Bitcoin Forum

Can the Blockchain technology serve to aid/transform the peer review process that happens in journals?

While peer review as it stands is essential to science, it is often not true peer review. Talking to journal editors, I have learned that often, peer review only means two people reading the publication. Some papers are rejected on shaky grounds, others are accepted without enough scrutiny. Watching for the impact of the journal can help, but still, I was wondering if anybody has a clear view on how blockchain can potentiate this so that science is boosted and raised beyond the reach of lobbying and personal bias?   If you think about it, scientific journals are basically a structure that provides trust. But isnt distributed trust what the blockchain is all about?

Can science be revolutionized with bitcoin also?

No.  The blockchain is a distributed timeserver and mechanism to arrive at consensus on timestamps without trust.

The idea behind Bitcoin is that there is no need to trust any entity or entities.  Every full node verifies every transaction and every block for itself rather than trusting what anyone else has to say about it.

I dont see why you say 'no' , since its not at odds with what I said.    You dont have to trust single entities, you trust the decentralized network (and the maths behind it). But maybe it was bad wording from my part?

And any thoughts on the topic?

Bitcoin can be used for voting, but science isn't a democracy. Perhaps statistical studies can benefit from blockchain technology.

You said that distributed trust is what the blockchain is all about.

I said no, because the blockchain is not "all about" "distributed trust".  The blockchain is about establishing an agreed timestamp without trust.


Math doesn't require trust, and you don't trust the decntralized network, you verify every transaction and every block for yourself specifically because you don't trust the decentralized network.

Yes, Blockchain technology can Revolutionize Science.

  By making censor proof submissions and true peer reviewed journals, in fact enhancing the science process itself.

  This can be done in one of two ways, A monetized system merge mined from Bitcoin or a Multi-stage Blockchain.

  The first solution, provides a currency by which the value of the Scientific Journals can be ascertained. The cost to submit a Article would be determined by the market, the more support you gain the more likely people will include your article permanently into one of the information blocks. This system would be as followed, Scientist purchases Science Journal coin, pays the required amount for review and inclusion in the Blockchain for a specified period. Other scientists review the findings and connect the dots with other Science Journals, being paid in the process for contributions to it's categorization and help with formatting(A Dynamic Categorization System to review submissions: ie: Do work to understand and consolidate the article with known knowledge). As Scientists review the meta aspects of the Blockchain(Article, Links, Correlations, Formatting, Deep Domain knowledge of individuals) The most Trustworthy, Accurate and verifiable information will be included permanently.
  It would require a different design for the Blockchain, It would be Torrent based and each article with it's annotations would be a separate block vying for inclusion in the permanent datastore, failure to do so would relegate it to the whims of peoples willingness to support your Article with hard drive space.

  The second a Multi-stage Blockchain would be far more forgiving and would not use Monetization. It is simply like Bitmessage: Multiple Blockchains linked together by Domain. The Hierarchy would be the same as traditionally done, Submit Journal for review to first stage, Users make correlations to established knowledge taking it to stage two, experiments are replicated and verified taking it to stage three; The further you go into the Blockchain the smaller it gets and more rigorous the process to establish Veracity. Sometimes you may need to reformat the submission since not all aspects of Hypothesis or Experiment are complete. 
  Each user would be required to establish their Domain knowledge before being able to Review Fellow Scientists Journals. The deeper the knowledge and trust the more value the opinions of individuals, this would work as a proof of knowledge system, any discrepancies in Reviews would lower the value of that individual if the majority of those that judge them think they are manipulating the process... so doing good work at all stages is key.
  Further processes would require Internet of Things functionality, where it is beyond Proof Of Knowledge it is Proof of Experiment results... if your equipment is not hooked up to the internet when replicating results, you will have to repeat the results to take a journal to final canonical inclusion in the Science Blockchain.

Preferably use both that way people can at least make a living doing science

Creationists would love this, science by populist vote.

yeah... there would be checks, can't buy your way up. The blockchain is nothing more than a set of rules it doesn't have to be math. Outline the systems criteria, design and incentives with good failure state analysis and bypasses possible. We make the process solid... It'll be accepted as accurate because of the checks and balances being applied without question. If the rules governing the Blockchain fail completely then it has to be forked and updated with a more rigorous process.

I know there are people that call something like that a blockchain, but if the rule isn't math, then who gets to make the rules?

The market, we show them how we run things and people decide where to put their efforts towards.
Effective designs spread better, resonating deeply with their Audience.

This.
Again, science is not a democracy. Voting is fine for a private magazine, but not an academic journal.

I don't think so. Science is not to get consensus, everyone could have different insight into some specific issue from their different perspective. I think you could create some type of petition to ask for support.

technology is not same as science

It's an interesting idea, but there would be a huge cultural pushback against it. I'm in academia (mathematics). When I first got interested in bitcoin this summer, I tried to talk to a few colleagues about it. The reaction was always somewhere between jocular and derisive. While science should not be about voting or popularity, the vast majority of scientists today would "vote" to avoid any journal associated with cryptocurrency related technology. Perhaps this will change in a generation or two, purely due to attrition. I cannot imagine my colleagues changing their minds. In fact, I no longer mention cryptocurrency at work, since it might negatively affect my ability to get tenure.

Nevertheless, I have spent some time brainstorming about how one might set up a "blockchain journal" for mathematics. Mathematics is something of a special case, since it is a deductive science. There is no need to do repeatable experiments or interpret statistical data. There are three main criteria when peer reviewing a mathematics article submitted for publication: correctness of the results, originality of the results and how interesting the results are. There are proof checkers for checking correctness of formal mathematical proofs automatically. There are also some (brittle) ways to check for originality automatically. This only leaves the subjective criteria of how interesting the results are. This final criteria could be omitted for publication into the "blockchain journal". Instead, publications could be rated on how "interesting" they are later, based on how many later publications use the results.

As long as the current negative attitude about cryptocurrencies persists in academia, people (like me) would be free to publish to the blockchain journal pseudonymously without putting their careers at risk.

I got interested in bitcoin and started thinking about these ideas for a blockchain mathematics journal during the summer when I proved some theorems for bitcoins at mathgate.info. I recently noticed the code for the mathgate.info proof checker is now open source. It's on my stack of things to look at carefully when I get time. It seems like such a proof checker could provide the core of such a blockchain journal by automatically checking correctness and originality.

Reality will be the ultimate Arbiter of who is right and who is wrong or both... either way, science blockchains are just a matter of thinking about them.

I love your idea, Math is a great place to start, It could be similar to Primecoin.
Though It would have to be done with the same Proof of Knowledge system for who could submit work.
No voting... Everything must be absolutely provable.  Having a Mind map of the branches of mathematics and creating a sort of game around it to see how far we can prove the theorems known in a visual manner.

and I'm thinking that code if distributable could work as a proof of work, shares would work the same way, people get Tokens for the work they put in; Breakthroughs are payable to the Authors of successful theorems, Multiple-blockchains to sift through until pure Mathematical Constants are etched in the Prime Chain.

We could also just merge mine it, develop a solid Homomorphic encryption scheme to keep coins secure then automatically distribute them to participants using their minds and machines to further mathematics alone. Have good Quantifiable metrics for all the code, monitor performance of network and individual code and give out the lottery to those who improve the theorem proving ability of the system as well.

We could do a lot of things, but the fact that we are able to distill the fundamentals of mathematics to a solid, indestructible knowledge store is mind boggling.