What is eLife's impact factor in 2026?

eLife has none. Web of Science indexes the journal only partially, and a partially indexed journal is not eligible for a Journal Impact Factor.

Why doesn't eLife have an impact factor?

Web of Science paused SCIE indexing of eLife on 23 October 2024 because eLife's model decouples publication from peer review validation. eLife then chose to supply a partial feed — Versions of Record assessed "solid" or above, about 93% of its papers — rather than change the model. Partial indexing makes a journal ineligible for the JIF.

Was eLife delisted from Web of Science?

No. Most eLife papers remain in the Web of Science Core Collection, under the Emerging Sources Citation Index per Clarivate's Master Journal List, along with Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews and Zoological Record. What was lost is the journal level metric, not the indexing.

Is eLife a reputable journal?

It is a non profit publisher with public peer review and published editorial assessments on every reviewed paper. Reputation and impact factor are not the same question, and eLife's model deliberately separates them.

How much does it cost to publish in eLife?

$3,750 for submissions from 1 July 2026, charged when a preprint is sent for peer review. Full waivers are available for labs under financial pressure.

What is an eLife Assessment?

A short editorial statement published with each reviewed paper, describing the significance of the findings and the strength of the evidence.

How do I list an eLife paper when a form asks for an impact factor?

Cite the paper's own citation counts from Crossref, Scopus or Google Scholar, reference the published eLife Assessment, and state the indexing position accurately rather than leaving it blank.

eLife Impact Factor 2026: Why There Isn't One

eLife has no impact factor because Web of Science indexes it only partially.

If you have been looking for eLife's impact factor and coming up empty, that is the correct result — and the reason is more specific than "eLife opted out of metrics." Web of Science paused indexing eLife's Versions of Record in October 2024. eLife responded by supplying a partial feed rather than changing how it publishes, and a partially indexed journal is not eligible for a Journal Impact Factor.

This page sets out that sequence with dates and sources, covers what eLife publishes instead, and tells you what to put on a grant form that expects a number in that box.

The answer changes what you put on a grant form, and it also changes nothing about how you prepare a scientific figure for the journal.

Does eLife have an impact factor?

eLife does not publish an impact factor on its own site. Unlike most journals of comparable standing — which carry a journal metrics page stating the current JIF — eLife's public pages describe the journal through its publishing model rather than through a citation metric.

The indexing position is checkable and worth knowing precisely. According to Clarivate's Master Journal List, eLife (ISSN 2050-084X, eLife Sciences Publications Ltd) is currently listed under:

Index	Status
Web of Science Core Collection	Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI)
Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)	Not listed
Additional indexes	Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews, Zoological Record

If your institution's evaluation rules are written around SCIE-listed journals specifically, that first row is the detail that matters — not whether a metric can be found somewhere on the web.

A common misreading, worth clearing up: being in ESCI rather than SCIE is not by itself what removes the impact factor. Since the 2023 Journal Citation Reports release, Clarivate has calculated a JIF for every journal in the Web of Science Core Collection, including ESCI — more than 9,000 ESCI journals received one for the first time that year. So "eLife is in ESCI" does not explain "eLife has no JIF." The actual mechanism is in the next section, and it is a different thing entirely.

One thing this is not: a delisting. Seeing "no impact factor" next to a well-known journal usually reads as a warning sign, and here it is not one. Most eLife papers remain in the Web of Science Core Collection, and Clarivate additionally lists the journal in Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews and Zoological Record. The papers are indexed, discoverable and accumulating citations. What is absent is a journal-level metric, not the journal.

Why eLife has no impact factor

The answer is a three-step sequence, and every step is stated by eLife itself.

1 · Web of Science paused SCIE indexing, effective 23 October 2024. In eLife's words, Web of Science "has paused indexing eLife Versions of Record in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), the commercial index that produces the Journal Impact Factor." The stated ground was structural, not a judgement on quality: Web of Science's "current policy excludes research from SCIE where publication has been decoupled from 'validation' by peer review." Under eLife's publish-review-curate model, papers appear whether or not reviewers endorse them, so the decoupling is real. eLife was placed "on hold" pending a reevaluation.

2 · eLife chose a partial feed over changing its model. In December 2024 eLife decided to supply Web of Science with only part of its output: Versions of Record whose eLife Assessment rates the strength of evidence as "solid" or above. By eLife's own count that covers 93% of its papers; the remaining 7%, assessed as "incomplete" or "inadequate", are not eligible.

3 · A partially indexed journal cannot have a JIF. This is the step that actually produces the missing number, and eLife states it plainly: "because we are not willing to change the eLife publishing model to accommodate Web of Science's policies, eLife will be a partially indexed journal and as such not eligible for the Journal Impact Factor."

