which we believe is now of a better quality.

 

Would you have done the extra experiments if this paper was published in another journal (where updating a paper with new experiments is not as simple)?

No. We have never updated any of our papers that have been published in the “classical way”.

 

What do you think of the threaded nature of F1000Research papers?

We think this is very good as it allows colleagues to be more appreciative of the history of a paper. We also believe this provides more information about the rational behind the experiments, especially those that were requested by the reviewers