F1000: Reforming and modernizing life science publishing

Speaker : Thomas Ingraham

Conventional academic publishing is a surprisingly wasteful and inefficient  system. There are unnecessary delays and duplication of effort resulting from submission-rejection cascades from journal to journal; reviewers labour for hours writing insightful assessments of research that nobody other than the authors  and editor will be able to appreciate; much important work, such as negative results, are often not published at all; and current incentives exacerbate irreproducible research.

In this seminar, I will focus on how F1000’s publishing model, where open peer review follows publication, addresses these issues. I will describe how we are modernizing research reporting infrastructure by supporting interactive data visualizations, credit assignment to peer reviewers and article versioning. I will also cover how we are working with major funders such as the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to launch their own open publishing platforms, in order to help shift the culture of science publishing.