Powering research reputations: Using real-time reputation building as an incentive to share research discoveries

Abstract

The vision for ARTiFACTS sprang from the realization that distributed ledger technology/blockchain technology could be applied directly to scholarly communications. Blockchain fits our current system of citation currency. As Eugene Garfield said decades ago, “The Mertonian description of normal science describes citations as the currency of science. Scientists make payments, in the form of citations, to their preceptors”. To work properly, scientists must be able to create, claim ownership, share novel works, and assign proper attribution to prior work at all phases of their research. However, the existing process of disseminating research and scientific discoveries is skewed towards published articles. Communication, sharing, and the ability to give or receive attribution are delayed far downstream - oftentimes several years – from the actual time when discoveries are made and formally communicated. Distributed ledger technology can deliver transformative value and efficiency in facilitating real-time sharing of the outputs of each step of the research process while providing comprehensive and immutable, break-proof attribution and linking for all relevant research artifacts. Ultimately, this technology will empower the scientific and scholarly communities to affect positive change. This paper briefly discusses some of the early learnings from their recent introduction of the ARTiFACTS system.