Support for Scholarship and Scholarly Communications
MacKenzie Smith, University Librarian and Vice Provost of Digital Scholarship, University of California at Davis
Blockchain technology has significant implications for the future support of scholarship and scholarly communicationâboth in terms of the operations and the research activities supported by libraries.
Operations
The obvious applications of blockchain technology for libraries include scholarly resources, particularly metadata and digital objects. The fundamental concepts of provenance and authenticity in special collections and archives, including records management, allow the authoritative tracking of ownership and other properties of the collection. Blockchain technology could support broad access to provenance and authenticity metadata about library collections, offering a superior solution to the current fragile, labor-intensive record-keeping workflows. For example, recording sale transactions on a blockchain throughout the lifetime of an item leaves no question about its history and provenance, assuming that the transaction is either native to the blockchain or, if originating off the blockchain, recorded correctly. Recording changes made to an item on a blockchain (e.g., reformatting a digital asset for preservation or amending a database) could make its authenticity simple to verify.
A related application of blockchain is in research data curation. Current digital asset management systems have various customized methods of tracking digital asset sources and integrity, such as digital hash values to track unintended changes to digital objects. Blockchain distributed ledgers might be ideal for tracking digital objects on a large scale, as well as tracking locations, owners, stewards, and other metadata that should be reliable and traceable over time.
Similarly, applying blockchain technology to metadata about information resources, from news items to research results, might improve public trust in that information by providing new ways to evaluate sources and changes over time. For example, a website such as Climate Feedback, which is now annotation-based, could use blockchain to sign notations or criticisms by scientists using a ledger-based comment system; the signed notations and criticisms could then easily be inspected by readers to establish the credibility of the annotators.1
Blockchain platforms could support new distributed, large-scale metadata systems, obviating the need for centralized systems like OCLCâs WorldCat, Crossref, or ORCID.2 While technically possible, the advantages of reforming large-scale metadata systems are unclear, given the inefficiency of blockchain technology and the fact that improved trust and greater decentralization are not top priorities for library and research-related metadata systems. Other new technologies, such as linked data, offer equally interesting alternatives for improving efficiency and greater decentralization.
Blockchain-based financial systems could be used to purchase scholarly resources. Finally, research libraries buy scholarly resources from all over the world, in every currency, and currency fluctuations can wreak havoc on library budgets. Blockchain-based financial systems, Bitcoin for example, offer intriguing possibilities for using cryptocurrency to regain control over international financial transactions, between libraries and publishers or among libraries, potentially eliminating exchange rate uncertainty while streamlining acquisition procedures. Achieving this potential would require large-scale change by many stakeholders, but smaller scale experiments could test the idea, for example, among library consortia that support fee-based interlibrary lending.
Research and Publishing Activities
Today, many libraries manage research data of all kinds. Research data management involves not only storing and curating digital data, but also organizing that data for discovery, providing data governance, and supporting open scientific workflows across the research life cycle. Outside of libraries, there are many efforts underway to apply blockchain technology to research workflows for improved accountability and reproducibility, such as Orvium, artifacts.ai, and protocols.io, to name just a few.3 These offer the potential for better policy compliance-monitoring by institutions and government funding agencies, and for helping to restore public trust in research. If blockchain catches on with researchers, libraries will need to adapt their data services to the technology. Ideally, libraries would be involved in the design and deployment of blockchain platforms and applications for research, and would add their expertise in archiving, digital preservation, and metadata management.
In the area of scholarly publishing and communications, there are similar efforts underway to apply blockchain to aspects of those activities, such as version tracking, peer review, and content management. If libraries continue to acquire and manage the outcomes of those activitiesâbooks, journals, websites, databases, media, and so onâand make these available to scholars over many years, then libraries need to get involved in defining how blockchain technology will be applied to the scholarly record.
Considerations for the Future
While blockchains are distributed and decentralized, the existence of these new systems could lead to even stronger centralized control of information resources. A particular issue for libraries with regard to the adoption of blockchain technology in publishing and scholarly communication is the potential of blockchain to significantly tighten intellectual property controls and DRM. For example, content distribution using smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain platform could cripple legal tools like fair use and eliminate digital first sale by creating verifiable transaction records that use licenses and transfer-tracking to limit owner rights and eliminate the possibility of rights expiration.
An area of great interest for blockchain advocates is identity management, such as giving individuals control over their personal information, rather than allowing companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google to own this information. Identity information is stored on a blockchain using public key and private key cybersecurity protocols and is extremely secure. For researchers who currently have to give information about themselves to a plethora of digital platforms to have an online presence (ResearchGate, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, etc.), this notion of regaining control over which platforms get what information is very appealing. But research libraries are all too familiar with professors and students who frequently misplace things.
Another consideration is the nature of research and knowledge production. As explained earlier, blockchain technology is best suited to transactions where immutability is important; data on the blockchain cannot change. While certain aspects of research and scholarly communication are transactional and immutable, like the records of experimental research, scholarship in general is neither transactional nor immutable. Scholarly research is an evolutionary discovery process that is marked by healthy disagreement and sudden paradigm shifts. Unlike finance and purchasing, science and the humanities are messy, and the blockchain is ill-suited to complex and chaotic data.
Credentialing and Continuing Education
Heather McMorrow, Level Pre-College Program Director, Northeastern University; and Amy Jiang, Library Technology Coordinator, University of La Verne
Universities and governments have been the arbiters of academic accreditation and professional certification for centuries. This has been the most functional and expeditious way to operate. However, this closed system has also meant ceding authority over our identities and narrowing what is validated as authentic knowledge at a time when the knowledge economy is only expanding.4 Decentralized applications, such as blockchain, can dramatically improve the issuance and data management of academic credentials, as well as shift the societal view of knowledge and skills verification, return identity, and academic sovereignty; improve accountability; impede corruption; and effectively knock down barriers to economic and social mobility. Decentralized systems place libraries in a unique position to innovate in support of these goals.
Applications
Three particular types of blockchain implementations (cryptocurrency, smart contracts, and systems of record) could play a role in education, impacting a range of services and experiences from university credentials to migration and mobility.5
One of the most commonly discussed applications of blockchain in higher education is for traditional university credentials. For example, MIT has implemented a Blockcert system to issue digital certificates, as well as dual paper and blockchain diplomas to students for its finance degree and its masterâs degree in media arts.6 This Blockcert system gives students the option of receiving a digital diploma in addition to a paper diploma, and because the mobile app gives students unique private keys, a student can therefore prove ownership of his or her diploma. This system does not host student artifacts, but rather simply provides a unique university artifact, in this case a digital diploma, to each student. In Europe, the Open University and the University of Nicosia have also begun experimenting with Blockcerts.
Blockchain technology can also be used to recognize lifelong learning activities and to provide credentialing for continuing professional education. Governmental and nongovernmental bodies, individual institutions, and funding organizations have explicit directives to recognize alternative paths to credentialing.7
Access to Personal Records
Blockchain technology has possibilities for developing economies that are disproportionately impacted by extreme poverty, institutional cor...
