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HomeNatureeLife gained’t reject papers as soon as they're beneath assessment — what...

eLife gained’t reject papers as soon as they’re beneath assessment — what researchers suppose

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The non-profit open-access journal eLife has launched a raft of modifications to the best way it publishes analysis. It would publish all papers that it sends for peer assessment, together with the reviewers’ reviews. The transfer, introduced final month, has had a combined reception.

“It is a important improvement for publishing as an entire,” says Bianca Kramer, an open science analyst at Sesame Open Science, a consultancy primarily based within the Netherlands. “It modifications the main focus of peer assessment from a gatekeeping train to an open evaluation of the standard of analysis.”

Others have expressed frustration, saying that eLife’s popularity will undergo if it stops rejecting papers on the premise of peer-review reviews.

“The present leaders at eLife have taken over one among my favorite scientific journals and killed it,” wrote Paul Bieniasz, a retrovirologist on the Rockefeller College in New York Metropolis, in a Instances Greater Schooling opinion piece on 28 October. “The numerous status loved by eLife, constructed on the selective publication of high-quality work offered by many laboratories, together with my very own, is being discarded.”

No extra rejections

The concept of constructing peer evaluations publicly obtainable shouldn’t be new. eLife itself has been publishing evaluations of papers it accepts and rejects since 2021 (additionally final yr, the journal started to mandate that any submitted analysis first be revealed as a preprint). Different publishers, such because the London-based platform F1000 Analysis, publish manuscripts instantly and later add peer-review reviews.

Underneath the earlier system, scientists paid US$3000 to publish in eLife, however this has now been decreased to US$2000. And in accordance with a 20 October editorial saying the modifications, the journal “will not make settle for/reject selections following peer assessment”. As an alternative, it should publish each manuscript that has been despatched for peer assessment, alongside reviews from the reviewers. The paper will probably be accompanied by an eLife evaluation to provide readers a way of the work’s significance (this ingredient units the mannequin aside from different post-publication peer-review techniques akin to F1000 Analysis).

After publication, authors can select whether or not to make the modifications prompt by the reviewers and resubmit the work to eLife or to ship it for assessment at one other journal. Every iteration of the reviewed preprint will obtain its personal digital object identifier (DOI), the distinctive string of numbers and letters assigned to analysis articles for referencing. A separate, ‘umbrella’ DOI may also be assigned to the paper and stay with it all through the method. At any level, the authors can designate a particular model because the model of report — roughly equal to the ultimate revealed paper in a standard journal.

The modifications will come into impact instantly and can turn into the one choice for researchers wishing to publish in eLife from January 2023.

Pace and scrutiny

eLife says that its new system will drastically velocity up the publishing course of and save authors from a months-long wait to see whether or not their work passes peer assessment. “It’s the immediacy of preprints with the scrutiny of peer assessment,” stated eLife’s govt editor, Damian Pattinson, at a press convention saying the modifications in October.

Richard Sever, who co-founded the bioRxiv and medRxiv preprint servers which are utilized by eLife, says that the modifications will power researchers to confront the extensively held concept that the title of the journal that publishes analysis is a proxy for the standard of papers. “One factor it should attempt to cease individuals doing is that this bean-counter method. For instance, considering somebody has three papers in eLife so that they should be good.” Researchers will now must learn the work and accompanying evaluations to see whether or not it’s credible, he says.

Kramer says that the worth for researchers of publishing in eLife remains to be “very a lot tied to the journal model”, with the popularity now “being constructed on the standard of peer assessment somewhat than on selectivity”. “Will probably be attention-grabbing to see how authors will reply,” she provides.

There are lots of positives to the journal’s “daring” modifications, wrote Sophien Kamoun, a biologist on the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, UK, in a weblog publish. “It places working scientists in charge of the publishing course of,” he wrote. He added that the journal publish selections about preprints which are submitted however not despatched for peer assessment. “Desk reject selections ought to be open and clear.”

Others have pushed again in opposition to the proposed modifications “Individuals will use proxies like status of the establishment and of the scientist/lab to find out what they consider a paper,” tweeted Man Tanentzpaf, a cell and developmental biologist on the College of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. “It will drawback decrease status institutes and early profession scientists.”

In his opinion article, Bieniasz accused the writer of a “bait and change” for authors who constructed up eLife’s popularity by publishing their finest work within the journal. He added that his eighth paper, which is at the moment beneath assessment at eLife, will probably be his final revealed there.

Pattinson says that the brand new mannequin shouldn’t be a bait and change. “We have now all the time been an progressive writer aiming to remodel the science-publishing system. After ten years of this work, we really feel the system won’t ever change until there are viable options which are obtainable to authors and, till now, these have been few and much between,” he says.

“We all know researchers worth high-quality peer assessment and editor-led evaluation, however they’ve probably not been in a position to entry these providers with out collaborating within the journal system,” Pattinson provides. “Now they will.”



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