eLife simplifies submission for authors through new collaborations

Cambridge, UK – Friday, January 13, 2017: eLife is integrating new authoring tools into its submission system to give authors more choice about how they submit their work.

eLife, the non-profit initiative inspired by research funders and led by scientists, aims to help scientists accelerate discovery by operating a platform for research communication that encourages and recognises the most responsible behaviours in science. eLife is now working with Overleaf, Manuscripts.app, PubRef and Authorea, to allow authors to write and submit research to the journal as quickly and easily as possible.

Through the collaborative writing and publishing system Overleaf, authors can create, edit, and share scientific ideas online through the Overleaf platform. Overleaf allows authors to write in either a full LaTeX editor or Rich Text mode, if they prefer to use a more traditional word processing environment. They can easily collaborate with others through a Google Docs™-style, real-time collaborative environment and they can see their finished file composed automatically as they write - they write on the left and see their composed document on the right, based on the template they are using. The Overleaf platform will also be integrated into the eLife journal submission and review system, eJournalPress (EJPress), allowing authors to submit their completed manuscripts more easily.

eLife also commissioned Overleaf to create a custom open-source LaTeX template, which is available to download and use from the eLife website or can be opened directly in Overleaf. The template allows authors to generate a paper in a similar format to the final PDF presented by the journal, giving them the ability to size their figures and an idea of how their completed paper will look if published.

Melissa Harrison, Head of Production Operations at eLife, says:

“We’re really happy to provide our authors with an eLife LaTeX template. This valuable tool has been created as a result of feedback from our authors, who we also involved in its development to ensure it meets their needs.”

John Hammersley, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Overleaf, adds:

“Our organizations have successfully worked together to generate a tailored LaTeX template which includes journal author guidelines and a simple submission link from Overleaf. This beautifully simple template provides authors with a straightforward option for writing and submitting manuscripts - helping both our organizations attain our like-minded goal of encouraging and improving academic collaboration.”

eLife is now also planning to integrate two relatively new author-writing tools, Manuscripts.app and PubRef.org’s Pipeline, into EJPress. The launch of Manuscripts.app was first featured as a ‘guest experiment’ on eLife Labs.

“Overall, we’re delighted to be working with each of these forward-thinking organisations to make the submission process easier for authors,” Harrison concludes. “We hope to see these and other partnerships continue over the coming months, so that we can provide our authors with the best possible writing and publishing tools available to them.”

eLife’s custom LaTeX template is available to download here:
https://submit.elifesciences.org/html/elife_author_instructions.html

The LaTeX template can also be opened directly in Overleaf here:
https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/elife-latex-template/csqxykvsnyxm

For more information, please contact:

Emily Packer, Press Officer, eLife
e.packer@elifesciences.org

About eLife

eLife is a unique collaboration between the funders and practitioners of research to improve the way important research is selected, presented, and shared. eLife publishes outstanding works across the life sciences and biomedicine -- from basic biological research to applied, translational, and clinical studies. All papers are selected by active scientists in the research community. Decisions and responses are agreed by the reviewers and consolidated by the Reviewing Editor into a single, clear set of instructions for authors, removing the need for laborious cycles of revision and allowing authors to publish their findings quickly. eLife is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust.

Learn more at elifesciences.org.

About Overleaf

Founded in 2012 and with over 500,000 registered users, Overleaf is an academic authorship tool that allows seamless collaboration and effortless manuscript submission, all underpinned by cloud-technology. By providing an intuitive online collaborative writing and publishing platform, Overleaf is making the process of writing, editing and publishing scientific documents quicker and easier. Researchers and academics can now write, collaborate, and publish with a single click, directly from the Overleaf web-app. Publishers and Institutions are partnering with Overleaf to provide customized writing templates, simple reference tool linking, and one-click publishing submission links.

Visit https://www.overleaf.com and follow @overleaf on Twitter.