The cryptocurrency will be used to reward reviewers for an experimental title called ResearchHub Journal.Credit: bizoo_n/Getty
One experimental journal pays reviewers the equivalent of $150 per review in a specially developed cryptocurrency. This publication is hosted on a platform aimed at making science more open and efficient, and participating in content rewards users with tokens called ResearchCoins.
The platform, called ResearchHub, was launched in 2020 and is backed by billionaire entrepreneur Brian Armstrong, who created Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States.
“It's a strange quirk of history that reviewers are not paid. What they do is valuable, and we should recognize that and reward it,” Armstrong said last month. , speaking at the launch of Research Hub Journal in San Francisco, California. The move comes as Bitcoin, the world's most established cryptocurrency, hits an all-time high of US$100,000, sparking new enthusiasm for the notoriously volatile sector.
Experts say that while ResearchHub addresses some of the problems in science, its radical nature may make it difficult to gain a foothold in research publication.
open source science
Armstrong first proposed the idea for ResearchHub in a 2019 blog post in which he expressed frustration with the speed and quality of scientific research. He said science should be run in a similar way to open source software, leveraging elements of successful online platforms such as social media site Reddit, code repository GitHub, and crowdfunding website Kickstarter to help users I suggested that we need to build on each other's work. As part of his plan, he wanted to provide a viable alternative to traditional journals.
ResearchHub Journal promises that preprints uploaded to the site will be peer-reviewed within 14 days, followed by a publication decision within 7 days. Authors pay a $1,000 article processing fee (APC), and the article and accompanying peer review are published under the generous CC-BY license. This journal has not yet published any articles and is not indexed in bibliographic databases such as Web of Science or Scopus.
Authors can also earn ResearchCoins as rewards for using good research practices, such as pre-registering studies and sharing data openly. ResearchHub users can already earn ResearchCoin by uploading preprints and papers to the site and commenting on and voting on these uploads. Users can also exchange tips for good work or pay others to complete research-related tasks, such as generating data for review. ResearchHub currently receives 7% of ResearchCoin transactions on the site, of which 2% is returned to the community.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange, founded the ResearchHub platform, which combines elements of sites like Reddit and GitHub.Credit: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg (via Getty)
Alex Holcomb, a metascientist and psychologist at the University of Sydney in Australia, likes the idea of experimenting with science's credit economy. “Currently, we only get credit for publishing papers, but science includes other great forms of assessment, such as peer review,” he says.
But he warns that most radical efforts in scientific publishing end in failure. “It's very difficult to break free from the tyranny of impact factors,” he says.
cash or credit
Paying researchers for peer review is not a new idea. Economic journals have done this in the past, and some medical journals pay certain reviewers. PeerJ, an open access mega-journal launched in 2012, uses a token system to reward reviewers. Reviewers earn 10 tokens for reviewing articles. These can be redeemed against APC for publication on PeerJ. The website says, “Tokens are fair, flexible, and the future of peer review.”
Some researchers have found that ResearchHub reviews can be lucrative. The site, which launched the journal just last month, has been paying reviewers to review preprints uploaded since May 2023.
Pedro Paulo Gattai Gómez, an independent molecular biology consultant in São Paulo, Brazil, says he now makes more money from his ResearchHub reviews than he did when he was a professor at an academic institution. . He reviews an average of 15 papers a month, which accounts for 70% of his income.
“It's fair to get paid for reviews,” he says. “I think it's very unfair to volunteer and not even receive appreciation.”
It is possible to convert ResearchCoin into regular money, but it is complicated. The “decentralized” cryptocurrency exchange Uniswap allows you to exchange ResearchCoin for other cryptocurrencies that can be converted into traditional currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USD coin. ResearchCoin is currently trading at around $1. ResearchHub co-founder Patrick Joyce said his team is in talks to list ResearchCoin on a more easily accessible centralized exchange.
James Butcher, a publishing consultant from Liverpool, UK, said the use of cryptocurrencies could make it harder for sites to get noticed because the system is being exploited by scammers. “Academics are a conservative group,” he says.
