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PubChain: A Decentralized Open-AccessPublication Platform with Participants Incentivized

by Blockchain TechnologyTaotao Wang, Member, IEEE, Soung Chang Liew, Fellow, IEEE, Shengli Zhang, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—We design and implement Publication Chain (Pub-Chain), a decentralized open-access publication platform builton decentralized and distributed technologies of blockchain andIPFS peer-to-peer file sharing systems. The existing publicationplatforms have some severe drawbacks. First, instead of pro-moting widespread knowledge sharing, access to publicationson the platforms owned by publishers is often on a fee basis.This drawback of pay wall prevents researchers from standingon the shoulders of giants. Moreover, the peer review processon most all existing publication platforms (including both open-access and publisher platforms) is prone to be ineffective, sincethere is no proper incentive to reviewers for performing high-qualified reviews. PubChain is an alternative platform to theexisting publication venues aiming to address their drawbacks.No central third-party owns the contents (i.e., papers and reviews)of PubChain. Exploiting blockchain technology, we devise anelaborate incentive scheme on PubChain to incentivize keystakeholders (i.e., authors, readers and reviewers) to participatepublication activities on PubChain in a substantive manner byearning credits and rewards through self-motivated interactions.We have performed simulations to investigate the robustness ofour proposed incentive scheme against fraudulent publicationsand reviews. We also have implemented a prototype of PubChainto demonstrate its key concepts.

Index Terms—Publications, Decentralization, Blockchain,Peer-to-Peer Networks, IPFS

I. INTRODUCTION

Publications of research results are an important activityto disseminate new knowledge. “Standing on the shouldersof giants” is a vivid expression that points out that newdiscoveries and innovations are often built on prior workby others [1], [2]. Researchers thrive on free exchange ofinformation.

A. Drawbacks and Limitations of Existing Publication Plat-forms of Publishers

To date, the most successful venues for academic paperpublication are journals and magazines owned by large en-trenched publishers, such as Nature Publishing Group, Instituteof Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), Association forComputing Machinery (ACM) and Elsevier of RELX Group.

T. Wang and S. Zhang are with the Guangdong Laboratory of Artificial In-telligence and Digital Economy (SZ), Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060,China (e-mail: ttwang@szu.edu.cn; zsl@szu.edu.cn).

S. Liew is with the Department of Information Engineering, TheChinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China (e-mail:soung@ie.cuhk.edu.hk)

These publishers publish a huge number of research papers ev-ery year. Their journals and magazines are platforms on whichresearchers exchange their latest research results and wherelatest research breakthroughs are announced. Despite their suc-cess, these publication platforms have significant drawbacksand limitations from the standpoint of key players—authors,reviewers, and readers—that matter most.

1) Pay Wall: The power to publish, store and share aca-demic literature is concentrated in the hands of a few dominantpublishers. These publishers are for-profit outfits. They chargeauthors for publications on their venues and they chargereaders for accessing the papers. In other words, they chargeboth the producers and consumers. Furthermore, conferencesorganized by some publishers often charge exorbitant regis-tration fees for conference attendance, and outrageous sumsof money for page charge for pages that do not incur muchadditional cost on their electronic platforms. They get awaywith these exploitations because they can. They have built uptheir brands over the years.

But who help them build and maintain their brands? Well,they leverage the free service of editors and reviewers to main-tain the quality of the publications. In most businesses, workerswho do work receive compensation rather than the other wayround. Publication business is an exception—publishers chargeboth the workers (the authors) as well as the customers (thereaders) and receive free services from both the workers andthe customers (the authors and readers themselves often serveas the reviewers).

Their charges can be quite expensive to the extent that onlylarge organizations, such as corporations, research institutionsand universities, can afford the fees. The pay wall put up by thepublishers excludes small organizations and individuals fromaccessing the latest research publications. These publishersstand in the way of knowledge dissemination and the pay wallprevents a level playing field among researchers.

