Harness the power of your research artifacts

Consider this: In 2016, there were 2.3 million scientific and engineering articles published globally. And every one of those articles is supported by many additional outputs created along the way. A great deal of the information produced, from hypotheses to protocols, lab notes to raw data, pictures to videos and more, has value — even negative or confirmatory results and failed experiments. And these outputs have value not just for the researcher or team doing the work, but for any researcher who may be trying to answer similar questions or replicate the results. Yet, very few pre-publication artifacts are being shared.

Researchers’ reasons for not sharing are many, but they can be largely summed up like this: researchers feel there is more downside than upside in sharing in-progress work outputs. The downside as perceived by most researchers is three-fold: 1) Fear of misappropriation of the work; 2) It takes too much time to manage it; 3) There has been no way to get meaningful attribution or citations for this work. So, researchers are biased to hold on to their work.

We think there is a better way — a way that can fulfill the full vision of Dr. Eugene Garfield who famously said, “Scientists make payments, in the form of citations, to their preceptors.” Indeed, sharing research not only has the potential to help other researchers, but it also increases the opportunity for attribution and citation, which in turn builds your reputation. And in real time, not at the end of a two- to three-year publishing cycle.

Here we offer a few reasons why you should share your research and how the ARTiFACTS blockchain-based platform makes it easier, safer and more beneficial than ever before.

Five reasons to share all research artifacts

1. Enhance your reputation, advance your career. In today’s publishing ecosystem, it could be many years before important research findings reported in a manuscript are submitted, reviewed, published, cited, and then for a citation history to build. By publishing your research artifacts throughout the research process, you improve your chances of researchers finding, using and citing your work. More citations help your reputation grow faster, influencing your ability to secure grants, receive tenure, and advance your career. And it is well documented that more open sharing of your research correspondingly increases awareness and recognition of your work.2

2. Speed the velocity of research. By sharing what you’re working on, what questions you’ve asked, what you’ve learned so far, the data you’ve collected and more, you enable other researchers to fast forward to new questions, sidestep mistakes, and build upon your work to accelerate learning and discovery. When credit can also be given and received for this work, we breakdown barriers that slow career advancement and societal benefits.

3. Reach more researchers and facilitate collaboration. With millions of researchers actively exploring new hypotheses and increasingly engaging in interdisciplinary research, chances are good many of them are working to address issues that intersect with your work in novel ways. By sharing all aspects of your research, you are increasing the chances of it being found and you may find collaborators who can contribute to your work.

4. Aid in reproducibility. Reproducibility is enhanced when researchers are able to build on a broader set of previous artifacts and knowledge. The more information you can provide to other researchers about your work and how you went about it, including the failures, helps them more effectively and efficiently confirm findings.

5. Support peer review. With background documentation of your methods, protocols, data collection, survey design, and more, reviewers can better understand and evaluate the value, novelty and rigor of your work.

These are all worthy incentives for sharing research, but how are we addressing the perceived downside to sharing? That’s where ARTiFACTS comes in.

Safely, easily share research artifacts

While there are other platforms available for sharing your work, they don’t offer the same peace of mind that ARTiFACTS can. Built on blockchain technology, the ARTiFACTS platform allows researchers to share work, collaborate, provide attribution and receive citations right within their workflow.

The system facilitates ‘one-click’ interaction with the distributed ledger, enabling researchers to “transact” on the blockchain, creating a permanent, unalterable record (or block) that includes a timestamp and encrypted identification information. Anything added to the platform can be made public or kept private and users can choose when to transact it on the blockchain. With the power of blockchain, ARTiFACTS becomes a real-time, single source of truth for researchers to:

• Establish proof-of-existence and confirm provenance. Blockchain can instantly and permanently record all transactions to provide unquestionable proof of existence with unique fingerprints of all transacted files.
• More safely share in-progress work and better manage IP. From within the ARTiFACTS project management platform or from within other researcher tools, share outputs when appropriate, and manage IP through smart contract capabilities (coming soon).
• Provide and receive valid, break-proof attribution and assignment of credit. As additional outputs are found and used, citations can be made in real-time and recorded on the distributed ledger. With an authoritative system for citation management, a more complete record of one’s scholarly contribution is now possible.

Distributed, permanent, immutable, timestamped, encryption — all of this combines to help researchers authoritatively and rigorously manage citations, artifact linkages and ownership pre- or post-publication in a way that is unprecedented relative to current indexing, archiving and researcher community solutions.

To learn more about ARTiFACTS or to try the system for yourself, go to artifacts.ai.