blog

We’re excited to announce that authors of preprints posted on bioRxiv can now submit their work directly to F1000Research using bioRxiv’s journal submission service, B2J.

The B2J submission process provides automated connectivity between bioRxiv and publication outlets, now including F1000Research, offering full invited peer review. Once we receive a preprint submission from B2J, we will perform our standard editorial checks. Once checked, we will ascertain which author will take responsibility for liaison during the post-publication peer-review process. We then send the nominated author a link to the submission form, pre-populated with the files and metadata received via B2J, so that they can complete any further details required.

One of the obvious questions we have been asked is why are we doing this, when the F1000Research publishing model is, in its early stages, much like a preprint model?  Our first priority as a service provider is to offer choice and flexibility to authors – and we know that many researchers now value the benefits that posting a version of an article on a preprint server can bring.

This can provide early, open sight of findings for informal comment and consideration by the scientific community at large while the authors decide what publication venue to submit their article to undergo invited peer review. We are pleased to see the growth in the use of preprint servers by researchers across disciplines, not least because it confirms to us the appetite among researchers to embrace new ways of publishing and the drive to accelerate access to and potential use, re-use and impact of research.

How are preprints valued?

There is increasing evidence that work shared via preprint servers is being taken seriously – a number of funding agencies, including, for example Wellcome, NIH and Cancer Research UK, now allow researchers to include preprints as part of their research output portfolio in grant applications. F1000Research and several journals allow preprints to be formally cited in an article reference list. In addition, we are witnessing an increasing number of preprints being recommended by independent science experts in F1000Prime, our literature recommendation service, in fact trebling in number over the past year alone.

In a similar vein, the Company of Biologists recently introduced preLights, a service that highlights preprints that are likely to be of particular interest to biologists. Importantly, many preprints receive their own digital object identifier (DOI) so they can be tracked, linked and referenced throughout the scholarly infrastructure.

We also see increased momentum among funding agencies and research institutions to embrace new, more holistic ways of assessing research and researchers, in-line with the aspirations of the DORA declaration which should present opportunities for researchers to embrace innovative ways to share their research.

Preprints as a stepping stone to a new open research paradigm?

We are excited by the links provided by B2J with publishing outlets because this provides a very easy route for researchers to take the next step to gaining more formal quality assurance of their work; the strength and uniqueness of F1000Research’s integration with bioRxiv is that this quality assurance and expert peer review will continue to be done in the open, transparently and at speed.

Of course, we hope that authors continue to value the benefits of the model that F1000Research and its sister platforms offer as it combines the advantages of preprints, i.e., the immediate dissemination of findings, with thorough and constructive open peer review and hence quality assurance. We welcome, however, the flexibility that preprint servers offer and their role in helping to shift the culture around how research is shared – to the benefit of science as a whole.

We will closely monitor use of the ‘preprint to F1000Research’ route to publishing and are keen to gather feedback from authors – so tell us what you think!