The recent events, culminating in the dismissal of Michael Eisen as Editor-in-Chief of
eLife by the
eLife Board of Directors (
link to statement), have led to many discussions and disagreements amongst ourselves and amongst our colleagues in the scientific community. It is important to note that we, as Senior and Reviewing Editors of
eLife, are neither members of the Board of Directors, nor were we consulted on the decision. Our role is to be stewards of
eLife’s scientific mission. We have a wide range of opinions on these recent events. Our shared goal here is not to summarize those opinions. Rather, we wish to highlight the importance of being part of a community that places the highest value on the ability to hold and respectfully discuss such a range of opinions.
Plurality of opinions is, and has been from its inception, the backbone of
eLife. Science makes advances through open disagreements and robust discussion.
eLife’s new publication model embodies this philosophy through open reviews.
We, the editors, believe the same principles apply more broadly. Dissent and discussion are fundamental to open societies. We robustly support the frank -- yet respectful -- expression of diverse views and political opinions. We believe thoughtful dissent, on topics scientific and otherwise, should be embraced and encouraged.
The members of our community come from a wide variety of backgrounds. What brings us together is the desire to create a diverse, global community that promotes open and trusted scientific results for the benefit of all. We, the undersigned editors, often differ in our individual political and other non-scientific views. However, we commit to do our utmost to ensure that these views do not influence our editorial decision making. The scientific community should know that contributions from scientists of all backgrounds are, have been, and always will be, welcome and valued at eLife.
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Signed,
1. Tamar Makin University of Cambridge
2. Alaa Ahmed University of Colorado Boulder
3. Noah Cowan Johns Hopkins University
4. Carlos Brody Princeton University and HHMI
5. Gaiti Hasan NCBS, TIFR
6. Robin Hiesinger Free University of Berlin, Germany
7. Ruth de Diego-Balaguer ICREA, University of Barcelona
8. Daniel Y Takahashi Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte
9. Claire Gillan Trinity College Dublin
10. Brice Bathellier Institut Pasteur
11. Alex Fornito Monash University
12. Juan Alvaro Gallego Imperial College London
13. Jörn Diedrichsen Western University
14. Andrés Jara-Oseguera The University of Texas at Austin
15. John Tuthill University of Washington
16. Eran Elhaik Lund University, Sweden
17. Redmond O'Connell Trinity College Dublin
18. Nora Abrous Inserm
19. Emilio Salinas Wake Forest University School of Medicine
20. Fred Rieke University of Washington
21. Adrien Peyrache McGill University
22. Ilona Grunwald Kadow University of Bonn
23. Sacha Nelson Brandeis University
24. Vidita Vaidya Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
25. Joseph Raimondo University of Cape Town
26. Michael Frank Brown University
27. Andrew King University of Oxford
28. Kenton Swartz National Institutes of Health
29. Barbara Shinn-Cunningham Carnegie Mellon University
30. Anna Schapiro University of Pennsylvania
31. Kristin Tessmar-Raible University of Vienna/AWI Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research
32. Supratim Ray Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
33. Floris de Lange Radboud University, Donders Institute
34. Joshua Gold University of Pennsylvania
35. Xiaorong Liu University of Virginia
36. John Huguenard Stanford University
37. Sofia J.Araújo University of Barcelona, Spain
38. Miriam Spering University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
39. Hugo Merchant UNAM, Mexico
40. Daeyeol Lee Johns Hopkins University
41. Lu Chen Stanford University
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48. Gillian McLellan University of Wisconsin-Madison
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50. Eduardo Franco McGill University
51. Jesse Goldberg Cornell University
52. Helen Scharfman New York University Grossman School of Medicine
