Introduction

This article is a more in-depth look at the platform of Orvium. From my initial research, it was clear that this really is going to be an exciting ecosystem for scholars/researchers If you have not already done so I urge you to read my first article, where I gave a great summary of why this project is going to be a game changer. You can find this article by clicking this link:

https://steemit.com/science/@cryptoguru1/a-review-of-orvium-bringing-blockchain-to-the-schloarly-publication-process

Also, please check out this YouTube video, created by the Orvium team which gives a great short summary of the project:

Source: (Orvium.io, 2018)

How Orvium will change their industry

The first thing I want to discuss here is how I believe Orvium are going to make this change. Change is something which is always hard to achieve, and it becomes increasingly difficult the more centralised an industry is. The scholarly publication industry in my opinion is very centralised, so for a change to occur here the technology needs to impress substantially. I believe Orvium will achieve this based I what I have witnessed so far.

As described by Orvium, (2018) in their whitepaper, Orvium will drive this change by:

Reducing publication costs: By utilising blockchain technology and allowing peer reviews on the network. We all know that the decentralised nature of blockchain allows for huge cuts in overheads and other related costs. Orvium will also reward the peer review process with their token (ORV), this is discussed further on in this article.
Improving knowledge dissemination: As described by Orvium, (2018) Universities strive for a large amount of publications into these “top publishers” which further fuels the current triple pay problem. I feel open access to research is needed and I am excited to learn that Orvium will be focusing on promoting their platform to put an end to this problem.
Funding research on the platform: This is very important as this is the basis of a universities purpose, they are funded by their ability to research, so this is of vital importance. I am very excited that this will be a core element to this platform.
Enhancing their own R&D collaboration frameworks: Orvium will be approaching universities/institution and showcasing their platform to them, collaboration with these is essential for a successful project.
Providing open source coding: Orvium will provide this in order to drive their technological change into the norm, don’t forget this project is a disruptor in the space and as such needs to provide this.

My opinion on this change

In my opinion Orvium offer a better system than the outdated model we currently have, at a substantially lower cost I may add. Blockchain will allow the peer review process to be fully transparent in a system known for foul play; This is my personal opinion based on experience, as I found my research days were sometimes like this.

What has further drawn me towards this project is that they will even allow multi-authors to peer review further enhancing the review process, according to their whitepaper. Also, these reviewers gain monetary reward (for once) for their hard work in the form of ORV tokens. The use of blockchain is effectively a tamper-proof time stamped entity allowing for minimal delays through the research cycle. This is such an exiting platform.

Traditional vs Orvium Research peer review process

Source: (Authorservices.wiley.com, 2018)

Source: (Orvium.io, 2018)

The charts above reveal the simplicity of the Orvium platform vs the more traditional peer review/publication process. The first chart shows the traditional process which is where the triple pay system comes into play, which I spoke about in my first article, this process takes such a long time from start to finish. After all the hard work from the institutions, the work is published and essentially sold back to them. Orvium will ultimately change the way this process is carried out and provide a much fairer system.

You guys don’t need me to go on about the benefits of blockchain, I have covered it numerous times in my articles, I am sure you can agree with me now that this is such a perfect use case for blockchain. Full traceability and decentralisation are going to revolution this space, I believe this will destroy bias in this space when it comes to reviews and allow huge amounts of “new entrants” enter this space.

Closer look at the Orvium platform/ecosystem

According to Orvium, (2018) their framework will be run on a set of rules, I will quickly go through these here but please follow up yourself with their whitepaper to learn more. As with any “rules” on the blockchain, these can be easily enforced with smart contracts. If you don’t know what smart contracts are, you have not been reading my articles.

As described in their whitepaper all users can create and manage their own Decentralised Autonomous Journals (DAJ’s). This is going to be a great framework in my opinion. Orvium, (2018) suggest this will be managed via the following rules:

Equal voting rights: With the added security that “activity” on the platform and a “verified account” are needed to prevent manipulation. This is of vital importance on any platform for fair play to ensue.
Proportional voting power: This is apportioned to one’s contribution to the platform, which is very fair my opinion, the last thing a platform like this needs is for users who contribute nothing to have power.
Reputation based: Reputation on the platform has consequences, thus preventing subpar accounts being established and allowing for an avenue of penalties to be explored if needs be.
Hybrid schemes: I am a bit confused as to how this works, Orvium, (2018) state it is essentially a combination of contribution and reputation, which will provide benefits to those who participate.
Quadratic schemes: Again, I am not 100% sure how this scheme will be structured but essentially it is the “purchase of votes for a proposal by paying the square of the votes acquired” (Orvium, 2018).
Contribution limits: This will combat take over from centralised parties, which is exactly what we are trying to get away from. I am glad this rule will be used in full force on this platform.
Contribution restrictions: This will utilise whitelists and blacklists to restrict users on the platform, which in my opinion is required to ensure fair play.
Exit conditions: Orvium describe this rule as the requirement of votes if somebody wishes to exit a role on the platform, I am not quite sure how this will work but it looks like the team envisage a very democratic process which is great to see.