2) Information Island: The authors are forced to transferthe copyrights of their papers to the publishers. The publisherstypically do not mutually share their literature resources. Thisgives rise to information islands with unsynchronized contents.There are many intrinsic disadvantages associated with suchisolated information islands. Readers and researchers lackingresources will have difficulty getting a complete set of pastpapers unless they subscribe to all these publishers. Theseislands are hurdles to knowledge dissemination.

3) Disintegration of Peer Review Process: Peer reviews ofpapers should be performed by experts with the same level

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of competence as the authors of the papers in their particularfield. The peer review process is crucial to maintaining paperquality. As a rule of thumb, journals and conferences with arigorous peer review process and with a low paper acceptancerate are considered to be more prestigious by readers andauthors.

With the growth of research participants, research papers arealso growing exponentially. It is getting increasingly difficultto find quality reviewers to review the large number ofpapers. Competent reviewers are researchers themselves. Asresearchers, they need to balance their time between reviewingothers papers and doing their own research. Unless thesepapers are directly related to their current research topics, theyhave little incentive to do the review, even if they have thetechnical expertise to do so. Review is a form of technicalauditing as far as scientific papers are concerned.

When accountants perform financial auditing for corpora-tions and organizations, they often charge a large sum ofmoney for their service, and as such they are obligated todo a professional job that meets a certain minimum qualitythreshold. Otherwise, the accountants would not receive futurejobs. When reviewers perform technical auditing, reviewersreceive zero compensation, and the quality of review variesmuch from reviewer to reviewer. There are no incentivesother than the conscience of the reviewers to meet certainminimum quality target. Arguably, serious technical auditingcan be a lot more time-consuming than financial auditing. Whyshould technical auditing be free? Are scientists worth lessthan accountants?

Without proper incentives, there is little reason for reviewersto spend time on paper review. As a result, because of paperexplosion, many reviews are quite shallow in nature, even forprestigious venues such as IEEE. Many senior researchers(e.g., professors) may relegate the responsibility of paperreview to junior novice researchers (e.g., beginning graduatestudents of the professors) who at least have the incentiveto review papers as part of their learning process—some ofthem probably have no choice because their superiors askthem to do the job. Where did the money—page charges,membership fees—go? Did any go to those responsible forquality assurance? Without proper incentives to reviewers, thecurrent peer review process can break down easily, especiallyin the face of paper explosion [3], [4].1

B. Other Publication Platforms and Services

Literature search and citation index services, such as web ofscience and google scholar, can partially overcome the infor-mation island effect. Papers from multiple publishers can belisted and their citations can be indexed. Since these servicesdo not really publish papers, they still cannot overcome thehandicaps of pay wall and peer review disintegration.

To overcome the pay wall of publishers, Free Open Accessaims to make academic literature a free public resourceon a global scale. For example, the arXiv preprint system

1 Besides the lack of incentives for reviewers, other limitations of thecurrent peer review system are discussed in [3], [4]. For example, the reviewprocess can be slow and cumbersome; it also exhibits various forms of bias.

allows authors to upload their papers for free access byall researchers. By the year of 2014, more than 1 millionarticles have been uploaded on arXiv [5]. The founder ofarXiv, physicist Paul Kingsbagh, won the 2002 MacArthuraward for his contribution to Free Open Access. AlthoughFree Open Access platforms allow everyone to access researchoutputs freely and easily, they still suffer from peer reviewdisintegration. In fact, arXiv does not even have a peer reviewprocess. Low-quality papers abound on Free Open Accessplatforms. As of today, papers published on Free Open Accessplatforms do not earn the same prestige that papers on thepublication platforms of Publishers.

Some open access platforms such as Peerj also support peerreview openly—review comments can be posted along with thepublished papers. However, even with this open peer reviewscheme, reviewers still lack incentives for investing efforts toprovide high quality reviews. Therefore, the open peer reviewscheme does not address the drawback of peer review process’sdisintegration.

All publication platforms today are centralized—they areowned or managed by a single organization. As a conse-quence, they are prone to single points of failure—there is noguarantee that the organization will never close the access tothe database. The power to publish, store and share academicliterature is concentrated in the hands of publishers and ownersof open-access platforms.

