eLife Impact Factor

eLife withdrew from Clarivate JCR in 2023. IF is the last available estimate. APC and model data from eLife editorial disclosures.

eLife announced in 2023 that it would no longer participate in Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports. The decision was part of a broader shift in the journal's editorial philosophy. eLife moved to a "publish, then review" model where all submissions that pass initial screening are published as preprints with attached reviews, rather than going through a traditional accept/reject gate.

Under this model, the concept of a selective impact factor becomes structurally incompatible with the journal's goals. The JIF rewards selectivity (fewer published papers with high citations each), and eLife deliberately moved away from selectivity as a value.

This wasn't a case of a journal losing its JIF because of quality problems. eLife chose to leave. The distinction matters because some researchers see "no impact factor" and assume the journal has been delisted or downgraded, which isn't what happened here.

The last widely reported JIF for eLife was around 7.6, recorded in the JCR 2022 cycle. In the years before withdrawal, eLife's impact factor had been trending in the 6.0 to 8.7 range, placing it comfortably in Q1 for biology and multidisciplinary science categories.

Those numbers put pre-withdrawal eLife in roughly the same citation tier as journals like EMBO Journal (8.3), PNAS (9.1), and PLoS Biology (7.2). It was never competing with Nature or Cell on raw citation density, but it was a respected upper-tier venue for life sciences.

Since leaving JCR, eLife has leaned on alternative metrics to communicate the reach of its papers:

• Downloads and page views as indicators of readership
• Citation counts from Crossref, Scopus, and Google Scholar (these still exist regardless of JCR participation)
• Altmetric scores tracking social media, news, and policy mentions
• Review transparency through publicly visible peer review alongside each paper

The idea is that individual paper metrics matter more than a single journal-level number. Whether you agree with that philosophy or not, the practical reality is that eLife papers are still indexed in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. They still accumulate citations. The papers don't become invisible just because the journal left JCR.

In our pre-submission review work with life-sciences manuscripts considering eLife, three patterns come up consistently:

The "no desk rejection = easier acceptance" misconception. Authors sometimes choose eLife because the reviewed preprint model appears to guarantee that every paper gets a fair hearing. That's not quite accurate. eLife still has an editorial triage step that determines whether a submission receives full peer review. Papers that don't pass that triage are returned without review, they just get returned faster. The meaningful acceptance rate for papers that enter the full reviewed-preprint process is still selective, and the bar for what receives review hasn't changed because the model changed.

The public review record problem for early-career researchers. Under eLife's model, the peer review reports are published alongside the paper. For a strong paper with constructive reviews, this is a feature. For a paper that required substantial revision or attracted pointed criticism (even if ultimately published) the review history becomes part of the permanent public record. Job candidates applying to faculty positions or researchers seeking grants may find that hiring committees and reviewers look at the attached reviews alongside the paper itself. Authors who don't consider this exposure in advance sometimes find it uncomfortable in ways a traditional journal wouldn't create.

Submitting for the wrong reason. eLife does its best work as a target for papers where the open peer review, fast publication, and transparent editorial process are genuine advantages for the science. Papers submitted primarily because the JIF question is awkward, or because authors want to avoid traditional peer review dynamics, tend to have a harder experience. The journal's editorial culture expects authors who are actually invested in the transparent review model. Submitting because it seems easier than a traditional journal is usually a miscalculation.

There are a few practical reasons this query persists:

Promotion and tenure committees. Many institutional evaluation committees still use journal-level impact factors when assessing publication records. A journal with no JIF can create friction in these conversations, even if the papers themselves are well-cited.

Grant applications. Some funding bodies ask applicants to list journal impact factors alongside publications. Without a number, researchers need to explain the gap or provide alternative evidence of quality.

Lab shortlisting. When building a submission target list, most researchers filter by impact factor. A journal that doesn't appear in JCR simply drops off these lists by default.

Peer comparison. Early-career researchers comparing their own publication record to competitors' often use JIF as a quick proxy. eLife's absence from that ranking makes the comparison less straightforward.

These are real constraints. The ideological case for abandoning impact factors is one thing; the practical reality of academic hiring and funding committees is another.

Submit if:

• Your paper is strong life-sciences research that benefits from open peer review
• You value transparency and speed over traditional prestige signaling
• Your institution or field accepts alternative metrics and doesn't penalize missing JIF
• The work fits eLife's scope (life sciences, broadly defined)

Think twice if:

• Your tenure case or grant depends on journal-level impact factors
• Colleagues in your subfield don't recognize eLife as a top-tier target
• You need the JIF number for institutional reporting requirements
• The publish-then-review model creates uncertainty about how the final version is perceived

A eLife vs traditional journal fit check can help you decide whether eLife's editorial model works for your specific paper and career context, or whether a more traditional venue is the smarter strategic choice.

eLife's withdrawal from JCR is part of a broader movement in academic publishing (DORA, CoALition S, Plan S) pushing back against journal-level metrics as proxies for research quality. Whether that movement succeeds at the institutional level is still unclear. For now, many researchers live in a hybrid world where alternative metrics are respected in principle but impact factors still dominate in practice.

The honest read is this: eLife publishes strong science. The papers are indexed, citable, and discoverable. But the lack of a JIF creates real friction for authors in systems that still rely on journal-level metrics. You should make the decision based on your own institutional context, not just on whether the journal's philosophy aligns with yours.

For eLife, this page exists to answer a practical problem: many authors still need to compare a journal with no current JIF against journals that hiring committees and grant reviewers can rank instantly. That means the right use of the page is not to force a fake replacement number. It is to help you decide whether eLife's model, visibility, and article-level discoverability are enough for your situation.

If your field or institution still leans heavily on journal-level metrics, the missing JIF creates real friction. If your priority is transparent review, open discussion, and a life-sciences audience that recognizes eLife on its own terms, the lack of a listed JIF may matter much less.

Before eLife left JCR, the journal's citation profile lived in the upper-single-digit range and then stopped being listed because the journal changed its model, not because the papers stopped being visible. That trend matters because it reminds authors that the missing metric is a policy choice layered on top of a still-citable journal, not evidence that the venue became academically invisible.

• eLife submission guide
• eLife submission process
• eLife review time
• Is eLife a good journal?