abstract:eLife is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal for the biomedical and life sciences. It is sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Max Planck Society, and Wellcome Trust following a workshop held in 2010 at the Janelia Farm Research Campus.
Unlike traditional journals, however, which cost British universities hundreds of millions of pounds a year to access, articles in eLife will be free to view on the web as soon as they are published.
Sir Mark Walport, the director of Wellcome Trust, said that his organisation is in the final stages of launching a high calibre scientific journal called eLife that would compete directly with top-tier publications such as Nature and Science, seen by scientists as the premier locations for publishing.