RE: PRACTICAL THINKING. — Strategies for open, free, and transparent scientific publishing. It's the future of publishing. But how do you get the future earlier? Sooner rather than later?
This is an important conversation. Thanks for getting the creative juices flowing here!
the for-profit paywall blocked science publishing houses are not serving scientists or the public well. If the public paid for the science, oftentimes through their taxes, then they should be allowed to read it, download it, and explore it.
Say you have a good idea, and then send this idea to a journal and then the journal sends it out to review to say reviewers 1 and 2. Reviewer 1 says the paper is bad and suggests "reject". Reviewer 2 says it is ok and suggests "revision". Editor says, well 50/50 so I will reject. Paper is rejected but Reviewer 1 has all of the ideas and data from the paper. This has in the past lead to conflicts and ideas being misused (a nice term for stolen). Having a timestamp that says, well, reviewer 1 received the paper that mentioned x, y, z first and then used those data to submit their own paper AFTERWARDS would help give credit where credit is due. Pretty cool.
You are a total genius as the blockchain needs to be part of the peer review process. Thanks! Lots of great ideas here from the replies here too.
Thanks for the kind words.
Point (2) is among the primary benefits of using blockchain, besides the fact that printing scientific content on money gives free archiving. With block confirmation taking seconds one some decentralized blockchains and graphs, that's the fastest and most secure way to produce time stamping.
For mathematicians, physicists, and quants there was always arXiv, but even that takes a day or so to post. Frequently revising arXiv papers is discouraged, however. It's intended for final or almost final preprints.
Being able to timestamp early thoughts and revise ideas in a space where ideas and priority are the bread and butter for most participants will lead to earlier and wider sharing of ideas. Each person then builds on the work of others more rapidly and shares the results of that sooner. The positive feedback of growth of knowledge is accelerated.
For example, I just revised this comment a minute I first posted it.
;)
Mancur Olson (Power and prosperity, New York: Basic Books, 2000) pointed out that any institutional arrangements that contribute to trust therefore make more easy and viable long horizon activities like science, which is the most durable of all activities. The most durable things are those which accumulate. (For better or for worse — trash is also durable in this sense.) So these things most of all are the glue of time binding and therefore are the primary causes of: (a) decline like in the case of trash or special interest groups (Mancur OLSON, The logic of collective action, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965) and (b) growth (David LANDES, The unbound prometheus, Cambridge: University Press, 1969).
All while most persons falsely imagine oil plant and pipelines are the durables of our civilization, while such things are actually built redundantly and work surfaces replaced or rotated every year or other year, depending on the material. In fact it's science that's primarily the cause of growth (Frederick SEITZ, Foreword, Purposive systems, New York: Spartan, 1968).
Agreed on all fronts! Thanks for taking the time to reply. Time stamping is cool and important and this is the way to move forward. Blockchain and science = together at last...
But no happy ending yet. Going to be a big struggle and there will be resistance. Keep up the great work - I look forward to seeing where this goes.