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Blockchain and Scholarly Publishing Industry: Potential Uses Cases – Applications of Blockchain in Academic Publishing

Blockchain and Scholarly Publishing Industry: Potential Uses Cases – Applications of Blockchain in Academic Publishing

Edward Reiner (New York University, USA) and Darrell W. Gunter (Seton Hall University, USA)
Copyright: © 2021 |Pages: 12
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5589-7.ch016
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Abstract

Blockchain has broad application in academic publishing and addresses necessary benefits in cost containment, improved workflow, and business management. In particular, blockchain facilitates greater control over copyrighted content and royalty administration, citations, and billing and collection. Blockchain is a user-friendly technology that can improve profitability and cash flow while reducing administrative errors. Blockchain technology has become ubiquitous within various market segments but slow to be adopted within academic publishing environments, but with the pressure on revenue growth and cost containment, blockchain represents a new tool in the arsenal of workflow products to create more accurate reporting. In particular, royalty accounting has been an area of varying reliability and uncertainly, relying on many data sources and data aggregation generally confusing to authors, researchers, and writers. Blockchain takes the guesswork out of this process by documenting digital content access and usage through artificial intelligence engines and machine learning tools.
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The Library Economy

Pricing pressures placed on academic publishers in the current “academic publishing economy” for library supported content has placed greater demand on cost containment and operating efficiencies. It is quite obvious that the need to control expenses, accelerate collections, reduce costly errors and improve back office efficiency are necessary to remain competitive in today’s academic publishing marketplace. Blockchain facilitates this with a high degree of efficiency and accuracy.

Applying technology-supported applications to reduce cost, improve efficiency and generating user confidence will promulgate greater industry acceptance. It is expected that the uptake of Blockchain applications in academic publishing will accelerate as more publishers embrace the platforms and applications as has been realized in other aspects of the content industry.

Definition: A blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, and oftentimes public, digital ledger that is used to record transactions across many computers so that any involved record cannot be altered retroactively, without the alteration of all subsequent blocks. This allows the participants to verify and audit transactions independently and relatively inexpensively. A blockchain database is managed autonomously using a peer-to-peer network and a distributed timestamping server. They are authenticated by mass collaboration mass collaboration powered by collective self-interest. Such a design facilitates robust workflow where participants' uncertainty regarding data security is marginal. The use of a blockchain removes the characteristic of infinite reproducibility from a digital asset. It confirms that each unit of value was transferred only once, solving the long-standing problem of double spending (Wikipedia, 2021). A blockchain has been described as a value-exchange protocol. A blockchain can maintain title rights because, when properly set up to detail the exchange agreement, it provides a record that compels offer and acceptance.(Euromoney, What is Blockchain, 2021).

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