The peer-reviewed journal eLife announced yesterday (October 20) that it will be doing away with the long-held practice of accepting or rejecting scientific manuscripts that are submitted for publication. Last year, the journal began exclusively reviewing papers that had already been posted as preprints. Now, eLife will post submitted preprints regardless of their quality, alongside commentary from peer reviewers and an assessment from the journal itself that details the reviewers’ and editors’ thoughts on the significance of the research and the strength of the evidence supporting the paper’s conclusions. Authors will have the option to revise the papers and resubmit, or simply ask that the manuscript be published as-is on the eLife site.
“It’s quite dramatically different system from the traditional journal system,” says eLife Executive Director Damian Pattinson. “It’s all about moving from the assessment being based on where you publish [to being] based on what you publish.” The ...
