eLife Pre-Submission Checklist: Is Your Paper Ready for the Reviewed Preprint Model?

Across Manusights submission reviews for manuscripts authors are weighing for eLife, the reviewed-preprint model changes which weaknesses matter, because the assessment and reviews are published in the open. Each pattern below names the manuscript component where we see the risk surface, so you can test your own draft before you submit into a public process.

Abstract that promises more than the evidence shows: The abstract claims an "important" or "fundamental" advance, but the evidence package would more likely draw a "useful" significance and "incomplete" evidence Assessment. At a traditional journal this gets fixed privately in revision; at eLife the mismatch is judged in public, so the abstract has to be calibrated to what the data can actually support before submission.

Figures and data a public reviewer could not reproduce: The figures lack the statistical annotations, controls, or scale bars a skeptical reader needs, or the underlying data and code are not deposited in a public repository with a DOI. Because the reviewed-preprint model expects readers to build on the work immediately, a figure or data gap that a private reviewer might overlook becomes a visible weakness in the public record.

Methods and statistics below the reproducibility bar: The methods omit software versions, parameters, or a sample-size justification, and the statistics do not match the data structure. eLife reviewers are thorough, and a thin methods or statistics section is exactly what a public review will name, so the reproducibility trail has to be complete before the paper enters the screen.

The common thread is that eLife's transparency raises the cost of every weakness that a traditional revise-and-resubmit cycle would have hidden. When we flag an eLife-bound manuscript, it is almost always because the abstract, figures, data, methods, or statistics are not yet ready to be judged in the open, even when the same paper might have survived a conventional private review.

The right question for this checklist is not "is the paper good enough to submit somewhere?" but "do you want the current version judged in public with an eLife Assessment attached?"

1. Is the manuscript posted as a preprint (or are you ready to post one)?

ELife only reviews papers that are available as preprints. If you have not posted to bioRxiv, medRxiv, or another preprint server, you must be willing to do so during submission. This is not optional. The entire publish-review-curate model depends on the work being publicly available.

2. Are you comfortable with public peer review?

This is the most important question. At eLife, the reviewer feedback, the eLife Assessment, and the public review summary are all published alongside your Reviewed Preprint. If reviewers find the evidence incomplete or the significance limited, that assessment is visible to anyone who reads the paper. Consider whether this transparency serves your career at this stage.

3. Does the paper report findings that are significant within your field?

ELife's editorial screen rejects 80 to 85% of submissions. Editors aim to review papers that report results significant within a particular field or of broad interest. The bar is high but different from Nature: eLife values significance within a field, not cross-disciplinary breadth.

4. Is the evidence package strong enough for a favorable Assessment?

The eLife Assessment evaluates two dimensions: significance of findings (landmark, fundamental, important, valuable, useful) and strength of evidence (exceptional, compelling, convincing, solid, incomplete). A paper with "incomplete" evidence and "useful" significance will receive a published Assessment that is not flattering. Make sure the evidence supports the strongest possible Assessment before submitting.

5. Are data and code publicly available?

ELife expects full data transparency. Raw data should be deposited in appropriate repositories. Code should be in public repositories with DOIs. The preprint model makes data availability even more important because readers will try to evaluate and build on the work immediately.

6. Is the methodology fully described?

ELife reviewers are thorough. Methods must be detailed enough for reproduction. Software versions, analysis parameters, and experimental protocols should be complete.

7. Are ethics approvals documented?

Standard requirements: IRB approval for human subjects, IACUC for animal research, both stated in the methods section.

8. Are you prepared for the $3,000 fee?

ELife currently lists a $3,000 publication fee when the paper is reviewed and published as a Reviewed Preprint. This covers the reviewed-preprint publication process and related editorial handling. Fee waivers are available for authors who cannot pay.

ELife does not use Nature's Reporting Summary or Cell's STAR Methods structure. Instead, it requires a Transparent Reporting Form and expects authors to follow the community reporting standard that matches the study type: CONSORT for randomized trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews, and ARRIVE for animal work. Before submission, complete the relevant checklist and confirm that the statistics, the sample-size justification, and the data-availability statement are ready.

Every one of these becomes part of the public Reviewed Preprint record if the paper is reviewed, so a missing or mismatched reporting standard is visible in a way it would not be at a traditional journal.

Check your eLife readiness automatically. The Manusights free scan evaluates your manuscript against eLife's editorial standards in about 1-2 minutes.

For deeper analysis, the eLife submission readiness check provides verified citations, figure-level feedback, and journal-specific calibration. Given eLife's public review model, ensuring citation accuracy and figure quality before submission is especially important because any issues identified by reviewers will be publicly visible.

Before a paper reaches public review, the editorial screen filters 80-85% of submissions. The patterns we see most often:

Significance pitched too narrow: the work is sound but reads as incremental within the subfield, so it would attract a "useful" rather than an "important" Assessment.

Evidence package with a visible gap: one missing control or one obvious follow-up experiment that a public review would flag as "incomplete."

Data or code not deposited: the reviewed-preprint model expects readers to evaluate and build on the work immediately, so a missing repository deposit is a screen-stage problem, not a revision-stage one.

Methods not reproducible from the page: software versions, parameters, or protocols missing, which a public review record would expose.

Reporting standard absent: the relevant CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, or ARRIVE checklist and the Transparent Reporting Form are not completed before submission.

After review, eLife publishes an Assessment using standardized terms:

Aim for "Important" or higher significance and "Convincing" or higher evidence strength. A paper assessed as "Useful" with "Incomplete" evidence has a permanent public record of that evaluation.

ELife does not reject papers after peer review. Every reviewed article is published as a Reviewed Preprint with an eLife Assessment rating significance and evidence strength. This means pre-submission preparation focuses on surviving initial editorial screening, not the traditional accept/reject binary.

The eLife Assessment uses specific language: findings rated "landmark" to "useful," evidence rated "exceptional" to "incomplete." Your pre-submission goal is to ensure your evidence package supports a "convincing" or "compelling" rating, not just to avoid rejection.

ELife lost its Journal Impact Factor over this model change. Check whether your institution's evaluation framework accepts eLife publications without an IF before targeting this venue.

A eLife submission readiness check evaluates readiness for eLife's editorial screening.