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The Faculty of 1000 team had a great time attending the 2013 Charleston Conference. It was a pleasure to participate and meet lots of old and new faces at our vendor booth and cocktail hour.

Iain H, our Outreach Director from London, flew over the pond to give two presentations. First, Iain talked about how the internet is changing the ways we can measure research impact in a joint session with Beth Berhnhardt (a librarian at the University of North Carolina Greensboro). Although the impact factor has been traditionally used to measure impact, in today’s digital age, it isn’t sufficient. Iain explained that multiple web-based tools are available to measure alternative metrics (altmetrics) today. Altmetrics are gaining importance; government organizations, like the National Science Foundation in the US, have started to encourage researchers to list altmetric-related data in grant applications. Iain introduced a number of tools that can measure altmetrics, such as ImpactStory and Altmetric.com. Despite the availability of new tools and data, impact measures often lack context, and readers may have a hard time deciphering the meaning of the data. F1000Prime aims to provide a solution to this dilemma by providing expert commentaries for the articles that are included in the database, along with a numerical score for each article. Thus, the recommendations provide a human element that explains why a particular article is important. As new measures of impact emerge, Iain suggests that we consider how to use these tools to help us better assess research impact more broadly than is possible through merely looking at citations and impact factors.

In his second talk, Iain gave an overview of the F1000Research publication model and discussed lessons learned in the journal’s first year, in a joint session with Peter Binfield (Publisher and Co-Founder of PeerJ) and Mark Kurtz (Senior Director of Strategic Development at BioOne) where emerging open access publishing models were introduced. In particular, Iain highlighted the immediate publication, data sharing and open peer-review process that make F1000Research unique. The journal has recently introduced the publication of article updates, of particular interest to software authors who can now publish an update of their article free of charge as newer versions of their software come out.

We had a wonderful time at the Charleston Conference this year, and we’re already looking forward to a return visit. See you next year, Charleston!