VDP-144 The Longevist Annual Review

[Rhys]

TLDR: This proposal asks the VitaDAO community to fund The Longevist for 2024. The following are a list of The Longevist’s inaugural year 2023 accomplishments and 2024 and beyond plans.

Background: The Longevist is a quarterly issued preprint overlay journal where key opinion leaders in both academia and industry vote onchain on the top preprints, to provide a new way to identify the best longevity research. Currently, The Longevist has 30+ voters “Curators” each quarter. Therefore, it contrasts quantitatively with journals in that there are many more voters on the research. Also, arguably the voters are more experienced than journal editors. In addition to these differences, VitaDAO started The Longevist for several additional reasons:

1. To increase VitaDAO’s visibility amongst longevity researchers
2. To allow researchers to be compensated for their time reviewing research
3. To grow the longevity research community’s awareness in onchain technologies (through VITA token compensation for Curators / referral bounties for readers, Snapshot voting mechanism and general intro to VitaDAO/DeSci).

Proposal: We The Longevist team ask the VitaDAO community to continue supporting The Longevist for 2024. We believe it is in line with VitaDAO’s 2024-25 Mandate in that it will help to identify commercially viable early-stage longevity projects whilst also fostering community growth and bringing increased crypto awareness.

To highlight why we think The Longevist deserves further funding, we highlight the 2023 achievements below:

The Longevist achievements:

• We have onboarded 30+ key opinion leaders (aka The Longevist Curators) into the VitaDAO ecosystem as token holders, including top academics and industry experts.
• The inaugural edition of The Longevist was launched in July 2023. We have now delivered 4 Editions (one each quarter of 2023). Each of the top 3 preprints of each quarter are awarded “Curators’ Choice” status and adorned with human:AI hybrid cover art.

• Our unique curation style has helped identify and promote top longevity research, with several Longevist-featured preprints having already been published in top journals.

• The Longevist was assigned an International Standard Serial Number ([ISSN 2817-8831])(ISSN 2817-8831 (Online) | The longevist | The ISSN Portal). ISSNs provide publications with a global identity, making them recognizable and accessible worldwide. They signal a level of professionalism and will help legitimize The Longevist as a resource alongside all other academic journals.
• Our Twitter page is already followed by some prominent people in the Longevity field, including David Sinclair, Steve Horvath and The Methuselah Foundation. And our presence caught the attention of the Journal Rejuvenation Research who recently highlighted The Longevist as a development in the field.

• Formed a collaboration with DeSciLabs - all Longevist preprints were put onchain via DeSciLabs Nodes. This provides provenance and permanence for each preprint.
• In advanced talks with one aging journal to have all Curators’ Choice preprints eligible to go straight to peer-review.
• Collaborated with the founders of BioRxiv to have Longevist-featured preprints included in their newly introduced “Community Reviews”.

In surveying the Curators after 2023,

• On average, each curator shared The Longevist with 14 colleagues. Thus, potentially up to 500 more longevity researchers know of VitaDAO now.
• All of them who responded (16) said they would vote in 2024
• None of them responded they wouldn’t take less compensation given that VITA price has appreciated.

In general, the Curators seemed enthusiastic about continuing their participation and in growing awareness for The Longevist and VitaDAO.

Integration of Longevist longlisted preprints into Dealflow for sourcing new projects

The Longevist team generated a longlist of 180+ longevity preprints from 2023. This was created by utilising a social listening tool, database scraping, referral prizes and ear-to-the-ground efforts. Code was created to automatically categorise the preprints by hallmark of ageing, disease indication etc. A CommercializationGPT was created to analyze the preprint content and determine Technology Readiness Level (TRL) to identify ones that have potential for commercialization.

Our “sourcing champions” then identified preprints which they would like to pursue, with ~65 preprints having already been assigned a champion.

Those preprints with commercialization potential will been integrated into dealflow as a top-of-funnel source of topical research.

2024 Plans

Objective 1: Expand and Develop Curator Network

Key Results:

• Increase the number of curators to a minimum of 80 by the end of Q4.
• Onboard 25% of our existing curators as senior reviewers, and have them review at least 1 project in their domain of expertise by the end of Q4.

