Q&A - EUREKA’s Authentication Process
What is your role in the EUREKA project?
I’m deputy CTO.
What is your field of expertise in academic research?
Requirements and challenges for blockchain governance, security challenges in smart contracts, automated Android mobile testing, and tech adoption.
What are some of the challenges about working on the EUREKA project?
It’s hard to combine many aspects in one single application, to combine the interaction with our smart contracts deployed on the Ethereum blockchain and the normal client-server communication. I think this is challenging, but at the end we have one single product. We will use our convenience layer for monitoring events in our smart contract and at the same time, display those data in our UI.
Walk me through the process of this from a non-technical standpoint. Walk me through it from submission to publication.
Our product will look like a normal application. Click on it, go to the application, and you will have, of course, the welcome screen and some more stuff. You will have to click a button to log in to our application. And here is the first main difference between a normal application, like Facebook or Instagram, and EUREKA’s Dapp. We will use MetaMask as a third party. MetaMask is a Chrome extension for sending transactions and handling key-pairs in the Ethereum blockchain. It’s a very well known extension in the crypto-space and it’s really growing. They’ve just release a new version which is really stable in my opinion.
Regarding the authentication process, for example, if you go to another application you always have the option to login using your email address and a password or to use a external social media provider. In our application we will skip that part, since in order to be able to access the dashboard in the main app you will just need a Ethereum key pair for unlocking your wallet. In order to do all of this you will use MetaMask and you will not need a “normal” password, just unlock your wallet. MetaMask will trigger a popup asking for the permission for signing your account.
And are there any security concerns about this? What makes it safe?
The cryptography behind the key pair. How it works on a technical level, MetaMask, injected with the web3 library, will unlock your account by signing the public key and the appeared message with your private key. Afterwards, it will generate a fixed-length string. In that sense we will generate a very strong and secure password for you for matching if you’re authenticated, but you will not know your password, and you won’t need to know it.
So MetaMask interfaces with the user’s browser and the blockchain. Now we’re logged in, what happens next? I want to submit my article.
You go to the dashboard, and you have a left panel. In that panel you have different tabs, for example, you have the dashboard where you can see all the generic stuff, you have “My Articles”, “My Reviews”, “My linked articles”, and so on. So you’d just click on “My Articles” and you can start a draft with one button.
So it’s very similar to the ScienceMatters platform?
Yes it is. I think the main difference between the ScienceMatters platform and EUREKA is the way we transact. When you submit an article using the ScienceMatters platform you just have a normal communication between a server and a client. In EUREKA’s case we will have to interact with the blockchain and trigger different functions in our Smart Contract. So the transaction, or the action behind a click button is different.
Follow EUREKA for part two of this interview with sneak peaks of the EUREKA platform in development
The waiting game: how the culture of the academic publishing industry is stifling global research and development
Bo‐Christer Björk and David Solomon (in an open access paper available here) identify three problems which affect the publication process in academia.
First, under traditional subscriptions to journals, access to information and research findings is not adequate. In practical terms this means that libraries must renew subscriptions to access journals (in print or electronic form) behind paywalls. These academic libraries can be subject to institutional budget cuts. This could make it harder to maintain access to a wider variety of journals behind paywalls. And with the advent of file sharing websites like Sci-Hub, economic necessity, if not opportunism, has lead to a practice of circumventing subscription fees. The example of Aaron Swartz’s arrest in 2011 comes to mind. After hacking into MIT’s servers to download and distribute journal articles behind paywalls, the punishment for his crime would have included a hefty fine and a 35-year prison term. Swartz hanged himself in 2013.
Swartz’s actions, and his tragic death, are evidence of the dire need for access to research.
Second, the peer review process is patently unfair, and this process often affects, based on chance alone, the choice of which research output or article can be published. Under the current system of publication the services of peer reviewing and editing are essential in ensuring quality control of individual published articles and studies. However, peer reviewers and editors are typically not remunerated for the work of their applying expertise in reviewing and editing research. The submission fee for one article in a “high impact” journal can cost over 5 000 USD.
