William Mobley, a neuroscientist from the University of California, San Diego, is urging academic publishers to start offering authors the option to publish short units of communication, which he calls ¡°single figure publications¡± (SFPs) in an .

The idea behind SFPs is to speed up scholarly communication, and make it more efficient by encouraging researchers to submit shorter publications with a particular focus on data, instead of waiting to publish them as part of larger research papers.

The editorial calls for an ¡°optimal format¡± of scholarly communication to ensure the findings presented are valid with full declaration of all materials and methods, rapidly shared with minimal delays, machine-readable and free of bias. These micro-publications would, the editorial proposes, consist of a figure, a legend, material and methods, and an optional results section.

¡°While the traditional format of journal articles will continue to be used to tell the important ¡®stories¡¯ of scientific journeys,¡± smaller units of communication are needed to enhance science further, the editorial says.

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¡°The SFP represents a ¡®bottom-up¡¯ means by which scholars can structure the content of their findings in a modular and piece-wise fashion wedded to everyday laboratory life,¡± the editorial adds.

Publishing nimble units of data, known as nano-publications, has become common in recent years; there are now whole repositories and journals, such as Scientific Data, dedicated to publishing data. But, according to the editorial, SFPs aim to build an ¡°important bridge¡± between traditional journal papers and data nano-publications.

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SFPs could be used to publish confirmatory data, negative results, data refuting published results and analysis of manufacturer-made reagents or materials, explains Professor Mobley. ¡°People need to know when something doesn¡¯t work the way others have proposed that it works.¡± This would also help to measure reproducibility of papers, he adds.

A key feature of SFPs, notes Professor Mobley, is that it would avoid the traditional ¡°method shrink¡±, and ensure authors are explicit about the procedures their followed, and the materials they used. ?

Long Do, co-author of the editorial, says SFPs started off as a ¡°research social network¡± called ¡°¡±, where academics could a post a figure from their research and share it with their colleagues, either in a private or public conversation. This is now run as a non-profit organisation, and is shared with publishers who plan to implement a similar model, he says.

Although, one drawback of SFPs, adds Professor Mobley, is that they are not currently considered a ¡°prestigious¡± way of publishing, as it¡¯s ¡°not what gets you promoted at a university¡±.

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SFPs may also face a backlash from traditional publishers, says Scott Edmunds, executive editor of the journal GigaScience. ¡°Science is supposed to be about standing on the shoulders of giants, and I strongly agree that building upon a base of smaller units will lead to much sturdier foundations, and much more rapid advances,¡± he says. ??

Another hindrance to SFPs and more granular publications is the issue of scalability and overload of information, warns Bernd Pulverer, chief editor of The EMBO Journal. ¡°The current biomedical literature already encompasses over 25,000 peer reviewed journals that publish over 1.5 million papers/year, growing 5% annually,¡± he says. ¡°The additional data would minimally add an order of magnitude of additional information.¡±

¡°[SFPs are] a marketplace of ideas driven by data,¡± Professor Mobley says. ¡°In the end, we can¡¯t trust our interpretations.¡±

?is a freelance science journalist based in London

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