53. Srdjan Ostojic Ecole Normale Superieure Paris
54. Harry T. Orr University of Minnesota
55. Nicolas Unsain Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
56. Neil Ferguson Imperial College London
57. Jonathan A. Cooper Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
58. SP Arun Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
59. Megan Carey Champalimaud
60. Michael A Taffe UCSD
61. Paula Casati Centro de Estudios Fotosintéticos y Bioquímicos
62. Peter Kok University College London
63. Anton M. Bennett Yale University School of Medicine
64. Ammie Kalan University of Victoria
65. Prabhat Jha University of Toronto
66. Clare Press Birkbeck, University of London and UCL
67. Stephen C. Ekker University of Texas at Austin
68. Anna Panchenko Queen's University, Canada
69. Felix Campelo ICFO-Institute of Photonic Sciences, Barcelona
70. Sjors Scheres MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
71. Pablo Manavella Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral - CONICET
72. Xiaobing Shi Van Andel Institute
73. Nagalingam Ravi Sundaresan Indian Institute of Science
74. László Csanády Semmelweis University
75. Mauro M Teixeira UFMG, Brazil
76. Katalin Toth University of Ottawa
77. Dieter Ebert University of Basel, Switzerland
78. Wafik El-Deiry Brown University
79. Michaela R. Reagan MaineHealth/Tufts University
80. Chyung-Ru Wang Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
81. Yukiko Yamashita Whitehead Institute/MIT/HHMI
82. Jie Xiao Johns Hopkins University
83. Farah D. Lubin The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)
84. Meg Schlichting University of Toronto
85. Henry M. Colecraft Columbia University
86. Mahendra Sonawane Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
87. Jean-Jacques Orban de Xivry KU Leuven, Belgium
88. Karsten Kruse University of Geneva
89. Leon D. Islas National Autonomous University of Mexico
90. Mauricio Comas-Garcia Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí
91. Marcelo Urbano Ferreira University of São Paulo
92. Wei Yan The Lundquist institute at Harbor-UCLA/David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
93. Alexander Chesler National Institutes of Health
94. Sarah Russell Peter Mac and Swinburne
95. Mathieu Wolff CNRS
96. Alphée Michelot Developmental Biology Institute of Marseille
97. Richard Amasino University of Wisconsin
98. Frank Chan Friedrich Miescher Laboratory/University of Groningen
99. Joshua T Schiffer Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
100 Jawed Siddiqui University of Nebraska medical center
101 Catherine Carr University of Maryland
102 Michael Dustin University of Oxford
103 Pil Joon Seo Seoul National University
104 Agnieszka Chacinska IMol, Poland
105 Arduino A Mangoni Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
106 Mihaela Iordanova Concordia University
107 Mark Jit London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
108 Dimple Notani National Centre for Biological Sciences, India
109 Rebecca Sappington Wake Forest University School of Medicine
110 Xin Chen Johns Hopkins University
111 Murim Choi Seoul National University
112 Rajan Sankaranarayanan CSIR-CCMB
113 Koyeli Mapa Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Delhi-NCR, India
114 Sarah Russell PeterMac and Swinburne University of Technology
115 Markus Ploner Technical University of Munich
116 Ben Cooper University of Oxford
117 Yoselin Benitez-Alfonso University of Leeds
118 Nicolás Pírez Universidad de Buenos Aires - CONICET
119 Zhiguo Zhang Irving Medical Center, Columbia University
120 Panayiota Poirazi IMBB-FORTH
121 Denise Cai Mount Sinai
122 Mohan Balasubramanian University of Warwick, UK
123 Jennifer Groh Duke University
124 Christine Clayton Heidelberg University, Germany
125 Pramod Mistry Yale University
126 Meredith C Schuman University of Zurich
127 James McCaw University of Melbourne
128 Ole Haagen Nielsen University of Copenhagen
129 Jonathan Roiser University College London
130 Tânia Reis University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus
131 Michael Czech University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School
132 Laura Bradfield University of Technology Sydney
