Open-Access Journal Experiment Begins Publishing Articles

The journal eLife, a collaboration between Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Wellcome Trust, and the Max Planck Society, is a new open-access journal project that has been long in coming. And while the eLife website still isn't complete and the journal is still being rolled out, they have been receiving so many quality publications that they wanted to start publishing articles already, such as this one: The starvation hormone, fibroblast growth factor-21, extends lifespan in mice.

The editors discuss the journal here:

The three legs of eLife's initial mission are: to publish outstanding science under an open-access license; to create an unparalleled editorial process that is decisive, fair and efficient; and to fully utilize digital media in the presentation of new research. The guiding principle of the project is to serve the interests of science, scholars and society.

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Newly published articles will continue to be added to the list at elifesciences.org over the coming weeks, with links to the content in PMC. But it is at the eLife journal website where we will have the most scope to experiment and explore new territory in research communication, beginning with the release of the initial version of the site towards the end the year—part 2 of the eLife journal launch.

Furthermore, there are should be some fun altmetric-friendly features as *eLife *continues to develop, including article-level metrics and other goodies. While this journal is by no means the only such attempt at a high-quality open access journal, its funding structure as well as other innovations are welcome additions to the open science scene and will hopefully help make this market that much stronger.

I look forward to seeing how this experiment continues to develop.

Top image: Bruce Fyfe/Flickr/CC__
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