Reimagining Scholarly Publishing: A Community-Led Approach with Lifecycle Journal

Scholarly publishing has long been dominated by traditional models that often slow down the dissemination of research and limit transparency. But what if there was a way to publish research that embraced openness, community participation, and continuous evaluation? Enter Lifecycle Journal, a new initiative by the Center for Open Science (COS) designed to put researchers back in control of how their work is shared and assessed.

A New Vision for Publishing

Now open for submissions, Lifecycle Journal is a three-year research and development pilot that reimagines scholarly publishing with a focus on transparency, collaboration, and rigorous evaluation. Rather than restricting the research process to a final, static publication, Lifecycle Journal allows researchers to:

• Share all aspects of their research at various stages
• Publish outputs continuously throughout the research lifecycle
• Receive feedback from a diverse range of community-led evaluation services
• Update and refine their work in response to new findings
• Engage with peers to enhance the impact and trustworthiness of their research

“Lifecycle Journal aims to reimagine scholarly publishing by creating a model where transparency, collaboration, and community-driven evaluation are at the forefront,” said Brian Nosek, Executive Director of COS. “By enabling researchers to share and refine their work throughout the entire research lifecycle, it addresses critical challenges in trust, rigor, and accountability.”

A Community-Centric Model

Traditional publishing often restricts researchers from revisiting and improving their work once it has been published. Lifecycle Journal shifts this paradigm by fostering an ecosystem where publishing is an ongoing process, supported by a network of evaluation services. These include human-led assessments, machine-assisted reviews, and empirical credibility checks, all working together to ensure research is as rigorous and transparent as possible.

“At Peer Community In, we’re convinced that the Publish-Review-Curate (PRC) model is the future of scholarly publishing,” said Thomas Guillemaud, Co-founder of Peer Community In. “It is parsimonious and efficient; the transparency of the evaluation process benefits readers; multiple curations by various services benefit authors, readers, and services themselves, and it gives more power to authors. Lifecycle Journal is the best real-life experiment in PRC.”

A Step Toward a More Transparent Future

By aligning the rewards of publishing with principles of openness and rigor, Lifecycle Journal offers an innovative framework that meets the evolving needs of researchers and scholarly evaluation services. It also embraces metascience from the outset, ensuring continuous improvement and knowledge-sharing among the broader research community.

Get Involved

Lifecycle Journal is now open for submissions. Join us to push the innovation envelope with a reimagined, transformational model of scholarly communication and publishing.

To learn more and submit your research, visit: www.lifecyclejournal.org.