A Decentralized Paper Dissemination System Employing Blockchain Technology, Peer Review and Expert Badges

Peer review represents the status-quo when it comes to evaluating research articles that are submitted to conferences and journals. The significance of a computer science article is given by the prestige of the publication and is correlated with the inclusion in the ISI Web of Science index.This paper discusses the issues of the current paper publication paradigm and proposes a decentralized approach to the paper dissemination and the peer review processes. On the one hand, decentralization and transparency are obtained by employing smart contracts, through blockchain technology. On the other hand, an optimization of the paper rating system is obtained by employing a system of expert badges, based on NFTs, which ensure that the peer review process is just and that only specialists in the fields associated to the contributed paper offer proficient feedback. Other proposed facets include the remuneration of reviewers, a method of allowing the proposed system to expand based on the community’s input, and a solution for allowing the organization of conferences.