C. How does PubChain Incentivize Participants

Publication Chain (PubChain) aims to overcome the lim-itations of the current publication platform. PubChain is adecentralized publication platform, where authors, readers andreviewers are incentivized to participate in a meaningful andsubstantive manner. In particular, these key players can earncredits and rewards through self-motivated interactions. Theassets of PubChain are owned by these key players, not by aseparate profit-focused publisher. PubChain does not own thecopyrights of the papers; the authors retain their copyrights.PubChain is not a central authority. The authors do not needpermissions to publish papers on PubChain.

In the following, we review the status quo of existingpublication platforms from the standpoints of the incentives forthe authors, the reviewers, and the readers. For this purpose,IEEE is taken as a representative of publisher platforms,and arXiv is taken as a representative of Free Open Accessplatforms.

Incentives for Authors:1) Visibility - The most important motivation for authors

is that their papers are downloaded and read by many.This is successfully achieved by IEEE already. It is alsoachieved to some extent by arXiv given its open accessnature.

2) Prestige and Recognition by Peers - Well written paperswith good results are recognized by peers. This issuccessfully achieved by IEEE already. As of today, thequality of papers in arXiv varies widely because of thelack of a review process. Having an arXiv paper by itselfdoes not earn recognition from peers.

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3) Time Stamping - Claiming the first to do something.This is achieved by IEEE to some extent; however thetime stamps are not immediate. Time stamping is moreimmediate with arXiv.

4) Low Cost - Publishing on IEEE venues is very costly.Uploading papers to arXiv incur no cost.

5) Continuous Improvement of Publications - Authors cansubmit revised versions of papers based on feedbackand reviews on the platform. If this can be achieved,research publications, like software, will have a life ofits own in that it can be continuously improved. Paperspublished in IEEE go through a few reviewers only. Andonce accepted and published, the publications are a staticrecord. arXiv allows authors to submit new versions ofthe same paper. However, there is a lack of feedback byreviewers that add quality to the new versions.

6) Financial Incentive - To most authors, making moneyfrom publications probably ranks low as an incentive.That said, as far as we know, IEEE (and other publishers)does not pay authors of significant papers that addprestige to their journals and magazines. Occasionally,prize paper awards come with only a small token amountof money as a goodwill gesture. There are no financialincentive schemes on open-access platforms either.

Incentives for Reviewers:1) Reward - Good reviews should be rewarded financially

or rewarded by other means. Paper review is an auditingprocess. Why should the efforts of paper reviewers befree especially if most reviewers do not gain recognitionfrom the efforts? Technical people have been exploitedto a large extent in that regard. IEEE certainly does notprovide strong incentives for reviewers to do a good job.Reviewers are not participants on the arXiv platform.

Incentives for Readers:1) Good and Relevant Papers - Readers, who are often

researchers themselves, want to find good and relevantpapers quickly. This is achieved by IEEE and arXiv.

2) Interactions with Authors and Reviewers - Readers canobtain answers from the authors directly on the platform.Each paper could also have a FAQ managed by theauthor, but with contributions from the other readersand reviewers. These are very little open interactionsand debates between readers, authors, and reviewers, onIEEE and arXiv.

PubChain is a blockchain-based publication platform de-signed to achieve the above incentives for all stakeholdersthrough an incentivized ecosystem. We next discuss why wechoose blockchain as our solution.

D. The Motivation and Justification for the use of Blockchain

Blockchain is a decentralized and distributed digital ledgerthat stores data in chronological order in a way that can ensurethat the data in the chain cannot be falsified [6]–[8]. It isnatural to employ blockchain to solve the problems of paywall and single point of failure. Although other solutions (e.g.,a web application run by a consortium) can also address someproblems of the existing publication platforms, i.e., pay wall

(if the consortium’s platform subscribes to free open access),single point of failure, there are still a number of advantagesenjoyed by blockchain that cannot achieved by these solutions.

Using blockchain, our PubChain can construct a decentral-ized publication platform that does not belong to any entities.Besides solving the problems of pay wall and single point offailure, the decentralized publication platform can establish anecosystem for publication activities, where authors, reviewerand readers are incentivized to make positive contributions.

