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

In our pre-submission review work, eLife is where authors most often underestimate the reputational difference between private review and public review. A paper that might survive a traditional revise-and-resubmit cycle can still be the wrong eLife submission if the current evidence package would likely attract a public Assessment that feels cautious, incomplete, or limited in significance.

That is why this checklist has to be tougher than "is the paper good enough to submit somewhere?" eLife's own model says that every paper they review is published as a Reviewed Preprint, with the assessment and public reviews attached. So the right question is whether you want the current version of the paper to be judged in the open.

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 $2,000 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.

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.

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.