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Ants-Review: A Privacy-Oriented Protocol for Incentivized Open Peer Reviews on Ethereum

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Euro-Par 2020: Parallel Processing Workshops (Euro-Par 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 12480))

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Abstract

Peer review is a necessary and essential quality control step for scientific publications but lacks proper incentives. Indeed, the process, which is very costly in terms of time and intellectual investment, not only is not remunerated by the journals but it is also not openly recognized by the academic community as a relevant scientific output for a researcher. Therefore, scientific dissemination is affected in timeliness, quality and fairness. Here, to solve this issue, we propose a blockchain-based incentive system that rewards scientists for peer reviewing other scientists’ work and that builds up trust and reputation. We designed a privacy-oriented protocol of smart contracts called Ants-Review that allows authors to issue a bounty for open anonymous peer reviews on Ethereum. If requirements are met, peer reviews will be accepted and paid by the approver proportionally to their assessed quality. To promote ethical behaviour and inclusiveness the system implements a gamified mechanism that allows the whole community to evaluate the peer reviews and vote for the best ones.

The two authors contributed equally to this work.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Publons. https://publons.com.

  2. 2.

    Gitcoin. https://gitcoin.co.

  3. 3.

    The Bounties Network. https://bounties.network.

  4. 4.

    Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium. http://nprc.incf.org.

  5. 5.

    ResearchSquare. https://www.researchsquare.com.

  6. 6.

    Peerage of Science. https://www.peerageofscience.org.

  7. 7.

    Solidity. https://solidity.readthedocs.io.

  8. 8.

    AntsReview. https://kovan.etherscan.io/address/0x85be8F04482cBB920550d5469E4dEdD6e1788121.

  9. 9.

    StandardBounties.sol. https://github.com/Bounties-Network/StandardBounties.

  10. 10.

    OpenZeppelin Library. https://openzeppelin.com.

  11. 11.

    Etherscan. https://etherscan.io/.

  12. 12.

    EIP 20. https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-20.

  13. 13.

    EIP 1724. https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/1724.

  14. 14.

    Dai. https://docs.makerdao.com/smart-contract-modules/dai-module/dai-detailed-documentation.

  15. 15.

    Pot. https://docs.makerdao.com/smart-contract-modules/rates-module/pot-detailed-documentation.

  16. 16.

    Compound. https://compound.finance.

  17. 17.

    Discover.sol. https://github.com/dap-ps/discover/blob/master/contracts/Discover.sol.

  18. 18.

    Status. https://status.im/.

  19. 19.

    PREreview. https://www.prereview.org.

  20. 20.

    PeerCommunityIn https://peercommunityin.org.

  21. 21.

    Review Commons. https://www.reviewcommons.org.

  22. 22.

    PrePrint Review. https://elifesci.org/preprint-review.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Andy Tudhope, Mark Beylin, Matteo A. Tambussi, Evan C. Harris and the four external anonymous peer reviewers for useful comments and revisions; the FDAPP 2020 workshop chairs and speakers for questions and feedback; Mitrasish Mukherjee for contributions on the interface.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sorbonne Université, Faculté des Sciences et Ingénierie, Paris, France

    Bianca Trovò

  2. Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA), Frédéric Joliot Institute for Life Sciences, NeuroSpin, Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Saclay, France

    Bianca Trovò

  3. MakerDAO, Community Development, London, UK

    Nazzareno Massari

Authors
  1. Bianca Trovò
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  2. Nazzareno Massari
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bianca Trovò .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland

    Bartosz Balis

  2. CiTIUS, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    Dora B. Heras

  3. ICAR-CNR, Naples, Italy

    Laura Antonelli

  4. University of Stirling, Stirling, UK

    Andrea Bracciali

  5. Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, Erlangen, Germany

    Thomas Gruber

  6. Konkuk University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Jin Hyun-Wook

  7. Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany

    Michael Kuhn

  8. Tennessee Tech University, Cookeville, TN, USA

    Stephen L. Scott

  9. Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Didem Unat

  10. Czestochowa University of Technology, Czestochowa, Poland

    Roman Wyrzykowski

Ethics declarations

This work was mainly developed during the ETHTurin Hackathon 2020 and the Gitcoin Kernel Fellowship program 2020. These organizations, as well as the authors’ affiliations, had no financial role in the design and implementation of the protocol.

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Trovò, B., Massari, N. (2021). Ants-Review: A Privacy-Oriented Protocol for Incentivized Open Peer Reviews on Ethereum. In: Balis, B., et al. Euro-Par 2020: Parallel Processing Workshops. Euro-Par 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12480. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71593-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71593-9_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-71593-9

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