Cambridge, UK – August 15, 2014
eLife celebrates its first full year in publishing with the release of its 2013 Annual Report. The report emphasises eLife’s achievements from last year and points towards how the unique initiative will continue to expand on successes in technology innovation and challenge the status quo.
In 2013, eLife made clear its intentions to address some of the critical issues facing science today. In a year that saw Editor-in-chief Randy Schekman share the Nobel Prize, eLife made significant progress in a number of areas:
- Introducing eLife Lens, an innovative article-viewing platform
- Challenging the incentive system, as co-author of the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and via Randy Schekman’s call for scientists to end their dependency on high-profile journals and the Impact Factor
- Transforming peer review, resulting in a mean time from submission to acceptance of around 90 days, and delivering clear and constructive feedback to authors
- Publishing great science: eLife published some of the most promising advances in biomedical and life sciences in 2013 – from the development of pioneering methods for editing the human genome by Jinek et al. to Scialdone et al.’s discovery that plants can ‘do maths’.
2013 was an important stepping-stone in eLife’s journey to transform the way scientists communicate their research. Looking ahead, in his letter as Chair of the eLife Sciences Board of Directors, Toby Coppel stated “eLife plans to go beyond the publication of static research articles and aims to become a dynamic platform to allow scientists to build their research stories online, to promote reproducibility in science, and to recognise the kinds of behaviours that will accelerate scientific discovery.”
He adds, “What gives us the greatest sense of optimism about the prospect for achieving this transformation is the intense appetite for change from early-career researchers. These scientists represent the future and we are focused on serving them well.“
The eLife 2013 Annual Report is available to read now at http://2013.elifesciences.org.
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Media contact
Jenny Mitchell
j.mitchell@elifesciences.org
01223 855 373 (UK)
About eLife Sciences Publications Ltd
eLife is a unique collaboration between the funders and practitioners of research to communicate ground-breaking discoveries in the life and biomedical sciences in the most effective way. eLife is also a platform for maximising the reach and influence of new discoveries and showcasing new approaches to the presentation, use, and assessment of research. eLife is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust. Learn more at elifesciences.org.
