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Earlier this year we published a pocket-sized research article describing the effect of capsaicin on vascular smooth muscle growth (and this post arguing in favour of short reports). Support for this idea is gaining pace as prominent neuroscientist Professor William Mobley, Chair of the Department of Neurosciences at the University of California San Diego has also now called for more concise and efficient research reporting. He suggests that the most practical way of achieving this is by fostering a culture of ‘single figure publications’ (SFP).

In an editorial published today in F1000Research, Professor Mobley together with his colleague Long Do explains the need for the SFP, a format composed solely of a figure, legend, and materials and methods, with a results–discussion section as optional. This format significantly reduces both the length of research papers and the amount of time needed to go from research to publication.

Mobley argues that: “There is a clear public interest in shorter and better structured reporting through single figure publication. While the traditional format of journal articles will continue to be used to tell important ‘stories’ of scientific journeys, more nimble, modular units of communication are needed, starting with SFP.”

The ultimate goal is for the SFP to be a cultural stepping stone towards an even smaller unit of reported research, the nanopublication, a format that enables computers to automatically integrate and aggregate scientific information on scales beyond what the human mind can achieve.

Mobley and Do practice what they preach; together with their colleague Nishant Singhal, they have also published an article (awaiting peer review) on F1000Research, written in the SFP style. The article describes a failed attempt to replicate a high profile paper published last year in Nature.

He is not the only eminent scientist backing the SFP; Steven Salzberg (Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science and Biostatistics at John Hopkins), who has also recently published a brief communication (undergoing peer review) reanalyzing a subset of findings of another paper, voiced his support.

“The scientific community needs a way to respond quickly to new findings, not only through social media, but through rapid-response publications that re-examine and confirm, or argue against, results that have received widespread attention. The popular media today tends to over-hype results, and journals that encourage this behavior are usually reluctant to publish anything that undermines their credibility, even if the result turns out to be wrong”, says Salzberg.

We at F1000Research couldn’t agree more, and we hope that our APC structure, where the cost of publishing articles under 1000 words are significantly reduced, will help to incentivize this shift towards shorter and more efficient research reporting.