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As anyone familiar with the F1000Research model knows, all our articles can be amended by the authors following publication to produce new individually citable versions of that article. We have labelled such amendments to-date using a black ‘Updated’ badge at the start of the article title and in the article status summary box on the right-hand side of our articles.

However, we have now expanded this facility to cover three distinct amendment options to closer match the differing reasons why an author might want to amend their article.

Revision

The first is the most standard reason for amending an article: revision. This is where an author has responded to referee or community feedback and amended their article resulting in a new version.  Authors are asked to respond directly to the referee reports if they have any specific comments or do not agree with some of the suggestions.  They also provide a short note at the top of the revised article to summarise the major changes from the previous version of the article.

From now on, these amended articles will be labelled using an orange ‘Revised’ badge.  Revisions are always free and this is the most common type of article amendment that readers will see across the site.

Update

There is now a second way to produce a new version of an article, called an update.  This is to enable authors to keep their articles up-to-date following minor developments in their field.  The most obvious example here is for software articles where it is common practice to publish new papers for a big new software release. However, there are often numerous smaller updates and patches in-between meaning that the article can become increasingly out-of-date compared with the software it describes.

The new blue ‘Update’ badge will be used to show such updates and authors are again asked to provide a short note at the top of the amended article to explain the major changes since the previous article version. Such updates are also free. Our first examples of this type of article amendment will be published soon once the code in some of our recent software articles is updated.

Follow-up

The third way to amend an article is the follow-up. The biggest difference here is that it is a completely new article with its own fresh citation. This is for regular amendments to articles e.g. an annual update to a review, opinion piece, or systematic review.  The initial article in the series provides the background and summary of the topic in question; the updates then just cover what has changed during the intervening period since the last article.

These will be labelled with a green ‘Follow-up’ badge and will be threaded together on the site so you can follow the chain. Articles will include information about the scope of the follow-up in the title, e.g. ‘Follow-up 2012-2013’ followed by the original title so that the connection between the articles in the series is clear. Such follow-up articles will receive a 20% discount on our standard article processing charges for the article type in question. Our first example of such a follow-up was published today.

As always, we look forward to any feedback and suggestions on these changes, and hope you will find that they better reflect the way you work as a researcher.