On the prospects of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies for open science and academic publishing

Abstract

Distributed ledger technologies such as blockchains and smart contracts have the potential to transform many sectors ranging from the handling of health records to real estate. Here we discuss the value proposition of these technologies and cryptocurrencies for science in general and academic publishing in specific. We outline concrete use cases, provide an informal model of how the Semantic Web journal's peer-review workflow could benefit from distributed ledger technologies, and also point out challenges in implementing such a setup.