Taylor & Francis acquires F1000Research

As the Open Access publication service F1000Research announced on January 10th it was acquired by one of the largest publishers of scientific content: Taylor & Francis (part of Informa plc). As F1000Research comments this will "support the transition towards more open and collaborative ways of working, enabled though new approaches to scholarly publishing."

The founder of F1000Research, Vitek Tracz, is well-known for selling start-up companies to branch giants e.g. in 2008 he sold the Open Access publishing house BioMed Central to Springer. Tracz's Science Navigation Group (SNG) also published the magazine The Scientist.

F1000Research was launched in 2013, it allowed to publish preprints and other publications Open Access and additionally supported Open Access to Research Data as well as Open Review.

Since 2016 the Wellcome Trust contracted F1000Research to provide a publishing platform for its grantees using the features mentioned above. In the following years other institutions followed this example e.g. the Gates Foundation, a list can be found here.