First Paper with ‘Living Figure’ Published

F1000Research, an open access scientific journal for life sciences, has debuted what it calls its first ‘living article.’ Other scientists can contribute their own data to the published scientific paper, and the figure updates live online.

Authors of the first paper to have this option, Julien Colomb from Freie Universität and Björn Brembs from Universität Regensburg, two German behavioral neuroscientists, developed software in collaboration with F1000Research that allows figures in the paper to be auto-updated as new data in submitted by other scientists.

Their paper finds that a commonly used strain of fruit flies sourced from different laboratories, which are meant to be nearly identical, actually show distinct differences in walking behaviors.

One researcher, Gregg Roman from the University of Houston, Texas, has inserted his own data onto, Figure 4 of the paper – the so-called ‘living figure’- and additional groups have agreed to add to it as well, the company said in a statement.

F1000Research launched in January 2013 and publishes scientific research immediately, and then invites peer review, avoiding the long delays associated with the traditional anonymous pre-publication peer-review process.

In a company statement Rebecca Lawrence, managing director of F1000Research said, “Allowing outside researchers to post their data onto a published paper takes the open science publishing concept a step further. It not only enables immediate sharing of results as new research occurs, but it also provides a great tool in helping the research community quickly identify the level of reproducibility of a new discovery.”