Two things follow that are worth knowing before you decide anything:

Scopus changed at the same time. eLife moved from the Scopus Journals Collection to the Scopus Preprints Collection. Reviewed Preprints are now indexed in Scopus and Google Scholar; Versions of Record continue in PubMed, Google Scholar and OpenAlex.
It was not a reluctant loss. eLife has been a signatory of the Declaration on Research Assessment since its founding and says it "never supported the Impact Factor and never wanted one." In a May 2025 follow-up it reported that of the funders and institutions it surveyed, more than 100 — over 95% of respondents — still consider eLife papers in research evaluation.

We do not state a historical impact factor value here. Figures for eLife's last JIF circulate on third-party sites, but we could not confirm one against a primary source, and an unsourced number in a promotion packet is worse than no number.

What eLife uses instead

Evaluation shifting from a single journal-level badge to many individual paper cards, each with its own indicator (illustration generated with SciFig)

eLife runs a publish-review-curate model. Papers are posted as preprints, peer-reviewed, and published as Reviewed Preprints with the reviews attached — along with an eLife Assessment, a short editorial statement about the paper's significance and the strength of its evidence.

The design intent is to move evaluation from the journal level to the paper level. Instead of inheriting a number from the venue, each paper carries its own public assessment and its own public reviews, which any reader — or hiring committee — can read directly.

Whether that is a better system than a journal-level metric is a genuine debate. What is not in question is that it is a different unit of evaluation, and one that some institutional processes are not yet built to accept.

What about CiteScore, SJR and h-index?

This is the sensible next question, and the answer is not the one most journal-metrics sites will give you.

CiteScore: also gone, for the same underlying reason. The December 2024 announcement covered Scopus as well as Web of Science — eLife moved from the Scopus Journals Collection to the Scopus Preprints Collection. CiteScore is calculated for journals in the Journals Collection, so eLife no longer receives one. Reviewed Preprints are still indexed in Scopus and Google Scholar; what changed is the collection they sit in, and journal-level metrics follow the collection.

SJR: derived from the same Scopus journal data, so any value you find is worth checking the date on before you use it.

h-index: computable, but the number depends on where you look. Unlike the JIF, an h-index is not issued by one authority — different citation databases compute it over different time windows and different source sets, so the same journal can carry noticeably different values in different places. That is normal and not evidence that any of them is wrong. If you quote one, name the database and the date; a bare h-index with no source is the kind of figure a committee can challenge and you cannot defend.

What to use instead. For a journal this size, the honest summary is that eLife has opted out of the journal-level metric system rather than scored badly in it. The figures that survive that opt-out are paper-level: citation counts for your specific paper from Crossref, Scopus, Google Scholar or OpenAlex, plus the eLife Assessment. Those are the numbers to put in front of a committee, and the next section shows how to phrase them.

Warning

If you find an impact factor, CiteScore or quartile for eLife on a third-party journal-metrics site, check what year it is labelled with. Values published before the October 2024 indexing change are historical, and some databases carry a derived figure — a Scopus-based score, for instance — under a heading that reads "Impact Factor". Neither is eLife's current Journal Impact Factor, because there is not one.

Why researchers still search for "eLife impact factor"

The query persists for practical reasons, not because people have missed the news:

Promotion and tenure review. Many committees still assess publication records using journal-level metrics. A paper in a journal with no stated JIF creates an awkward blank in a table.
Grant applications. Some funders and institutions ask applicants to list impact factors alongside publications.
Shortlisting where to submit. Researchers filtering candidate journals by metric will simply not see eLife in a JIF-sorted list.
Comparing with peers. Early-career researchers benchmarking their record against others' find the comparison harder without a common number.

These are real constraints on real careers. The philosophical case against impact factors and the practical reality of a tenure packet are two different problems, and the second one lands on you rather than on the journal.

Next step: the figures eLife will accept

If eLife is on your shortlist, its figure rules are unusually permissive — 300 dpi, 10 cm minimum width, and no cap on how many.

Explore the Tool

What to put in the box when a form demands a number

Three approaches that do not involve inventing a figure:

Cite the paper's own metrics. Citation counts for individual eLife papers are available through Crossref, Scopus and Google Scholar. A well-cited paper's own count is stronger evidence than a journal average, and it is the evidence eLife's model is designed to produce.

Point to the eLife Assessment. Every reviewed eLife paper carries an editorial assessment of significance and evidence strength, plus the full public reviews. For a committee willing to read, that is more information than a JIF conveys.