I really do believe that this will be a game changer for the dissemination of academic work. I believe this platform which is governed by the above rules will provide this world with a much-needed change to the current norm. Why should the norm be a “triple pay system”? This will be much cheaper and faster than current systems. Orvium will be a fairer and more decentralised way of handling journals and content in an industry which is only growing.

This ecosystem will bring scholars together in one space and will vastly improve the current scientific method, I cannot think of a greater use of blockchain than this. Blockchain will take away a lot of the manual process we encounter today when submitting manuscripts for review, it will also offer more secure systems and aid in the much-plagued problem of this industry (Plagiarism).

What I further find very interesting about Orvium is that they support “Grey literature”. As described in their whitepaper this is essentially non-traditional literature, such as reports. This type of literature does not follow any real format. You probably have come across this during your own college research years as it is generally hard to track down authors and details for reference purposes. This is yet another great example of blockchain use on this platform. Furthermore, Orvium, (2018) suggest they will leave their API open source to link to outside sources such as Google scholar, which I may view is a vital requirement for the success of this platform.

Token economics

I really want to focus on this area to showcase to you how this utility token will work on the platform. Often there is an argument that most projects don’t require a separate cryptocurrency. This is one such project which has such a niche market and will require the benefits of its own cryptocurrency, so I feel it is my duty to explain why. I am going to rely on the projects whitepaper in detail during this section as it is the only source of information on this area I could find.

All the benefits of this platform are enabled by their ORV token, it is going to be the transfer of value across the platform/ecosystem. When I say value, I mean much more than the monetary value of course. Orvium, (2018) state that users will be required to have ownership of a unique wallet in order to prove authentication of their account, as can be seen by the below image:

Source: (Orvium.io, 2018)

From what I understood from the whitepaper, a user’s wallet acts as their ID, not to dissimilar to other projects, but one which I think is vitally important in an industry which puts such value on the ownership of manuscripts and journals. What we all know about blockchain is that it is tamper proof and once a manuscript is submitted by a verified user this essentially gives ownership of the manuscript to that particular user. The blockchain can then fully trace this through the life cycle of the research review process.

Source: (Orvium.io, 2018)

Where the token itself comes in, is during the peer review stage, people don’t work for free so the platform is designed to use the ORV tokens as a staking mechanism by scholars to incentivise reviewers. Orvium further disclose in their whitepaper than reviewers can claim these stakes once their review is accepted, the number of stakes is decided by the scholar at the start. This will all lead to a paying economy on the platform which revolves around the ORV token. I believe this economic model will keep the value of the tokens within the ecosystem itself as users will use these “rewarded stakes” for further services such as their own academic submissions. This ecosystem will allow you to earn in proportion with your reputation.

I am so excited for this, as essentially reviews will be public because it exists on the blockchain attached to the “manuscript history” (Orvium, 2018). The economy also excites me as I believe the value will find its own level based on “industry standard rates” and stakes will reflect this. Scholars will need to “pay” the going rate for the review process thus creating an economy. Orvium further add that “outside parties” such as institutions can further add stakes to manuscripts in order to improve the review process on research which interests them, this will provide more valid results.

What I also love is that the copyright and licensing arrangements are dictated by the owner of the data, they can stipulate what is allowed to be copied, downloaded and printed. The ORV token will act as payment as dictated by the owner and transferred minus a small fee by Orvium. This model I believe will attract a lot of people to this platform very quickly.

Source: (Orvium.io, 2018)

Orvium will allow researchers/scholars to create decentralised journals, all housed on the Ethereum blockchain. What further interests me is that Users of Orvium can stake ORV tokens in these DAJ smart contracts. Orvium, (2018) state in their whitepaper that these DAJ’s will then issues Journal tokens (JTs) to these users. I would like to learn more about these JTs, as I could not find a whole lot of information about it, but essentially, they will be an important aspect to how this platform works and links together.

