elife
GitHub针对eLife期刊的投稿适配与选题评估工具。涵盖其Reviewed-Preprint模式、开放科学理念、方法证据标准及拒稿启发式规则，辅助作者判断稿件匹配度、优化框架并准备公开同行评审，非官方指南替代。
Trigger Scenarios
作者指定或考虑将eLife作为目标期刊
稿件强调严谨性和可重复性但缺乏单一突破性叙事
希望以预印本形式公开同行评审和透明报告
需要了解eLife评估词汇及Featured论文标准
Install
npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill elife -g -y
SKILL.md
Frontmatter
{
"name": "elife",
"description": "Use when targeting eLife or deciding whether a life-sciences manuscript fits this open-access life-sciences journal. Encodes eLife's unique Reviewed-Preprint model, fit, framing, method-and-evidence bar, house style, official-submission re-check, and desk-reject heuristics."
}
eLife (elife)
Journal positioning
eLife is a non-profit open-access journal covering all of life sciences and biomedicine, operated by an independent board and funded by major research foundations. Its defining structural feature is the Reviewed-Preprint model: most submissions are posted as preprints on bioRxiv and receive a public eLife assessment plus full peer-review reports — the journal does not issue a binary accept/reject decision in the traditional sense. The eLife assessment uses a controlled vocabulary (landmark, fundamental, important, valuable, useful, incomplete, inadequate) to characterize significance and evidential strength. The readership is the global life-sciences research community, and the ethos strongly favors rigor, reproducibility, transparency, and open science over prestige signaling. This skill is a fit / venue-selection / re-framing tool. It does not replace the journal's current official submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live author instructions on elifesciences.org.
When to trigger
- The author names eLife as the target venue or is considering an open-access life-sciences outlet with public peer review.
- A manuscript is strong on rigor and reproducibility but may not carry the single-advance framing required by Nature/Cell flagship journals.
- The author wants the manuscript posted as a preprint and reviewed publicly, with transparent reviewer reports and eLife assessments visible to readers.
- The author needs guidance on eLife's Reviewed-Preprint workflow, assessment vocabulary, and what determines a "featured" eLife paper.
Scope & topic fit
- All areas of life sciences and biomedicine: cell biology, developmental biology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, genetics/genomics, structural biology, microbiology, immunology, computational biology, and clinical/translational work.
- Methods and resources: new tools, datasets, or software with demonstrated utility in life-sciences research are explicitly welcomed as a first-class article type.
- Negative results, replication studies, and resource papers are more welcome here than at flagship journals — eLife's ethos explicitly values rigor over novelty hype; the assessment vocabulary rewards evidential strength independent of whether results are positive.
- Quantitative and computational biology, biophysics, and cross-disciplinary work that does not fit a single specialty journal.
- Review and opinion content is published but typically commissioned; editors select topics where a synthesis would serve the community — unsolicited reviews should be proposed before full preparation.
Method & evidence bar
- eLife assesses evidential strength explicitly using its assessment vocabulary: claims must be matched by appropriate experimental or computational evidence; overclaiming relative to evidence is a primary editorial concern and results in a lower significance or strength rating.
- Reproducibility practices are expected: data deposition (raw data, processed data), code availability, detailed methods — eLife pushes authors toward full transparency more forcefully than most traditional journals.
- Statistical rigor: pre-registration is not mandatory but is valued; sample sizes must be justified; effect sizes and confidence intervals preferred over significance thresholds alone.
- For animal studies, ARRIVE reporting guidelines apply; for human studies, CONSORT/STROBE as appropriate and ethics declarations.
- Revised manuscripts under the Reviewed-Preprint model are re-assessed publicly; the revision letter and author response are posted alongside the paper.
- The assessment distinguishes significance (landmark → important → valuable → useful) from evidential strength (exceptional → compelling → convincing → inadequate) independently — authors should calibrate which dimension their manuscript excels on.
Structure & house style
- eLife uses a structured-summary abstract format (editor's evaluation is posted separately; author's abstract is standard unstructured).
- Article types include Research Articles, Short Reports, Tools and Resources, Research Advances, Feature Articles, and Reviews — each has distinct scope expectations (verify current definitions on the live site).
- The eLife digest (plain-language summary for a non-specialist audience) is expected with most research articles; it is public-facing.
- Figures should be publication-ready and accompanied by source data files (underlying numerical data for each panel).
- The public peer-review reports and author responses form part of the published record — draft the response letter with this in mind from submission.
Official-submission checklist
- Before giving submission-ready advice, read
../../resources/source-basis.mdand../../resources/official-source-map.md; start from the official source anchors for this journal family, then cite the current journal-specific page you checked. - Search the live site for "eLife author guide" or "eLife submission process" and follow the current version at elifesciences.org.
- Re-check the current Reviewed-Preprint model workflow, including preprint posting consent, assessment timeline, and the distinction between "eLife Reviewed Preprint" and a "Version of Record."
- Confirm data deposition requirements: raw data, processed data, and code repositories (Zenodo, GitHub, Dryad, GEO, SRA, RCSB, etc.) expected before publication.
- Check reporting guidelines: ARRIVE (animal), CONSORT/STROBE (clinical), MIQE (qPCR), or other community standards relevant to the study type.
- Verify open-access licensing (eLife publishes under CC-BY), funding and competing-interests disclosure, and AI-use policy.
- If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win.
Pre-submission self-check
- One sentence matching the claimed significance level ("landmark," "fundamental," "important," or "valuable") to the actual evidence presented — do not overstate.
- All raw data, processed data, and analysis code are deposited or will be deposited, with accession numbers/links ready.
- The eLife digest is drafted and accessible to a scientifically literate non-specialist.
- The manuscript is posted or is ready to be posted as a preprint (bioRxiv or equivalent); consent for public posting is confirmed.
- Reporting guidelines relevant to the study type have been applied and a checklist is ready.
Common desk-reject triggers
- Scope entirely outside life sciences or biomedicine (physics, chemistry without biological application, social science).
- Manuscripts where the significance claim is drastically mismatched with evidential strength — editors use the assessment vocabulary to flag this explicitly.
- Clinical trials or large-scale human studies without the appropriate reporting compliance (registration, CONSORT, ethics).
- Refusal to post a preprint or to participate in the Reviewed-Preprint workflow may affect routing (verify current policy on whether non-preprint submissions are accepted).
- Studies reporting software or databases without working, documented, publicly accessible code/data.
Re-routing decision
- Flagship-level conceptual advance across life sciences →
nature,science,cell, orpnas. - Open-access general biology with a more pronounced methods/transparency culture →
plos-biology. - Genomics or computational biology focus →
genome-biology. - Neuroscience with field-leading conceptual advance →
nature-neuroscienceorneuron.
Output format
[Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason)
[Target] eLife
[Topic tags] <2–3 closest topics>
[Method/evidence] <does the evidential strength match the claimed significance level per eLife's assessment vocabulary?>
[Top risk] <the single most likely reason for rejection or a weak assessment>
[Official items to re-check] <Reviewed-Preprint workflow / data deposition / reporting checklist / digest / CC-BY / ethics>
[Re-route suggestion] <if not a fit, a better-matched venue>
Version History
- 1839142 Current 2026-07-05 13:00
