Frequently asked questions
Everything researchers usually ask before depositing work in Life of Research — what it costs, who may upload, how citation works, and how it compares to other repositories.
What is Life of Research?
Life of Research is a free, open-access repository where anyone can publish research papers, preprints, datasets, theses, posters, presentations and research software. Every deposit receives a permanent link, a stable identifier and a ready-made citation, and anyone in the world can read and download it without paying or creating an account.
How much does it cost to publish on Life of Research?
Publishing on Life of Research is completely free. There are no article processing charges, no submission fees, no subscription and no charge for readers. Uploading requires only a free account, and reading or downloading requires no account at all.
Who can upload research to Life of Research?
Anyone can upload to Life of Research — university researchers, independent scholars, students, citizen scientists and practitioners. No institutional affiliation, invitation or academic email address is required. The service exists specifically so that researchers without access to an institutional repository still have a permanent, citable home for their work.
Is work on Life of Research peer reviewed?
No. Life of Research is a repository, not a journal, so deposits are published immediately without peer review. Records are labelled by type, so a preprint is clearly marked as a preprint and a peer-reviewed journal article is marked as an article. Readers should judge each record on its own merits and check whether a peer-reviewed version exists elsewhere.
What file types can be uploaded to Life of Research?
Life of Research accepts PDF, Word documents (.doc, .docx), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), Excel (.xls, .xlsx), CSV, plain text, Markdown, LaTeX (.tex), BibTeX (.bib), ZIP archives, and PNG or JPEG images. Each file may be up to 100 MB and a record may contain up to 10 files. PDF is recommended for papers because it is what search engines and academic indexes read most reliably.
How do I cite a record from Life of Research?
Every record page on Life of Research displays a ready-made citation in APA style and in BibTeX, both copyable with one click. Each record also carries a permanent URL naming its type, such as lifeofresearch.com/articles/123 or lifeofresearch.com/datasets/45, plus a stable identifier such as LOR-00123. Cite the permanent URL rather than a file link, because the record page remains valid even when the files are updated.
Which licenses can I choose when depositing?
Depositors choose from Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0), Attribution-ShareAlike, Attribution-NonCommercial, CC0 public domain dedication, the MIT license for software, or all rights reserved. CC-BY 4.0 is recommended for papers because it permits the widest reuse while requiring attribution, and CC0 is recommended for datasets. The chosen license governs the deposited files; the metadata describing every record is always public.
Can I remove or update work after publishing it?
Yes. Depositors can edit a record's metadata and files at any time from their dashboard, and each change to the files increments the record's version number. A record can also be withdrawn, which removes it from public view, search results and the API. Identifiers are never reused, so a withdrawn record's link never points at different work later.
How is Life of Research different from Zenodo?
Life of Research and Zenodo are both free open-access repositories that accept any research output. Zenodo is operated by CERN and mints a DOI for every deposit, backed by institutional preservation guarantees. Life of Research is a smaller, independent repository offering permanent links, open metadata and a public API, with DOI minting planned rather than available today. Depositing in both is sensible, since multiple copies make research safer.
Does Life of Research provide a DOI?
Life of Research does not mint DOIs. Records receive a permanent URL and a stable identifier such as LOR-00123, which are sufficient for citation and linking. Minting DOIs requires paid membership of a registration agency such as DataCite, which this repository does not currently have. If a record already has a DOI issued elsewhere — by a journal, or by another repository — you can enter it when depositing, and it is then displayed, linked and included in the exported citation metadata. Depositors who need a new DOI should also deposit in a DOI-minting repository such as Zenodo and link the two records.
Is there an API for Life of Research?
Yes. All published metadata is available as JSON without authentication: lifeofresearch.com/api/records returns a paginated list and supports a q search parameter, and lifeofresearch.com/api/records/123 returns a single record with its file list and download URLs. The API is open for any use, including text mining and indexing.
Will my work be indexed by Google Scholar?
Record pages are built to meet Google Scholar's technical requirements: each page carries Highwire citation metadata tags, links directly to a crawlable PDF on the same domain, and requires no login to read. Indexing by Google Scholar is not guaranteed for any repository and can take months, since Scholar reviews repositories before including them. Records are also published in an Atom feed, a sitemap and an open API so other indexes can find them.
Still have a question?
Read the policies for content, licensing and takedown rules, or the about page for how the repository works. Ready to publish? Upload your work — it takes a few minutes and costs nothing.