The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden, has added its weight to the funder-backed effort to reform science publishing, eLife. Established 100 years ago, the Foundation has awarded 24bn Swedish Krona (nearly £224m) in research and education grants, making it one of the largest private research funders in Europe.
eLife was founded in 2011 in an unprecedented collaboration between the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (US), the Max Planck Society (Germany) and the Wellcome Trust (UK). To date, the organisations have promised over £40m to eLife, which aims to help scientists accelerate discovery by operating a platform for research communication that encourages and recognises the most responsible behaviours in science.
Having first distinguished itself through a consultative approach to peer review of the most promising new results, eLife now increasingly contributes to the development of new, open-source tools and technology that enhance the communication, discovery and interrogation of published findings. The organisation has released a modular open-source publishing system, eLife Continuum, and is now collaborating in the development of an open annotation platform for scholarly discussion online and an open-source solution for submission and peer review.
The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation has committed SEK 29m (about £2.72m) to eLife for a four-year period beginning in 2018. Long-term support from research funders is one aspect of eLife's strategy for sustainability, and further organisations will be welcomed to the initiative in future.
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