Is eLife a Good Journal? The Publish-Then-Review Experiment Explained

In October 2022, eLife stopped making traditional accept/reject decisions. Under the new model:

1. You submit a paper
2. Editors assess whether it's in scope for eLife
3. If in scope, the paper is published immediately as a "Reviewed Preprint" with a DOI
4. Reviewers assess it publicly, their reviews and ratings are published alongside the paper
5. You can revise based on reviews; the revised version is also published
6. There is no accept or reject. The paper stays published regardless of what reviewers say

This is fundamentally different from every other major journal. The result: eLife publishes more papers than before (no rejection filter), the IF dropped from 8.7 to 6.4, and the community is split on whether this is the future of publishing or an experiment that damaged a formerly elite journal.

The upside:

• No desk rejection. If your paper is in scope, it gets published
• Public peer review provides genuine accountability, reviewers sign their names
• Fast publication without months-long review cycles
• The science published in eLife is often excellent, many papers come from leading labs
• $3,000 APC is lower than Nature Communications ($7,350) or Cell Reports ($5,450)

The downside:

• IF dropped from 8.7 to 6.4, matters at institutions using IF thresholds
• "Published in eLife" no longer means "accepted after selective peer review"
• Some hiring committees are confused about what eLife publication means under the new model
• Harsh public reviews are permanently attached to your paper

At progressive institutions that value open science and preprint culture: eLife is well-regarded. The funder backing (HHMI, Wellcome, Max Planck) carries weight.

At traditional institutions using IF thresholds: the new model creates friction. "Published as a Reviewed Preprint" is harder to explain than "Accepted in Journal of Cell Biology."

In preprint-friendly fields (genomics, computational biology, neuroscience): eLife's model feels natural. In fields without preprint norms (clinical medicine, materials science): it feels foreign.

In our pre-submission review work with manuscripts targeting eLife, three patterns generate the most consistent mismatch decisions among the papers we analyze.

Scope misidentification from legacy reputation. eLife's author guidelines specify that submissions must be "of interest to scientists in at least two of eLife's subject areas." We see manuscripts that were clearly targeted at eLife's pre-2022 identity as an elite selective journal, when the journal now operates on a fundamentally different model. The scope check still applies: in-scope papers get published, out-of-scope papers are returned. Authors who do not update their mental model of eLife are surprised when scope decisions do not match the outcomes they expected at the old journal.

Incomplete internal logic for the new review framework. Under the publish-then-review model, eLife's assessments use specific ratings: "landmark," "fundamental," "important," "valuable," or "useful" for significance, and "exceptional," "compelling," "convincing," "solid," or "incomplete" for evidence strength. SciRev author reports since 2022 show that papers receiving "incomplete" evidence ratings stay published but carry that signal permanently. We observe that manuscripts with single-model evidence or missing mechanistic controls receive this rating predictably. A paper that would have been sent for major revision at a traditional journal instead gets published with a permanently attached "incomplete evidence" assessment.

Career-context mismatch. eLife's guidelines do not restrict who can submit, but the career implications of publication differ dramatically by institutional context. We find manuscripts from authors at institutions using JCR impact factor thresholds for tenure or promotion, where the eLife model creates genuine complications: no current JCR IF, no traditional acceptance letter, and the need to explain a "Reviewed Preprint" to committees unfamiliar with the model. This is not a scientific problem, but it is a real submission-strategy problem that the journal's own documentation does not fully address.

SciRev author-reported data on eLife's review timeline shows faster first decisions than traditional journals, typically within 2-4 weeks of initial screening. A eLife evidence structure and assessment rating check can assess whether your paper's evidence structure would receive a "convincing" or better eLife assessment rating.

eLife's previous impact factor was approximately 7.7 (2023 JCR), but the JCR 2024 edition reports N/A for all metrics, impact factor, JCI, and quartile rankings are all absent. This is almost certainly a consequence of the reviewed-preprint model transition: when a journal stops issuing traditional accept/reject decisions, the citation accounting that underpins impact factor calculations doesn't work the same way. The IF 6.4 referenced on this page comes from earlier JCR data and may not appear in future editions. If your institution or funder requires a current JCR impact factor, eLife can't provide one right now.

For the latest editorial policies, see eLife's publishing model page.

Last verified: eLife editorial policies and JCR 2024 data (released June 2025) checked April 2026.

eLife eliminated the traditional accept/reject decision after peer review. Since 2023, every article that passes initial editorial screening and peer review is published as a Reviewed Preprint on the eLife website, accompanied by reviewer feedback, an author response, and an eLife Assessment summarizing significance and evidence strength.

This means eLife does not reject papers after peer review. It publishes them with transparent quality signals. The eLife Assessment rates findings as "landmark," "fundamental," "important," "valuable," or "useful", and rates evidence strength as "exceptional," "compelling," "convincing," "solid," or "incomplete."

The trade-off: eLife lost its Journal Impact Factor over this model change (Web of Science delisted it). This means eLife papers may not count in IF-based evaluation frameworks at some institutions. However, the journal remains highly respected in biology, and many researchers view the transparent model as the future of scientific publishing.

Top subject areas: Neuroscience, Cell Biology, Microbiology, Genetics, Immunology. APC: ~$3,000 (mandatory OA).

An eLife submission readiness check scores desk-reject risk.