Problem

It is hard to judge the quality of academic research. Journal brand isn’t a good proxy.

Solution

A collection of the top longevity research voted on every quarter by a large body of longevity KOL (key opinion leaders).

Specification/FAQ

What is the Longevist?

A curated collection of the most impactful longevity research every quarter, similar to an overlay journal. The name is supposed to evoke a similar magazine, The Economist.

Where do the articles come from?

Articles will be sourced from preprint servers such as BioRxiv, MedRxiv, and Arxiv. Also, researchers can submit their own articles to be considered by the Longevist. These articles will be paid articles.

Who chooses the articles that the Longevist votes on?

A quorum of key opinion leaders (KOL) in the longevity space. We are aiming to have a mix of industry and academic KOLs. Recognizing that KOLs are busy, they can have teams that make recommendations to them and vote on their behalf. Also, ideally ahead of a work being posted on The Longevist, it would be independently peer reviewed in a public format such as on TLDR.

How does the curation work?

We are aiming to recruit ~50 KOLs who will vote on the top 3-5 articles each quarter (4 times a year, March 31, June 30, September 30, December 31). Ideally, the Longevist would select 10-20 articles a year. Having such a small number should ensure that the Longevist focuses on truly impactful research. The KOLs can nominate articles to be voted on. The voting will be done on-chain. A majority 10 “yes” votes are needed to reach consensus. Once an article is accepted it will also be put on-chain. A larger more frequent voting will happen for paid articles. The precise mechanics of both are TBD. The infrastructure for doing the voting on-chain and putting the articles on-chain will be provided by Snapshot and DeSciLabs, respectively.

What does on-chain mean?

We do put the articles on blockchain storage for their permanence and provenance. Blockchains are significantly more robust for information permanence than a centralized database.

Will posting a preprint to The Longevist affect an article’s ability to be published in a traditional journal?

No. The Longevist is not a publisher. We are not modifying the content from the original preprint. We are simply curating what we hope to be the best preprints to help the field focus on impactful research.

Who leads the Longevist?

Tim Peterson, VitaDAO Steward, Asst. Prof @ WashU, BIOIO founder. @timrpeterson

@Rhys (Rhys Anderson).

How do I get involved?

If you or someone you know wants to vote on what gets curated, please connect to tim@vitadao.com. Similarly, if you want to help build The Longevist, please reach out to Tim. USD and $VITA tokens are available to those who contribute. 500 $VITA are tentative amounts for voting per quarterly edition. Bonuses will be paid to those KOLs who recommend an article that gets voted on to be selected. Full and part-time positions are available for builders.

What does success look like?

As @vincent said

[quote=“vincent, post:2, topic:1028”] Can see a lot of awareness and reputational value for VitaDAO, and ofc publishing is the core mechanism by which science is funded, and communicated [/quote]

Like most websites and journals, we will track success in terms of page views, downloads, citations, tweets, etc. We will also consider tracking invited talks in longevity fora, and/or NIH grants earned by the PI in the years around publication. The Longevist aims to curate the best. This means success of each selected Longevist article should outperform the journal average in which it is eventually published.

Budget: What is the expected budget, and how will this budget be used and distributed among the team?

We anticipate needing one full-time admin or a few (2-3) part time admins. $50K USDC + 25K VITA is proposed maximum for the admins for the first year budget. More likely the admin budget would be closer to $10K USDC. $50K is for ~1000 hrs of work, 250 hrs per quarter. That’s six full-time weeks per three months, which would be unlikely.

The maximum KOL first year budget we’d need is 500 $VITA X 50 voters X 4 voting sessions per year = 100,000 $VITA. Future per year budgets would expected to be similar in terms of what is used in the first year in USD, but likely less $VITA as VitaDAO matures.