Ethereum brought the Touring Complete World Computer, the EVM, and it became immediately possible to store anything on the blockchain.
The world of scientific research gave us the open source World Wide Web through the pioneering work done by Tim-Bernes Lee and his team at CERN.
The same world of researchers has subsequently been on the receiving end of an archaic system where publishers take home most of the money and restrict access to scientific information in the process.
While the rest of us digitize all other assets and make them immutably and safely stashed away onto blockchains, Orvium is doing just that, but now to scientific publications.
Let’s see how.
The pain with traditional scientific journals
The indecent publishing trinity
This is not the holy trinity. We are talking about the researcher, the publisher and the funder.
What has been happening the world over is that research is usually funded by institutions or governments, and carried out by researchers.
When groundbreaking findings are ready, the researchers, or the government, have to pay publishers steeply to get the work published and disseminated.
They even surrender copyrights free of charge and earn a pittance from their labours.
The same governments and institutions have to pay even more for journal subscriptions and to access syndicated publications.
The ever-suffering research scientist
The researcher is often paid by the government or an institution, and not the publisher. They then have to go through numerous stages in the submission and editing of publications for free before their work can be published.
Poor quality publications
Most publishers are in a hurry to get as many publications as possible. They, therefore, pay scant attention to editing, typographical errors, general formats and the overall quality of resultant publications.
The peer review problem
Research publications gain traction and credibility when they receive peer reviews and start attracting citations.
Up to now, there has been absolutely no fiscal motivation for anyone to review anything. People largely do it because ‘it is the right thing to do.’
Resultantly, most high-quality publications end up with very poor quality reviews that don't serve them in the least.
The high cost of access to research
What is the point of research if it is not going to quickly assist in creating a better living for humanity?
Science thrives when it is disseminated and improved upon.
Students the world over are re-inventing the wheel by repeating research and experiments because they have no way of knowing that the same piece of work was done by someone else using far more sophisticated methods to achieve very helpful results.
This is because all published research is expensive to access.
Delays from submission to ultimate publication
Because of queues during publications as publishers use most money – first served systems, it becomes quite a long and tedious journey for science to be published most of the time.
Orvium will disrupt the publication industry
That a blockchain is promising to remove most of these problems, the science world is about to heave a collective sigh of relief.
Several things will be directly addressed by this blockchain in a way never before seen in science publication. Let’s highlight a few.
Optimal Costs of Publication
Because there will be no oligopolies controlling how the publications will be paid for and published, scientists will have full control over how they want their research published, through participation in the running of the blockchain.
Costs will be fair, equitable and transparent.
Elimination of science predation
When works are published on a blockchain, it is possible to use such technologies as Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to detect plagiarism, idea pilferage and uncited references.
Supporting research-based synergies
The blockchain is a community. Scientists will be able to share data emanating from a research finding, and they can look for online synergies to move the research forward, including through tokenized remuneration and sheer help.
Zero delay publishing
When you talk about a blockchain transaction, we know that it is now possible to have instant verifications. Publications will be the main form of transaction on Orvium, and this means that it will be instant.
Once verified on the internet, every publication will enjoy immutability and proof of existence for all eternity.
Furthermore, each publication will have complete and immutable traceability of all activity around it, including downloads, purchases, peer reviews, citations etc.
Returning the Copyrights and Licenses
The biggest gain to the researchers is that they will get the full power of copyright and the licences of their works.
They will, therefore, decide how their work is disseminated and shared. Through the use of tokenized promotions, research advancement and engaging online discussions, it is possible to now quickly avail various pieces of research to a ground-zero that is worked out to bring quick and massive discoveries.
Along with this will be the raw power of bringing street-folks into the scientific discourse. Normal-day John and Jane will be able to follow and contribute to scientific research processes and assist in giving valuable layman insights.
Distributed Autonomous Journals
Now that journals host publications and make money through downloads, the blockchain will host DAJs which will be developed and run by anyone in the community. They will be working using the Distributed Autonomous Organization approach, complete with rules on all aspects of publication.
These DAJs are a completely new paradigm in scientific publication. They will allow for mitigation of costs, refining publication classification and democratizing research in unprecedented ways.
Other benefits proposed by the blockchain are funding for certain forms of research with a direct and huge impact on society and funding of publication under certain conditions.
The token
The blockchain will use the ORV as the fuel for all transactions. And there will be many. From submitting, reviewing, citing, editing, downloading, copyrighting to licensing, all transactions between the community of researchers, authors, users and all the other interest groups in the community will be done using the ORV.
The expectation is the ORV will grow as the community grows. This is a blockchain with known massive pains and very little competition.
Details of the token sale can be gleaned from their website.
Roadmap
Orvium will be implemented in six phases, namely Nebula, Red Giant, Super Nova, White Dwarf, Neutron Star and Pulsar. The token sales will happen in Nebula and Red Giant, with the other phases dedicated to system implementation, prototyping and collaboration to bring users into the program.
Final thoughts
There have been many areas where we have seen blockchains come and give solutions to the niggling problems with centralization and the old problems that exist in there.
From gaming, shipping, banking, voting and all the other solutions we have been waiting for.
This is yet another demonstration of the power of immutability, distributed consensus and trust free economies that are being proposed by blockchain based open source initiatives. It is the internet re-invented for the masses.
It is the power of the blockchain but now applied to the field of scientific research and publication.
We have a great proposition. The research will be funded. Scientists will instantly publish their works. Science will be disseminated the way it was always supposed to be. Common folks will enter into the world of the geeks. Reviewers will be rewarded for their pains.
And humanity will reap mightily through the power of the Orvium dream!