A DAOs-Based Publishing System for Advancing Open Access

Abstract

The development of the scientific publishing system has remarkably enhanced global accessibility to research findings and substantially increased the visibility and dissemination of academic publications. However, significant challenges still exist in effectively safeguarding the intellectual property rights of contributors, such as the unauthorized usage of materials, the complexity of enforcing intellectual property rights across various legal jurisdictions, and high instances of plagiarism and content misuse. Additionally, financial barriers related to open access may restrict the participation of economically disadvantaged researchers, potentially biasing scientific records towards more affluent research initiatives. To address these issues, a novel decentralized framework is formulated to ensure truly open access. This framework leverages blockchain for immutable record-keeping and clear attribution of authorship, to prevent unauthorized usage and plagiarism. Besides, it also utilizes a copyright-sharing model based on decentralized autonomous organizations and operations (DAOs), where smart contracts automatically enforce copyright and access policies to ensure fair compensation for authors and researchers. Furthermore, the copyright sharing model based on non-fungible tokens (NFT) and gradual ownership optimization (GOO) mechanism is proposed to ensure fair and accurate recognition and compensation for scholarly contributions.