eLife, a New Scholarly Communication System
by
Robin Peek
Posted On Jan 7, 2013
The launch of a new open entrance (OA) biography has spin hackneyed today. In fact, one would be astounded to find a new biography rising that was of a “traditional” focussed given a stream mood of educational libraries and their budgets. In Dec 2012, a new journal, eLife debuted and it is opposite adequate from a normal mode of erudite communication that merely job it a new biography does not unequivocally do it justice. The eLife Initiative is saved and overseen by a Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Max Planck Society, and a Wellcome Trust, all vital investigate funders. “Their idea is to rise an beginning in investigate communication whose primary proclivity is to offer a interests of science, and to catalyse widespread alleviation of a stream complement for disseminating and pity of new investigate findings.
The eLife biography (ISSN 2050-084X) is formed in Cambridge, U.K. (HighWire Press is indeed doing a mechanics of publishing). And while it is distinct many OA journals that get shouldered with a mostly inapt tag of “author-pays” open entrance journal, no supports are exchanged between a researcher and a biography while a biography is being determined though fees might be imposed after as other income streams are developed.
Over new years, there have been many open entrance journals launched and many of these have a same demeanour and government of a normal journals that came before. The “hybrid” journals, for example, merely container open entrance articles into a pre-existing normal journal. And, it can be reasoned that this was a protected proceed to benefit acceptance. In many ways, this is like a mid-1990s radical sea change as imitation shifted to digital journals and it seemed to make any bid to keep a digital knowledge scarcely matching to paper.
There are many facilities that eLife strives to accomplish, some-more than can be discussed in this article, though we offer a few of a highlights. The pattern of eLife makes many softened use of being an electronic middle than many journals (OA or not). Content is protected underneath a CC-BY license that permits unlimited use and redistribution, supposing that a strange author and source are credited. The calm is offering in HTML, PDF, and XML, a latter providing an softened ability for information mining, translation, and other reuses. This is a depart from a permissions given by many journals.
eLife is “a researcher-led digital announcement for superb work, a height to maximize a strech and change of new commentary and a showcase for new approaches for a display and comment of research.” Randy W. Schekman, an American dungeon biologist during a University of California, Berkeley and former editor-in-chief of Proceedings of a National Academy of Sciences, was announced in 2011 as a editor-in-chief of eLife, nonetheless substantial courtesy is given by eLife to a “over 200 of a world’s many gifted biomedical scientists” who are pivotal stakeholders in a journal’s slip and management.
Another pivotal underline that creates eLife singular is that it seeks to urge a edition knowledge for early-career researchers, as is remarkable on a website. “We aim to make eLife a heading choice for all researchers, in sold for early-career researchers. It’s critical that early practice of edition are constructive and fair. We’ll broach a tip edition venue to allege careers in science; we’ll make decisions quickly; broach a fair, transparent, and understanding author experience; and emanate limit intensity bearing for published works.”
eLife is regulating an open contention between editors and reviewers, also a vital disproportion from other journals. Not usually is a idea to dive a reviewing process as to not concede submissions to dawdle in an inbox, though a routine seeks to yield a author with constructive, and one would hope, some-more unchanging feedback than a stream indication mostly generates. The arrogance here also appears to be that by such a timely and organisation commitment, a reviewing routine would also essay for a aloft peculiarity of feedback by all parties. This is a commendable idea if it can be consistently achieved.
A quite critical underline is a page with author information. The “author contributions” territory highlights, in important detail, a grant that any listed author done to a work. In many fields, though in bio-medical in particular, contributed authors can simply be 10 or some-more (sometimes many more) and typically a principal investigators are listed initial even if he or she did not lift about a bulk of a investigate itself. In turn, this has led to “author bloat” so that authors can supplement a essay to his or her CV though though an confirmation of what a tangible grant was. This could offer to offer some-more law to a inlet of a contributions that were done and that could, in turn, revoke some of a bloat.
In addition, authors are asked to divulge “competing interests” that he or she might have. In an article citing 7 authors, for example, a competing seductiveness territory states that, “MR and SWH: Own shares of a Abberior Instruments GmbH start-up provision RESOLFT microscopy kits. The latter also advantages by IP cumulative by a Max Planck Society. The remaining have announced that no competing interests exist.”
eLife claims that since of their in-depth editorial routine they will usually name a many successful work for publication, notwithstanding their miss of space constraints. They explain that, “As an online biography not singular by space constraints, we design to be means to tell a good series of papers any year.” But, they argue, eLife is not a megajournal (such as PLoSOne) since these forms of journals muster “a peer-review routine that assesses investigate rigour, though not intensity impact or significance.”
“I don’t consider eLife affects a gold/green discuss during all. It’s an instance of gold, not an try to solve a differences between immature and gold,” observes Peter Suber, executive of a Harvard Open Access Project. “It’s an generally engaging instance of gold, however, since of a income behind it and a counsel try to strech a top levels of peculiarity and prestige.”
eLife will be published on Tuesdays any dual weeks.