Objective 2: Strengthen Outreach and Engagement

Key Results:

• Establish partnerships with at least 3 aging societies, 5 institutes, and 5 universities to promote collaboration and engagement by the end of Q3.
• Increase Twitter followers to 5000 through targeted content related to aging societies, institutes, and universities by the end of Q4.

Objective 3: Grow Academic Reader Community & Participation

Key Results:

• Achieve an increase in the subscription of readers to our mailing list from 70 to 500 by Q4.
• In discussions to form a journal club collaboration with lifespan.io.
• Inform all longlisted corresponding authors that their work has been selected. Invite the senior authors of Longevist-featured preprints (top 10 of each Q) to be Curators.

Objective 4: Develop and Distribute Educational Material for the General Public

Key Results:

• Collaborate with The Sheekey Science show to launch educational materials tailored for both the general public and academics on the importance and impact of our work.
• Achieve a reach of 5,000 views/downloads of the educational materials across platforms by the end of Q4.

Objective 5: Host Annual Longevist Award Ceremony

Key Results:

• Successfully plan and execute the inaugural virtual annual award ceremony, recognizing the top Longevity & Aging Research preprints of 2023. To prioritise, following delivery of Q1 '24 (with an aim to host earlier, ~March, in future years).
• Secure partnerships to increase reach and publicity (see objective 2).
• Have 100 attendees in the virtual award ceremony.

Budget

2023 Budget awarded
Curator Compensation: 100k VITA maximum allowance (used ~60k VITA)
Ops: 25k VITA + 50k USDC

2024 Budget ask
Curator Compensation: 25k VITA max
Ops: 15k VITA + 35k USDC, including running salaries, inaugural annual award ceremony prizes, preprint referral prizes, quarterly Sheekey Science Show content.

Timeline

2023: Recruit curators, build website and publish first 4 quarterly editions

2024: Grow readership/community and have first longevity-identified projects pass through the dealflow funnel.

2025: Attract donations / sponsorships etc to initiate financial independence from VitaDAO funding.

Benefits to VitaDAO

• Reputational value from supporting longevity science.
• Increased awareness from this value-added outreach project, leading to more funding applications from having more academics and KOLs learn about VitaDAO
• An increase in critical mass through onboarding KOLs into the VitaDAO ecosystem.
• Decentralisation of governance to mission-aligned prominent people.
• New source of dealflow from The Longevist longlist preprint database - potential projects are then pursued by “sourcing champions”

• Agree
• Revisions Requested (Detail in Comments)
• Disagree

[ADMelhede]

Awesome work! All for the results so far and excited to see how this expands in 2024 and beyond! Like the goal of initiating financial independence from VitaDAO funding in 2025.

Why is the goal to get a maximum of 100 curators rather than more?

How many subscribers does the mailing list currently have? That could help get a better picture of what a 50% increase in the list would mean. Whether that is enough?

Why is the annual award ceremony first taking place before the end of Q3 for 2023, that’s not too close to 2025? Can it be done by Q3 instead?

Is there a quantifiable goal in terms of how many partnerships to secure to increase reach and publicity as part of Objective 5?

Glad to see the big decrease in budget for 2024. What is the reason for it?

[Rhys]

Thanks Andreas, really appreciate the feedback!
Long term, we’d love to have many more than 100 curators to make it truly decentralised. But for the moment we need to consider our compensation limit and also time commitment to recruitment, although this should hopefully become easier as we become more established!
The mailing list has 70 subscribers atm, and I’ve changed the goal to at least 500.
I agree the award ceremony should be earlier, in future it would be good to aim for around March (The Oscars of Longevity Preprints). If this passes, we’ll get the Q1 '24 Edition out and then prioritise the award ceremony (have made this edit too). In terms of partnerships, this will be concomitant with Objective 2.
The budget has been revised to account for token price and also to bring in line with the 2024-25 mandate which aims to streamline ops and reduce burn rate.

[oearmitage]

Really impressed with the amount of impact across both community, sourcing scientific dilligence candidates and sourcing projects for this amount of budget allocation. Great work

[ADMelhede]

Great, thank you for answers. Appreciate the changes, too!