The argument for non-remuneration of peer reviewers and editors could be maintained on a basis of mutual benefit to authors of articles. Editors and reviewers are usually published authors themselves. This means that when the time comes for the editors and reviewers to publish, this group of people can call in a ‘favour’ which they earned reviewing an early author’s work.
Whether this ‘favour’ is more of an obligation is not a relevant question to pose at this point.
The essential point of understanding is that publishing houses outsource the work of review and editing to volunteer reviewers and editors. This is particularly disturbing when one makes comparison of the services within academic publishing industry to the services within the legal profession. As a thought experiment, imagine that lawyers had no professional structures which allowed them to charge a fee for checking a contract. This group of professionals would simply have to rely on an economy of favours. They would have to assume that when the time came they could exploit their professional networks in order to have a contract checked by the right expert. The sobering reality is that lawyers have refined the act of charging for their expert services to an exquisite art. Given the scarce skills and expertise required in the editing and reviewing process, one hopes that authors in academia might take note of this ‘exquisite art’.
This comparison raises important questions about the fairness of the non-remuneration of editors and peer reviewers.
The third problem is that the publication process of an article is often very delayed. This delay is compounded by a lengthy review process. This problem is dangerous for research and development because it contributes to a seemingly wanton stagnation of global research and development. Its cause is rooted in the outmoded mindset and lax attitude of traditional publishers. This mindset is exemplified by an existing practice of bundling of print journals. The reasons for this practice originate from page limits set in place due to the high cost of printing. Bundling the articles along type and length allows publishing houses to maximise their profits at the expense of delaying the publication of some article that do not make the cut until the next issue. In some cases that has lead to a serious bottleneck effect in the dissemination of published articles. The mindset extends beyond journals which issue printed volumes. This delay is compounded by the fact that authors must pass through several rounds of review, in which authors make changes to their work.
The review process can take years. Authors must implement changes to such a degree that the review might take on the level of work of the original project itself. Consequently some authors may actively choose to delay the submission of research to a publisher for fear of having their ideas stolen or ‘scooped’. Given the increasingly competitive nature of the ‘publish or perish’ world of academic, this hoarding of data might seem justified, however, its effects on scientific progress are deleterious.
Electronic journals and repositories are still partially affected by this outmoded mindset. Today, the practice of bundling electronic articles by type and length exists, to a somewhat limited extent.
As a millennial and digital native, I find this mindset infuriating. For those of us who come from a position of relative privilege, our generation has grown up with expectation having unfettered access to information on immediate and current basis. In short, we expect better. And our native knowledge of technology has allowed us to begin divest from publications behind paywalls. Judging by the number of uploads and downloads on certain websites which flaut copyright law, the infurituation can be followed by action.
My intention here is not to lambaste the entire publishing system within academia. My intention is to call attention to a culture of reluctance to embrace change which has caused some of the biggest publishing companies to fail to innovate. I also mean to offer solutions to these problems.
A researcher from an established research institute delays publication of their findings for several years. The existing system in academia incentivises researchers to delay publishing research until they have a sufficiently large ‘story’ in order to further their careers. As a result, several years can pass until important findings are published.
A researcher can instead publish multiple single observations on the EUREKA platform, giving other scientists the chance to incorporate these observations into their own research. As the single observations are recorded and timestamped on the blockchain, the researcher can take credit for their work immediately. This will be especially useful for junior researchers looking to make an early mark on their careers.
EUREKA is a scientific review and rating platform fuelled by the EUREKA token, which has the potential to radically improve the $20 billion global science publishing industry and the science research process.
Watch the introductory video featuring prominent academic supporters of our open science mission:
https://youtu.be/ScU9ytVP5WcJoin our Telegram channel to chat directly with the EUREKA team: https://t.me/joinchat/EXhWdw1KgAQgnraZhI9XBA
The EUREKA team is from the established open access Swiss science publisher www.sciencematters.io, which will be the first to implement the EUREKA Platform.
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