To date, eLife has published over 700 Research Articles on a broad range of subjects in the life and biomedical sciences, including genetics, neuroscience, stem cells, infectious diseases and ecology. eLife is an open-access journal, so all of these articles are freely available to readers around the world. However, most Research Articles are written for fellow specialists. Therefore, in order to bring the latest research to a wider audience, all eLife articles include a short plain language summary called an eLife digest.
eLife digests are written to clearly explain the main findings of each article, and to provide the background that is needed to put these findings into context. eLife writers and editors work with the authors of the Research Article to ensure that the digests are both accurate and understandable by a broad audience.
By sharing eLife digests on Medium, we hope that more people will discover these short research summaries and gain something from reading them. Medium already has a community of several hundred thousand users who write, read and freely share stories published on the site. We feel that the clean, minimal design of Medium provides an enjoyable reading experience—and represents an excellent place to share eLife digests with new audiences.
We’ve started by sharing digests from 25 eLife papers—covering a range of research topics from how “ quick reflexes allow a plant virus to hitchhike inside insect pests” to “ how the brain makes maps of its world”. We will share more eLife digests each week, which will reflect the broad range of articles that eLife has published and will add to the growing collection of great stories shared on the Medium blog-publishing platform.
To read the first 25 digests visit eLife on Medium, and follow us to be updated when we share more digests in the future.
