Orvium ICO — Taking the Problems in the Scientific Publishing Industry Head-On!
In the first part of this series, we’ve shined some light on the traditional scientific publishing industry and how the current system is more than out-dated. The entities in power control a huge part of the industry which comes with further problems we’re going to address in this article.
Besides the problems of how the few big publishers account for up to 70% of the published material, the question of who the copyright belongs to pops up sooner or later. Usually you would expect the researcher to be able to copyright and earn based on his own research work. Instead, most of the research works are being copyrighted by the publishers which amassed such a big audience that the researcher has to take his publishing route through them. By stripping them off their copyright claims, potential earnings diminish and the researchers will be left with a one-time payment at best. Another huge pain point in the current publishing system is the process of reviewing and revising scientific research work.
As I’ve pointed out in the first part, I guess that most readers here will have been through some form of scientific or academic research and know the drill on how exact the people who review your work are (or better said should be). Currently there is no system in place that can make 100% sure that the reviewers are upright honest and knowledgeable enough to provide a high-quality feedback which digs deep into the topic and material discussed in the paper. Even if the reputation of the reviewers are on the line if some crucial mistakes are not being reviewed properly the intransparency of the current system is yet a point that has to be addressed in order to make sure that the scientific publishing industry provides the highest quality possible.
If you’ve followed my previous articles or are already knowledgable with the specifics of the blockchain technology you probably know where Orvium is heading in terms of implementation and usage it in this industry. The trustlessness, transparency and immutability of the blockchain technology can be perfectly utilized in order to attack all these problems. However the implementation has to be thought through to the dot in order to ensure a working system that finds it’s usage in the real-world too. To reach this goal, Orvium has a few more things in mind the platform can and will provide once fully developed.
How Orvium will not only solve the problems addressed above but also improve the current system by implementing new and highly useful features will be discussed in the next article!
