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.

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.
• Password recovery and email notifications. There is no mail delivery configured yet, so a forgotten password currently requires contacting the administrator.
• Communities and curated collections.

Contact

For takedown requests, corrections, account problems or anything else, email pranaymahendrakar@sonytech.in. For takedowns please include the record identifier (for example LOR-00042) and a short explanation. See the policies for what we accept and how withdrawals work.