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This BLIP is a draft: the collaborative document we use to write it is https://hackmd.io/QtoxlUimQNSJByIRKm0IwQ?edit

Peer Review

BLIP: 3
Title: Peer Review
Owner(s):
Author(s): Antonio Tenorio Fornés (antonio@decentralized.science), Kaan Uzdogan (uzdogan@mpdl.mpg.de), Paulo Colombo (pcolombo@ucm.es), Elena Pérez Tirador (elena@decentralized.science), Kevin Wittek (wittek@internet-sicherheit.de), Sebastian Müller (sebastian.mueller@flexdapps.com), James Lawton (lawton@mpdl.mpg.de)
Status: Raw
Created: 2020-06-09
License: BSD-2-Clause

Motivation

This document proposes an standard for the registration of peer reviews on the Bloxberg's blockchain. At bloxberg's bloeckchain ecosystem, there are currently several applications and projects that register peer reviews, such as Bloxberg's peer-review-app, Decentralized Science, or peerMiles project. An agreement of how to record these peer reviews would benefit Bloxberg's applications ecosystem, enabling interoperability among them.

List of blochain projects registering peer reviews

Following, we list the blockchain projects that could benefit from this standard

Projects actively contributing to the definition of the standard

Other active blockchain projects with interest in peer reviewing

Standard Peer Review registries

Currently, our reference implementation peer-review-app is registering many fields of a peer review such as the review author, or the ID of the reviewed article.

This standard should specify which fields to register in every record, the format and standards those fields should adopt, which are mandatory among others.

Peer Review Records' fields

[name=Paulo] What is the id field and why do we need it ?

Field data type Format/s Mandatory Comments
id string IPFS Hash?? Yes The id should be unique. How to make sure reviews are unique? See Zooko's triangle for a relevant discussion on the compromises between decentralization, human usability and unique identifiers
doi
timestamp uint32 unix timestamp Yes
author address Yes
journalId string ISSN Yes
publisher string Name? Yes
manuscriptId string DOI Yes See isReviewOf relationship of Crossref.
manuscriptHash string IPFS Yes
recommendation enum (TODO: See other standards such as Orcid, Publons...) Yes
url string Yes The url should give public access to the content of the review. Alternativelly, it can be a IPFS address so the content is served from a decentralized network
endorsers address[] Yes
endorsersMap mapping(address => bool) Yes
stage enum Values: pre-publication, post-publication Optional Defined at Crossref peer review stage schema
type enum Values: referee-report, editor-report, author-comment, community-comment, manuscript, aggregate, recommendation Optional Defined at Crossref peer review type schema
revision-round int Yes Defined at Crossref peer review revision-round schema
competing_interest_statement string
institution
titles
license_data
  • TODO Decide which field could be private. For instance, the review content could be publicly shared or not depending on the reviewer's preferences.

Existing standards (industry / de-facto / formalized)

Functions and Permissions

Function name description parameters permission Comment
addReview add a review to the system author, journalId, publisher, manuscriptId, ManuscriptHash, recommendation, url reviewers can add reviews to their profile. TODO: consider other authorized actors such as journals or review registering services (Publons, Orcid,...)
addMultipleReviews add multiple reviews to the system ids, journalIds, publishers, manuscriptIds, manuscriptHashes, timestamps, recommendations, urls reviewers can add multiple reviews to their profile at once
deleteReview delete a review from the system id reviews can be deleted by the author only
endorseReview endorse a review address, id reviews can be endorse by others only
addEndorser add an endorser address address, name? endorser address How should endorsers share with the network how they verify reviews? different approaches from different actors should be supported.

Decentralized Endorsements for Review Validity

We should allow other reviewers and third parties to endorse for the validity of reviews registered at the system.

Different actors can have different strategies to verify a review. These actors can register their addresses as endorsers, and register a URL explaining how they validate the reviews. For instance, Bloxberg peer-review-app can verify at their servers that a review comes from Publons, and have an address that endorses after this verification is done.

How to bring trust to public endorsers

As a decentralized application where we would allow different endorsers. Users, applications and other actors should decide which endorsers to trust. A system where users could vote up or down specific endorser's addresses could help to build trust in such addresses. Also, we could use the more advanced Token Curated Registries as a decentralized reputation system for endorses identities.