Towards a Decentralized Process for Scientific Publication and Peer Review using Blockchain and IPFS

Abstract

The current processes of scientific publication and peer review raise concerns around fairness, quality, performance, cost, and accuracy. The Open Access movement has been unable to fulfill all its promises, and a few middlemen publishers can still impose policies and concentrate profits. This paper, using emerging distributed technologies such as Blockchain and IPFS, proposes a decentralized publication system for open science. The proposed system would provide (1) a distributed reviewer reputation system, (2) an Open Access by-design infrastructure, and (3) transparent governance processes. A survey is used to evaluate the problems, proposed solutions and possible adoption resistances, while a working prototype serves as a proof-of-concept. Additionally, the paper discusses the implementation, in a distributed context, of different privacy settings for both open peer review and reputation systems, introducing a novel approach supporting both anonymous and accountable reviews. The paper concludes reviewing the open challenges of this ambitious proposal.

CODECHECK: an Open Science initiative for the independent execution of computations underlying research articles during peer review to improve reproducibility

“…We certainly do not want the binary attribute of "code works" to become a factor in bibliometric approaches for performance assessments. While developed for the current "paper"-centric publication process, the CODECHECK principles would also work well with novel publication paradigms, e.g., peer-reviewed computational notebooks 112 , iterative and granular communication of research outputs, articles with live-code 113 such as eLife's ERA, decentralized infrastructure and public reviewer reputation systems 114 , and completely new visions for scholarly communication and peer review, such as described by Amy J. Ko in A modern vision for peer review. An explicit segmentation of research steps could even make the focus of a CODECHECK easier by only checking the "analysis" sub-publication.…”

Paperchain: Distributed Way of Publishing Paper on the Blockchain

“…2. The IPFS [17] Peer-to-Peer network is used to distribute scientific papers by giving open access infrastructure. 3.…”

When Blockchain Meets Distributed File Systems: An Overview, Challenges, and Open Issues

“…Not only playing as a game-changer in music domain, IPFS has been adopted by other areas. For instance, Tenorio-Forn et al [71] proposed a decentralized publication system for open-access science based on IPFS. Their proposed distributed systems can record reviewers' reputation, and handle the transparent governance processes.…”