According to eLife’s longtime supporter Paul Bieniasz, changes that pretend scientists don’t care about publishing in highly selective journals would terminate eLife’s critical role in publications related to Science.
The most esteemed and well-read peer-reviewed journals in the scientific field are where scientists prefer to publish their greatest work. The “big three” of the biological science—Cell, Nature, and Science (CNS)—are highly regarded.
Sadly, but unavoidably, repeated rejection is a cost of having access to these coveted and extremely selective publication places. Many successful but dissatisfied biologists have a tale to tell about an editor who seemed ignorant or a malicious peer reviewer who unjustly prevented the publication of their Nobel-worthy submission in CNS.
Science is not benefited by destroying eLife’s reputation for selectivity
More significantly, when unable to come to a clear “accept or reject” conclusion, CNS editors and reviewers have formed the irritating habit of demanding vast volumes of additional experimental work as a requirement for publication. As a result, there were and still are many concerns about CNS judgments and peer review. Even yet, CNS has regularly reported significant findings, and publication therein continues to be highly sought after, while the newspaper’s publishers reap enormous profits from charging excessive subscription prices.
A little over ten years ago, Robert Tjian, the then-president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), announced plans for a new publication of science that would challenge the dominance of the big three. I was there at the gathering of HHMI scientists at that time. HHMI would support eLife, a journal that would publish work in “the top tier of life science,” along with the Wellcome Trust and the Max Planck Institute. eLife would be blatantly exclusive and extremely picky. The opening editorial of eLife stated, “We invite you to select eLife as a preferred forum for the publication of your best work.”
However, eLife would differ from CNS in two crucial respects.
Science is not benefited by destroying eLife’s reputation for selectivity
First, it would follow the increasingly well-liked open-access publication paradigm and be free for readers. Second, eLife would alter the process of peer review. Editors would be active scientists chosen for their competence in a particular topic. Reviewers would discuss manuscripts and work with editors to reach accept or reject decisions, providing a short list of manuscript adjustments as needed. Reviewers would be anonymous to one another but would know each other’s identities.
Anonymous reviewer sabotage and several months of reviewer-imposed experimentation would be eliminated. In other words, eLife would offer a careful, unbiased, and kind review process. Many people who frequently suffered at the dictatorial whims of CNS reviewers and editors found the model to be fascinating and alluring.
Even though eLife was never able to unseat the main three journals, it did achieve and gain recognition. Seven studies from my lab were published in eLife over the years. I shared the opinion of many others when I said that eLife was the place to publish research that showcased our greatest work but wasn’t quite showy enough for the editors of CNS.
We backed eLife because it had the most impartial peer review of any scientific journal, but also because publication in eLife came with a seal of approval and recognition. In fact, a few of the eLife papers my colleagues and I published served as launching pads for team members to win elusive academic positions and establish independent research labs. It is an uncomfortable reality, but one that must be avoided.
Now that eLife is being led by new people, things are changing. Most crucially, eLife leaders are offering to publish every submission that can pass a brief editorial screen rather than sticking with the conventional binary “accept vs reject” publication choice approach (although there is significant uncertainty about how much initial gatekeeping editors will do). Manuscripts, reviewer comments, and an editor’s description of them will all be placed online. The editor’s summary will also contain a list of common keywords in bold fonts, such as “important,” “solid,” and “inadequate,” that essentially functions as a grading system.
Descriptors that even remotely communicate the idea that something “should be rejected” are conspicuously absent from the list of common buzzwords. The choice of whether and how an author responds to a critic is theirs.
It’s a novel method of publishing research that has some advantages and advocates. However, I find it difficult to perceive eLife’s modifications as anything other than its doom.
For all the authors who have long backed the expansion of eLife as a “preferred venue for the publication of your greatest work,” the modifications are comparable to a “bait and switch.” The enormous prestige that eLife formerly held—built on the selective publication of excellent research from numerous laboratories, including mine—is now being abandoned.
It wasn’t necessary that way. With their innovative “no rejection” publishing methodology, the eLife leaders might have simply launched a unique spin-off journal. Scientist-authors had the option of voting with their feet if that model was what they preferred.
However, it is obvious that the eLife leadership doesn’t just want to build a new publishing model; they want to obliterate the conventional one because they are self-assured that they know what is best for us. They contend that the reputations of scientific journals have become an unwarranted barometer of the caliber of the papers they publish. They do have a very small tip.
The title of the journal does, however, give a somewhat accurate sense of the level of scientific rigor of the articles that are published there. As a result, eLife contributed to the creation of opportunity by offering a further prominent setting where excellent science can be fairly assessed, published, and promoted as well as professions begun. The publishing of the Science industry complex is flawed in many ways, but eLife in its original form is not one of them.
In the end, one of my favorite scientific journals has been murdered by the current eLife management. eLife is now reviewing our seventh paper. It’s going to be our last.
