Life of Research
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Free, open-access repository

About Life of Research

Life of Research is a free, open repository for scholarly work — papers, preprints, datasets, theses, posters, presentations and software. It exists so that anyone, anywhere, can share their research and anyone can read it, without paywalls, fees or institutional gatekeeping.

What you get

  • A permanent home for your work. Every record receives a stable identifier (like LOR-00042) and a permanent URL that you can put on your CV, in citations, and in grant reports.
  • Ready-made citations. Each record page provides APA and BibTeX citations that others can copy with one click.
  • Discoverability. Record pages embed Google Scholar-compatible metadata tags, and the whole repository is indexed via an open sitemap and a JSON API.
  • Usage statistics. Views and downloads are tracked per record, so you can see your work's reach.
  • Your choice of license. From Creative Commons Attribution to all-rights-reserved — you decide how your work may be reused.
  • Free for everyone. No article processing charges, no submission fees and no reader accounts.

Who is it for?

Independent researchers, students, citizen scientists, and anyone whose work deserves a public, citable home — especially those without access to institutional repositories.

Machine access

All published metadata is open and available without authentication:

  • /api/records and /api/records/<id> — JSON, with a q search parameter
  • /oai2 — an OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint serving oai_dc and oai_datacite, for harvesting by academic aggregators
  • /feed.xml — an Atom feed of the most recent records
  • /sitemap.xml — every indexable URL

Not yet available

  • DOI registration. Records receive a permanent URL and an identifier such as LOR-00042, which are enough to cite and link. Minting DOIs requires paid membership of a registration agency, which this repository does not yet have. Where a record already has a DOI issued elsewhere, that DOI is displayed and linked.
  • Communities and curated collections.

Contact

Ready to share your work?

It takes a few minutes and costs nothing.