I spend a lot of time thinking about this technology, hence the title, and how it can, and is influencing so many areas, Weller (2014) speaks about the problems in open access publishing and there really has been no dramatic shifts since that was written. The current system really is a hinderance especially when you think about how long it can take from writing to publication, with lengthy peer review times in between, not to mention the costs involved.
There are of course solutions to this, as far as I can see, and I have written about this in a few places already, one of which can be found at https://steemit.com/blockchain/@chavboy/how-can-a-social-network-be-used-to-increase-the-dissemination-of-research#@steemitboard/steemitboard-notify-chavboy-20170610t134624000z, these are just a few extra thoughts on the topic. The gold route to open access publishing is really not a viable long term option as far as I can tell, one could argue that we still need a system such as this to secure the knowledge base and give academics a secure place where they can release their material without fear of their work being misused by others. I do speak about this very problem in my extended abstract which is linked to in the post above, so I won't trawl back over that topic here. So even with this argument there really is no place for the practice of double dipping whereby publishers get to charge twice for the journal, Weller speaks about this in the brilliant "The Battle for Open: How openness won and why it doesn't feel like a victory." This is, in my view, a cynical attempt to extract every last penny out of this industry before their outdated model breaks down and fails to produce anymore income.
The route that interests me is the green route type of scenario (again for a clear discussion on this route please see Weller (2014) titled as above), we have the technology where this is a viable option, publications can be held in a repository, with minimal cost incurred, and tagged so they are fully searchable. Where blockchain comes in, of course, is for the security aspect and also to cover the peer review process. If the repository has blockchain technology built into it, it would mean that academics can upload their papers to the repository knowing there is a secure record of the upload. There could be further discussion on how peer review could take place but a good starting point would be a reputation based system, similar to the demo over at blockchain.open.ac.uk. This would very much be community led and could lead to a much more frictionless process. Steemit uses tokens to encourage participation, and this community has grown quite rapidly in a short space of time. Clearly there needs to be a movement away from the current system as it does not lend itself well to fast paced sectors where the pace of change is quicker than the process itself. If we are looking for technology that can provide us with solutions to the current problems in this area then I would shout it from the rooftops Blockchain, Blockchain, Blockchain!!
Blockchain, Blockchain, Blockchain!!