We believe that there is no free lunch—but good lunchshould not cost too much, and people who contribute to thelunch quality should be rewarded. For certain production andsales activities, there must be people who pay money (the oneswho enjoy the services/products) and people who receive themoney (the ones who provide the services/products). Authorsneed to pay for their publications, due to that they use others’services (i.e., platforms’ publication services, reviewers’ re-view services). However, on all current publishers’ platforms(i.e., conferences, journals), authors just pay the publishersand not the reviewers, and fees paid to publishers are ratherhigh. On free open-access platforms, authors do not payanybody and there is no review service provided. Besides theplatforms’ publication services, reviewers’ services are alsoimportant to paper quality assurance. Reviewers provide somesort of a ”consumer reports” service. However, reviewers oncurrent publication platform lack incentives to perform highquality reviews. Therefore, we design PubChain to incentivizereviewers to provide high quality reviews by letting them toreceive an amount of financial rewards commensurate with thequality of their reviews.

How to credit reviewers is not an easy task, since how toevaluate their review comments and scores is not straightfor-ward. Using blockchain technology, we design an incentivemechanism for authors, reviewers and readers that incentivizesthese participants to form an ecology that promotes paperquality and achieves free open access at the same time (seeSection IV). In particular, we devise a decentralized scoringmechanism that is robust to dishonest scoring behaviors (seeSection V). We compare the current existing publicationplatforms, a web application run by a consortium and ourPubChain by indicating the problems that can be solved bythem in TABLE I.

E. Related Work and Our Contributions

Refs. [3], [4] discussed the limitations of the current pub-lication platforms, especially the limitations imposed by thepeer review process. Works [9], [10] proposed to incentivereviewers using digital cryptocurrency of blockchain. Work[11] proposed to permanently record educational records(i.e., exam credentials, record of learning, the authorshipof something) and the corresponding reputation rewards onblockchain. Works [12] and [13] proposed to use blockchainto record the copyright of publications and use peer-to-peerfile storage system IPFS to store the publications.

These existing works mainly talked about the idea of usingblockchain to record the copyright of papers and/or issuingtokens to authors/reviewers. However, a complete framework

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TABLE ICOMPARISON OF DIFFERENT PUBLICATION PLATFORMS

Pay Wall Single Point of Failure Disintegration of Peer Review ProcessPublishers × × ×

Free Open Access√

× ×Consortium Web App

√ √×

PubChain√ √ √

×: having such problem.√: having no such problem.

with rigorous designs is still lacking. Our PubChain is acomplete framework with rigorous designs for implementingblockchain based publication platform. Compared to theseexisting works, PubChain has the following new contributions.• First, PubChain has an incentive mechanism to authors,

reviewers and readers that incentivizes these participantsto form a self-sustaining ecology that promotes paperquality on an open access platform (Section IV).

• Moreover, PubChain has a decentralized scoring mecha-nism that is robust to dishonest scoring behaviors (SectionV).

• Finally, we consider many practical aspects of the system,including the system architecture (Section III), and thefinancial model (Section II).

II. SOLUTION OF PUBCHAIN

A. Design Concept

A central design concept of PubChain is to use blockchain[6]–[8] and off-chain peer-to-peer distributed file storage(i.e., InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) [14]–[16]) as buildingblocks to decentralize the publication platform. Such decen-tralization also means that there is no single central party thatcontrols the running of the platform. If properly designed,the decentralized system can also be more robust than acentralized system given its replication of data across multipleparties.

PubChain uses the IPFS system as the database system forstoring papers. IPFS is a distributed and decentralized storagesystem consisting of a network of peer-to-peer nodes. Thetechniques and features of IPFS can be found in [14]. WithIPFS, papers are content-addressed in the database. Authorscan back up their papers to the network and freely downloadpapers without the risk of single-point failure. The IPFSrepository is physically owned by all users and not by a singleentity.

PubChain exploits blockchain technology to confirm theregistration of the paper ownership, to track index citations,and to incentivize participants. Blockchain is a distributed anddecentralized append-only ledger for digital assets. Data inblockchain is replicated and shared among all the participants.Past records are made tamper-resistant through its append-only paradigm. There are many successful existing blockchainsystems, e.g., Bitcoin [17], Ethereum [18]. We can reuseand modify their software code to build the blockchain ofPubChain.

