Journal seeks to upend scientific publishing by only reviewing—not accepting—manuscripts

A publisher is trying to change how scientists share their research findings. eLife, an online journal focused on the life and medical sciences, announced last week that it will no longer accept or reject manuscripts for publication.

Authors have been charged $3000 if their paper is accepted by eLife. If an author accepts the publisher's offer to have a submitted manuscript undergo peer review, they will be charged $2000. The manuscript and its associated, unsigned peer-review statements will be posted online regardless of whether the critiques are positive or negative. The new version of the paper will be posted by eLife.

Other innovations have been tried since e Life was founded. All submitted manuscripts were required to be published as preprints. Michael Eisen of the University of California, Berkeley is the editor-in-chief of e Life.

Eisen says the detailed critiques written by reviewers that eLife recruits are its main contribution to the scientific process. He says the reviews are more useful to the community than our thumbs up or thumbs down publishing decision. The peer-review process at other journals is often opaque and slow because it can take multiple rounds.

Some people don't share Eisen's vision. There is no interest in reading other people's peer reviews. It's silly to turn reviews into supplements. Most researchers don't post their manuscripts as preprints, which could make the new model hard to use.

eLife's new approach is not completely new. Researchers are able to post manuscripts on the online platform F 1000 Research. Eisen wants eLife to stand out in this new marketplace.

The new model of e Life is still being finalized. Eisen says that they will probably ask prospective reviewers for their sense of which papers will be the most useful to critique. eLife will not consider the manuscript's scientific importance, unlike a few other journals.

Authors will be able to declare the final version of their manuscript. A group of researchers who are funded by the National Institute of Health will be able to meet the requirement that their work be included in the PubMed search engine. An eLife-reviewed manuscript can be submitted to a different journal for publication, but only if they have not declared it final.

Eisen wants e Life to cover its costs without using the subsidies from donors that have supported the publisher since it was founded. He hopes the new policy will make the publisher disappear. You won't be citing eLife at all, because you'll be citing the authors work on a preprint server.