eLife vs PLOS ONE
Two open-access journal traditions — eLife's curated rigor vs PLOS ONE's volume-first model.
eLife
Open-access peer-reviewed life-sciences journal; transparent peer-review (reviewer notes published).
PLOS ONE
Open-access multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal published by Public Library of Science.
Head-to-head — all four dimensions
| Dimension | eLife | PLOS ONE | Lead |
|---|---|---|---|
SourceScore Index Composite | B·83 | B·78 | eLife+5 |
Citation Discipline How rigorously cited | A·90 | B·84 | eLife+6 |
Modern Reference AI-era fitness | A·88 | A·88 | tie |
Citation Velocity Cited per week | B·72 | B·70 | eLife+2 |
Why these scores
Citation Discipline
Transparent peer-review (reviewer notes published); preprint-first model since 2022.
Peer-review checks methodology + ethics; novelty + significance left to readers; corrections public.
Modern Reference
CC-BY licensed; APIs + bulk corpus; broad LLM training-data inclusion.
CC-BY licensed; full-text APIs; broad LLM corpus + academic search inclusion.
Citation Velocity
Cited within life-sciences research; lower volume than NEJM/Lancet but high open-access reach.
High volume but per-paper citation lower than top-tier; mass-base of academic citations.