The operation of PubChain blockchain is divided into twoconsecutive phases, with the first phase being a temporaryphase before the final second phase takes over. In the first

phase, PubChain operates as a consortium blockchain usingthe Proof-of-authority (PoA) consensus protocol [19]. In thesecond phase, PubChain operates as a public blockchain usingthe Proof-of-work (PoW) consensus protocol [17].

Fig. 1 gives an overview of the PubChain platform. Thereare three entities in the platform: a group of publicationplayers, a blockchain system sustained by miners, an IPFSsystem with distributed storage nodes. The blockchain systemand the IPFS system are the infrastructure of PubChain. Anetwork node can be a miner of blockchain or/and a storagenode of IPFS. Blockchain miners run the distributed consensusprotocol to maintain the data on blockchain. In the consortiumblockchain phase, the miners are the super nodes that areselected to run the PoA protocol. In the public blockchainphase, the miners are the nodes that devote their computingpowers to solving hash puzzles of the blockchain. IPFSstorage nodes share their memory space for the distributedand persistent storage for PubChain. Through a PubChaininterface, the publication players (i.e., authors, reviewers, andreaders) interact with the blockchain and IPFS systems in theconduct of their activities on PubChain. We have developeda PubChain system that combines blockchain and IPFS. Wewill describe the system architecture of PubChain in SectionIII.

When an author uploads his/her paper to PubChain, the pa-per is time-stamped and registered on Pubchain as a permanentrecord. The citation index for every paper is also tracked onPubChain. Tokens are used to financially incentivize players toengage in publication activities on PubChain and to incentivizeminers to sustain and maintain PubChain. We will elaborateour proposed incentive mechanism in Section IV.

The tokens issued by PubChain are called PubCoins. Pub-Chain is a non-profit project and we will not sell the issuedPubCoins through initial coin offering (ICO) and privateplacements to any other entity to make money. PubCoins willbe distributed to all the participants as the rewards for theircontributions to the platform, rather than to the project teamor other organizations.

To endow PubCoin with real monetary value, we designPubChain as a side chain of another parent chain whosetokens are in wide circulation and are considered to have realmonetary values, e.g., Bitcoin, Etherum, Bitcoin Cash. Usingthe two-way pegging technique of side chain [20], we cantransfer the tokens on the parent chain to PubChain and viceversa. This concept is illustrated in Fig. 2. The technical detailsof two-way pegging and side chain can be found in [20]. At thebeginning stage, PubChain operates separately from the parentchain, and PubCoin has no real monetary values. Donation to

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query paper matadata

from blockchain

send transactions to blockchain

upload/download papers/reviews

TXTX

TXTX

TXTX

TXTX

TXTX

TXTX

TXTX

TXTX

block #100 block #101 block #102 block #103

Distributed File

StorageSystem(IPFS)

Blockchain system

PubChain

Interface

PubChain

Interface

PubChain

Interface

PubChain

Interface

Authors, Reviewers, Readers

Fig. 1. The overview of PubChain platform, where we have three entities: a group of publication players (authors, reviewers, readers), a blockchain systemsustained by miners, an IPFS system with distributed storage nodes.

PubChain can be injected into PubChain from a parent chainusing two-way pegging, and PubChain will then operate as aside chain after that. We discuss the details about the financialmodel of PubChain in the Section II.B.

B. Financial Model

With the crypto-currencies provided by blockchain systems,PubChain aims to establish the following financial model forthe world of publications.

