January 30, 2011

'Facebook of Science' Seeks to Reshape Peer Review

'Faculty of 1000' Aims to Reshape Peer Review 1

Courtesy BioMed Central

With his latest Internet experiment, a large network of scientists called the Faculty of 1000, Vitek Tracz hopes to transform papers from one-shot events owned by publishers into evolving discussions among researchers, authors, and readers.

Enlarge Image
close 'Faculty of 1000' Aims to Reshape Peer Review 1

Courtesy BioMed Central

With his latest Internet experiment, a large network of scientists called the Faculty of 1000, Vitek Tracz hopes to transform papers from one-shot events owned by publishers into evolving discussions among researchers, authors, and readers.

By Colin Macilwain

Vitek Tracz is a risk-taker. He put his money into open-access publishing when free Internet journals seemed like a long shot.

"Everybody promised me that open access would not succeed," recalls the scientific publisher. "They said I would go bankrupt. I thought there was a very high chance of that, myself. But it now turns out to be significantly profitable." Two years ago he sold his BioMed Central publications—there are now about 200 of them—to Berlin-based Springer for