Why eLife is on Medium
We’re here to open up science for everyone by sharing non-technical summaries of Research Articles.
eLife joined Medium in December 2014. At that time, we had already published over 700 Research Articles on a broad range of subjects in the life and biomedical sciences—including genetics, neuroscience, stem cells, infectious diseases and ecology. eLife is an open-access journal, so all of these articles are freely available to readers around the world. However, most Research Articles are written for fellow specialists. Therefore, in order to bring the latest research to a wider audience, all eLife articles include a short plain-language summary called an eLife digest.
eLife digests are written to explain the main findings of each article, and to provide the background that is needed to put these findings into context. eLife editors work with the authors of each Research Article to ensure that the digests are both accurate and understandable by a broad audience.
By sharing eLife digests as stories on Medium, we hope that more people will discover these summaries and gain something from reading them.
And since Medium already has a growing community of several hundred thousand users who write, read and freely share stories published on the site—we felt that it was an excellent place to share eLife digests with new audiences.
We started by sharing digests from 25 eLife papers — covering a range of research topics from how “quick reflexes allow a plant virus to hitchhike inside insect pests”…
… to “how the brain makes maps of its world”.
Since then we’ve been sharing more digests that reflect the broad range of articles that eLife has published in five broad areas: Health and Disease; Brains and Behaviour; Roots and Shoots; Life’s Building Blocks; and Life on Earth. And we will continue to share more digests every week to add to the growing collection of great content on Medium.
Follow us for updates when we share more eLife digests on Medium