A certain amount of PubChain tokens (PubCoins) are issuedto the participants on PubChain. Corresponding to the twophases of blockchain systems, the establishment of the valueover PubCoins is also divided into the following two phases:• Phase I (Consortium blockchain phase): In this phase,

as a bootstrap incentive scheme, a certain amount ofnew PubCoins is issued to each PubChain user whenhe/she first registers as a user. To endow PubCoins withreal monetary values, we adopt the two-way peggingtechnique of side chain to transfer the values of othercryptocurrencies (that already have real prices on themarket) to PubChian. On one parent chain, we lock acertain amount of the cryptocurrency tokens to a spe-cial address and we also send the simplified paymentverification (SPV) [17] proof of this token-locked trans-action to PubChain. The cryptocurrency tokens ownedby the special address cannot be transferred to otheraddress by spending: these cryptocurrency tokens aresimply a reserve to endow PubChain tokens with real

monetary values. On PubChain, the miners will packagethe transaction sent from the parent chain into a block forbroadcast to the whole Pubchain network. Then, a blockon PubChain issues a number of PubCoins to the users ofPubChain (with two-way pegging, these issued PubCoinscan be sent to the parent chain to unlock the lockedcryptocurrencies on the parent chain). In this manner, theissued PubCoins are linked to the locked cryptocurrencieson the parent chains; the value of the PubCoins areendorsed and determined by the total amount of thelocked tokens.

• Phase II (Public chain phase): In this phase, a certainamount of PubCoins are issued in each block. Theseissued tokens will be given as rewards to the mineras well as to the authors and reviewers that contributeto PubChain. How the rewards are distributed amongthe players will be explained later. The amount of therewarded PubCoins in each block is constant and doesnot vary from block to block. This means that thetotal amount of tokens issued increases over time andis unlimited. No other cryptocurrency is transferred toPubChain anymore in Phase II. PubChain is operated asa decentralized central bank that constantly issues newtokens to adapt to the expansion of the whole economyon the platform.

Fig. 3 illustrates the above two-phase financial model of thePubChain system. A few remarks are as follows:• There is a important difference between the cryptocur-

rency endorsement mechanism in Phase I of PubCoin and

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Parent Chain

Side Chain

Two Way Pegging

Fig. 2. Illustration of the concept of side chain and its two-way pegging.

the ICO activities of other projects. Using the two-waypegging technique, Pubchain cryptocurrency endorsementcan guarantee the cryptocurrencies transferred to Pub-Chain belong to the entire PubChain network rather thanto a single entity (i.e., not controlled by one entity);nobody can embezzle these locked cryptocurrencies andspend them. For ICO, there is a high risk that the insti-tution or individual controlling the project will abscondwith the raised cryptocurrencies.

• Phase I is similar to the Bretton Woods system (thesystem for monetary and exchange rate managementestablished in 1944 [21]) where the US dollar is linked togold (all involved countries confirmed the official priceof 35 US dollars per ounce of gold in January 1944) andthe currencies of other countries maintain fixed exchangerates with the US dollar. Under Bretton Woods system,the credit and the value of the US dollar is supported bygold.

• The purpose of Phase I is to inject real monetary val-ues into PubCoins to incentivize participants to conductpublication activities over PubChain. This phase is veryimportant for cold-booting PubChain. As more activeparticipants join PubChain and as the value of PubChainto publication players are demonstrated, more participantscan be brought in, whether they are incentivized bymoney or by the value of PubChain as a publicationvenue. At some point, a vibrant ecosystem will be es-tablished, and there will be no need to inject the valuesof other crypto-currencies into PubChain. PubChain thenoperates normally with its financial value tied to its usevalue: PubChain then enters Phase II of its operatingmodel.

• In Phase II, the amount of the rewarded PubCoins inevery block keeps constant all the time, which meansthe total amount of tokens issued increases over timeand is unlimited. This is different from the token issuingmechanism of Bitcoin that limits its total amount oftokens. This implies the underlying financial models ofPubCoin and Bitcoin are different. Bitcoin is more likegold, and its value comes from its scarcity; PubCoin ismore like a currency, and the issuer continues to issue

parent chain

Lock tokens

Issue PubCoins

PubChain

Phase I

Verification of SPV proof

Lock tokens

Issue PubCoins

Verification of SPV proof

… …

Issue PubCoins

Issue PubCoins

Issue PubCoins

Issue PubCoins

…

…

Phase II

SPV proof

SPV proof…

…

Fig. 3. The illustration of the two-phase financial model of the PubChainsystem.

this currency to adapt to the gradual expansion of theentire economy: if more work is done (in this case, morepublications, more reviews, more readers participations),more currency will be issued to support the increasedscale of the economy. Phase II is similar to the currentUS dollar system after the collapse of the Bretton Woodssystem since the early 1970s.

III. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE OF PUBCHAIN

Recently, blockchain-based decentralized data storing andsharing networks were investigated in [22]–[26]. PubChain hasmany technological similarities with these existing blockchain-based decentralized data systems. One major difference ofPubChain, however, is that the data stored and shared onPuhChain are very specific, i.e., papers. This difference addsa set of special technical requirements to the design andimplementation of PubChain.

PubChain has the following technical requirements: 1)Any node should be able to upload and share papers onthe platform. 2) The platform should provide scalable datatransmission and storage capabilities. 3) Nodes should beincentivized to upload papers to PubChain to derive benefitsfrom the uploaded papers. 4) The platform should be able toidentify and evaluate the quality of papers. 5) The platformdoes not keep ownership of papers.

In order to realize these technical requirements, PubChainis built on a completely decentralized system architecture.As shown in Fig. 4, the system architecture of PubChain

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consists of four layers: blockchain layer, virtual machine layer,routing layer and storage layer. Following the design principleproposed in [27], this architecture decouples the control plane(that consists of the blockchain and virtual machine layers) andthe data plane (consisting of the Routing and storage layers).We describe the functions of the four layers in the following.

A. Blockchain Layer

The bottom layer is the blockchain layer. The Bitcoin-likeblockchain system is a tamper-proof distributed ledger that issuitable for recording small data but not suitable for processingbig data. For the design of PubChain, the blockchain systemsare exploited to record the metadata of papers; the blockchainsystems also record the operation commands sent by the nodesand enable consensus on the execution order of operations. Ina nutshell, the blockchain layer realizes a global state recorderfor the PubChain platform.

B. Virtual Machine Layer

Above the blockchain layer is the virtual machine layer. TheAPI functionalities provided by the script languages on theBitcoin-like blockchain systems are very limited. For example,the Bitcoin blockchain can only perform simple operationssuch as issuing and recording transactions. For PubChain,the logic functionalities reside in the more versatile virtualmachine layer. We can define new operations in the virtualmachine layer without changing the underlying blockchainlayer. The virtual machine layer reads the recorded metadataof papers and the operation commands from the blockchainlayer and executes these operations accordingly.

Our current reference implementation of PubChain uses theEthereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contract mechanism[18] in its virtual machine layer. Since the EVM smart contractis Turing complete, we can realize the functionalities requiredby the PubChain platform and easily incorporate other newfunctionalities as they arise. Another choice for the virtualmachine layer is the virtual chain mechanism proposed in [27].We can also realize the logic of PubChain by predefining therequired operations using the technology of virtual chain. Al-though virtual chain is not Turing complete, it is a lightweightdesign whose advantages include better reliability, security andperformance.

C. Routing Layers

Above the virtual machine layer is the routing layer. Themain function of the routing layer is to allow the virtualmachine layer to obtain the addresses of papers in the storagesystem. PubChain separates routing requests (i.e., how tolocate papers) from the actual storage of papers. This avoidsthe need for PubChain to adopt a specific storage backend, al-lowing the coexistence of multiple forms of storage backends,including centralized database, commercial cloud service, andpeer-to-peer distributed file sharing systems (e.g., IPFS).

In the implementation of PubChain, a subset of publicationplayer nodes, blockchain miner nodes, IPFS storage nodesforms a peer-to-peer network based on distributed hash table

………… block0 block1 blockN-1 blockN Blockchain Layer

Virtual Machine Layer

Routing Layer

Storage Layer

Data Plane

Control Plane

cloud service IPFS

Fig. 4. The System Architecture of PubChain.

(DHT) [28] for storing the routing files. When the virtualmachine layer sends an address resolution request to therouting layer, the routing layer first looks for the correspondingrouting file according to the target hash value of the paper sentby the virtual machine layer through the DHT mechanism.With the routing file, we can then get the URL of the specificstorage locations (such as cloud service: https://, IPFS storage:ipfs://)2. A data request is then initiated to the correspondingstorage system via the URL.

