VDP-75 The Longevist: A collection of the top longevity research

Proposals Passed Proposals
1

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

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.

  • Agree
  • Agree with revisions (please comment)
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0 voters
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Love the project! Imo the key question which should have some governance is concrete budget for first step, for example it could be up to $50k usdc + vita in total for the first step and this year and expand based on hitting specific valuable milestones related to our mission and vision

→ leading me to the core questions of: what would massive or mediocre success look like, and failure…

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

2 Likes
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$50K USDC + VITA seems like a reasonable year one budget. I’ll update the proposal. Thanks!

2 Likes
4

I think curation will be the main function of all journals in the future, so getting ahead of this will be great.

I would recommend establishing better success metrics. Many journals provide data on views, downloads, citations, tweets, etc. Could also track invited talks in longevity fora, and/or NIH (or just NIA) grants earned by the PI in the year or 2 around publication. If it aims to curate the best, each article collected by the Longevist should outperform the journal average in which it is eventually published.

I would recommend rephrasing ‘published’ to ‘collected’, ‘curated’, ‘commemorated’ to make it clear it is not a publisher. I would also recommend changing ‘What is the Longevist’ to ‘A curated collection of the most impactful longevity research every quarter, similar to an overlay journal…’

IPFS is a great system, and storing data there is reasonable, but it is not an immutable blockchain. Arweave has its own chain.

5 Likes
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we can probably explore ways to store on ipfs/filecoin and arweave

1 Like
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Thanks @bowtiedshrike !

  • I incorporated your specific success metrics in the proposal.
  • Changed the “what is longevist” to your suggestion.
  • Agree with @vincent we can explore arweave. DeSciLabs has a solution that is functional. In general, I adhere to the “done, better than perfect” principle.
2 Likes
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Storing on IPFS is ok, but it shouldn’t be said it’s ‘stored on the blockchain’ in that case. It’s peer to peer, which is decentralized, but not a permanent, immutable ledger.

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This was simplified language intended for the KOLs. Neither peer to peer or a proper blockchain can technically claim to be immutable. We are starting with DeSciLabs, but maybe we will also do Arweave or other more proper blockchains as resources permit. I think what’s written is fine as is, but point taken.

1 Like
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is that budget for the 50 KOLs or the full time admin, or both?

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Thanks for chiming in here @Max_Unfried as it will be too expensive to pay KOLs $250 per vote.

I propose 250 VITA per vote with a limit of 5 votes.

I was only thinking of admins here, so I amended the proposal to include the estimated VITA given to KOLs.

Any feedback on the budget would be appreciated. As always it shouldn’t be just one person making the rules. We should seek consensus.

2 Likes
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Do you think compensation for voting per article would encourage KOLs to use up all 5 votes to maximise reward - potentially introducing a bias that lowers the threshold for a paper to receive a vote?
What if we do compensation per issue, say 500 $VITA - with 50 KOLs this would also cap the VITA at 100k per annum where currently it could hypothetically reach 250k.

3 Likes
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It’s a good idea to cap at 500 VITA per issue. I’ll change the proposal to that.

1 Like
14

This is exciting, and I think could be funded by the philanthropic side of VitaDAO which is getting started. This is a matter of prioritizing where the funds should go, and I’m not convinced this is the best one to focus on, not only the budget itself but also significant time from steward(s).

We talked about showing what remaining budget we have and what we expect it’ll be used on, in all VDPs, so that tokenholders (including myself) can make an informed decision (given we aren’t in a bull market and abundance anymore).

1 Like
16

The reputational value of having 50+ KOLs voting on research under the umbrella of VitaDAO is huge IMO. The aspiration is to create something like The Oscar Awards. And at a cost of max $50K (1-2% of our budget), it seems high on bang for buck to me. Also, it won’t take that much effort. As a steward, I wouldn’t spend more than 2-3 hrs per week on this and I won’t count towards the budget. $50K is for ~1000 hrs of work, 250 hrs per quarter. That’s six full-time weeks per three months. Unlikely. The actual costs are probably more like $10K.

1 Like
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I like the idea of seeing how much money is available and making informed decisions based on that.

I think this is a valuable project and worth committing funds to. I think curation is the future of journals. There’s a lot of status in being first, and if this takes off, the deal-flow gets a lot easier. Both from having KOLs who know about VitaDAO, and people learn about VitaDAO as a source of funding, so the projects get more competitive.

4 Likes
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I updated the proposal to reflect that the actual USDC usage would be closer to $10K per year rather than $50K.

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It should be noted that this project partially fulfills part of the strategic plan we set out for 2023.

We are aiming to provide more value to researchers, and one of the areas where we can provide value outside of project funding it to help researchers get published, and their research peer reviewed.

Accepting that we need to start this process as an overlay journal until it becomes established, this is a cost effective value-added outreach project in my opinion - and the costs are really no more than we would spend to sponsor and send attendees to a conference.

Noting some negative votes on this proposal so far - so it would be more productive if we had some comments from those individuals that have concerns or don’t support the project - so perhaps those issues can be addressed.

Also, @timrpeterson it may be worth noting in the proposal that this project is in line with our strategic plan for 2023 so it is clear it is part of the roadmap.

3 Likes
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Seems like this can be put on-chain, and ideally clarify the budget maybe as “up to X amount” for a few line items. A bit unclear now with 50k but probably 10k because more is unlikely. Also it could be just up to stewards to manage and pay out every month.

2 Likes
21

This proposal has passed Phase 3 and is currently actively implemented!
https://snapshot.org/#/vote.vitadao.eth/proposal/0x3d5c04ff5c166fd5d7037fdde3abb6184ffab6427ee199286f59cb38810c503f