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This paper is based upon a lightening talk that was given on February 14, 2023 at the 2023 NISO Plus conference. The presentation described the research for the creation of a white paper on the use of blockchain technology along the scientific research workflow that will be released in early 2024 by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). What the three-year study found is that the technology is indeed being used in almost all the steps in the scientific research workflow - from hypothesis development through to publication - by commercial organizations as well as by non-profits and across all market sectors, even governments. For example, the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) uses blockchain technology in a pilot program, the Grant-recipient Digital Dossier (GDD), to manage their grant program more efficiently. As of July 2021, GDD had reduced the time required to complete grant assessment tasks from four-plus-hours to a fifteen-minute process. This paper briefly summarizes the findings, discusses the pros/cons of the technology, and provides a glimpse of how the technology is impacting the future of scientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents a reprint of the article "Can Blockchain Withstand Skepticism? An Inquiry," by Kent Anderson, which appeared in the blog "The Scholarly Kitchen" in early 2018. Topics discussed include the perceived benefits of blockchain technology to scholarly publishing and communications, the regulation of blockchain through the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by the European Union (EU), and the use and capabilities of cryptocurrencies.

All the power on the Internet belongs to companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon - largely because they control content discovery. Users return to them time and time again instead of browsing around the web like originally intended because the access mode is direct and trusted. Also, these developers have built clever technology and algorithms that keep users hooked - all while using what remains siloed information and data that is essentially provided by publishers who themselves have built websites, platforms, and apps with walls around users. This paper attempts to demonstrate how Blockchain technology provides an opportunity to take back this power by decentralizing the Internet once again. It also offers the possibility to open up horizontal discovery on the web between publishers providing optimal discovery, while at the same time creating trust and transparency between publishers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an overview of the highlights of the NFAIS Conference, Blockchain for Scholarly Publishing, that was held in Alexandria, VA from May 15–16, 2018. The goal of the conference was to take a close look at the initiatives that have emerged as a result of the increasing global acceptance of blockchain technology. This technology, chiefly known as the foundation of Bitcoin and originally introduced as a means of securely managing cryptocurrency, has proven to have practical applications beyond finance. The basic technology is that of a distributed ledger and it is being broadly-adopted by multiple industries, including the scholarly publishing community. The capabilities of this new technology are prompting a direct exchange among stakeholders, as blockchain promises a more structured, decentralized, and immutably secure approach that has the potential to significantly impact researcher workflows - from data collection to peer review to access and published work. The technology inspires passion - there are those who believe that it will ultimately transform our lives while others are completely skeptical. The NFAIS conference provided a look at both sides of the coin (no pun intended). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current citation indexes such as Scopus and the Web of Science rely on centralized curation to function. This creates a series of potentially negative incentives, both financial and academic, which could be addressed through the creation of an unpermissioned, distributed ledger of citations. This paper explores this possibility using Bitcoin as a model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic publishing is continuously evolving with the gradual adoption of new technologies. Blockchain is a new technology that promises to change how individuals and organizations interact across various boundaries. The adoption of blockchains is beginning to transform diverse industries such as finance, supply chain, international trade, as well as energy and resource management and many others. Through trust, data immutability, decentralized distribution of data, and facilitation of collaboration without the need for centralized management and authority, blockchains have the potential to transform the academic publishing domain and to address some of the current problems such as productivity and reputation management, predatory publishing, transparent peer-review processes and many others. In this paper, we outline the technologies available in the domain of permissioned blockchains with focus on Hyperledger Fabric and discuss how they can be leveraged in the domain of academic publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of thoughts, ideas and other information fixed in a tangible medium of expression for purposes of reproducing, displaying or communicating the information to others has its origins in antiquity. Both the information itself and its symbolic expression are purely conceptual entities until fixed in a material object. When an intangible means of expression, in which symbolic logic is represented as or converted to machine-independent data structures in digital form, and structured as digital objects (i.e., digital entities), this implementation may be viewed as the logical equivalent of fixation in a material object; and, in this context, we are viewing a block as a particular way of structuring a digital object, and a blockchain in itself as a digital object that incorporates one or more objects. In considering the development of commerce based on the Digital Object (DO) Architecture, an interesting area for exploration and development has been introduced around the concept of mobile computer programs configured as digital objects. This technology may play an important role in the management of software embedded in new Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as microcontrollers, where issues have arisen with respect to the interoperability of such software with other resources in the developing IoT. There have been many efforts over the years to evolve the Internet to embrace new technology, such as the DO Architecture, and we hope this trend continues unabated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an overview of the highlights of the 2018 NFAIS Annual Conference, Information Transformation: Open, Global, Collaborative, that was held in Alexandria, VA from February 28 - March 2, 2018. The goal of the conference was to take a close look at the initiatives that have emerged as a result of the increasing global acceptance of Open Science and Open Access ideologies and policies. These include the rise of private funding foundations that are mandating more open and collaborative research; innovative new technologies and tools that have opened dialogue in the research community; and increased interoperability and seamless access to not only the scholarly article, but also to all associated digital research objects. It became clear that the ultimate and common goal of all stakeholders in the scholarly and scientific communities is the rapid dissemination of scholarly communication with the parallel advancement of scientific research. It is also became clear that there are divergent views on when and how this goal will be reached. The NFAIS 2018 Annual Conference provided a very interesting overview of how the scholarly community is attempting to work together towards a more open, global, and collaborative future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain allows for decentralized, self-regulating data, ultimately creating a shared infrastructure where transactions are saved and stored. Scientific information in its essence is a large, dynamic body of information and data that is collaboratively created, altered, used and shared. It lends itself well to the blockchain technology because that technology has the potential to solve challenges around peer review, irreproducibility, and metrics. Other applications of blockchain technology such as cryptocurrencies and digital rights management systems also have a potential relevance for academic publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vision for ARTiFACTS sprang from the realization that distributed ledger technology/blockchain technology could be applied directly to scholarly communications. Blockchain fits our current system of citation currency. As Eugene Garfield said decades ago, "The Mertonian description of normal science describes citations as the currency of science. Scientists make payments, in the form of citations, to their preceptors". To work properly, scientists must be able to create, claim ownership, share novel works, and assign proper attribution to prior work at all phases of their research. However, the existing process of disseminating research and scientific discoveries is skewed towards published articles. Communication, sharing, and the ability to give or receive attribution are delayed far downstream - oftentimes several years – from the actual time when discoveries are made and formally communicated. Distributed ledger technology can deliver transformative value and efficiency in facilitating real-time sharing of the outputs of each step of the research process while providing comprehensive and immutable, break-proof attribution and linking for all relevant research artifacts. Ultimately, this technology will empower the scientific and scholarly communities to affect positive change. This paper briefly discusses some of the early learnings from their recent introduction of the ARTiFACTS system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All professionals should consider the use of blockchain as a new and exciting arrow in their quiver when it comes to program risk management. In fact, even recently as several months ago, The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), published a draft paper discussing and defining blockchain and its role in security. Traditional program structuring and deployment will not work well for blockchain technology. When we implement a new technology, we need to understand first what it is, potential use cases such as tracking the provenance and transfer of a digital asset, what we hope to accomplish, and then how we can implement to reduce the most risk to the organization. This includes determining if blockchain encryption is a good fit for the assets (using a flowchart), determining if the organization is ready for the change (change management) and the role of training as bookends to the program (first initial training, then development of SOPs and user training once the blockchain has been deployed). This paper discusses how to reduce risk to the organization, as a poorly-planned implementation can create turmoil and waste lots of time and money including a loose structure that can be applied as a baseline and then customized based on the needs of the organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]