eLife Produces Open Science Podcast Series

eLife, an open access (OA) journal covering research in the life and biomedical sciences, will produce a podcast series with The Naked Scientists, broadcasters who present easy-to-understand science to the general public.

“The Naked Scientists have a committed following and a knack for making complicated stories accessible and interesting,” says Randy Schekman, eLife editor-in-chief. “Since our journal is freely available online, anyone listening to the eLife podcast will be able to read the full papers anytime.”

There are two podcast episodes available so far. In the first episode, five authors discuss their research articles as representative samples of eLife’s publishing program. Topics include the discovery of a receptor for the hepatitis B and D viruses, the effects of fog on car drivers, and modern DNA sequencing technology that sheds light on the potato famines of the 1840s. In the second episode, topics are “plants performing arithmetic division, the evolutionary dynamics of cancer, single-molecule measurements in the immune system, why blood vessels don’t grow in the retina, how to make science count in government, a sensor for ammonium, and the evolution of gene regulation.”

The goal of these podcasts is to offer eLife’s OA content to a wider audience and to use more engaging elements to reach that audience. Other initiatives include the eLife Digest, a short summary of each available paper; Insights, where experts offer commentary on selected articles; and an API (application programming interface) so users can access, reuse, and build upon eLife metadata.

eLife encourages distribution of the podcasts under a Creative Commons Attribution License.