Maybe I would then just mention that the partnerships are outlined in objective 2 in objective 5, e.g. “refer to objective 2” or similar.

Also, would be good to highlight that there will be a focus to have the awards happen earlier in the future, e.g. in line with the Longevity preprints Oscars that you mentioned.

Those could add a little more context and strength to the overall proposal in my eyes.

Makes sense with the mandate focus, and glad to see this.

I am going to vote in favor of this proposal and looking forward to seeing it play out!

[Max_Unfried]

Increase the number of curators to a maximum of 100 by the end of Q4

Could we also have an increase to a minimum of at least 80 curators as a hard KPI. SO doubling the current curators within a year sounds reasonable.

[Max_Unfried]

@Rhys

• Achieve an increase in the subscription of readers to our mailing list from 70 to 500 by Q4.

Which mailing list are you referring to?
Monthly newsletter or Longevity Research Newsletter? Or is there another one?

[Max_Unfried]

@Rhys

• In discussions to form a journal club collaboration with lifespan.io.

Given their potential merger and uncertainty - what keeps VitaDAO/The Longevist from just starting monthly journal clubs? I feel more execution and less partnerships might move us faster along. We already have a bunch of partnerships, most of them just eat time and keep people busy with no tangible results.

[Rhys]

Thanks Max. Let’s do it - edit made to 80 minimum!

[Rhys]

It’s not a newsletter (although the research newsletter is at 1400+ subscribers now!), it’s a Longevist-specific mailing list (can sign up at the bottom right corner of The Longevist website) to receive e-mail updates. I’ve mainly been doing a quarterly round up of what’s been going on each time we deliver a new edition.

[Rhys]

The idea here was that lifespan.io already have a long-running journal club which we could guest feature on with Curators’ Choice preprints

[clarck7]

Absolutely agree! The Longevist is a fantastic initiative that goes beyond just identifying great research. By creating a community hub for longevity researchers, VitaDAO can establish itself as a central player in the longevity field. This will attract not only more researchers (and potentially more grant applications), but also boost VitaDAO’s reputation and visibility within the longevity space.

Here are some of the specific aspects I find most compelling:

• Uniting a Global Network of Researchers: The Longevist fosters collaboration by bringing together longevity researchers from around the world. This creates a powerful network that can fuel innovation and accelerate progress in the field.
• Building Awareness for VitaDAO: As The Longevist gains traction, so too will awareness for VitaDAO. This will expose VitaDAO’s mission and goals to a highly relevant audience who are likely to be interested in its work.
• Identifying Promising Projects: The Longevist’s longlist creation process sounds very thorough, and integrating these pre-prints into the Dealflow funnel is a brilliant way to identify potentially groundbreaking projects early on.

[Max_Unfried]

Ah very cool - wasn’t aware of this.

[Rhys]

Edits made, thanks again Andreas!

[michele.gallia]

I am one of the sourcing champions and at the moment when I tell researchers that I found their paper on the Longevist in many cases they are not even aware of it. It would be great if moving forward the Longevist team can make some outreach to these researchers - maybe offering positions as curators, a prize as it is the proposal. What initiatives do you have in mind to increase awareness of VitaDAO among the researchers that have been selected for publication and are on the long list?

I look forward to another year of the Longevist - can be very valuable for VitaDAO and to build stronger and better relationships with the academic community.

[Rhys]

Thanks Michele, we have reached out previously to the shortlisted (top 10) authors – although it would probably be a good idea to automate contacting everyone on the longlist. We’re also compiling a list of ageing institutes / societies etc as part of outreach (and prob extend the reach to university biology departments in general). We’re really up for adding more utility/perks to being featured in The Longevist (straight to peer review, amplification of research through journal club / podcast etc) and I think that’s a good idea – perhaps any senior author of a Longevist-featured preprint should be eligible to be a Curator!

[michele.gallia]

thank you Rhys! - would it be a problem to incorporate these initiatives in the proposal?

[Rhys]

No problem at all - initiatives added to Obj 3. Thanks Michele!