Could Blockchain provide the technical fix to solve science’s reproducibility crisis?

Blockchain technology has the capacity to make digital goods immutable, transparent, and provable. Sönke Bartling and Benedikt Fecher look at the technical aspects of blockchain and also discuss its application in the research world. Blockchain could strengthen science’s verification process, helping to make more research results reproducible, true, and useful

Opening Science: The evolving guide on how the Internet is changing research, collaboration and scholarly publishing.

Open research practices seek to make scientific practice more efficient and accessible. A new book offers an overview of the Open Science landscape. Benedikt Fecher, Sönke Bartling, Sascha Friesike outline why ‘research on research’ is necessary and also demonstrate how to contribute to the collection via GitHub

Dynamic publication formats and collaborative authoring

While Online Publishing has replaced most traditional printed journals in less than twenty years, today’s Online Publication Formats are still closely bound to the medium of paper. Collaboration is mostly hidden from the readership, and ‘final’ versions of papers are stored in ‘publisher PDF’ files mimicking print. Meanwhile new media formats originating from the web itself bring us new modes of transparent collaboration, feedback, continued refinement, and reusability of (scholarly) works: Wikis, Blogs and Code Repositories, to name a few. This chapter characterizes the potentials of Dynamic Publication Formats and analyzes necessary prerequisites. Selected tools specific to the aims, stages, and functions of Scholarly Publishing are presented. Furthermore, this chapter points out early examples of usage and further development from the field. In doing so, Dynamic Publication Formats are described as (a) a ‘parallel universe’ based on the commodification of (scholarly) media, and (b) as a much needed complement, slowly recognized and incrementally integrated into more efficient and dynamic workflows of production, improvement, and dissemination of scholarly knowledge in general

Open Platform Concept for Blockchain- Enabled Crowdsourcing of Technology Development and Supply Chains

We outline the concept of an open technology platform which builds upon a publicly accessible library of fluidic designs, manufacturing processes and experimental characterisation, as well as virtualisation by a ‘digital twin” based on modelling, simulation and cloud computing. Backed by the rapidly emerging Web3 technology “Blockchain”, we significantly extend traditional approaches to effectively incentivise broader participation by an interdisciplinary ‘value network’ of diverse players. Ranging from skilled individuals (the ‘citizen scientist’, the ‘garage entrepreneur’) and more established research institutions to companies with their infrastructures, equipment and services, the novel platform approach enables all stakeholders to jointly contribute to value creation along more decentralised supply chain designs including research and technology development (RTD). Blockchain-enabled “Wisdom of the Crowds” and “Skin in the game” mechanisms secure “trust” and transparency between participants. Prediction markets are created for guiding decision making, planning and allocation of funding; competitive parallelisation of work and its validation from independent participants substantially enhances quality, credibility and speed of project outcomes in the real world along the entire path from RTD, fabrication and testing to eventual commercialisation. This novel, Blockchain-backed open platform concept can be led by a corporation, academic entity, a loosely organised group, or even “chieflessly” within a smart-contract encoded Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO). The proposed strategy is particularly attractive for highly interdisciplinary fields like Lab-on-a- Chip systems in the context of manifold applications in the Life Sciences. As an exemplar, we outline the centrifugal microfluidic “Lab-on-a-Disc” technology. Rather than engaging in all sub-disciplines themselves, many smaller, highly innovative actors can focus on strengthening the product component distinguishing their unique selling point (USP), e.g., a particular bioassay, detection scheme or application scenario. In this effort, system integrators access underlying commons like fluidic design, manufacture, instrumentation and software from a more resilient and diversified supply chain, e.g., based on a verified pool of community-endorsed or certified providers

Unchaining Collective Intelligence for Science, Research and Technology Development by Blockchain-Boosted Community Participation

Since its launch just over a decade ago by the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, the distributed ledger technology (DLT) blockchain has followed a breathtaking trajectory into manifold application spaces. This paper analyses how key factors underpinning the success of this ground-breaking “internet of value” technology, such as staking of collateral (“skin in the game”), competitive crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and prediction markets, can be applied to substantially innovate the legacy organization of science, research and technology development (RTD). Here, we elaborate a highly integrative, community-based strategy where a token-based crypto-economy supports finding best possible consensus, trust and truth through adding unconventional elements known from reputation systems, betting, secondary markets and social networking. These tokens support the holder’s formalized reputation, and are used in liquid-democracy style governance and arbitration within projects or community-driven initiatives. This participatory research model serves as a solid basis for comprehensively leveraging collective intelligence by effectively incentivizing contributions from the crowd, such as intellectual property (IP), work, validation, assessment, infrastructure, education, assessment, governance, publication, and promotion of projects. On the analogy of its current blockbusters like peer-to-peer structured decentralized finance (“DeFi”), blockchain technology can seminally enhance the efficiency of science and RTD initiatives, even permitting to fully stage operations as a chiefless Decentralised Autonomous Organization (DAOs)

Bimetallic Ag-Pt Sub-nanometer Supported Clusters as Highly Efficient and Robust Oxidation Catalysts

A combined experimental and theoretical investigation of Ag-Pt sub-nanometer clusters as heterogeneous catalysts in the CO→CO_2 reaction (COox) is presented. Ag_9Pt_2 and Ag_9Pt_3 clusters are size-selected in the gas phase, deposited on an ultrathin amorphous alumina support, and tested as catalysts experimentally under realistic conditions and by first-principles simulations at realistic coverage. In situ GISAXS/TPRx demonstrates that the clusters do not sinter or deactivate even after prolonged exposure to reactants at high temperature, and present comparable, extremely high COox catalytic efficiency. Such high activity and stability are ascribed to a synergic role of Ag and Pt in ultranano-aggregates, in which Pt anchors the clusters to the support and binds and activates two CO molecules, while Ag binds and activates O_2, and Ag/Pt surface proximity disfavors poisoning by CO or oxidized species

Bimetallic Ag-Pt Sub-nanometer Supported Clusters as Highly Efficient and Robust Oxidation Catalysts

A combined experimental and theoretical investigation of Ag-Pt sub-nanometer clusters as heterogeneous catalysts in the CO→CO_2 reaction (COox) is presented. Ag_9Pt_2 and Ag_9Pt_3 clusters are size-selected in the gas phase, deposited on an ultrathin amorphous alumina support, and tested as catalysts experimentally under realistic conditions and by first-principles simulations at realistic coverage. In situ GISAXS/TPRx demonstrates that the clusters do not sinter or deactivate even after prolonged exposure to reactants at high temperature, and present comparable, extremely high COox catalytic efficiency. Such high activity and stability are ascribed to a synergic role of Ag and Pt in ultranano-aggregates, in which Pt anchors the clusters to the support and binds and activates two CO molecules, while Ag binds and activates O_2, and Ag/Pt surface proximity disfavors poisoning by CO or oxidized species