eLife 'Under Review': What Each Status Means and When to Expect a Decision

Before the paper enters the eLife review process, an eLife handling editor evaluates whether the work warrants the eLife review process and public Reviewed Preprint publication. Roughly 60 to 70 percent of submissions are rejected at this editorial-screening stage. A rejection at screening most often means the handling editor concluded that the work is outside eLife's editorial scope or that the methodology is insufficient to warrant public reviewer evaluation. Papers that pass screening enter the Reviewed Preprint pipeline, with no second-round accept/reject decision after review under the Reviewed Preprint model.

The eLife editorial office confirms files are complete: manuscript with figures embedded, supplementary information separate, reporting checklists where applicable (ARRIVE for animal work, MIQE for quantitative PCR, CONSORT for any clinical-trial component), cover letter directed to the editor, conflict-of-interest declarations, ethics-statement documentation, IACUC approval for vertebrate animal work, and data-availability statement.

The handling editor reads the paper and evaluates eLife scope fit, methodological soundness, and whether the work warrants the eLife review process. Editorial screening is the only gating decision under the Reviewed Preprint model: papers that pass screening publish as Reviewed Preprints regardless of subsequent reviewer evaluation.

In parallel with the handling editor's primary read, ambiguous-fit papers are discussed at the eLife editor meeting. This editorial-team discussion runs alongside the screening and adds 3 to 5 days to the timeline that is invisible to the author in the portal.

eLife handling editors typically invite 2 to 3 external reviewers. The recruitment window can take 7 to 14 days because reviewers willing to participate in the collaborative-assessment writing process required by the Reviewed Preprint model are scarcer than reviewers for traditional accept/reject review.

Once reviewers agree to review, the typical eLife peer-review cycle lasts 4 to 8 weeks. The reviewers produce individual reports and then collaboratively write the eLife Assessment and Public Review Summary that becomes part of the public Reviewed Preprint. This collaborative-writing phase is distinctive to eLife and extends the review window compared to traditional journals where reviewer reports are simply forwarded to the editor.

Once you have received the eLife Assessment and public reviews, you have two weeks before the Reviewed Preprint is published. You can use this time to raise concerns about any factual errors or provide a provisional author response to accompany the first version of your Reviewed Preprint. Within about 2 weeks of review completion, eLife publishes the Reviewed Preprint on its website, including the paper, the eLife Assessment, public review summaries, and the author response (if provided). The Reviewed Preprint is a citable publication with a DOI.

• Rejection within 1 to 5 days: Administrative issue or immediate scope mismatch.
• Rejection within 1 to 2 weeks: Editorial screening rejection. Most rejections happen here.
• Still Under Review after 4 weeks: Strong signal. Paper passed editorial screening and is in active review.
• Still Under Review after 14 weeks: Past the 96-day median. A polite inquiry via the submission portal is appropriate.
• Status changes to "Reviewed Preprint Preparation": Reports are in; expect publication within 2 to 3 weeks.

This is the most common anxiety we hear from eLife authors during the active editorial window. The honest answer: no, 8 weeks at Under Review puts you mid-cycle in eLife's 96-day median submission-to-Reviewed-Preprint-publication timeline. Reports may already be in collaborative-assessment writing with the reviewers preparing the eLife Assessment and Public Review Summary. The collaborative-writing phase distinctive to eLife adds time that traditional accept/reject journals do not have. If the portal still says Under Review at the 12-week mark, the most likely explanation is that the reviewers are still in the collaborative-assessment writing phase or that one of the assigned reviewers asked for an extension. This is normal practice at eLife.

What you should NOT do during the 8-to-12-week window is email the editorial office. eLife handling editors are managing 30+ active papers; an inquiry at 8 weeks adds friction without accelerating the timeline.

If your eLife paper is rejected at editorial screening (before reviewer assignment), the natural cascade depends on the scope concern. For status-tracking guidance across publishers in general, the Cell Press author status portal gives a useful baseline for how to read status fields across Editorial Manager portals.

Communications Biology is a Nature Portfolio open-access cascade for broad-biology papers where the eLife scope concern is breadth. Nature Portfolio operates independently from eLife; the portal is at mts-commsbio.nature.com and editorial contact routes through commsbio@nature.com.

iScience is a Cell Press open-access cascade for broad-biology papers where Cell Press scope fits better than eLife's editorial focus. The Cell Press Editorial Manager portal at editorialmanager.com/iscience handles submission; editorial contact at iscience@cell.com.

PLOS Biology is a PLOS cascade for biology papers where the open-access publishing model + traditional accept/reject review is preferred over the Reviewed Preprint model.

bioRxiv direct posting is always available. eLife rejection at screening does not prevent posting to bioRxiv as a non-peer-reviewed preprint.

eLife asks reviewers to evaluate four things specifically, and then collaboratively write the eLife Assessment and Public Review Summary. The table below maps each to actionable preparation.

In our pre-submission work with eLife-targeted manuscripts, three named patterns generate the most consistent reviewer concerns under the Reviewed Preprint model and are the most common reasons papers miss the editorial-screening bar or trigger critical public reviewer reports.

Methods documentation gaps surface as public reviewer concerns. Under the Reviewed Preprint model, reviewer reports become public alongside the paper. When methods documentation is thin, reviewer concerns about reproducibility appear in the public record. The strongest manuscripts pre-empt these concerns with detailed methods documentation.

Narrow scope framing flagged at editorial screening. When the introduction frames the work too narrowly without broad-biology generalization, editorial screening rejection is common. The strongest manuscripts frame the introduction around eLife's broad-biology editorial scope.

Author-response window under-utilized. The 2-week author-response window before Reviewed Preprint publication is an opportunity to address reviewer concerns and shape public framing. The strongest Reviewed Preprints include thoughtful provisional author responses that address reviewer concerns proactively rather than dismissively.

This page was created from eLife's public author guidance at elifesciences.org/about/peer-review, eLife Reviewed Preprint model documentation including the 96-day 2025 median submission-to-publication timeline, the 2-week author-response window, and the collaborative-assessment writing process, and Manusights pre-submission review experience with eLife-targeted manuscripts.

For the broad-biology open-access landscape beyond eLife, see Cell Reports (Cell Press transparent peer review with traditional accept/reject), Communications Biology (Nature Portfolio open-access), iScience (Cell Press open-access), and PLOS Biology (PLOS open peer review). The choice across these titles depends on whether the central contribution is broad-biology under the Reviewed Preprint model (eLife), Cell Press traditional accept/reject (Cell Reports), Nature Portfolio open-access (Communications Biology), or PLOS publishing model (PLOS Biology).

Reviewers at eLife typically draw from one methodology-focused reviewer and one broader-biology specialist who can contribute to the collaborative eLife Assessment writing. Preparing a response template that addresses the public-record nature of eLife reviewer reports is essential.

For a pre-upload check of your manuscript against the eLife broad-biology editorial-screening bar before submission, our eLife pre-submission diagnostic flags the methods-documentation gaps and narrow-framing weaknesses most likely to surface in public reviewer reports.