eLife APC and Open Access: The Unique Publish-Then-Review Model and What It Costs

In January 2023, eLife switched to a "publish, review, curate" model. Here's what that means:

1. You submit a preprint (usually already posted on bioRxiv or medRxiv).
2. eLife editors screen it. If it passes, it enters peer review. You're charged £2,000.
3. Reviewers evaluate the paper. Their reviews are published publicly alongside the paper.
4. An editorial assessment is written. This summarizes the significance and strength of evidence.
5. The paper is published as a "Reviewed Preprint" on the eLife website, with public reviews attached.
6. There is no accept or reject decision. The reviews and assessment speak for themselves.
7. You can revise and request re-assessment if you want, at no additional charge.

This is fundamentally different from every other major journal. There's no binary gate. Your paper is published with its reviews visible to the world, and readers decide how to weigh the evidence.

Because eLife no longer makes accept/reject decisions, Clarivate removed it from Journal Citation Reports in late 2024. The last reported impact factor was 6.4 (2023).

This matters because:

• Grant committees at some institutions still filter by IF
• Tenure review processes at many universities reference JCR rankings
• Some countries (particularly in Asia) tie career advancement directly to IF thresholds

If your career advancement depends on publishing in IF-bearing journals, eLife's model creates risk. If your institution evaluates research on its merits rather than journal prestige metrics, eLife becomes one of the best deals in publishing.

eLife's waiver policy is among the most generous in academic publishing:

• Automatic waivers for corresponding authors in lower-income countries (aligned with Research4Life eligibility)
• Partial waivers for financial hardship, available on request
• Institutional payment agreements with some universities and funders
• No questions asked: eLife states that inability to pay should never prevent publication

The journal's position is that the £2,000 fee funds the editorial infrastructure, but they don't want it to be a barrier. In practice, waiver approval rates are high.

eLife satisfies every major OA mandate. In fact, eLife was created specifically by three major funders (HHMI, Wellcome Trust, and Max Planck Society) to be a fully open, funder-compliant publishing platform. The irony is that the model has evolved beyond what some of those funders' internal evaluation processes can easily accommodate.

eLife works well for:

• Researchers at institutions that evaluate papers on merit, not journal brand
• Labs with limited budgets that can't afford $5,000-$12,000 APCs
• Authors who want their peer reviews to be transparent and public
• Work that benefits from preprint-first workflows (common in computational biology, genomics, neuroscience)
• HHMI, Wellcome, or Max Planck funded researchers (the founding funders)

Think carefully if:

• You need an IF-bearing journal for tenure, promotion, or grant renewal
• Your field (clinical medicine, for example) places heavy weight on traditional journal prestige
• You're uncomfortable with your peer reviews being published publicly
• Your institution's evaluation criteria specifically reference JCR quartile rankings

• No revision charges. If you revise your paper and request re-assessment, there's no additional fee.
• Preprint required. eLife strongly encourages (but doesn't strictly require) posting a preprint before submission. If you haven't posted to bioRxiv/medRxiv, factor in the time to do so.
• Public reviews can't be retracted. Once your paper enters review and reviews are published, those reviews are permanent. Even if you withdraw the paper, the reviews remain visible. Consider whether you're comfortable with this before submitting.
• Career risk varies by field. In computational biology and neuroscience, eLife publications carry weight. In clinical medicine, the lack of IF is a larger barrier.

eLife is best understood as a bet on the future of publishing. If you believe that transparent review and open access will eventually replace the traditional accept/reject model, publishing in eLife puts you on the right side of that transition. If you need traditional metrics for near-term career decisions, the safer options are PLOS Biology, EMBO Journal, or Nature Communications.

Before deciding where to submit, make sure your paper is ready for whichever level of scrutiny you're targeting. Run a free readiness scan to identify issues before they show up in peer review, whether that review is public or private.