blog

Earlier this week, we started a discussion on Twitter, using hashtag #scoopingsci, to talk about issues surrounding scooping in science.

This is an interesting topic from our point of view, because we can help researchers in different ways, and from the ensuing Twitter discussion, it seems like all these angles are of interest to people:

• F1000Research papers are published much faster than papers in other journals because we publish before peer review, usually within a week of receiving the final manuscript. A newly publish article will have passed a thorough check by our in-house editorial team, and can be formally cited at that point. This rapid publication model has helped several researchers stay ahead of their competition. (More info here.)
• On the other hand, we also have a policy of not turning down articles that are not novel. Replication helps validate new discoveries, and if your work shows the same as a study that has just come out (in other words, if you just got scooped) then that doesn’t make it any less valuable. We tell our referees not to look at the novelty of the work they review, but purely at the scientific quality.
• And finally, there was a bit of discussion about getting scooped by people who stole your results. Fear of being scooped is one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to open science (perhaps only second after “incentive”), and we’re doing everything we can to make sure you get proper credit for sharing your preliminary work, for example via DOIs for datasets, formal publication of data articles, and at F1000Posters via watermarks and creative commons licenses on posters. If someone uses your information, you were still the first to publish it.

To see the full discussion on Twitter, have a look at the Storify below.