Peer review and publishing at eLife

Publishing with eLife is different because there is no accept or reject decision after peer review: rather, every article we review is published as a Reviewed Preprint. This is a new type of scientific publication that includes the article, feedback from the reviewers, a response from the author (if available), and an eLife Assessment that summarizes the significance of the findings being reported and the strength of the evidence. This approach emphasizes the scientific content of individual articles rather than journal name.

1

Less uncertainty

Once an article has been selected for peer review, the authors can be sure that it will be published.
2

Speed and openness

Publishing in eLife combines the advantages of preprints with the scrutiny offered by peer review.
3

Expert evaluations

eLife Assessments summarize the significance of the findings and the strength of evidence in an article.

Our peer review and publishing process has five steps:

1
Submission

Authors may submit to eLife directly or transfer a preprint from bioRxiv or medRxiv. Full details of the submission process are available in the eLife author guide.
2
Peer review

eLife editors - who are all active researchers - discuss new submissions and decide which will be peer reviewed. The criteria used by the editors are discussed in “How and why eLife selects papers for peer review”.

Each peer reviewer is asked to write a Public Review of the article, and to recommend ways in which the authors could improve it. The editor and the peer reviewers also write an eLife Assessment that summarises the significance of the findings and the strength of evidence.

Our publication fee is $3000 and is payable at this stage (although the fee is waived for anyone who cannot afford to pay).
3
Publication of Reviewed Preprint

A Reviewed Preprint includes the preprint itself, the eLife Assessment, Public Reviews that describe the strengths and weaknesses of the article, and a response from the authors (if available).

By making the views of expert editors and reviewers an integral part of the published paper, we hope to improve the way that scientific research is assessed and evaluated.

Reviewed Preprints can be cited by their DOI and/or their eLife citation.
4
Publication of revised version

Authors are free to submit a revised version of their article, and the editor and the peer reviewers will update the eLife Assessment and the Public Reviews as necessary.

Version two of the Reviewed Preprint will include the revised preprint, an eLife Assessment and Public Reviews (updated as appropriate), and a response from the authors.
5
Publication of Version of Record

At any point following peer review, the authors can choose to publish their article as a regular journal article (the Version of Record) to mark the end of the review and publication process.

Other features of the peer-review process at eLife:

We work with authors to make all submissions selected for peer review available as preprints.
Publication of an eLife Version of Record (VOR) complies with all major funding agency requirements for immediate online access to the published results of their research grants. An increasing number of funders are also recognising Reviewed Preprints in research assessment.
VORs are typically indexed by a variety of services, such as Google Scholar, PubMed, PubMed Central, Europe PMC, OpenAlex, and the Directory of Open Access Journals. Each indexing service applies different criteria to what they will include, so we cannot guarantee that a VOR will be indexed by all of these services.
We do not artificially limit the number of articles we review or publish.
Editors and reviewers consult with each other during the peer-review process, especially when writing eLife Assessments.
eLife Assessments use a common vocabulary to summarise the significance of the findings reported in an article (on a scale ranging from landmark to useful) and the strength of the evidence (on a scale ranging exceptional to inadequate).
Public Reviews describe the strengths and weaknesses of the article, and indicate whether the claims and conclusions are justified by the data. Where the reviewers disagree with the claims in an article, this is made explicit within the eLife Assessment and the Public Reviews.
Recommendations to the authors for improving the article are published as part of the Version of Record.