It All Began Here... Faculty Of 1000 Marks Ten Years Since The First Evaluation Was Written

On the 4th July 2001, Andrew Lumsden of the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, King's College London, and F1000 Section Head for Neurodevelopment, became the author of the first Faculty of 1000 (F1000) evaluation.

In the ten years since this evaluation was written, F1000 has continued to illuminate the top literature of biology and medical research.

Lumsden's review of "Genetic control of dorsal-ventral identity in the telencephalon: opposing roles for Pax6 and Gsh2" was the first evaluation collected by Vitek Tracz, who created the first open access publishing venture, BioMed Central (BMC), and founded F1000. Many more evaluations were submitted by F1000 Faculty Members throughout 2001 and the F1000 Biology website was launched in 2002. This was followed by F1000 Medicine in 2006, and in October 2010 the two sites were merged to form F1000.com.

F1000 was conceived as a collaboration of 1000 international Faculty Members, but in the ten years since its start, the Faculty has grown considerably and now numbers more than 10,000 experts. The fully searchable database contains nearly 110,000 evaluations, which provide insight into the best research in over 300 biology and medical disciplines. The wider F1000 service also features an open access repository of posters and presentations and two F1000 Reports journals, which review emerging topics as identified by the Faculty.

Commenting on reaching this milestone, Sarah Greene, F1000 Editor-in-Chief said: "We're delighted that Andrew's contribution commemorates the occasion. He's been on board as Section Head of Neurodevelopment for a decade, working with his Faculty to flag and explain the top 166 papers (and counting) in that field, and showing leadership in countless other ways. We cannot offer enough praise to all the Faculty who have devoted time and brainpower to pioneer this brave new model of transparent peer review. Thanks to their efforts, F1000 has become a hub of discourse around that most sacred entity - the research paper."

About Faculty of 1000: The international F1000 Faculty of 10,000 experts includes 5 Nobel Prize winners, 81 fellows of The Royal Society, 12 Lasker Prize winners, 136 members of NAS and 97 members of the Institute of Medicine. On average, the Faculty publishes 1,500 new evaluations each month across a range of disciplines. Many of the articles selected for evaluation have been published in popular and high-profile journals however around 85% of evaluations come from more specialized or less well-known journals.

To find out more about Faculty of 1000, please contact Eleanor Howell on +44 (0)20 7631 9129 or email press@f1000.com. For more information, visit http://f1000.com.