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A Reputation System for Scientific Contributions Based on a Token Economy

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Linking Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL 2024)

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Abstract

One way of determining the reputation of a scientist is by assessing the portfolio of their publications in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. However, this reputation is an incomplete measure of achievement and creates a variety of misaligned incentives that negatively influence the scientific process and cause an increased distribution of low-quality research content. In this paper, we point out some current problems in the scientific process, how they are linked to the behavioral patterns of optimizing bibliographic metrics, and present a possible solution in the form of a reputation token system. The solution is characterized by a token economy with mechanisms to create stronger incentives for high-quality contributions and deter fraud. We provide a prototypical implementation of the reputation token as a smart contract for the Ethereum blockchain with a user interface and network visualization.

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Data Availability Statement

The code repositories for Fungible Soulbound Tokens [3] and the Reputation Token with demonstrator visualization [5] are openly available on Github. The related work comparison [4] is available on the Open Research Knowledge Graph platform.

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/Christof93/FungibleSBT.

  2. 2.

    https://github.com/Christof93/ReputationToken.

  3. 3.

    https://christof93.github.io/ReputationToken.

  4. 4.

    https://orkg.org/comparison/R592130/.

  5. 5.

    https://cryptovalleyconference.com/.

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks are extended to our colleague Andreas Marfurt who helped shape significant aspects of the presented solution through discussions and feedback. The authors thank the Federal Government, the Heads of Government of the Länder, as well as the Joint Science Conference (GWK), for their funding and support within the NFDI4Ing and NFDI4DataScience consortia. This work was partially funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) - project numbers 442146713 and 460234259 and by the TIB - Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. L3S Research Center, Leibniz University of Hannover, Hanover, Germany

    Christof Bless & Sören Auer

  2. Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Rotkreuz, Switzerland

    Christof Bless & Alexander Denzler

  3. TIB - Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology, Hanover, Germany

    Oliver Karras & Sören Auer

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  1. Christof Bless
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  2. Alexander Denzler
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Correspondence to Christof Bless .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Salford, Salford, UK

    Apostolos Antonacopoulos

  2. University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

    Annika Hinze

  3. Sorbonne University (CNRS), Paris, France

    Benjamin Piwowarski

  4. University of La Rochelle (L3i Laboratory), La Rochelle, France

    Mickaël Coustaty

  5. University of Padova, Padua, Italy

    Giorgio Maria Di Nunzio

  6. University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Francesco Gelati

  7. University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

    Nicholas Vanderschantz

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Bless, C., Denzler, A., Karras, O., Auer, S. (2024). A Reputation System for Scientific Contributions Based on a Token Economy. In: Antonacopoulos, A., et al. Linking Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries. TPDL 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15177. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-72437-4_3

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