ResearchHub is supported by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who has strongly advocated for paying scientific critics.
Nature — one of the world's largest scientific journals — has just introduced ResearchHub, a decentralized science (DeSci) protocol, a move that could bring the broader scientific community's attention to DeSci and cryptocurrencies.
In an article on December 11, Nature — a journal that attracts 9 million viewers per month — introduced the ResearchHub platform, paying peer reviewers the equivalent of $150 in cryptocurrency to independently review new research papers.
The article also mentions that this is a financial opportunity for some, like the São Paulo molecular biologist consultant Pedro Paulo Gattai Gomes, who says he is now earning more money from reviewing for ResearchHub than the amount he earns in his academic faculty role.
This scientist says he reviews an average of 15 papers per month, earning $150 equivalent in ResearchCoin (RSC) tokens from ResearchHub for each review, telling the magazine: "Being paid to review is fair, because in my opinion, it is very unfair to work voluntarily without even receiving a thank you."
Being featured in Nature is considered a major victory for DeSci, as Nature has a very high Journal Impact Factor of 50.5 — the average number of times its articles are cited.
RSC has risen nearly 20% in the past 24 hours to $1.01, data from CoinGecko shows. Its market capitalization is $96.1 million.
The DeSci ResearchHub protocol, launched in 2020, is supported by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who spoke at the launch of the ResearchHub Journal in San Francisco, California, last month: "It is a bizarre anomaly in history that peer reviewers are not paid. This is a valuable thing they do and we should recognize and reward them."
However, Nature said that while ResearchHub addresses some "problems" in science, it may face challenges in scaling due to the "extreme nature" of its approach.
Nature said many scientists may struggle to convert RSC into their fiat currency as they need to use decentralized exchanges like Uniswap to exchange RSC for more prominent cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum or USD Coin before they can deposit to a centralized exchange, convert to fiat and withdraw.
Nevertheless, ResearchHub has taken steps to simplify this process, with RSC officially listed on the centralized exchange Gate.io on November 29.
Although the ResearchHub Journal officially launched last month, it has been paying reviewers to assess, comment on or vote on research papers uploaded since May 2023.
ResearchHub users can also tip each other for good work or pay others to perform research-related tasks, such as creating data for a review.
Authors must pay a $1,000 paper processing fee, and ResearchHub will take 7% of any ResearchCoin transactions on the site — with 2% "reinvested" into the community, Nature said.
Nature also pointed out that the ResearchHub Journal has not yet published any papers of its own and is not indexed on bibliographic databases like Web of Science or Scopus.
Decentralized science is becoming an increasingly popular topic in the field, peaking in search interest on Google Trends just last month.
Its goal is to address challenges in traditional science such as lack of funding, data sharing or collaboration, and its use cases could range from promoting research to making genetic testing cheaper to treating baldness.
The top DeSci tokens in the industry have a market capitalization over $1.2 billion, data from CoinGecko shows.
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The article The scientific journal Nature introduces the DeSci project ResearchHub first appeared on CoinMoi.
