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

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

Decentralizing Science: Towards an Interoperable Open Peer Review Ecosystem using Blockchain

Science publication and its Peer Review system strongly rely on a few major industry players controlling most journals (e.g. Elsevier), databases (e.g. Scopus) and metrics (e.g. JCR Impact Factor), while keeping most articles behind paywalls. Critics to such system include concerns about fairness, quality, performance, cost, unpaid labor, transparency, and accuracy of the evaluation process. The Open Access movement has tried to provide free access to the published research articles, but most of the aforementioned issues remain. In such context, decentralized technologies such as blockchain offer an opportunity to experiment with new models for science production and dissemination relying on a decentralized infrastructure, aiming to tackle multiple of the current system shortcomings. This paper makes a proposal for an interoperable decentralized system for an open peer review ecosystem, relying on emerging distributed technologies such as blockchain and IPFS. Such system, named ``Decentralized Science'' (DecSci), aims to enable a decentralized reviewer reputation system, which relies on an Open Access by-design infrastructure, together with transparent governance processes. Two prototypes have been implemented: a proof-of-concept prototype to validate DecSci's technological feasibility, and a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) prototype co-designed with journal editors. In addition, three evaluations have been carried out: an exploratory survey to assess interest on the issues tackled, a set of interviews to confirm the main problems for editors, and another set of interviews to validate the MVP prototype. Additionally, the paper discusses the multiple interoperability challenges such proposal faces, including an architecture to tackle them. This work finishes with a review of some of the open challenges that this ambitious proposal may face

Quantinar: a blockchain p2p ecosystem for honest scientific research

Living in the Information Age, the power of data and correct statistical analysis has never been more prevalent. Academics, practitioners and many other professionals nowadays require an accurate application of quantitative methods. Though many branches are subject to a crisis of integrity, which is shown in improper use of statistical models, $p$-hacking, HARKing or failure to replicate results. We propose the use of a peer-to-peer education network, Quantinar, to spread quantitative analysis knowledge embedded with code in the form of Quantlets. The integration of blockchain technology makes Quantinar a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) that ensures fully transparent and reproducible scientific research

Securing medical records based on inter-planetary file system and blockchain

In general, health records include important information like the patient’s history, findings of examinations and assessments, diagnosis reports, documentation of consent, and treatment plans. Sharing this information has grown to be a challenge concerning data security, as it could result in compromising patient privacy. Therefore, the patient's information should not be misused or tampered with. In this paper, a full process of storing and retrieving medical records is proposed using a decentralized system through the integration of two emerging technologies: Blockchain and Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS). The system provides solutions for the major security concerns associated with medical files, including authentication and authorization, database breaches, data integrity of local and cloud storage, and data availability. The obtained results indicate a high level of safety by adding security layers such as confidentiality, authentication, authorization and access control, based on different factors. All these aspects contribute to reaching the aim of the proposed system, which is storing and retrieving medical records in a decentralized and safe manner

Developing Data Integrity in an Electronic Health Record System using Blockchain and InterPlanetary File System (Case Study: COVID-19 Data)

The misuse of health data stored in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) system can be uncontrolled. For example, mishandling of privacy and data security related to Corona Virus Disease-19 (COVID-19), containing patient diagnosis and vaccine certificate in Indonesia. We propose a system framework design by utilizing the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Blockchain technology to overcome this problem. The IPFS environment supports a large data storage with a distributed network powered by Ethereum blockchain. The combination of this technology allows data stored in the EHR to be secure and available at any time. All data are secured with a blockchain cryptographic algorithm and can only be accessed using a user's private key. System testing evaluates the mechanism and process of storing and accessing data from 346 computers connected to the IPFS network and Blockchain by considering several parameters, such as gas unit, CPU load, network latency, and bandwidth used. The obtained results show that 135205 gas units are used in each transaction based on the tests. The average execution speed ranges from 12.98 to 14.08 GHz, 26 KB/s is used for incoming, and 4 KB/s is for outgoing bandwidth. Our contribution is in designing a blockchain-based decentralized EHR system by maximizing the use of private keys as an access right to maintain the integrity of COVID-19 diagnosis and certificate data. We also provide alternative storage using a distributed IPFS to maintain data availability at all times as a solution to the problem of traditional cloud storage, which often ignores data availability. Doi: 10.28991/esj-2021-SP1-013 Full Text: PD

Blockchain for automotive: An insight towards the IPFS blockchain-based auto insurance sector

The advancing technology and industrial revolution have taken the automotive industry by storm in recent times. The auto sector’s constantly growing demand has paved the way for the automobile sector to embrace new technologies and disruptive innovations. The multi-trillion dollar, complex auto insurance sector is still stuck in the regulations of the past. Most of the customers still contact the insurance company by phone to buy new policies and process existing insurance claims. The customers still face the risk of fraudulent online brokers, as policies are mostly signed and processed on papers which often require human supervision, with a risk of error. The insurance sector faces a threat of failure due to losing and misconception of policies and information. We present a decentralized IPFS and blockchain-based framework for the auto insurance sector that regulates the activities in terms of insurance claims for automobiles and automates payments. This article also discusses how blockchain technology’s features can be useful for the decentralized autonomous vehicle’s ecosystem

Analysis of web3 solution development principles

In the master's thesis, we researched the principles of Web3 solution development. We studied the blockchain and blockchain-related technology, development of the Web including all versions of the Web and the differences between them. We presented the popular technologies for Web3 development and the most common Web3 solutions with examples. With help of systematic literature review we explored the state-of-art technologies for Web3 solution development and proposed a full-stack for Web3. In the final part we implemented a proof-of-concept Ethereum decentralized application and compared it with equivalent concept of Web2 application. We proposed future work of researching other popular blockchain protocols like Solana or Polygon