ResearchProof for Academy Initiative — a donation-based platform for scientists to prove authorship of scientific results using blockchain and cryptographic timestamping and increase the pace of scientific research

Great news from the ResearchProof Team: today we launched the ResearchProof for Academy Initiative, our new donation-based notarisation service for scientists to prove authorship of scientific results in a legally and internationally valid way using blockchain and cryptographic timestamping, to help scientists register early results, encouraging worry-free sharing and thus helping to increase the pace of production of scientific results.

With ResearchProof for Academy scientists can generate a legally and internationally valid unfalsifiable timestamp to prove the authorship of their scientific results prior to their dissemination, using both cryptographic timestamping and blockchain technologies.

In view of the COVID-19 international emergency, to support as much as possible rapid dissemination of scientific research with new technological tools, we decided to make the ResearchProof for Academy Initiative permanently available to the scientific community as a donation-based service for academic use, meaning that if you belong to an academic institution, or if you perform independent scientific research, you can use our platform for free and donate to support us.

And the coolest thing is that by using the encryption option, the results deposited with ResearchProof for Academy will be totally encrypted and thus not publicly readable — not even by us—unless you decide otherwise.

This means that the fact that you generate a proof of authorship with our service does not imply that you will be compelled to share it, unless you decide to. On the other hand we truly believe that this kind of service, by guaranteeing legal authorship, can foster a more rapid exchange of early intermediate results within the scientific community, even before publication. Should you decide to share your content after registering it, you can do so using Creative Commons or any other licence, with no imposition or constraints from our side.

The purpose of the ResearchProof for Academy Initiative is to offer scientists around the world an easy and quick tool to prove authorship of scientific results in a legally valid way, to encourage scientists to share early results in a worry-free way and thus help increase the pace of production of scientific results.

Timestamping on the platform currently uses eIDAS-compliant cryptographic timestamping technology, which is legally recognised in the European Union thanks to the EU eIDAS Directive, and in 172 countries worldwide thanks to the International Berne Convention on works of genius.

Alongside eIDAS-compliant timestamping, the platform also implements blockchain timestamping technology, which will gradually be made available to users worldwide in a stepwise manner [EDIT, 28 April 2020: Bitcoin Blockchain Timestamping has now been implemented and tested and it is available on a global scale for all users].

The ResearchProof project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 782642.

The purpose of the ResearchProof for Academy Initiative is to offer scientists around the world an easy and quick tool to prove the legal authorship of scientific results in a legally valid way, to encourage scientists to share early results without worries and thus help foster the increase of scientific production.

It is already possible to use the ResearchProof for Academy Registry service through this link. To visit the general ResearchProof project homepage, you can click here instead. We are eager to hear your comments and feedback!

Well, that’s it for now, but more news will be surely coming soon. We hope that with this tool, by guaranteeing preservation of authorship, we can contribute to a faster, seamless and worry-free sharing of early results, to the benefit of the scientific community, of science and of society as a whole.

All the best to all,

Adriano, Daniela, Lluís, Suli, Tamara, Rastko, Airleas and all the ResearchProof Team