More than 100 higher education institutions and funders have publicly endorsed eLife, stating the journal is still considered in hiring, promotion and funding decisions despite losing its impact factor.

In a vote of confidence for the pioneering title’s unique model – which, since 2023, has seen the open access journal drop, accept or reject decisions after peer review, with the paper published alongside comments – several leading universities have said the experimental not-for-profit publication remains highly valued among researchers.

It follows a setback in November, when Clarivate said it would – a move that threatened its journal impact factor, a metric highly prized by researchers and universities given it is widely regarded as a proxy for citation strength and excellence. In December eLife was partially indexed in the Web of Science, though it will lose its journal impact factor from next month.

However, several leading universities including Caltech and the University of Virginia in the US, King’s College London in the UK and Aarhus University in Denmark have signed an open letter stating they still regard eLife as a top-tier journal.

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Other organisations including the Gates Foundation and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have also backed the journal, which faced criticism in some quarters for its decision to forgo its reputation for selectivity in favour of a more inclusive approach.

Other institutions from the UK, US, Germany, the Netherlands, India and Singapore have also signed the statement, 

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Damian Pattinson, executive director at eLife, said the endorsements indicated the “growing support for open models of research [which reflected] 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,” he added, stating it was “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.”

Ashley Farley, senior officer of knowledge and research services at the Gates Foundation, criticised the Web of Science’s decision to pause indexing eLife’s manuscripts, stating this “reinforces outdated publishing metrics that hinder innovation”.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,” she said.

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Sue Hartley, vice-president for research and innovation at the University of Sheffield, another signatory, said eLife’s loss of an impact factor “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,” she said.

Nandita Quaderi, senior vice president and editor-in-chief of Clarivate’s Web of Science, Clarivate, said �𳢾��ڱ���has been partially indexed in the since December 2024, a resource supported “innovative and emerging publication models.” 

While the Web of Science’s Core Collection did “index journals that have adopted open models of peer review and models such as 'publish, review, curate',” explained Quaderi, “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.”

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“We cannot make exceptions or create specific polices for individual journals that might compromise research integrity,” she added, stating that “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  to reject/remove journals that fail to put effective measures in place to prevent the publication of compromised content.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com