Further to eLife's trial of a new approach to peer-review last year, I thought you might be interested in this new blog post from our Editor-in-Chief Michael Eisen, reflecting on the trial and describing how eLife aims to make peer review more effective.

To provide some context, eLife was launched in 2012 with the goals of creating an open-access venue for the publication of outstanding work in the life sciences, transforming the way that these works are peer reviewed, and using the internet to enhance the way works of science are presented, read and used. 

As part of our ongoing effort to rethink peer review and the role of journals in it, last year we began a trial of a new process designed to give authors more control over the decision to publish. The trial was motivated by a desire to end the needless cycles of peer review at multiple journals, to give authors more of a say in when and how their work is published, and to reduce the emphasis on journal titles in the way we evaluate works of science and the authors who carried them out.

Eisen now explores how well the trial accomplished its goals and what we have learned from it. He explains how it has informed two new initiatives at eLife towards more effectively capturing the value of peer review: publishing acceptance explanations for papers published by eLife, and a new service called "Preprint Review".

These initiatives represent a step in fulfilling our grander mission, with the idea of making the peer review carried out by eLife more valuable to the community by introducing new ways of communicating the outcomes of the process.

For further details, please see Eisen's full blog post at https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/e9091cea/peer-review-new-initiatives-to-enhance-the-value-of-elife-s-process.

If you'd like more information, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes,

Emily
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