Towards decentralised open science with blockchains.

Abstract

This work proposes and evaluates a sociotechnical system decentralising scholarly communication (SC), i.e., how researchers (1) disseminate and (2) evaluate their findings. The current set-up of SC relies on (1) academic publishing (AP) for the dissemination and (2) publisher-driven peer review (PR) and scientometrics for the evaluation of research. Currently, SC relies on resources that are computed and stored centrally in private, corporate databases. This thesis not only outlines the tensions between the oligopolistic nature of corporatised SC vs. the collaborative public-domain mindset of science, but it also documents the ‘wicked problem’ of large market players failing to curate public domain work, often privately appropriating it. Also described are shortcomings of PR and scientometrics in their current, ossified, and non-transparent formulations. Against that backdrop, using engineering and social approaches, the thesis presents an all-encompassing study into what is expected of modern SC and how to envision its future. One novel finding is that given the problems of corporate centralisation pertaining to SC, the tenets of Open Access, Open Science and Open-Source Software apply synergistically, and when implemented using the features of blockchain technology, this combination provides a valid platform to decentralise & ‘de-corporatise’ SC, to ensure its fit within the public domain. It is documented how, as part of the emerging Web3 paradigm, blockchain-based sociotechnical systems facilitate interactions among parties, reducing the number of intermediaries required and providing new efficient modes of coordination. The thesis addresses the tension between the singular ideal of truth in research juxtaposed against the pluralistic nature of research production. On the one hand, it is the use of blockchain smart contracts, whose execution is validated globally by the network, that helps with providing a single version of the truth to all scholars, thus organising research information and value exchange with fairness, transparency, and efficiency in mind. On the other hand, blueprints for SC decentralised autonomous organisations acting as federated support networks are proposed, including the governance smart contracts containing the logic for disintermediated AP (Smart Papers), decoupled PR (DAO4PR) and transparent scientometrics computations. Accordingly, novel blockchain SC software is created and evaluated computationally and sociologically. The results suggest SC needs to be modernised to stay fit for purpose and that blockchain solutions are useful towards that end, especially the proposed solution that incorporates open-source smart contracts running atop a Proof-of-Stake blockchain, Ethereum.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Luis Ibanez Gonzalez: orcid.org/0000-0001-6993-0001

ORCID for Leslie Carr: orcid.org/0000-0002-2113-9680

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