Blockchain in name only - why you should not use blockchain in scholarly publishing

Transcript

1. Blockchain In Name Only How to think about blockchain in STM publishing @IanMulvany - Head of Transformation - SAGE Publishing
2. While discussing interoperable metadata and interchangeable standards is GOOD, blockchain is inappropriate for our industry because it is too complex, requires lack of trust to be valuable and does not offer as much potential ROI as other initiatives.
3. Why are people talking about this?
4. I’m going to propose that a possible solution to the growing problem of authentication and accounting in scholarly publishing may be found in the technology behind Bitcoin the blockchain. Phil Davis writing on The Scholarly Kitchen 2016 Third-party companies have made huge profits from the work of scientists for many years, selling journals and reprints to a variety of institutions. In blockchain- powered scientific publishing, researchers would control whether or not institutions are required to pay to use their work, while making it freely available to the public and researchers alike, if they so wish. Manuel Martin is CEO and co-founder of Orvium.
5. I’m going to propose that a possible solution to the growing problem of authentication and accounting in scholarly publishing may be found in the technology behind Bitcoin the blockchain. Phil Davis writing on The Scholarly Kitchen 2016 Third-party companies have made huge profits from the work of scientists for many years, selling journals and reprints to a variety of institutions. In blockchain- powered scientific publishing, researchers would control whether or not institutions are required to pay to use their work, while making it freely available to the public and researchers alike, if they so wish. Manuel Martin is CEO and co-founder of Orvium. KILL SCI-HUB !!! KILL Publishers !!!
6. Blockchain - X minute primer where X < 10
7. Blockchain Metadata Data
8. Blockchain Metadata Data Previous Hash Metadata Data Previous Hash Metadata Data
9. Blockchain Previous Hash Metadata Data Previous Hash Metadata Data Previous Hash Metadata Data Previous Hash Metadata Data
10. Blockchain
12. Blockchain - tamper proof
15. 51% rule
16. 51% rule
17. To prevent a coordinated attack transactions are designed to be slow - “proof of work”
18. We need: Previous Hash Metadata Distributed writers Lots of copies 1 2 A network with no trusted intermediary, and shared copies of the database 4 3 Proof of work scheme to prevent 51% hack Incentive to participate ⏳
19. In STM we don’t have these things: 1 2 4 3 Distributed writers Lots of copies A network with no trusted intermediary, and shared copies of the database Proof of work scheme to prevent 51% hack Incentive to participate Hard to get to scale across all publishers We have a high trust environment, lots of trusted intermediaries Anonymity is eventually pointless in STM -> low incentives for attack Existing incentive schemes too entrenched to be supplanted
20. Finally - idea is simple, but implementation is hard - case study - Bitcoin 95% of transactions on the bitcoin network may be artificial Not secure Not egalitarian Not efficiently distributed Over 80% of mining is preformed by six mining pools $2.7M stolen from exchanges per day in 2018
21. Risks It will get attacked and hacked Vendor lock in Lack of technical capacity or attention within our organisations Who owns the transaction? Who owns a peer review? Reward systems in academic publishing are hard to shift
22. Opportunities Let’s us all talk about metadata Submissions as transactional events A global append only store Multiple copies, by design Transactional history of articles is interesting
23. Alternatives AWS S3 DAT Kafka Solid Web Apps
24. Alternatives for your attention Metadata Standards Distributed Systems Open Publishing Systems