Many technological and scientific innovations are patented yearly. All of these can be credited to the researchers who carry out most of the background work. With this, reputation is a bigger deal for researchers than monetary profit. Within the scholarly community, which includes college researchers, the trading currency is attribution in the form of citations.
Typically, attribution for researchers comes only after their works have been published. After which they have to be discovered by other researchers to be cited. Usually, this publication cycle takes a long time, making it rather tiring and less productive.
Regardless of these limitations, thousands of research journals are still being published globally per annum. However, the statistics of published articles pale in comparison to the actual number of scientific and engineering works being embarked upon within the same timeframe. A great deal of hypothesis, negative and positive confirmation results never make the cut to publication. This is often due to the fear of researchers losing control of their Intellectual Properties (IP) and no certainty of provenance.
ARTiFACTS
This is where ARTiFACTS offers a viable solution by enabling access to scientific research files and giving due recognition to researchers for their scholarly and scientific contributions in various fields such as life sciences.
You might be asking, what is life science the study of? And why is ARTiFACTS important to its research practice?
To answer these questions, life science is the study of all life past and present. It is a model field of application for ARTiFACTS because it is a very wide field due to its scope of study (life itself). It is a discipline that is subdivided into more than 25 other branches of study. Therefore, it involves a lot of research and consequently creates a huge volume of “artifacts.”
“Artifacts,” in this case, refers to any form of digital file or research work outputs created by human or machine, whether at pre-publication or post-publication.
As a blockchain platform, ARTiFACTS helps researchers by providing a collaborative workflow solution for the scientific and scholarly research community, including college researchers. It utilizes a competitive and intuitive technology, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), in order to achieve this purpose. It provides a simple and user-friendly platform that’s changing the narrative by boosting the ease of accessibility to data for all concerned research stakeholders.
Being based on the blockchain, a type of DLT gives an uncommon edge to ARTiFACTS. The blockchain allows the distribution of information and data to be secured, open, immutable, and in a decentralized ledger format.
ARTiFACTS’ utilization of the DLT and web 3.0 technologies ensures that all research outputs are indexed, attributed, and cited quickly. The ledgers in DLT also utilize independent computers, often referred to as nodes, to record, share, and synchronize research data in their respective electronic ledgers in real-time.
The data being transferred are then confirmed by validating nodes. This reassures college researchers of zero-plagiarism and effective rewards for their contributions to a project.
DLT, along with the blockchain, is the building block of “internet of value.” This enables the recording of interactions and transfer “value” peer-to-peer. This is done without a need for a centrally coordinating entity, like a centralized ledger. “Value” in this case refers to any record of ownership of assets, i.e., money, securities, land titles, and also ownership of specific information like research data and artifacts.
How ARTiFACTS Can Help College Researchers
The ways in which ARTiFACTS helps college researchers share information are discussed are:
1. Data Distribution Is Facilitated By Its Underlying Bloxberg Blockchain Infrastructure
Securing scientific information with no risk of manipulation was unrealistic up till February 2019 when the Bloxberg infrastructure was created. The Bloxberg infrastructure is a leading blockchain project for science researchers. It’s a collaborative effort of 11 research institutions led by the Max Planck Society’s Digital Library. The vision for the Bloxberg infrastructure is to change the way scientific data and results are managed and communicated.
ARTiFACTS is the first partner building on the Bloxberg distributed ledger to provide researchers with citation-focused tools. The Bloxberg infrastructure is currently supported by over 30 leading research universities.
The infrastructure enables ARTiFACTS to help researchers share information through these three capabilities:
Research Data Certification:
- Research claims don’t need to be limited to one institution or college alone, but can be confirmed by the whole trusted network through the Bloxberg infrastructure.
- College researchers can use Bloxberg to create a transparent footprint of their work, without revealing its content. After which, they can generate a certificate that proves the uploading of a particular data at a certain time, protecting them from being scooped or have their IP stolen.
Bloxberg Faucet:
- The faucet app is used to provide Ether to users of the blockchain. Thus, in order to interact with blockchain applications or deploy smart contracts, ether is utilized for this interaction.
- This guarantees that people who wish to build on Bloxberg or utilize the functionality of the apps will be able to do so.
Block Explorer:
- An influx of data itemizing current exchange status, for example, pending or affirmed, smart contracts get sent and can be engaged with, and a comprehensive and transparent investigation of the general activity of the network can be seen here.
2. Members Have A Singular Dashboard and Full Privacy Control, Which Eases Data Management
There’s nothing like having the luxury of having all your work in a place. Combined with having a number of add-ons integrated into its platform, ARTiFACTS allows users like college researchers to manage their work all in one dashboard. This helps to keep all their research artifacts organized in one place and establishes linkages in real-time for discovery and attribution.
Also, users have the right to determine what they want to keep private or make public. While the ability to seamlessly share research artifacts with others is great, being able to control what to share must be retained by the researcher. This is another way ARTiFACTS ensures that college researchers can share information.
3. Encourages Longevity and Continuation of Research Projects
It’s common knowledge that some research projects can take a lifetime or more before it gets completed. Sometimes, the original author of the research paper might have passed before getting completed by another. Also, some authors lose interest in some research efforts and move on to another while some only seek collaborative efforts of other researchers. Irrespective of the reasons, the continuing or contributing researcher typically has to peruse through a disjointed set of documents before they can make any progress on the project.
