Publishing with eLife: Meet our editorial staff

Nicola Adamson, Journal Development Editor – After studying Neuroscience at University, Nicola’s interest in how science is shared and ensuring responsible behaviours in science led her to join eLife. Beginning as an Editorial Assistant, Nicola’s current role focuses more on data to help support the growth of the eLife Model and engaging with eLife editors.

Fiona Bryant, Senior Editorial Assistant – Fiona studied Biology at University and joined eLife after working for several years as a Research Technician in agricultural science. In her role as Editorial Assistant she provides support at each stage of the review process.

Wei Mun Chan, Research Integrity Manager – Wei Mun brings over a decade of publishing and life-science data curation experience to his role, where he champions reproducibility, Open Science, and FAIR data practices. He works to uphold the integrity of the scientific record, ensuring every article in eLife meets rigorous ethical standards and follows best practice.

Andy Collings, Executive Editor – With 20 years in scientific publishing – starting at PLOS – Andy leads eLife’s editorial team and works closely with our Editor-in-Chief and Deputy Editors. He’s passionate about open research and improving how research is reviewed and communicated.

Matthew Perkins, Editorial Assistant – Matthew joined eLife in January after completing his Biochemistry master’s on photosynthesis and sustainable agriculture at Lancaster University. Matthew is a member of the LGBTQ+ community and campaigns for human rights, social justice, and decolonisation. These experiences have helped inform his understanding of the importance of equitable, open science.

Sam Porteous, Senior Editorial Assistant – Sam joined eLife after completing a degree in Geography at the University of Cambridge. Whilst working at eLife, Sam has also completed a part-time masters in Sustainable Development which he hopes to utilise to engage with and improve upon eLife’s commitments to carbon neutrality. Alongside day-to-day activities, Sam is responsible for overseeing submissions that eLife receives from Review Commons and provides oversight of eLife’s pool of Early-Career Reviewers.

Our focus is on delivering high-quality public reviews.

– Andy

Andy: Each day is varied, as we work through the questions that have arisen as we help papers through submission and peer review. Our focus is on delivering high-quality public reviews, so the process is designed around this. This means we need to keep authors updated and find ways to improve the process for future submissions.

I help to assign submissions to editors, coordinate the handover of Version of Record requests to production, and provide letters of support for authors and reviewers. Our team works closely with an external editorial support service, so we’re often on Slack ensuring we’re helping each other in the most effective ways.

Wei Mun: My typical day involves working closely with other members of the editorial office and editors, to ensure submissions meet our ethics and data sharing requirements. We have a number of quality and integrity checks. We will also investigate ethical concerns that are identified during the review process and beyond. This often involves looking at images, text, data, and correspondence. We work to address issues affecting integrity of submissions with various stakeholders and aim to communicate issues affecting the scholarly record in a timely manner.

Nicola: The role is quite varied and no day looks the same! There’s a lot of data analysis, for colleagues and editorial leadership. For example, looking at rates of submissions being sent for review with different editors; providing updates on data such as submission volumes, geographical distributions of authors and subject areas for the Board of Directors; and looking at data on how the eLife Model is working, such as how terms in eLife Assessments have been changing between first and final versions of an article and the extent to which authors are revising.

I also work to ensure we’re engaging with our editors to hear their thoughts and communicate what we’re doing with them. This involves things such as setting up Q&A calls for our Senior/Reviewing Editors to discuss with our EiC/Deputy Editors, and distributing and analysing editor surveys.

Matthew: My role is to assist the editorial process. Typically this involves checking papers in various stages and making sure everything is running smoothly. I also answer lots of queries from and provide support to authors, editors and reviewers with eLife’s editorial process. Publishing for the first time can be daunting. This can make academia/publishing feel more inaccessible, exclusionary and intimidating. I would say, don’t be afraid to ask questions! At eLife we care about promoting inclusion and would never wish to make anyone feel unwelcome or out of place, especially if they are just starting their scientific career.

... it’s really interesting to hear outside perspectives and rewarding to hear support from researchers about what we’re doing.

– Nicola

Wei Mun: As an independent non-profit we don’t have shareholders and instead our focus is to make scientific publishing better. Given our size, there are more opportunities to cross-pollinate and collaborate with other teams. I find it especially rewarding that my work makes a direct impact on the journal and our mission to change scholarly publishing for the better.

As an independent non-profit we don’t have shareholders and instead our focus is to make scientific publishing better.

– Wei Mun

Nicola: Having joined eLife before we moved over to the current model I’ve found seeing the evolution of the process to where we are now really enjoyable as with change there’s always been an opportunity to grow and learn new things. I’ve also had opportunities to speak with researchers and publishers outside of eLife and it’s really interesting to hear outside perspectives and rewarding to hear support from researchers about what we’re doing. I also feel incredibly lucky to work with such a wonderful group of people at eLife.

Matthew: I find it engaging to work in making research accessible but particularly at eLife I find it rewarding to support a publishing model which I believe makes academia a fairer, more equal and less antiquated place. I have only been with eLife since January but I worked on a project analysing data to do with waiver requests. This was particularly interesting as it highlighted the barriers to research that people face. Luckily eLife is able to assist in these cases by offering full waivers.

Andy: Bringing about change is challenging but rewarding! I’ve been extremely fortunate to have been a part of two different organisations from an early stage, seeing them grow and develop after an exciting launch phase. We get to meet fascinating people, through the submissions we process and by exhibiting at conferences. In some ways, scientific publishing has changed a lot in the last twenty years, but looking ahead there’s still a lot more to do!

... we make sure everything is running smoothly, reduce wait times where possible and try to improve the experience of authors.

– Matthew

Matthew: You can essentially think of us as companions to the eLife Model, we make sure everything is running smoothly, reduce wait times where possible and try to improve the experience of authors, editors and reviewers. I help answer any questions authors may have about the submission process or any issues they encounter. Whether this be providing status updates on papers, receiving provisional author responses or helping to explain our editorial process. As we use a different model to most other journals it can be a challenge for some authors but where I can, I like to make the environment feel as open and friendly as possible. We encourage authors learning more about the process and no question is stupid!

Nicola: Some of the things I’m working on or work we’re planning is around expanding how we use the eLife Model, for example whether there are new articles types we can introduce into the model and the subject areas/scope that we cover, as ways to ensure we grow and expand beyond the current areas.

Our internal editorial team may not appear on the published article, but their work is essential to everything we do at eLife. They help ensure fairness and rigour in the review process and support authors, editors and reviewers with care and dedication.

Huge thanks to Nicola, Fiona, Wei Mun, Andy, Matthew and Sam for making time to answer these questions!

You’ve met the people, now learn about the process. Learn what happens when you submit with eLife?