Hello steemians! Ok, truth to be told, I am going to dropout from my phd soon. Personal circumstances did not allow me to continue with the research. Yet, I still remain in love with what i am doing, so much so i decide that I am going to continue my independent research. And i decide to share my research results with the Steemit community some time in the future with some fine-tuning in the depth of posts. There are a few reasons why I am doing this.

Current landscape in academia and why it is a problem

First, journal publications are very expensive - can be anything from USD10,000 per year and USD 10 - USD 30 per journal paper depending on the field. These journal publishers have increased their annual subscription every year but most university library budgets are not growing at the same rate. Hear this - In 2015, the academic publisher Elsevier earned about $1.58 billion in profit or about $9.36 billion in revenue. In fact, they are earning much more than Facebook or International Banks of China. With access to internet and free peer reviews, we would expect that the costs of journal publishing should go south. But it seems that this is not the case.

This problem is so severe that even ivy league universities find this hard to swallow. If Harvard university can no longer afford to pay, I wonder how other universities researchers in developing countries are coping with the limitation of literature. And indeed, it was the similar predicament that lead Alexandra Elbakyan, a Kazakhstan university student to create Sci-hub. This lead to a lawsuit from Elsevier to Sci-hub and Alexandra Elbakyan. An article here did some research using Sci-hub traffic data and found out that in fact, Sci-hub users are scattered all around the world, even in the States.

This situation has led many researchers to break the copyright law. But they did it with the underlying good intention to seek for relevant literature because they were blocked by publishers' desire for more profits. The way that scientific knowledge is monetized in the modern day today for more profits at the expense of scientists doing good for the improvement of humanity is beyond me. Putting a price tag on knowledge which is explored and created by scientists, and then asking scientists to pay for their own work. Something here surely does not add up.

We need an alternative model for research dissemination.

Importance of knowledge decentralization and management

In a post by @anwenbaumeister, she talked about steemit’s potential for decentralization of knowledge. I believe that steemit with huge potential for knowledge decentralization, can draw power away from exorbitant journal publishers and return this power back to scientists, the knowledge explorers. Knowledge should not be managed by centralized publishers. Steemit and steem blockchain can be a potential alternative model for scientists to contribute their work directly for impact and influence. Imagine an awesome knowledge center to collect and spread valuable knowledge and information. A centre for academicians to illustrate expertise, debate and discuss.

How steemit can be a knowledge centre even for layman

I am not asking Steemit to award me with a PhD. But I would like to show what I am doing here is an example of how not only valuable knowledge can be decentralized, such knowledge can be managed. This also includes the communication channels of your research. At one point during the last 2 years of my PhD, i wondered if my mentor ever read the things i wrote. And then i realized there will just be 3 people reading my PhD thesis. That will be my mentor, the examiner and maybe my husband. That was also when i noticed that more people are reading my blog than my phd thesis. That is fully understandable. I mean who wants to read a 30,000 word long and boring thesis unless they have to. BUT, if the thesis were to be transformed into information readable and useful for the layman, i can imagine that piece of information delivering more impact for the community.

People in niche expertise may agree with this:- it is harder to communicate your research to layman than to your peers in the same field. I have been blogging passionately about design thinking at steemit, pretty much in layman terms. I hope that my effort can give steemit and steemians added value in terms of knowledge sharing and intellectual discussion.

Appeal to scientists: Join us

Join steemit and be part of this awesome wave! Try it. If you do blog about your expertise, be it economics, science and engineering, social sciences, please tag as #academia so that i can follow you. Waiting for you. :-)

P/S: Thanks for the positive response. Would like to raise awareness on the #pevo project which i am part of. See @pharesim's post here Also see https://pevo.science/

P/P/S: Thanks for the coffee guys :-) Never expected this response. of course, big things do not happen overnight. But, let's start small and gain awareness. Have thought of a few ideas for the scientific community on steemit. Keep steeming on!