eLife Trialing Radical New Approach To Peer Review

By David Branigan for Intellectual Property Watch

eLife, an online publisher of research in the life and biomedical sciences, is trialing a radical new approach to peer review to increase editorial transparency and promote more efficient access to innovative new research.

According to the eLife website, “Having free and open access to the outcomes of research helps make achievements more visible, accessible and usable – ultimately accelerating discoveries and their applications.”

Below are the core elements of this new approach, as described in an eLife editorial by Mark Patterson and Randy Schekman:

• Once a research manuscript is invited for peer review, eLife commits to publishing it.
• Peer review reports and a statement from the editor are shared with the author, who writes a response.
• The author makes the final decision to move forward with publishing the manuscript.
• eLife publishes the manuscript along with the peer reviews, the statement from the editor and the response from the author.

“Potential benefits of the new approach include a reduced emphasis on journal brands in research evaluation, a rebalancing of the relationship between authors, editors and reviewers, and greater efficiencies in journal publishing,” according to the editorial.