About The Longevity Decentralized Review

TLDR provides funding for researchers to review each other's work. It addresses critical issues with academic journals:

• Researchers should be able to obtain peer reviews of their work in a timely and fair fashion.
• Reviewers should have the option of being compensated for their efforts.
• The general public shouldn't have to wait for research to be published in a journal to know whether it's credible.
• Journals should not profit off the free labor of researchers.
• TLDR will not interfere with the status quo. It is an opt-in mechanism for researchers to get extra eyes on their work.

FAQ

• How does TLDR work?

  TLDR is an on-demand peer review service. There is a free and paid tier. Articles from websites known as “Rxiv” (pronounced “archive”) preprint servers, BioRxiv, MedRxiv, and Arxiv are auto-posted daily to the homepage. The incentive for peer reviewing these freely posted manuscripts is to receive a share of the donations given to TLDR. See the Donate page to donate. The paid tier differs in that it allows researchers to post their work directly to have it reviewed. Paying places a 'Paid' label next to the submission.keep their manuscript(s) part of the paid tier. Reviewers have extra incentive to review paid manuscripts because they not only receive a portion of the total donations but also a portion of the total subcriptions.its $VITA token, the initial focus of both the free and paid tiers are on longevity related research.

• Where does the research come from posted on the TLDR homepage?

  The research is posted from the researchers themselves and from the preprint servers, Biorxiv, MedRxiv, and Arxiv. We especially want people to link to their research on the preprint servers. These 'Rxiv' websites enable anyone to submit their research in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, medicine) disciplines for free. This is helpful because not every can afford to publish in traditional academic journals. Currently, we are focusing on biology-related manuscripts (e.g., Arxiv 'q-bio' and 'physics.bio-ph') but we potentially will expand.

• How does peer review work on TLDR and how does it differ from traditional peer review?

  TLDR reviewing is similar to traditional peer reviewing in terms of its emphasis on rigor and in judging for importance. However, it differs in that it is quantitative. The ranking of each work is based on upvotes by ones peers. It is similar to how it's done at Hacker News. Also the reviews are ranked by upvotes. Anyone can review a work by clicking 'Write review' under each manuscript.
  
  We believe TLDRs have value when compared to traditional reviews because though they will likely be shorter than traditional peer reviews, they can be faster and the voting can enable a broader consensus. This contrasts with traditional peer review that is performed by a relative small number of people (2-4).
  
  All this being said, we are always open to suggestions on how to facilitate a better peer review environment.

• How does how the reviews get evaluated affect how they get paid?

  Researchers can evaluate the reviews using upvoting and commenting. This feedback will help reviewers grow their reputation and will determine their payouts.

• How are donations handled?

  TLDR gives the donations we receive to the researchers who peer review. A small fraction of the donations go to operating the TLDR organization, as is needed to pay staff salaries and maintain this website. We use Stripe for our credit card processing and Smart Contracts for our cryptocurrencies.

  Please donate here.

  We support the following digital currency donations:

• Bitcoin (BTC): 36DkutW1QKHSiN9xuGakQaaKThWrhTBBRHCopy
• Ethereum (ETH): 0x99B75a632567ce5A86eDE922E23D1B052136192dCopy
• USD Coin (USDC): 0x3344fcA91ecdBDb7c919Ae91C0a9a8F1d63a1Ab3Copy

• Can you log in under a pseudonym? Can people see my activity on the site?

  Yes, you can log in under a pseudonym. There's no restrictions on who can use the site. Your reviews and donations are anonymous. All content is anonymous. We feel this is important to promote free expression. That being said, those who are abusive towards others will have their accounts and comments delisted. Also, if you will make a donation or pay for a review using a credit card, we are required by our payment processor to collect your email.

• What is the problem that TLDR addresses?

  Publishing in journals especially in the biomedical sciences has significant issues. Journals historically provided an important function in physically printing research manuscripts. However, now with the internet anyone can make their work accessible by posting it online. Researchers are now doing this at preprint servers as mentioned above.
  
  The remaining major distinction between a journal and any website on the internet is that journals have peer review. Peer review is the process of scientists reviewing each other’s work to determine if the work is worthy of publishing. In most cases, scientists recommend other scientists with similar domain expertise to a journal to review their work. Scientists then often spend many hours assessing the quality of results and suggesting changes. Often, there can be several rounds of revision.
  
  This is a system that benefits the world that scientists take pride in, with one major issue – The journals do not pay scientists for any of this work. Rather, the journals charge large and growing fees (many $thousands) to scientists for the privilege of publishing in their journals. The journals have little costs because scientists do most of the work for free. This results in journals having massive profit margins. Some estimates have journals outdoing the profit margins even of some of the most successful companies on earth such as Apple.
  
  To recap, the common scenario is scientists pay journals from their increasingly inadequate non-profit funding sources to have other scientists do free labor reviewing for for-profit journals. It is widely acknowledged by many that this is an unacceptable exploitative system that needs to change.

• How does the paid tier pricing work?

  You can extend the period of time your (or anyone's) manuscript is open for review by paying. As a logged in user you can pay either via USDC or via USD.

  Pricing tiers

  • 1 month extension. $19
  • 3 month extension. $39
  • 6 month extension. $57
  • 12 month extension. $99

• How does one get paid to do peer reviews?

  You get paid using $VITA tokens. Please include your ERC-20 address on your 'Profile' when you are logged in. In the future we plan to use log in with a web3 wallet and to do away with the email requirement.

• Who developed TLDR? And what does TLDR refer to?

  TLDR was created by Tim R. Peterson and colleagues. TLDR is an acronym that stands for The Longevity Decentralized Review. Tim is an Assistant Professor at Washington University School of Medicine. The TLDR is not affiliated with Washington University.

• Questions?

  Please reach out! We'd love to talk with you.