blog

Max Planck Society affiliated authors can publish their articles on F1000Research free of charge. Liz Allen, Director of Strategic Initiatives at F1000, and Vicky Hellon, Publishing Editor at F1000, talk about our publishing model and how this can help Max Planck researchers by making their research as discoverable, accessible and useable as possible.

F1000 counts itself among publishing pioneers who are today offering an alternative, more radical approach to publishing research findings.

Launched in 2013, F1000Research was designed to remove unnecessary barriers and delays that researchers face when sharing their research findings. For those who aren’t familiar with F1000’s publishing model, we offer post-publication, open peer review which in a nutshell, combines the benefits of pre-printing (providing rapid publication) with expert, invited peer review (providing quality assurance). And we know that researchers increasingly value the benefits of getting their work out early, evidenced by the phenomenal growth and uptake of preprint servers across disciplines. More on how it works here.

The F1000Research platform also offers additional benefits to researchers compared to other journals. The platform publishes ‘traditional’ research articles but also allows authors to publish a range of different article types too; such as software tools, data notes, method articles and registered reports, allowing researchers to be credited for all their different research outputs. The publishing platform aims to stay ahead of the curve – our versioning system allows small updates which can help keep papers cohesive and we recently have incorporated interactive figures into some of our articles.

Since its introduction, F1000Research has seen increasing adoption among researchers and we are now working with a number of high-profile funding agencies, research institutions and organisations across the world (including the Wellcome Trust, Gates Foundation and African Academy of Sciences) and excitingly now other publishers (see Emerald) to provide open research and data publishing services.

All our platforms are also fully compliant with research funder and institution OA requirements – and specifically ‘Plan S’.

F1000 recently announced an agreement between F1000 and the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL), whereby MPDL will cover the cost for Max Planck authors to publish on F1000Research. As coordinating body of the international initiative “Open Access 2020”, MPDL has been a staunch supporter of OA.

Our publishing model makes it very simple for researchers to publish their research OA and allows that research and all its essential components (e.g. data; associated software) to be immediately fully open and usable for all, alongside transparent peer review reports.

We hope our broad scope of life sciences will be suitable for the majority of Max Planck Research, particularly interdisciplinary research which we know often is hard to find a home for in specific journals.

Rebecca Lawrence, Managing Director at F1000 said: “We are excited to be working alongside the MPDL in its aim to drive OA uptake among Max Planck researchers and to make research as discoverable, accessible and useable as possible.” 

We continue to engage with researchers across the globe through outreach and are hoping to continue this with Max Planck Institutes. If you are a researcher affiliated with Max Planck and feel this publishing model could benefit you or your institution, or you want more information then please contact us via publishers@f1000.com – we welcome any feedback or ideas!