WIKIMEDIA, MODAuthors publishing a new type of article in eLife will be able to update their papers as they wish, the journal’s publisher announced this week (August 13). “Research does not stop with the publication of a paper; often experimental designs are rapidly refined, and new techniques are developed that can affect the original conclusions,” the publisher said in its statement introducing the new article format, the “Research Advance.”
Consisting of around 1,500 words with up to four main figures, tables, or videos, a Research Advance enables authors to add on to a paper they’d previously published in eLife. Research Advance additions, the publisher said, will be indexed and citable as stand-alone contributions.
The first such contribution to be accepted presents an advance in an electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) technique.
“In the Research Advance Sjors Scheres—the corresponding author on the original paper—reports how this new approach to cryo-EM can be used to study the structure of smaller macromolecules, which has the potential to open the door to a much broader range of biological insights,” eLife Executive Director Mark Patterson and his colleagues wrote in an editorial.