133 Wenfeng Qian Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
134 Jonathan Bogan Yale School of Medicine
135 Dominique Bergmann Stanford University
136 João T. Marques Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
137 Aleksandra Walczak CNRS
138 Agnese Seminara University of Genoa, Italy
139 Päivi Ojala University of Helsinki
140 Koichi Kawakami National Institute of Genetics, JAPAN
141 George Perry Pennsylvania State University
142 Peter Tontonoz UCLA
143 JC Zuniga-Pflucker University of Toronto
144 David James University of Sydney
145 Gordon Berman Emory University
146 David A. Donoso Escuela Politécnica Nacional
147 David Kramer Michigan State University
148 Mariela Monteoliva. INTA-CONICET, UCC
149 Hao Yu National University of Singapore
150 Maria M. Zambrano Corpogen Research Center, Colombia
151 Yamini Dalal Deputy Editor, eLife 152 Vincent Castric CNRS, University of Lille
153 Becky Bart Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
154 Lennart Verhagen Donders Institute, Radboud University
155 Audrey Sederberg Georgia Institute of Technology
156 Merritt Maduke Stanford University
157 Volker Dötsch Goethe University
158 Shozeb Haider University College London
159 Martin Eilers University of Wuerzburg
160 Michel Bagnat Duke University
161 Simona Giunta University of Rome Sapienza
162 Patrick Hu Vanderbilt University Medical Center
163 Dominique Soldati-Favre University of Geneva
164 Silke Hauf Virginia Tech
165 Ethel Bayer-Santos University of Sao Paulo
166 Luis F. Larrondo P. Universidad Católica de Chile
167 Birte Forstmann University of Amsterdam
168 Laura Ruth Delgui CONICET-Argentina
169 Weiwei Dang Baylor College of Medicine
170 Teresa Giraldez University of La Laguna
171 Bruno Lemaitre EPFL Lausanne Switzerland
172 Paschalis Kratsios University of Chicago
173 Satyajit Rath IISER, Pune, India
174 Heedeok Hong Michigan State University
175 Yogesh K. Gupta University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
176 Yaroslav Ispolatov Universidad de Santiago de Chile
177 Yunlei Yang Albert Einstein College of Medicine
178 Samuel Pleasure UCSF
179 Elham Mahmoudi University of Michigan
180 Urbain Weyemi Reviewing Editor, eLife
181 Martin Reincke Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
182 Margaret Anne Stanley University of Cambridge
183 Lejla Zubcevic University of Kansas Medical Center
184 Ivan Topisirovic McGill University
185 Urszula Krzycch WRAIR, USA
186 Huan Luo Peking University
187 Mary B. Kennedy California Institute of Technology
188 Marcus Seldin University of California, Irvine
189 Kassandra Ori-McKenney UC Davis
190 Sergio Rasmann University of Neuchâtel
191 Alan Talevi University of La Plata, Argentina
192 Yuji Mishina University of Michigan School of Dentistry
193 Jeremy Reiter UCSF
194 Gherardo Mazziotti Humanitas University of Milan, Italy
195 Amit Verma Albert Einstein
196 Tomohiro Morio Tokyo Medical and Dental University
197 Ken Ho Garvan Institute of Medical Research
198 Jong-Eun Park Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
199 Beate Lichtenberger Medical University of Vienna
200 Seunghee Hong Yonsei University, SOUTH KOREA
201 Youngsung Joo Seoul National University
202 Kunlin Wei Peking University
203 Upinder S. Bhalla National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
204 Eugene Duff Imperial College London
205 Maroeska Rovers Radboudumc and University of Twente
206 Hayriye Cagnan Imperial College London
207 Yanchao Bi Beijing Normal University
208 Stephan A Pless University of Copenhagen, Denmark
209 Jessica Dubois Inserm Unité NeuroDiderot, Université Paris Cité
210 Jean-Ju Chung Yale University School of Medicine
211 Jerry L Workman Stowers Institute for Medical Reseach
212 Axel Brakhage Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology, Jena, Germany
213 Shuo Su Nanjing Agricultural University
214 Victoria Bautch University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
215 James Sellers National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, NIH
216 Simon Mendez-Ferrer University of Cambridge
217 Murali Prakriya Northwestern University
218 Claude Desplan NYU
219 Manuel Zimmer University of Vienna
220 Marcos Nahmad Center for Research and Advanced Studies, Mexico
