Over the past year, a revolution has been quietly brewing in the world of academic publishing. But in the past two weeks, things have become a lot noisier.

That was when major journal database Web of Science delisted well-known life sciences journal eLife over its unique publishing model. So far, neither side has backed down.

Founded in 2012, eLife is a multidisciplinary biology journal that positions itself alongside leading publications such as Cell, Nature and Science. But in January 2023, eLife adopted a new policy: all submissions deemed suitable by the editorial board would be published and peer-reviewed in public on the eLife website, regardless of the reviewers’ recommendations.

In most journals, papers are peer reviewed first and not published if they do not pass the peer-review process. Now, eLife’s upheaval of the publishing model has redefined the standards for academic publication.

On October 23, Clarivate, the company behind Web of Science, marked eLife “on hold” on its database. According to Web of Science, eLife is being re-evaluated due to “concerns about the quality of the content published in this journal”. During this reassessment period, the database will no longer include any new articles published in the journal.