Mapping the blockchain for science landscape

Science and blockchain are in many ways natural bedfellows.

Science, in essence, is a principled way of selecting the best ideas based, not on who proposed them, but how well they match the scientific data. In its ideal form, this process is open and transparent so that nothing has to be taken on trust.

Blockchain on the other hand is a way of trustlessly recording data. The distributed ledger short-circuits the need to rely on the reputation of any one person.

So, philosophically at least, there are obvious parallels. But can they be translated into practical outcomes? Can blockchain enhance science?

At Frankl, we definitely think so. We’re working towards a decentralised, open science. Our apps integrate blockchain into the scientific workflow, while our token (the Frankl) incentivises members of the scientific community to engage in open science practices.

But we’re not the only ones thinking along these lines. Blockchain projects are springing up all round the world, focusing on different parts of the scientific enterprise. It’s a truly exciting time to be in this space.

So here without further ado is our run-down of blockchain science projects that have caught our eye, organised according to the broad issues they’re seeking to address.

Research funding

Scientific research requires money. But with limited funds (and so low success rates), researchers often spend large amounts of their time applying for research grants — time that could be spent doing actual research. A number of projects are exploring whether blockchain and “crypto-tokens for science” can make research funding fairer and more efficient.

The Replication Foundation is focused on funding attempts to replicate research findings — an essential part of science that few traditional funding bodies support. The Foundation will run as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) whose rules and financial transaction records are maintained on a blockchain. “The DAO [accepts] proposals for replication studies and funding. Token holders can then vote on these proposals and if quorum is reached in a certain time period, the funding is transferred to the proposal’s author.”

Pan-European team ScienceRoot are creating “a centralized portal” that lists grants from around the world. It will also allow researchers to showcase their ideas and crowd source funding. “In the future this will be able to work not only with Science Tokens but also with individual tokens created for each project.”

Matryx, based in San Diego, are in some sense turning the problem on its head. Rather than researchers proposing projects and competing for funds, they’re creating a public ledger of open projects and their associated payments or “bounties”. “Bounty requirements are posted publicly and indexed in the smart contract system... Once the Bounty is public, users begin creating submissions in an open multi-round contest.”

Meanwhile, Argentinian team, the Open Science Network propose both traditional and bounty-based funding through their RES token. They will also support replications: “Part of our network’s revenue (from patents, applied technology and donations) will be used to create a reproducibility fund.”

Data management and sharing

Data sharing is critical for advancing science. It allows other scientists to validate the analyses reported in an academic paper (and makes it much easier to detect rare cases of data-faking). Just as importantly, it allows the data to be re-used and remixed with other datasets to answer new questions that the original researchers didn’t think of. Basically, it’s good for everyone.

And so this is where we in the Sydney-based Frankl team are focusing our initial efforts, building apps that automatically archive data as it’s collected. The best solution will depend on the context — small data files can be written directly to the blockchain, larger files will require “off-chain” distributed solutions like IPFS or Swarm or (at least initially) more conventional cloud-based storage.

Others are working on similar problems. Data Management Hub is a group out of Ireland and the UK, “actively working on use-cases that bridge the gap between IPFS (and other distributed technologies, e.g. ledgers and smart contracts) and existing scholarly communication infrastructures, from data repositories and linked data to DOIs and ORCIDs”.

Peer review and publication

Peer review is the vetting process by which manuscripts are assessed by independent researchers prior to publication in scientific journals. It’s slow, inefficient, and opaque. Scientific publishing is also extremely lucrative for publishers who take content given to them free by scientists and then charge everyone else to read it! It’s no surprise then that several blockchain initiatives are taking aim at scientific publishing.

European team Orvium with links to CERN and NASA propose using blockchain to create “a public, fully traceable, and trustworthy record of the publication process at a minimal cost”. The proposed platform will also incorporate cloud computing, big data analytics and machine learning to “enhance life cycle automatization, facilitate peer review accuracy (e.g., identify plagiarism), classify papers based on their content and identify emerging trends and topics.”

Other projects are seeking to build new scientific publications upon blockchain infrastructure. On the Seoul-based Pluto Network, peer reviews are “transparently recorded on public blockchain ledgers, and depending on the contribution made with them, researchers are compensated with their reputations.”

The above-mentioned Scienceroot are also proposing their own academic journal. Blockchain and smart contracts will “guarantee submitters immutability, security, transparency and trust”; peer reviewers will be compensated for their efforts; and academics can “obtain profits from their published work”.

The Open Science Network are also looking to reform peer review. “The cost for peer reviewing is paid using the RES token as a medium… The author, or any other participant in the network, can set up bounties for peer reviewing or reproduction.”

Finally, Amsterdam-based Katalysis aim to make the peer review process “more transparent, trustworthy and robust”. Their decentralized infrastructure will “extract peer review data from journals and share this information in a transparent, yet in an anonymous way, with the community.” Katalysis have recently announced a partnership with technology company Digital Science, scientific publisher Springer Nature, and ORCID who provide digital IDs for researchers.

Attribution and IP

Scientists are evaluated and rewarded primarily according to the scientific publications they produce. But this ignores the many small contributions that collaborators and research team members make along the way. It also means that there’s no real incentive to develop intellectual property once it becomes apparent that it won’t lead to the sought after publication.

US team ARTiFACTS aim to leverage distributed ledger technology for proof-of-existence, linking and attribution. “Researchers will be able to immutably prove ownership and existence of novel work, expand access to their scientific and academic research artifacts, provide and receive ‘real-time’ attribution for novel work and more comprehensively and rapidly build and demonstrate their body of scholarly contributions.”

Meanwhile, Knowbella — also based in the States — describe themselves as “a matchmaking service between IP producers and IP consumers”. They seek to unlock the “unrealized value of… global orphaned intellectual property by crowdsourcing it to researchers and providing tools and incentives for scientific collaboration.”

Exciting times ahead

The projects are in various stages of development with details to be ironed out in most cases. Like the Frankl team, they’re no doubt asking the same hard questions: How do we engage the scientific community and convince enough people that a blockchain-based approach is a sufficient advance on the status quo to justify changing scientific practices? How do we develop a business model that’s sustainable in the medium to long term?

The other big question is can the emerging community work together? Or will the projects be destined to compete? In our view, there’s no reason why multiple projects can’t thrive and complement one another, leveraging blockchain technology to ensure that everyone is rewarded for their contributions.

It’s great to know that our excitement about the potential of blockchain is shared by so many others who care about science. There’s a temptation to portray this as great minds thinking alike. But the truth, we think, is that blockchain-for-science is simply an idea whose time has come.

Frankl Open Science

If you’d like to know more about Frankl, you can read our whitepaper, check out our website, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter @FranklOpenSci.

You can also chat directly with us via our Telegram channel: you can download the Telegram app here and find us at t.me/franklcommunity.

Mapping the blockchain for science landscape was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.