eLife Assessments
Articles in eLife provide readers with a more nuanced assessment of the research being reported.
eLife changed its approach to peer review in 2023 to better convey the assessments made by editors and reviewers. Every Reviewed Preprint published in the journal now includes an eLife Assessment written by the editor who oversaw the review process and the peer reviewers. This assessment summarizes what the editor and reviewers thought about the article.
eLife Assessments also use a common vocabulary to describe the significance of the findings reported in the paper (on a scale ranging from useful to landmark) and the strength of evidence (on a scale ranging from inadequate to exceptional).
The definitions of the terms used for the significance of the findings and the strength of evidence are given below.
Significance of the findings:
Landmark: findings with profound implications that are expected to have widespread influence
Fundamental: findings that substantially advance our understanding of major research questions
Important: findings that have theoretical or practical implications beyond a single subfield
Valuable: findings that have theoretical or practical implications for a subfield
Useful: findings that have focused importance and scope
Strength of evidence:
Exceptional: exemplary use of existing approaches that establish new standards for a field
Compelling: evidence that features methods, data and analyses more rigorous than the current state-of-the-art
Convincing: appropriate and validated methodology in line with current state-of-the-art
Solid: methods, data and analyses broadly support the claims with only minor weaknesses
Incomplete: main claims are only partially supported
Inadequate: methods, data and analyses do not support the primary claims
