In contrast to the other journals recently placed on hold from indexing, including Elsevier’s Science of the Total Environment, Clarivate has cited a specific policy as the reason for re-evaluating eLife: "Coverage of journals/platforms in which publication is decoupled from validation by peer review."

eLife last year adopted a new model in which it publishes every manuscript its editors send out for review, along with the text of the reviews and an editor’s assessment of the significance of the findings in the paper and the strength of the evidence presented.

Damian Pattinson, eLife’s executive director, described Clarivate’s decision to re-evaluate the journal due to its new model as "a real overreach," and expressed concern about Web of Science’s "dominance" in the publishing industry. "It’s not for them to decide the rules of publishing," he said.