eLife, the new open access journal initiative of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust, have made their first few articles available. The site will be officially launched in December 2012. The full content will also be made available via PubMed Central (PMC) and its mirror sites, such as UKPMC. The open access journal will cover advances in life sciences and biomedicine. The eLife annoucement is available from: http://www.elifesciences.org/12-1015/