F1000Research is one of a small number of publishing venues that reverses the usual order of scholarly publishing: an article is published first, and formal peer review happens in public, afterward, attached to the published record rather than gating it. General discussions of open peer review as a concept, and CASRAI’s own comparison of single-blind, double-blind, and open review models, cover the terminology and the broader landscape. This page is narrower: it walks through F1000Research’s specific platform mechanics — what happens between submission and publication, how referees are chosen and what their reports look like, what the approval statuses mean, and when an article becomes indexed — for a research administrator or author trying to understand what they are actually agreeing to before submitting there.
The core sequence: publication comes before review
On a conventional journal, peer review happens before publication and functions as a gate — the manuscript is not public until it clears review. F1000Research inverts this. After submission, the article goes through an in-house editorial check that screens for things like plagiarism, competing-interest and ethics-approval declarations, and basic formatting and reporting completeness — not a judgment on scientific merit or significance. Once it clears that check, the article is published on the platform and publicly labeled “Awaiting Peer Review.” Formal peer review then happens afterward, in the open, against the version that is already live.
This means an F1000Research article is discoverable and citable (with its own DOI) before any external reviewer has assessed it — closer in that respect to a preprint than to a conventional journal article, except that formal, invited, named peer review is built into the platform as the next step rather than left to happen informally elsewhere.
Who reviews an article, and how referees are chosen
Reviewer selection is author-driven, within editorial oversight. Before publication, authors are asked to suggest at least five potential referees, and to keep suggesting names until at least two review reports have been published against the article. F1000Research’s editorial team supports this process — including a Reviewer Finder Tool — and can request additional suggestions if the initial list lacks diversity across institutions, countries, or gender. Referees who agree to review are then formally invited by the editorial office, not selected anonymously by an editor working alone, which is the more common model at conventional journals.
What a review report looks like, and why identities aren’t hidden
F1000Research review is fully open on every axis the field distinguishes between: reviewer names and institutional affiliations are published alongside their reports, the reports themselves are published in full next to the article, and (per the ANSI/NISO Z39.106-2023 terminology standard that CASRAI’s other open-peer-review content uses as its reference vocabulary) there is no anonymized track at all — there is no single-anonymized or double-anonymized option on this platform. Each report ends in one of three formal approval statuses:
- Approved — the reviewer finds the article sound, with at most minor requested changes.
- Approved with Reservations — the reviewer sees academic merit but wants more substantial revisions addressed.
- Not Approved — the reviewer considers the article to have fundamental flaws.
Every report and status is published regardless of outcome, including “Not Approved” ones — the article is not withdrawn or hidden if a referee is critical. That transparency, rather than any post-hoc editorial summary, is what a reader sees when deciding how much weight to put on the work.
Versions, and what it means for an article to “pass” review
Because the article was already public when review began, revision doesn’t overwrite it — F1000Research keeps every version (V1, V2, V3…) alongside the reports that prompted each revision, so the full review history stays attached and citable rather than disappearing behind the final accepted text. Authors whose article receives a “Not Approved” or “Approved with Reservations” report are encouraged to publish a revised version addressing the specific concerns raised, and can continue inviting review on the new version.
An article is considered to have passed peer review once it accumulates either two “Approved” statuses, or one “Approved” plus two “Approved with Reservations” statuses (across any version). At that point, F1000Research submits it for indexing in PubMed, Scopus, and other major bibliographic databases — with the review reports themselves indexed and linked alongside the article, not just the article text. An article that never accumulates enough favorable reports remains permanently visible on the platform, with its full review history attached, but does not get indexed the same way.
How this differs from post-publication commentary
It’s worth distinguishing this from the informal, unsolicited commentary that can follow publication elsewhere — platforms like PubPeer, or preprint-server comment threads, discussed in CASRAI’s guide to post-publication peer review. F1000Research’s model is not that: the reviewers are formally invited (not volunteers commenting after the fact), the reports are a required, structured part of the publication record with a defined approval taxonomy, and the process determines a concrete downstream outcome — indexing eligibility — rather than functioning as open-ended public discussion. CASRAI’s overview of open peer review signals and identifiers covers how F1000Research and comparable venues fit into that broader open-report / open-identity taxonomy across the field; this page focuses specifically on how F1000Research itself runs the process end to end.
Who operates F1000Research, and the funder-gateway model
F1000Research traces back to Faculty of 1000, a literature-recommendation service founded by publishing entrepreneur Vitek Tracz in 2000; the F1000Research publishing platform itself launched in 2013 as one of the first venues built around this publish-first, review-after model. Taylor & Francis Group acquired F1000 in January 2020 and continues to operate the platform. F1000’s publishing technology also underpins a small number of funder-branded “open research” gateways run on the same model for a specific funder’s grantees — most notably Wellcome Open Research (for Wellcome-funded research) and Gates Open Research (for Gates Foundation-funded research). An author publishing through one of these funder gateways is going through the same editorial-check, author-suggested-referee, open-report, versioned-revision process described above, just under a funder-specific brand and eligibility gate rather than F1000Research’s general-subject one.
Frequently asked questions
Is F1000Research peer reviewed?
Yes, but the review happens after publication rather than before it. Every article is publicly labeled “Awaiting Peer Review” until it accumulates review reports, and only articles that reach the “Approved” thresholds described above go on to be indexed in PubMed and Scopus alongside their reports.
What happens to an article that is “Not Approved”?
It stays published on F1000Research with its full review history visible — it is not retracted or hidden — but it does not become eligible for indexing in PubMed/Scopus unless a later, revised version accumulates enough favorable reports.
Is F1000Research the same as a preprint server?
No. A preprint server hosts a manuscript with no formal review attached to it. F1000Research publishes the article immediately, like a preprint, but then runs a formal, invited, openly reported peer-review process against that published version — with defined approval outcomes and indexing consequences that a preprint server doesn’t have.
Can reviewers stay anonymous on F1000Research?
No. F1000Research operates a fully open model: reviewer names and affiliations are published with every report. There is no single-anonymized or double-anonymized reviewing track on this platform.
Who chooses the reviewers?
Authors are required to suggest at least five potential referees before publication and to keep suggesting names until two reports are published; the editorial team can request more names to broaden institutional, national, or gender diversity, and formally invites the referees who take part.
