Abstract
BitViews is a blockchain application that collects, validates, and aggregates worldwide online usage data of author’s approved manuscripts (AAMs) deposited in Open Access Institutional Repositories. It creates a free public ledger of usage events that allows anyone to see which research outputs have been accessed, where, and when, thus providing the raw material to construct discipline- and region-specific non-citation based measures of research impact.BitViews’ short-term implications include:1.The re-alignment of journal impact measures (from citations to usage);2.Changed patterns in the production of research articles (towards high- usage topics);3.Creation of new networks of research collaboration;4.Enhanced opportunity for open data sharing.BitViews’ long-term effects are transformative. Because BitViews promotes the “unbundling” of AAMs from published articles, it endows AAMs with independent value. Two disruptive consequences follow: the very concept of APCs is undermined and the conditions are created for the academy to regain ownership of peer review. Relegating commercial publishers to the role of providers of post-AAM services, huge resources will be released. As soon as AAMs are de‐ coupled from articles, the same process and infrastructure can be applied to research monographs, thereby completing the cycle of Open Access to the whole production of knowledge.
Highlights
BitViews is a blockchain application that collects, validates, and aggregates worldwide online usage data of author’s approved manuscripts (AAMs) deposited in Open Access Institutional Repositories
A key difference between the BitViews Project and other initiatives, such as Open Review6, PubFair7, or the “De-coupled Journal” [4], that take a radical perspective aimed at altering the very foundations of the current academic publishing mechanism, is that the latter envisage a root-and-branch reform of academic publishing before the objective of universal open access is achieved, whereas BitViews on the one hand attains open access while working within the confines of the status quo while on the other hand creates the preconditions for flipping the current dysfunctional publishing model to a more efficient and fairer one
The BitViews Project can be viewed as a benign Trojan horse: in the short run it provides authors of academic articles with the hitherto missing incentive to deposit the content of their research on institutional repositories thereby achieving the objective of universal open access
Summary
The basic concept of BitViews was first published in [1] and further illustrated in [2], but it may be helpful to describe briefly its key features: 1. A blockchain application (BitViews) collects, validates (using augmented COUNTER criteria), and aggregates on a worldwide basis online usage data of author’s approved manuscripts (AAMs) deposited in every Open Access Institutional Repository. To the best of my knowledge, BitViews is the first project that deploys a completely decentralised selffinancing mechanism owned and managed by University and Research libraries. This aspect of the project requires some explanation, because it is vital for the success of the whole enterprise, and because it has far-reaching implications for scholarly communication more generally. BitViews, instead, is funded on a voluntary basis by University and Research libraries located in the global North through a novel variant of crowdfunding (conditional crowdfunding), a two-stage mechanism designed to overcome the free-rider curse, namely, the incentive for beneficiaries of public-good projects to under-contribute, on the expectation that other beneficiaries fund the scheme. In spite of the pessimistic outlook, the sections will examine the short- and longterm effects of a successful BitViews Project
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