Source: (Orvium.io, 2018)

From what I can understand these JTs can only be used within that particular DAJ and sent back to redeem ORV. These JT tokens have no use case within the Orvium ecosystem, whereas the ORV used to stake goes towards operational costs of the DAJ on the platform. I believe also that rights/licences needed to create these DAJs are required to be paid for in ORV.

It is further reported by Orvium, (2018) that academic challenges can be laid down by staking ORV tokens for scholars to prove. Examples of this are challenges to existing theory’s and are a process which I feel really adds to academia because it is important to constantly challenge the old and develop new findings.

Machine learning on the platform

I touched on this in my first article but this has a huge part to play in how this platform operates. Orvium, (2018) report that they will utilise big analytics and machine learning to operate this ecosystem which will provide unparallel efficiency such as tackling plagiarism and allowing for automated tracking of manuscripts through the peer review process.

Orvium state in their whitepaper that these machine learning applications will:

Aid in citation reviews.
Improve the accuracy of reviews.
Enable easy identification of links between research.
Allow for automated recommendations of “fields” based on content.
Allow for automated pairings to relevant DAJ’s which will reach the correct audiences.
Allow for trend alanayses to be carried out.

As you can see the benefits of machine learning are endless. I believe the ORV tokens will perform a pivotal role to allow the use of this technology on this platform.

Conclusion

I am so excited about this project as I truly believe it is a much-needed innovation in this industry. I believe the current “triple pay” system which is plaguing the world at the moment is both immoral and unjustified, I further believe it is un-suitable. Why should “universities/researchers” have to submit to the will of the publishers when blockchain has the solution. I believe blockchain is revolutionary and it is use cases like this that will spark mass adoption.

We all know the benefits of blockchain and smart contracts in its transparency and security. I truly believe a “truly open” review process which Orvium will offer will be a game changer in the industry. Orvium are going to take these benefits and apply it to their platform. Their platform will be governed by a fair set of rules in order to ensure the academic work which its handles is subject to the fairest scientific review process possible. Their ORV token will ensure the platform runs unhindered by outside factors and will provide the monetary transfer of value across the ecosystem, it has a pivotal role in how this platform operates. Orvium will further utilise decentralised storage, cloud computing and big data/machine learning on the platform to handle the huge amount of data that this platform will handle.

Blockchain is un-hackable in my opinion and its decentralised nature will allow for more open structures in all industries. The scientific process is the worthiest use case for blockchain that I can think of. I believe this process is one of the most important aspects of human civilisation we can muster up, it must be imperative that we as a society embrace these new technologies and advance our civilisation, what a better way to embrace blockchain than the source of all knowledge we hold today; the research process which got us here.

References

Authorservices.wiley.com. (2018). The Peer Review Process | Wiley. [online] Available at: https://authorservices.wiley.com/Reviewers/journal-reviewers/what-is-peer-review/the-peer-review-process.html [Accessed 19 Jul. 2018].
Blockchain Council | Blockchain-council.org. (2018). Can Blockchain And Machine Learning Work Together | Blockchain Council. [online] Available at: https://www.blockchain-council.org/blockchain/can-blockchain-and-machine-learning-work-together/ [Accessed 19 Jul. 2018].
DocSend. (2018). DocSend - Simple, intelligent, modern content sending. [online] Available at: https://orvium.docsend.com/view/nvr6ywj [Accessed 16 Jul. 2018].
ICO Drops. (2018). Orvium (ORV) - All information about Orvium ICO (Token Sale) - ICO Drops. [online] Available at: https://icodrops.com/orvium/ [Accessed 18 Jul. 2018].
Libraryjournal.com. (2013). Library Journal. [online] Available at: https://www.libraryjournal.com/ [Accessed 18 Jul. 2018].
Orvium.io. (2018). Orvium - Open and Transparent Science Powered by Blockchain. [online] Available at: https://orvium.io/?utm_source=icodrops [Accessed 16 Jul. 2018].
YouTube. (2018). Orvium at a glance. [online] Available at: [Accessed 19 Jul. 2018].

A detailed look into the Orvium ecosystem

Introduction

How Orvium will change their industry

My opinion on this change

Traditional vs Orvium Research peer review process

Closer look at the Orvium platform/ecosystem

Token economics

Machine learning on the platform

Conclusion

Further Reading

References