eLife has released its 2014 annual report, showcasing the non-profit’s achievements of the past year
eLife has released its 2014 annual report, showcasing the non-profit’s achievements in attracting growing numbers of submissions, publishing a broad swath of high-quality research swiftly and constructively, supporting the careers of early-career researchers, and exploring new publication formats. Each of these steps is a stride towards eLife’s ambition to change science publishing to serve scientists more effectively.
Introduced in 2011, eLife is the non-profit collaboration between three research funders and leading researchers to influence the way important biomedical research results are evaluated for publication, presented online, and shared with a worldwide audience. In this year’s report, board chair Toby Coppel reports “tremendous progress” toward the initiative’s initial ambition “to create a new, first-rate, open-access journal, which will allow the scientific community to regain control of the publishing process”. He also describes eLife’s longer-term vision, “to establish eLife as a dynamic platform for high-quality research communication that supports and recognises the most productive behaviours in science”.
Highlights from eLife progress in 2014 include:
- The publication of 507 works of outstanding research on topics ranging from Ebola and the threat of extinction for sharks and rays to the evolution of photosynthesis and how mammalian sperm stay on course
- A new service to allow authors to publish their work within one day of acceptance
- The introduction of the Research advance, a short, peer-reviewed contribution that strengthens or refines original work published in eLife
- The open-source reading tool eLife Lens piloted by six other publishers
- The appointment of fourteen talented early-stage scientists to the eLife early careers advisory group
As eLife advances toward its mission it is hoped that eLife’s policies and practices will be adopted by other organisations. Aspects of the eLife editorial process are being explored by other journals, for example, and are named in the report.
“As more of our colleagues recognise eLife as a venue for their most exciting work, the greater the potential for eLife to have an impact on the most painful aspects of research communication, such as how important works are identified and recognised,” said Randy Schekman, eLife Editor-in-Chief. “We are very pleased to see eLife take root this quickly.”
The report concludes:
“Above all, accelerating discovery means improving the conduct and culture of science. eLife therefore needs to set a first-rate example of how to select and evaluate research and make that process more transparent, how to share findings and ideas in a way that maximises the ability of others to build on that work, and how to recognise researchers who go the extra mile to make the research enterprise as productive as possible. With these goals in mind, we aim to take eLife forward.”
The eLife 2014 annual report is online at 2014.elifesciences.org
