Faculty of 1000 Medicine launched by BioMed Central

Jan 23 2006

Faculty of 1000 Medicine, a major new online service designed to help medics keep abreast of the most important new research, is now live.

Run by a team of almost 2500 of the world’s leading researchers and clinicians, Faculty of 1000 Medicine provides a consensus view of important articles and trends across medicine. The continuously updated service, found at www.f1000medicine.com, will be available to institutional and personal subscribers.

Faculty of 1000 Medicine offers similar functionality and organisation to its sister service, the highly successful Faculty of 1000 Biology, to which more than 80% of the world’s top institutions subscribe. Faculty Members submit short evaluations of 2-3 interesting articles that they have read in the previous month, providing an article rating (the F1000 factor), as well as information about the article type and specialties it will be of interest to. The Faculty of 1000 Medicine in-house team then carefully check the evaluations to ensure they are concise and user-friendly, aiming to get new evaluations on the site within two working days. The comprehensive medical coverage complements the biological focus of Faculty of 1000 Biology (www.f1000biology.com).

A new feature exclusive to Faculty of 1000 Medicine is the Clinical Impact label highlighting research findings that Faculty Members think will have an immediate effect on clinical practice.

Faculty of 1000 Medicine is headed by an International Advisory Board of world leaders in medicine including Steven Hyman, Provost of Harvard University, and Sir Keith Peters, Emeritus Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge University. Divided into 18 Faculties, the service covers the whole of medicine - from Anesthesiology & Pain Management to Women’s Health. The Faculty is further divided into approximately 200 Sections representing specific research areas, which are cross-indexed to reflect the interdisciplinary nature of medicine.

Jean-Louis Vincent, Head of Faculty for Critical Care & Emergency Medicine, welcomes the launch of Faculty of 1000 Medicine:

“Faculty of 1000 Medicine is exactly what researchers and clinicians need to keep up to date with the most important developments in their specialty and related fields. It is impossible to read all of the articles that one should, and medicine is becoming more and more interdisciplinary. Timely, concise evaluations from peers that one respects are a lifeline in the sea of literature.”

Faculty of 1000 Medicine offers the most comprehensive literature evaluation service on the market, covering more fields of medicine than any other. Faculty Members are free to evaluate articles from any journal they choose. This flexibility leads to the identification of Hidden Jewels, articles evaluated from less widely read journals, which readers may otherwise have missed but which rate highly according to Faculty Members.

Evaluations are systematically organised according to subject keywords and are cross-linked to make it easy for users to find evaluations of interest to their specialty. Users can also customize the service to their interests and opt for regular updates by email, including stored searches on keywords of interest, at a frequency that suits them.

Faculty of 1000 Medicine has been eagerly awaited by many individuals and institutions, and has already attracted advance institutional sales and trials.