ARTiFACTS helps college researchers to solve this problem with its efficient time stamping technique. Researchers are able to identify the exact sequence of a research procedure. It’s more like that ARTiFACTS adds a timeless edge to each artifact uploaded to its platform. This allows other researchers to build on available pre-existing knowledge devoid of any of the hassles commonly associated with conventional methods. The more information provided by the original authors, the easier it is for anyone to build on their already existing work.
ARTiFACTS additionally assigns a computerized unique mark of all uploaded files in a process called hashing. It then stores them on the Bloxberg blockchain infrastructure. This makes a permanent chain of records for that artifact. This ensures provenance prior to and after publication.
4. Fast Tracks the Rate of Your Research
It’s highly difficult carrying out research with limited external output. From numerous mistakes to slow completion of the research work, working alone is definitely no fun. As with any job, your organization or supervisor needs to be able to quantify your output. It’s easier with most jobs, but with a built-in delay in scholarly communications, researchers have always been in need of a better way to demonstrate the value of their research faster.
ARTiFACTS gives college researchers a way to see the impact of their work in real-time via its open (but secure) platform to share research. College researchers can now show their supervisors and organization how many citations their latest dataset has already received, and the effect it is having in the broader research world.
5. Attribution Is A Whole Lot Easier
The unhindered flow of information in this technological age will drastically boost the rate of innovations in various niches.
However, in the research community, getting rightfully cited for your works is equally as important as witnessing the breakthroughs in technology and science. As mentioned above, attribution in the form of citation is the language of all researchers. It’s what boosts their reputations, which often comes after journeying through the long road to publication.
This is actually the bane of uninhibited interchanges within the scholarly ecosystem today. The process of sharing research discoveries requires going through a long and arduous publication cycle. The discouraging part to this is, proper citation is still not guaranteed having completed the cycle due to the fact that only a part of these publications is properly indexed. The eventual result is a waste of time and failure to retrieve research files.
In addition, supplemental files that prove to corroborate the assertions of research are not rightly connected to their respective research works. These conspire to conceal basic data, slow scholarship awards and prevent college researchers from getting attribution for their contributions.
Since college researchers get deprived of the credit for their works due to poor citations and indexing, it is not uncommon for some to keep back valuable research data and information that threaten infringement on their IP. This practice inherently hinders the easy flow of research data and information which then increases the risk of duplication of effort and inefficient funding allocation.
With ARTiFACTS, college researchers get the due attribution for their works, independent of publication status. This means for every item of research uploaded or cited, the rightful owners get the credit for them. This ensures that all the artifacts linked to a project are appropriately kept and available for the use of others.
6. Integrated With Your Existing and Preferred Research Tools
ARTiFACTS is not just another research management tool you’ll have to start learning from scratch. It allows for easy integration with your existing working tools with a readiness to integrate even more of them subsequently.
However, if using an add-on is not a priority for you, then ARTiFACTS has got you covered. All your files will be assigned unique, persistent identifiers that are suitable for use in citations via its platform.
Some of the integrated third-party add-ons on the ARTiFACTS platform are listed below:
Storage:
- ARTiFACTS’ storage is the default for every project uploaded on the platform. The benefit of using the ARTiFACTS storage is that it has no storage cap. You have the option of linking using your third party storage for access to existing data.
- The various options that are enabled for linkage to the ARTiFACTS platform are Google Drive, Amazon, Dropbox, GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, and OneDrive.
Citation Management:
- ARTiFACTs has a built-in capability to keep track of your attributions. However, if you still want to make use of other citation management tools, the available options are Mendeley and Zotero.
7. Aids Research Collaboration
As mentioned earlier, ARTiFACT utilizes PoE to ensure that other researchers don’t get the credit for your work. By sharing your research procedure with others on this platform, the data collected will help other researchers to make inferences from your research drawbacks and limitations. This proves to hasten the speed of groundbreaking discoveries. In addition to this, their contribution can help refine your research and results. Contributors on a particular project are also rightfully attributed.
There are always various college researchers working on different ideas, and there’s a healthy chance your interest with those in other fields might align. In fact, your research could complement those in other niches. Discovering and finding such complementary research might help you quickly arrive at your own final analysis. Unfortunately, being in such a situation is even more difficult since there’s no middle-ground for researchers in the same or different niches to share ideas and progress.
This is another way ARTiFACT avails college researchers a solution. It’s an effective platform with the capacity to handle millions of research projects. ARTiFACTS’ large database creates a network where you’ll find people with similar or complementary projects that you can collaborate with.
Conclusion
ARTiFACTS is open for the use of both researchers and organizations. For individual college researchers and small research teams, ARTiFACTS offers free membership and full access to its features. For libraries, publishers, funders and R&D-Focused Organizations, they can utilize the ARTiFACTS platform on a premium subscription basis that’ll give them access to custom functionality on the platform.
The platform helps the scientific and scholarly world to connect with the researcher, provide adequate findings for the research, and cite works from scientists and researchers from their field of interest. With full integration with the scientific and engineering world, ARTiFact will transform the whole learning and research experience.
This translates to no more lengthy or incomplete research procedures. With ARTiFact, the knowledge is right at the doorstep of innovators.
For more great college tips, check out the other blogs on College Basics.
