eLife is pleased to announce partnerships with Imperial College London and the University of Sheffield, UK, on its new uncapped scheme that promotes greater equity, inclusivity and sustainability in scientific publishing.
Bookshelves in a university library. Photo by Zoshua Colah on Unsplash.
These partnerships come after the nonprofit introduced uncapped and centralised schemes to help institutions support their researchers in publishing through the eLife Model, and to help transition away from traditional author fees that pose a barrier to research communication. Imperial College London and the University of Sheffield follow the MIT Libraries as eLife’s first adopter of the two-year uncapped scheme, with their agreements running until the end of June and July 2027, respectively.
Alessio Bolognesi, eLife Head of Publishing Development, says: “There is growing support for open science among the research community, which we’ve seen first hand in conversations with Imperial College London, the University of Sheffield and other institutions globally. We’re delighted to partner with these two leading universities as we continue to promote our model as a fairer and more transparent approach to research publishing and assessment.”
In its conversations with eLife, the University of Sheffield expressed a commitment to supporting alternatives to the traditional publishing system. These include the eLife Model that combines the speed and openness of preprints with the scrutiny offered by peer review. The outputs of the model are Reviewed Preprints that include the article, public reviews and an eLife Assessment – all designed to emphasise the scientific content of individual articles rather than journal name or journal-level metrics.
As signatories of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, eLife, Imperial College London and the University of Sheffield share a common view that journal-level metrics should be avoided in favour of more effective methods of research assessment, such as that offered by the eLife Model.
Peter Barr, Head of Content & Collections at the University of Sheffield Library, says: “Through our Comprehensive Content Strategy, the University of Sheffield is committed to the equitable transformation of scholarly communications by investing in alternative approaches to the dissemination of research. The eLife Model represents such an approach offering a direct and practical solution for our researchers to try its innovative route to publication.”
Ruth Harrison, Head of Scholarly Communications Management, Library Services, at Imperial College London, adds: “We want to be able to support a variety of publishing models to better enable access to research, and create more equitable paths to publishing for all authors. This agreement means our authors can be part of eLife’s publishing programme at no additional cost to them, and that we welcome different routes for the communication of research.”
eLife continues to offer its publishing agreements to other institutions and funders that wish to support their researchers in publishing through the eLife Model.
“It’s wonderful to welcome Imperial College London and the University of Sheffield on board, and we hope to see many more forward-thinking organisations join them over the coming months,” says eLife Head of Publishing Fiona Hutton. “Their support is invaluable to our mission as we continue working with the community to reform research publishing and assessment for all.”
To read more about eLife’s publishing agreements, see ‘eLife adds publishing agreements to its offering to support an open research future’.
To read more about eLife’s conversations with the research community about its publishing model and research assessment, see ‘Research organisations still consider eLife papers in funding and hiring decisions’.
To learn more about the eLife Model, see ‘Peer review and publishing at eLife’.
And more information about the University of Sheffield Library’s Comprehensive Content Strategy is available here.
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eLife
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About
eLife transforms research communication to create a future where a diverse, global community of scientists and researchers produces open and trusted results for the benefit of all. Independent, not-for-profit and supported by funders, we improve the way science is practised and shared. From the research we publish, to the tools we build, to the people we work with, we’ve earned a reputation for quality, integrity and the flexibility to bring about real change. eLife is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Max Planck Society and Wellcome. Learn more at https://elifesciences.org/about.
