Scientific Publishing: How and why eLife selects papers for peer review | eLife

"eLife is working to promote a culture in which the actual content of a paper is more important than the name of the journal in which it is published. A culture in which scientific research is first disseminated as a preprint and then assessed and evaluated in depth by experts. This is why papers published in eLife include the preprint itself, an eLife assessment and Public Reviews written by the editor and reviewers, and a response from the authors (if available).

By making the views of expert editors and reviewers an integral part of the published paper, we hope to improve the way that scientific research is assessed and evaluated. Where readers are experts, they can assess the work for themselves. If not, they can rely on our Public Reviews, which go into the strengths and weaknesses of the paper in detail. And if they require a concise critique, they can read the eLife assessment, which summarises the significance of the findings reported in the paper (on a scale ranging from useful to landmark) and the strength of the evidence (inadequate to exceptional).

This approach of moving beyond binary accept/reject decisions and more fully conveying the views of expert reviewers has many advantages. It helps those who have to evaluate researchers and their work to make better-informed decisions about funding, hiring and promotion. It means that reviewers cannot prevent the publication of a paper that has been selected for peer review, which allows authors to engage more freely with reviewers during the revision process, without worrying about having to start over at a new journal. It also ensures that comments from the reviewers are valued as an integral part of the scientific literature. Overall, this approach enables the rapid and scholarly dissemination of new scientific knowledge in a way that permits the views and constructive criticisms of expert reviewers to be openly considered by both authors and readers. More information is available on the eLife website: elifesciences.org/about/peer-review.

If this is what we want, why do we only review some papers and not others?..."