Introducing the REWARD ecosystem by EUREKA

Many of the challenges that academia is currently facing (including biases in peer reviewing, poor evaluation criteria for research and researchers, long delays in scientific publishing, non-communication, redundant and irreproducible scientific data) are compounded by the absence of fair credit for contributions and put the fate of scientific research in jeopardy.

One of the major culprits in exacerbating this crisis is the exaggerated commercial interests of publishers who act as middlemen in what should actually be a peer-to-peer evaluation process.

EUREKA is proposing an online blockchain-powered scientific review and rating platform to circumvent the roadblocks that have been set in place by the current publishing system. The REWARD system will be at the core of its operation. It is modeled to address the fundamental issues deep-rooted in the scientific research process: Revelation, Evaluation, Worth Assignment, Award, Replication, Data Analytics.

REWARD — steps involved in the workflow of EUREKA

Many parts of the research cycle including hypothesis generation, discovery, attribution, incentivisation (e.g., via smart contracts), and publication/dissemination can all be done via blockchain.

• Revelation: Getting scientific data timestamped and claiming immediate ownership. This has important ramifications for protecting intellectual property, preventing ‘scooping’ and helps to avoid delays in discovery and communication.
• Evaluation: Crowdsourced and expert-guided open peer reviewing allows real time, scientific self correction, as well as peer review of the research, and eliminates the hindering of scientific progress brought about by delays in scientific publishing.
• Worth assignment: EUREKA’s unprecedented crowdsourced scoring will provide researchers as well as publishers with a new metric that can be used to evaluate the work swiftly, thus speeding up the publication process. This is similar to the transfer service of test scores between educational institutions or investment grade ratings given by analysts.
• Award: Using EUREKA’s blockchain-based scientific rating system will provide reliable, immutable scores that can be transferred on the blockchain to funders, institutions and directly to journals. Decisions on funding, award granting as well as career advancement could become based on ratings and reviews on the EUREKA platform.
• Replication and incentivisation: A decentralised, peer-to-peer review system and the issuance of smart contracts fosters a collaborative environment, and incentivises replication research to either confirm or contradict existing studies. This ensures the reproducibility of findings and minimises wasteful time and financial spending.
• Data Analytics: An AI-based prediction tool will make use of the ScienceMatters’ patented algorithm which identifies related studies and observations by cross referencing annotations and links them to form a natural narrative. It is also envisaged that this technology might be leveraged to predict targets for drug development.

By providing such a blockchain-powered ecosystem, not only is EUREKA enabling a more efficient and trustworthy science publishing process, but it is also ensuring that researchers get compensated for their contributions, be it in the form of scientific discoveries or their evaluation, through the issuance of smart contracts.