BINO - Blockchain In Name Only - how to think about block chain in STM publishing

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Blockchain In Name Only How to think about blockchain in STM publishing @IanMulvany - Head of Transformation - SAGE Publishing

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While discussing interoperable metadata and interchangeable standards in STM 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.

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Blockchain - 1 minute primer

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Blockchain Previous Hash Metadata Data Previous Hash Metadata Data Previous Hash Metadata Data

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Blockchain Previous Hash Metadata Data Previous Hash Metadata Data Previous Hash Metadata Data Previous Hash Metadata Data

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Blockchain Previous Hash Metadata Data Previous Hash Metadata Data Previous Hash Metadata Data Previous Hash Metadata Data

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Blockchain

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Blockchain - tamper proof

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51% rule

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51% rule

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To prevent a coordinated attack transactions are designed to be slow - “proof of work”

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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 ⏳ • Also lots of potential value if there are interactions between transactions

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Alternatives AWS S3 DAT Kafka Solid Web Apps

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Alternatives for your attention Metadata Standards Distributed Systems Open Publishing Systems

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