Submitting your work to a journal can feel fraught and uncertain. Months pass, sometimes years, while your paper is reviewed, revised, and even then, potentially rejected. Meanwhile, your research sits on hold, hidden from view.
At eLife, Reviewed Preprints were created to change this.
As part of our Publish, Review, Curate model, articles reviewed by eLife are published as Reviewed Preprints. They include public peer reviews, a response from the author (if available), and an eLife Assessment that summarises the significance of the findings and the strength of the evidence. We publish articles once the review process is complete, making reviewed research available much sooner than at traditional journals. Authors can then decide how they want to revise their article, and when to finalise it by publishing the Version of Record (VOR).
Reviewed Preprints provide several benefits to you as an author and the scientific community:
- By publishing as soon as the reviews and eLife Assessments are received, your reviewed research reaches the community faster, helping it make an impact sooner
- You can avoid months of uncertainty and have the freedom to revise as you see fit, with no threat of rejection after review
- Public peer reviews and eLife Assessments allow others to evaluate your work with confidence
Features of a Reviewed Preprint
1. Speed and flexibility through early, open publication
A Reviewed Preprint capitalises on the speed and openness of preprints. Your work is published as an open-access article once the peer-review stage is complete, around three times faster than at traditional journals, where nothing is visible until after multiple rounds of revision and editorial approval. Now, your reviewed and assessed research can begin to inspire others, garner attention, and contribute to your career.
After publication in eLife, it can be revised and resubmitted, declared the VOR, or even published elsewhere if you choose, retaining the flexibility to evolve and develop in a way that works for you.
2. Open signals of trust from expert peer review
Unlike a preprint, a Reviewed Preprint combines research with its expert peer reviews and eLife Assessment, all of which are published openly. You can still expect the highest standards from our reviews, which are rigorous, constructive, and written by practising scientists for the benefit of authors and readers.
An eLife Assessment provides an evaluation of the research at the top of each article, and uses a standardised vocabulary to explain simply and concisely the significance of the work and the strength of the evidence.
Together, these provide a stamp of trust that helps peers, evaluators, and institutions assess your work with confidence. This approach emphasises the scientific content of individual articles rather than journal name.
We also publish authors’ responses, allowing you to add context or address reviewer comments before preparing any revisions.
Publishing at eLife is the best publication process I had so far: transparent, fast, thoughtful reviews and editorial consideration [...] The assessment and reviews are very fair.
Gabriel Weindel on Mastodon
3. Less uncertainty with freedom over revisions
At eLife, there are no hoops for you to jump through to get your Reviewed Preprint accepted after peer review. We don’t believe in binary publishing decisions as a tool for assessing research and researchers. Rather, we want readers to engage with the strengths and weaknesses of research, guided by our expert eLife Assessments. We have replaced journal-level accept–reject decisions with these article-level assessments. This means if we invite your work to be reviewed, you know your Reviewed Preprint will be published.
Unlike traditional journals, reviewer feedback at eLife is intended to strengthen the work, not determine whether it is acceptable for a particular journal. We also recognise that there are valid reasons why authors may not be able to implement every suggestion. With eLife, you have the freedom to revise as you see fit.
If you decide to revise, we will update your Reviewed Preprint and eLife Assessment, and keep a citable and navigable log of past versions connected by an umbrella DOI, allowing the community to engage with the scientific discourse fully.
A screenshot from a research article published in eLife showing a navigable log of its versions and revisions.
At any point following peer review and assessment, you can choose to publish your article as a regular journal article (the VOR) to mark the end of the review and publication process. While an increasing number of funders are recognising reviewed preprints in research assessment, a VOR is more widely indexed and meets the requirements of funders and institutions that continue to insist on one.
"Your model absolutely rocks. We are preparing final revisions for our reviewed preprint, and it's so refreshing not to be under huge amount of stress because of a deadline, potential further revisions, or even rejections.”
Victor Tatarskiy on Bluesky
Through Reviewed Preprints, valuable scientific discourse that typically happens behind closed doors is brought into the light for the benefit of the whole research community. The eLife Model gives you the flexibility to focus on improving your work without the threat of rejection. Article-level eLife Assessments, together with public peer reviews, are more transparent, more informative, and stop wasted peer-review activity. They enable others to build upon and assess your work with confidence, accelerating your contributions to science and to your career.
