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“[L]ately I have begun to worry that my F1000Prime Alerts know me better than I know myself,” — Prof Gerald F Joyce, The Scripps Research Institute

Today we’re publicly launching a new personalized and customizable homepage for all users of F1000Prime – an update that fundamentally changes how users of F1000Prime interact with the website from the first visit. And these new F1000Prime features are, for a limited time, freely available for a one month personal trial to any individual who registers online, or if previously registered, signs in (read the press release here).

What and why have we changed?
People who use F1000Prime have been telling us that some of the most valuable features are being alerted to important papers in subject areas (sections) matching their research interests and, for those that have set it up, the intelligent F1000 SmartSearch feature.

Well, we’ve been listening – we want more people to get the most out of F1000Prime. We’ve created an interactive F1000Prime homepage that puts personalization central to the experience of using the website. The technology behind the changes includes a unique algorithm that learns from selections you make in setting up your homepage, and, over time, provides the most relevant articles both from the F1000Prime database and newly published articles from PubMed. So, the more you use the website, the better your homepage feed will be. From the homepage, you can amend your personalization settings and easily browse all the content from the subject areas you have selected as relevant to you.

The focus is on fast registration with F1000Prime, accompanied by a personalized list of relevant papers (and Faculty Members) after the first visit – in three simple steps. This produces a unique list of recommended articles from F1000Prime’s Faculty, along with F1000Prime Reports, and relevant articles from PubMed. In other words, a personal electronic table of contents. Every article is accompanied by a “Not relevant” button to help teach F1000Prime to return even more relevant articles. Personalized recommendations of content based on how an individual uses a website have previously only been commonly seen on major retail websites and search engines.

Articles of particular interest can be followed – generating email alerts to new comments and recommendations about the articles. The new homepage also suggests Faculty Members that a registered user might be interested in following.

The first version of the new homepage was made available to all institutes that subscribe to F1000Prime and all personal subscribers in September. We now want all life scientists and clinicians to be able to try the powerful new technology behind the homepage and share their personalized article recommendations with their peers. Therefore, for a limited time, a free one-month personal trial subscription to F1000Prime is available to any individual. No payment details are needed – you just need to register online, or sign in if you have previously registered on the site.

Thanks go to many of the F1000 community – scientists and clinicians who use F1000Prime, Faculty Members and F1000 Specialists – who have helped shape the design and technology behind the new homepage. We hope users of F1000Prime will enjoy an even better service as a result. Please try the new personalized F1000Prime and tell us what you think. Keep reading if you need further instructions on setting up your new homepage.

The three steps to a personalized literature service
First, enter at least three keywords that represent your research interests (it’s up to you how narrow or broad the terms; see image above).

Second, the resulting page (example below) lists the F1000Prime Sections (subject areas) that are mostly likely to be relevant to you, based on your keywords. You can select as many Sections as you wish or refine your keywords as needed.

At this stage, you’ll see a snapshot of your new homepage and, if you are not already registered and signed in, you must register your details and alert preferences, or sign in with any existing Google or Facebook account. If you are new to F1000Prime, you will be required to validate your email address, unless you are using Google or Facebook to sign in, whereby you will be directed to your new homepage.

The third and final step, on the first visit, will show you F1000Prime recommended articles from all time. You can check the “Not relevant” button for any articles if needed, which will help the algorithm continue to learn about your interests.

Then, that’s it. The next time you sign in and on subsequent visits the most recent recommended articles – and articles from PubMed – that F1000Prime has matched to your interests will be displayed.  You will also receive email alerts with your personalized feed of articles at your desired frequency.