Cryptocurrency will probably be used to reward peer reviewers for an experimental title referred to as ResearchHub Journal.Credit score: bizoo_n/Getty
An experimental journal is paying peer reviewers the equal of US$150 per assessment in a specifically developed cryptocurrency. The publication is hosted on a platform aiming to make science extra open and environment friendly, and rewards customers with a token referred to as ResearchCoin for participating with content material.
The platform, referred to as ResearchHub, launched in 2020 and is backed by billionaire entrepreneur Brian Armstrong, who developed Coinbase, the biggest cryptocurrency alternate in the US.
“It’s a wierd oddity of historical past that peer reviewers don’t receives a commission. It’s a precious factor that they do and we should always acknowledge, reward it,” Armstrong stated final month on the launch of the ResearchHub Journal in San Francisco, California. The transfer comes as Bitcoin — the world’s most established cryptocurrency — reached an all-time-high worth of US$100,000, fuelling renewed fervour for the notoriously unstable sector.
Specialists say ResearchHub addresses a number of the points in science however would possibly battle to achieve a foothold in analysis publishing due to its radical nature.
Open-source science
Armstrong first floated the concept for ResearchHub in a 2019 blogpost in which he expressed frustration on the pace and high quality of scientific analysis. He recommended that science ought to function in the same technique to open-source software program, the place customers construct on every others work, with components of profitable on-line platforms reminiscent of social-media web site Reddit, the code repository GitHub and crowd-funding web site Kickstarter. As a part of his plan, he needed to supply a viable different to standard journals.
The ResearchHub Journal guarantees that preprints uploaded to the positioning will probably be peer reviewed inside 14 days and a publication determination will probably be made in seven days after that. Authors pay a $1,000 article-processing cost (APC), and papers and the accompanying peer critiques are printed beneath a liberal CC-BY licence. The journal is but to publish a paper and isn’t listed on bibliometric databases reminiscent of Internet of Science or Scopus.
Authors also can earn ResearchCoin as a reward for utilizing good analysis practices, reminiscent of preregistering research and sharing information overtly. Customers of ResearchHub can already earn ResearchCoin for importing preprints and papers to the positioning, commenting on or voting for these uploads. Customers also can tip one another for good work or pay others to finish research-related duties, reminiscent of producing information for a assessment. At present, ResearchHub takes a 7% reduce of any ResearchCoin transactions on the positioning, 2% of which is ploughed again into the group.
Brian Armstrong, chief govt of the Coinbase cryptocurrency alternate, arrange the ResearchHub platform that mixes components of websites reminiscent of Reddit and GitHub.Credit score: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg through Getty
Alex Holcombe, a metascientist and psychologist on the College of Sydney, Australia, likes the concept of experimenting with the credit score economic system of science. “At present, we simply get credit score for publishing papers, however there may be a lot extra to science, together with nice types of analysis, reminiscent of peer assessment,” he says.
However he cautions that the majority radical initiatives in science publishing fail. “It’s so exhausting to interrupt out of the tyranny of affect components,” he says.
Money or credit score
Paying researchers for peer assessment just isn’t a brand new concept. Economics journals have completed it in the previous, and a few medical journals pay sure reviewers. PeerJ, an open-access mega-journal launched in 2012, makes use of a token system to reward reviewers. Reviewers earn ten tokens for reviewing an article; these might be redeemed towards the APCs for publishing in PeerJ. The web site says that “tokens are truthful, versatile and the way forward for peer assessment”.
Some researchers are discovering that reviewing for ResearchHub is profitable. Though the positioning launched its journal solely final month, it has been paying referees to assessment uploaded preprints since Might 2023.
Pedro Paulo Gattai Gomes, an impartial molecular-biology marketing consultant in São Paulo, Brazil, says that he now earns extra money reviewing for ResearchHub than he did in his professorial roles at educational establishments. He critiques a median of 15 papers a month, accounting for 70% of his revenue.
“Getting paid to assessment is justice, as a result of in my opinion it is extremely unfair to work voluntarily and never even obtain a thanks,” he says.
Cashing in ResearchCoin for unusual cash is feasible however difficult. The ‘decentralized’ cryptocurrency alternate Uniswap permits ResearchCoin to be traded for different cryptocurrencies, reminiscent of Bitcoin, Ethereum or USD Coin, which might be transformed into some standard currencies. ResearchCoin is at the moment buying and selling at round $1. ResearchHub co-founder Patrick Joyce says that his staff is in talks to get ResearchCoin listed on a centralized alternate that’s extra easy to entry.
James Butcher, a publishing marketing consultant in Liverpool, UK, says that using a cryptocurrency may make it tough for the positioning to achieve traction, as a result of these techniques have been exploited by scammers. “Teachers are a conservative group of individuals,” he says.
