KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A year after the launch of their ‘reviewed preprint’ model, the journal eLife has released their key findings.
• eLife report over 6,200 submissions, 2.5× faster time to publication, and no significant change in quality.

In January 2023, eLife made the radical decision to end the process of accepting or rejecting papers after peer review, in favour of publishing ‘reviewed preprints’. A year on, they have released their key findings.

What is the ‘reviewed preprint’ model?

In this model, all articles selected for peer review are published on the eLife website as a reviewed preprint alongside an eLife assessment, public reviews, and a response from the authors (if provided).

What are the key results?

In the first year, eLife report:

• over 6,200 submissions received and more than 1,300 reviewed preprints published
• over 2.5× faster time from submission to publication than the legacy model
• no significant change in the quality of submissions (based on ratings for significance and strength of evidence)
• quality of eLife assessments and public reviews rated highly by authors.

When the new model was launched, eLife reported that views across academic publishing were mixed, with concerns that:

• authors would not submit their work
• editors and reviewers would not want to be involved
• articles would be of low quality or only from researchers with the most confidence in their work.

However, a year on, eLife consider the reality to be much more encouraging, highlighting how:

• editors and reviewers have been able to focus on summarising the strengths and weaknesses of an article, with their views open for debate
• authors and reviewers have been able to provide exchange without fear of articles being rejected
• the majority of authors have revised their articles in response to reviewer comments, resulting in what eLife believe to be ‘better science all around’.

The majority of authors have revised their articles in response to reviewer comments, resulting in what eLife believe to be ‘better science all around’.

What’s next?

Going forward, eLife commit to continued evolution and adaptation. One proposal is to extend this approach to articles that may not typically be published by broad-interest journals, such as important negative or preliminary findings.

eLife welcome ideas to help them achieve these aims. They also encourage other publishers to adopt some aspects of their approach by making their software infrastructure freely available.

————————————————–