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We’ve hit a major milestone on F1000Prime – we’ve just published our 150,000th article recommendation!

Submissions of article recommendations have risen each year since we launched F1000Prime in 2002: in 2013 we received a whopping 16,654 submissions. This has been possible because of continued growth in the numbers of Faculty Members who select articles – the F1000Prime Faculty now includes nearly 6,000 members, 9 of whom are Nobel Laureates.

The 150,000th article was selected by Prof. Rick Maizels of the Immunology Faculty, and was published in the journal Allergy . The article sheds light on how the consumption of fish oils could help protect against allergy.

Specifically, the study found that mice fed fish oils were protected against allergy to cow’s milk; more importantly, these mice were able to transfer this allergy protection to mice fed a normal diet – provided the donor mice had been exposed to allergen – via the involvement of T regulatory cells (Tregs).

Explaining why he selected the article, Prof. Maizels said, “[T]his work expands the known palette of dietary influences on regulatory T cell function, and complements other seminal work in which short chain fatty acids … generated by intestinal microbes were shown to promote Treg differentiation in the colon.”

We spoke to the corresponding author of the article, Dr Linette Willemsen, who said, “… As a researcher and author it is important to know not just that our work is being read, but that it is being read and built upon by other scholars, such as the peer-nominated experts contributing to F1000. We are delighted that our paper was selected to contribute to this and celebrate the establishment of this 150,000th recommendation.” (read more in our press release)

Our F1000Prime Publisher Kathleen Wets commented, “We congratulate the authors of the Willemsen paper – and authors of every paper recommended by F1000Prime – on the selection of their article and trust it will help demonstrate the impact of their work in the scientific community. At F1000 we are very grateful for the continued work of our Faculty Members in identifying the best published research through post-publication peer review, guiding researchers and clinicians to the most important papers in the ever-growing sea of literature.”

We in the F1000 London office will be having a slice of the above cake later today – what better way to celebrate than with cake and tea?