Scientific Publishing: How and why eLife selects papers for peer review

Recruiting good reviewers is difficult, and it is getting more difficult as the volume of published work increases year-on-year. Importantly, it is easier to find reviewers, particularly those with the deep expertise we need, for work that is interesting and rigorous. People simply prefer to review work that is of interest to them, and the same is true when it comes to finding editors to oversee the review process.

So there is a clear tension: we would like the outputs of the eLife peer-review process to be of the highest quality, but preparing such assessments is easier for work that editors and reviewers are willing to engage with. Therefore, one clear reason for why we only peer review some submissions is to ensure the quality and rigour of what we produce.

We must continue to focus our efforts on those papers where the outputs of the eLife peer-review process are most valuable. This is not the same as deciding which papers are “the best”. For example, there might be value in reviewing work that is controversial in a particular field of research. However, it does mean concentrating on papers where we believe the scientific content will be most inspiring to eLife readers.

Just as editors and reviewers prefer to review work that is of interest to them, as readers we scientists pay more attention to reviews of work that has the potential to change the way we think about a question. Therefore, if we are going to change scientific publishing for the better, we will do so faster by focusing our efforts on such papers.

The peer-review process at eLife is overseen by a team of over 70 Senior Editors and more than 700 Reviewing Editors. Every paper submitted to the journal is assigned to a Senior Editor, who generally asks a small number of Reviewing Editors about the submission. The Reviewing Editors offer their scientific views on the paper, and there is an open discussion about whether to review the paper, using the reasoning laid out above. Editors are considering whether the work is of substantial interest, whether they will be able to find high-quality reviewers, and whether the reviews will be valuable to the scientific community.

If they decide to proceed, and if one of the Reviewing Editors agrees to handle the submission, they initiate the labour of love that is peer review. Once the reviews have been received, the Reviewing Editor and the reviewers craft the eLife assessment, which is vetted by the Senior Editor before publication. This assessment, together with the Public Reviews, helps readers to better understand the new findings, their validity, and their relevance to the broader scientific community. If this approach were adopted more widely, it would mean that a reader could judge the work in a given paper on its own merits, irrespective of where it was published.