100 institutions declare support for eLife model

eLife says that more than 100 institutions and funders worldwide have confirmed that research published in the journal continues to be considered in hiring, promotion, and funding decisions, following its move to forgo its Journal Impact Factor. The organisation says this “offers reassurance to researchers and highlights growing momentum behind fairer, more transparent models of academic publishing and assessment”.

These responses follow an effort by eLife to clarify how its new publishing model is being received across the academic community, including academic institutions and funders. In total, more than 95% of respondents expressed their support for non-traditional models of research assessment such as eLife’s, with some urging other organisations to do the same. They include Aarhus University (Denmark), the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK), Caltech (US), King’s College London (UK), and the University of Virginia (US). Besides these organisations, the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently confirmed that it continues to classify eLife as a top-tier journal.

This declaration follows the news that the eLife journal is undergoing significant changes in its indexing status due to its publishing approach. Following discussions with Clarivate about its model, eLife agreed to be partially indexed in Web of Science’s Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), rather than compromise on its model, which means the journal will no longer receive an Impact Factor.

Ashley Farley, Senior Officer of Knowledge & Research Services at the Gates Foundation, said: “Web of Science’s decision to pause indexing eLife’s Versions of Record reinforces outdated publishing metrics that hinder innovation. The Journal Impact Factor is an inadequate measure of research quality, and indexers must evolve to support responsible, transparent models like eLife’s. Scientific publishing should prioritise meaningful assessment over arbitrary metrics, and we stand with eLife in advancing a more equitable and open research ecosystem.”

Damian Pattinson, Executive Director at eLife said: “The growing support for open models of research reflects a real shift away from flawed metrics like the Impact Factor. At eLife, we’ve always believed that research should be judged on its own merits, not simply on where it’s published. It’s heartening to see funders and institutions continue to recognise eLife papers in funding and hiring decisions, showing that transparency, rigour and openness are being rewarded, and that the absence of an Impact Factor is no barrier to academic success.”

Sue Hartley, Vice-President for Research and Innovation, University of Sheffield said: “This change will not cause any problems at the University of Sheffield – we recognise that eLife is an innovative publishing model and we are committed to supporting these alternatives to the mainstream models. Also our institutional values are to avoid the use of metrics like Impact Factors in career progression, not least as we are DORA signatories.”

Tim Newton, Dean of Research Culture, King’s College London said: “King’s is a signatory to DORA and is working towards membership of COARA. We are committed to responsible research assessment and so have made adjustments to our appointment and promotion processes to recognise diverse and non-traditional outputs, and to advise against the reliance on metrics.”

Damian Pattinson concluded: “With the global research community increasingly embracing open science, eLife remains confident that its model represents the future of scholarly publishing – one that prioritises scientific quality, transparency, and integrity over outdated prestige metrics.”

Dr Nandita Quaderi, Senior Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of the Web of Science at Clarivate, responded to the eLife statement, saying: “The Web of Science Core Collection supports innovative and emerging publication models. We index journals that have adopted open models of peer review and models such as “publish, review, curate”. 

 “When making any policy decision, we need to consider both the intended and unintended consequences of that decision as any new policy will need to be universally applied – we cannot make exceptions or create specific polices for individual journals that might compromise research integrity. Cover-to-cover indexing of journals in which publication is decoupled from validation by peer review risks allowing untrustworthy actors to benefit from publishing poor quality content, and conflicts with our standard policy to reject/remove journals that fail to put effective measures in place to prevent the publication of compromised content.”

A Clarivate spokesperson emphasised that eLife has been partially indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection since December 2024, in line with Web of Science editorial policies.

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