eLife Submission Guide: No Impact Factor, 15% Acceptance Rate & $2,000 APC Explained

In 2023, eLife did something no major journal had done before: it voluntarily gave up its impact factor. The editors asked Clarivate to stop calculating it and announced the journal would assess papers on scientific merit, not metrics.

For researchers deciding where to submit, this raises practical questions. Is eLife still worth submitting to? How do tenure committees view IF-free journals? What does the review process actually look like now?

What eLife actually does now

eLife runs what it calls a reviewed preprint model:

1. You submit your manuscript
2. Editors decide whether to send it for review (this is the 15% filter)
3. If sent for review, your paper is posted as a preprint on bioRxiv simultaneously with review
4. Reviewers write public reports, which are posted regardless of outcome
5. The editors write a public assessment using structured language ("landmark", "valuable", "useful", "solid", "incomplete", "inadequate")
6. You can revise and resubmit, or take your paper and the reviewer reports to another journal

The big difference from traditional journals: even papers that dont get accepted receive public peer review, which can be used for submission elsewhere.

The impact factor situation

eLife last had an official JIF of 6.4 in 2022. It requested removal from JIF calculations starting in 2023. Clarivate agreed and stopped calculating it.

For practical purposes:

• An eLife paper will not contribute to a journals JIF calculation
• Citation counts for eLife papers are still tracked (Scopus, Google Scholar, Web of Science)
• eLife papers remain highly cited in their fields: the underlying science quality hasnt changed
• The journal is still indexed in PubMed and all major databases

Is eLife still worth submitting to?

It depends on your career stage and institution.

Early-career researchers: Be cautious. Some tenure committees at traditional research universities still use JIF as a proxy. An eLife paper where a cell biology paper in Nature Communications or Cell Reports would have been clearer for your file is a real consideration. Ask your department chair or mentor explicitly.

Established researchers: Less of a concern. Your body of work speaks for itself, and an eLife paper in your field is well understood by colleagues.

Where eLife excels: Cell biology, developmental biology, neuroscience, genetics, genomics, and computational biology. The journal publishes excellent work in these areas and is read widely.

Where it matters less: Clinical medicine, public health, and fields where JIF-based metrics dominate grant review. A Nature Medicine or NEJM paper carries more institutional weight in those fields.

What the 15% acceptance rate means

The 15% acceptance rate is the fraction of all submissions that receive a positive assessment through the full process. It breaks down roughly as:

• ~50-60% of submissions are rejected without external review (editorial assessment)
• ~40% go to external peer review
• Of those, ~30-35% receive a positive assessment

The editorial bar is high. eLife editors want conceptually significant work in biology and medicine. Incremental studies, narrow specialist interest, and work without clear mechanistic contribution tend to be rejected at the editorial stage.

What eLife editors look for

Conceptual advance: eLife explicitly values papers that advance understanding of biological mechanisms, not just accumulate more data points. The question editors ask: does this change how we think about something?

Methodological rigor: eLife has high standards for statistics and reproducibility. Power analyses, appropriate controls, and transparent reporting are expected.

Broad biological interest: Papers should interest researchers beyond a narrow specialist audience. A genetics paper relevant only to researchers working on one specific pathway is a harder sell.

The APC structure

eLife charges $2,000 APC: but only if your paper receives a positive assessment. If your paper goes through review and receives a negative assessment, you are not charged.

This is unusual and worth noting: the financial risk is lower than journals that charge regardless of outcome. You pay $2,000 only if the journal is essentially accepting your work.

Waiver policy: researchers from low-income countries (World Bank Group D and lower) are fully waived. Partial waivers are available on demonstrated financial need.

eLife vs comparable journals

For strong biology/biomedical work where the authors are not constrained by IF requirements, eLife is competitive. The combination of public peer review, reasonable APC, and field prestige makes it a genuine choice: just not for everyone.

See the complete eLife journal page for acceptance rate, APC details, and submission stats.

Deciding whether eLife is the right fit? Pre-submission review gives you an honest assessment of whether the work meets the journal's conceptual bar. Get in touch.

The submission process step by step

Submitting to eLife is more involved than most journals. Here's the sequence:

1. Create an eJP account at submit.elifesciences.org. This is eLife's own submission system, not Editorial Manager.
2. Choose an article type. Research Article is standard. Short Report is for focused single-finding papers (max 4 figures). Research Advance builds on a previously published eLife paper.
3. Upload your cover letter. This is important at eLife. Editors read it carefully and use it to assess whether to send for consulted review. Explain the conceptual advance specifically: not vaguely.
4. Suggest reviewing editors. eLife uses a public list of reviewing editors. You can suggest editors you think have relevant expertise. These suggestions are often followed.
5. Complete the data availability form. eLife requires that all data supporting the paper be deposited in a recognized repository. Links required at submission, not just at acceptance.
6. Ethics and competing interests. Standard but strictly enforced. IRB/IACUC number, consent language, conflict of interest statement for all authors.

Timeline from submission to decision

The consulted review stage is unique to eLife. Before sending out for full review, the senior editor may consult with the reviewing editor or a board member to assess whether the paper clears the conceptual advance bar. This adds 1-3 weeks but also means fewer papers are sent for full external review: reducing unnecessary reviewer burden.

Common reasons for rejection at eLife

Incremental advance. eLife's post-2022 model requires a clear conceptual advance beyond existing literature. Confirmatory studies, extensions to a new context without new mechanistic insight, or papers that verify a hypothesis without surprising findings get rejected at triage.

Preprint exists but hasn't been refined. Many researchers post to bioRxiv and then submit to eLife without significant manuscript improvement. Editors can see the preprint. If the bioRxiv version and submitted version are identical, that's a weak signal.

Significance claim doesn't match scope. Claiming broad significance for narrow findings. The eLife senior editors are experienced enough to identify the mismatch fast.

Data availability incomplete. A specific statement pointing to a real repository is required. "Data available on request" or "data provided as supplementary" without a repository deposit will hold up or reject your submission.

Practical submission checklist

• [ ] Conceptual advance is explicit in cover letter (not just a significance claim: what is new in how we understand biology?)
• [ ] Suggested reviewing editor identified from eLife's public editor list
• [ ] All data deposited in a recognized repository (Dryad, Zenodo, Figshare, NCBI, etc.) with live links
• [ ] Preprint (if exists) cited in cover letter; new version improved beyond preprint
• [ ] Article type selected correctly (Research Article vs. Short Report vs. Research Advance)
• [ ] Ethics documentation complete
• [ ] Author contributions complete (CREDIT taxonomy)
• [ ] Competing interests declared

Related resources

See our full eLife journal guide for acceptance rates, editorial scope, and how the new model compares to traditional journals. For submission strategy and manuscript preparation, see our expert pre-submission review.

• eLife impact factor guide: IF, what the post-2022 model change means for the metric
• PLOS ONE submission guide: the main alternative for open-access biology
• Cover letter templates: how to frame the conceptual advance for eLife
• Impact factor data from Clarivate Journal Citation Reports

The Bottom Line

eLife's no-rejection-after-peer-review model means the peer review process is your main hurdle. The consulted review is rigorous and transparent. The upside is that a good paper doesn't get buried in revision loops , the reviewers' comments are public, and the expectation is revision, not rejection.

Sources

• Journal official submission guidelines
• Author experience data compiled from journal tracker communities (SciRev, Researcher.Life)
• Editorial policies published on journal homepage
• Pre-Submission Checklist , 25-point audit before you submit

See also

• eLife Impact Factor 2026
• Is eLife a Good Journal?
• eLife vs PLOS ONE