State the indexing position plainly. A sentence you can paste verbatim: "Indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection (Emerging Sources Citation Index). eLife is a partially indexed journal and is therefore not eligible for a Journal Impact Factor; this follows Web of Science's October 2024 decision, not any change in the journal's standing." Every clause there is checkable against the sources at the foot of this page, which is more than a blank or an unsourced number gives you.

If your institution's rules make a SCIE listing genuinely mandatory, that is a legitimate reason to pick a different venue — and better to know before submission than after acceptance.

What eLife does publish about itself

Facts that are stated on eLife's own pages and are often more decision-relevant than a metric:


ISSN	2050-084X
Abbreviation	eLife — no abbreviated form; cite it in full
Organisation	Non-profit; eLife Sciences Publications Ltd, United Kingdom; Editor-in-Chief Tim Behrens
Model	Publish-review-curate — only preprints are reviewed
Review outcome	Reviews and eLife Assessment published regardless of whether the paper becomes a Version of Record
Publication fee	$3,750 for submissions from 1 July 2026, charged when a preprint is sent for peer review
Fee waivers	Full waiver available on request for labs under financial pressure
Article length	No maximum for Research Articles; ~5,000 words suggested
Display items	No limit on figures or figure supplements

That fee is charged at the point a preprint is sent for review, not on acceptance — a materially different arrangement from journals that bill on acceptance, and worth checking against your funding timeline.

Should you submit to eLife?

Submit if:

Your evidence benefits from being read in full, with the reviews visible alongside it
Your paper needs more figures than a display-item cap would allow
You want a public record of what reviewers actually said
Your evaluation environment accepts paper-level metrics

Think twice if:

Your institution's rules are written specifically around SCIE-listed journals
A grant or promotion form requires a journal impact factor and will not accept alternatives
You are not prepared for reviewer comments on your work to be permanently public
You need the venue's name to do the signalling work by itself

Preparing figures for eLife

One consequence of eLife's model is unusual freedom in how you present evidence: no limit on colour figures, no limit on figure supplements, and no charge for colour. The constraints that do apply are about readability — 300 dpi minimum, 10 cm minimum width, scale bars on micrographs, and statistics in the legend.

Because reviews are public, figure quality is visible in a way it is not at other journals. The complete specification is in eLife formatting requirements; the process and fee timing are in eLife submission guide.

If you are rebuilding figures to hit the 300 dpi and 10 cm floors — or adding the scale bars and labelled bands eLife requires — upgrading an existing figure is faster than redrawing it from scratch.

Build an eLife-ready figure

300 dpi, 10 cm minimum width, scale bars in place — start from a description, or upgrade a figure you already have.

Try Free

Where to go next

Four questions usually follow this one. Each has its own page in this guide.

"So what are my actual odds?" — eLife sends about 35% of submissions out for review and declines the rest at a median of eight days. eLife acceptance rate explains why that number is not an acceptance rate and what it means for your paper.
"What do the figures have to look like?" — 300 dpi, 10 cm minimum width, no cap on how many. eLife formatting requirements has the full specification.
"How do I actually submit?" — preprint first, $3,750 charged at review rather than acceptance. eLife submission guide walks the sequence.
"Can I use an AI tool for the figures?" — yes, with disclosure in Materials and Methods, and one hard exception. eLife AI policy covers all three rules.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Every figure here was read from the primary sources below — Clarivate's Master Journal List for indexing, and eLife's own pages for the journal facts. Reviewed 2026.

Web of Science Master Journal List — eLife record — current indexing position (search by ISSN 2050-084X)
Update on eLife's indexing status at Web of Science — the SCIE pause, its effective date of 23 October 2024, the stated policy ground, and eLife's DORA position; the May 2025 addendum carries the survey of funders and institutions
Changes to eLife's indexing status in Web of Science and Scopus — the partial feed, the 93% / 7% split by eLife Assessment, the statement that partial indexing makes the journal ineligible for the JIF, and the Scopus Preprints Collection move
Clarivate — 2023 Journal Citation Reports changes — the extension of the JIF to all Core Collection journals including ESCI
About eLife — organisation, publish-review-curate model, editorial leadership
eLife author instructions — publication fee, waivers, article types and length

One deliberate omission: we do not state a value for eLife's last impact factor. Numbers of that kind circulate on third-party sites, but none could be confirmed against a primary source. The dates and the mechanism above are a different matter — those come from eLife's own announcements and are quoted directly.

Indexing status and fees change. Confirm both against Clarivate and eLife before relying on them. See our editorial standards for how these guides are researched and corrected.