(9 May 2019) Securing scientific information online and worldwide with no risk of manipulation: what almost sounds like magic is now possible – thanks to the latest technologies and logical organization with the help of the decentralized blockchain infrastructure “bloxberg”.
The bloxberg consortium was initiated at the beginning of 2019 under the leadership of the Max Planck Digital Library and consists of eleven leading research facilities from ten different countries. The scientists in the founding consortium agree that bloxberg will change the way scientific data and results will be managed and communicated in future. With bloxberg, the consortium trusts in an online system without a classic client-server architecture, such as is currently used for websites. Instead, decentralised electronic accounting, better known as the blockchain technology, is used.
There are more than enough concrete applications and demands for a transparent and safe online system based on blockchains in science: to verify the authenticity of data, guaranteed protection of intellectual property rights, the exchange of valuable research results, peer reviewing, the publication of papers and much more.
“We repeatedly hear from our researchers that they would like to have a “time stamp” or a way to certify their research data, hypotheses and methods – particularly before these are published” – says Sandra Vengadasalam from Digital Labs. “The use of blockchain technology thus appeared obvious“.
More details of the practice can be found here.