D. Storage Layer

The top level of the PubChain is the storage layer that storesthe actual data of papers. Each stored paper is signed by theowner’s private key to claim its ownership. Because papersare stored outside of the blockchain, PubChain can supportthe storage of papers with any size and can use a varietyof storage backends. Nodes do not need to trust the storagesystems because they can verify the integrity of downloadedpaper in the virtual machine layer. Multiple forms of datastorage can be mounted to the storage layer. For example,some large institutions (such as universities, companies) canset up their own centralized databases to back up the paperson PubChain for their own use. However, the decentralizedpeer-to-peer IPFS storage system is always included to ensurethe accessibility of the papers.

IV. INCENTIVE MECHANISMS OF PUBCHAIN

Papers on PubChain will attract large readership only if itis a reputable publication platform. Authors and reviewerscontribute toward making PubChain a quality publicationplatform by submitting high-quality papers and reviews. In thatlight, effective incentive mechanisms to encourage substantiveand meaningful participation by authors and reviewers are acore part of Pubchain. In this section, we describe the incentivemechanisms of PubChain3.

2One paper can be stored in multiple storage systems to ensure itsavailability. The IPFS system is always used to store papers for ensuringfree open access. If the URL of a cloud service is used, the access to thepaper is via a central server. If the URL of IPFS is used, the access to thepaper is via the DHT embedded in IPFS system.

3We focus on the incentive mechanism to publication players here. Theincentives to blockchain miners are the mining rewards and transactions fees.Filecoins [29] are the incentive to IPFS storage nodes who share their storagespaces.

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A. Incentive Mechanism to Authors

In Pubchain, an author submits her/his paper via a transac-tion Tpost. The transaction Tpost includes meta-informationassociated with the submitted paper, such as the authorsaddress on the blockchain, the papers IPFS address, title,keywords, and the transaction hashes of papers cited by thepaper.

The author pays X PubCoins in the transaction of eachsubmitted paper.4 A fraction of a1X tokens, 0 < a1 < 1,are allocated to areviewer bonus pool. The tokens in thereviewer bonus pool are distributed to reviewers according tothe mechanism presented in Section IV.B. Another fraction ofa2X tokens, 0 < a2 < 1, a1 + a2 < 1 are given to the paperscited by the submitted paper 5. The remaining (1− a1 − a2)Xtokens are taken as the transaction fees given to the miner thatrecords the transaction onto blockchain.

In the public-chain phase of PubChain, every mined blockcontains a coinbase transaction that mints Y new PubCointokens. Among these minted tokens, a fraction of b1Y tokens,0 < b1 < 1, are released to the reviewer bonus pool, a fractionof b2Y tokens, 0 < b2 < 1, b1+b2 < 1 are released to authorsas rewards according to the following reward distributionmechanism, and the remaining (1− b1 − b2)Y tokens arereleased to the miner of that block.

To incentivize authors to submit quality papers, rewards aredistributed to authors according to the review scores of theirpapers. Specifically, when a new block is mined, the authorof paper i receives a reward of Gi PubCoins from the newblock, computed as follows:

Gi = b2Y ×max (Si − λ, 0)∑i

max (Si − λ, 0)(1)

where Si is the current review score of paper i (computationof the current review score Si of paper i will be presentedin Section V.A), λ is a quality threshold for papers, thesummation of i is over all papers that were been publishedon PubChain during the previous M block intervals. In otherwords, a paper will be rewarded within a reward window ofM blocks after it is published on PubChain.

The review score Si of paper i is initialized to zero, Si = 0,and thus max (Si − λ , 0) = 0 initially. With the threshold λ,posting and overwhelming PubChain with low-quality paperswhose review score does not pick up over time will not berewarding. Furthermore, since X PubCoins are charged foreach posted paper, there is a disincentive for authors to submitlow-quality papers.

4On PubChain, when users generate the blockchain addresses, theymust provide their affiliation emails or ORCID IDs, and each affiliationemail/ORCID ID can only be linked to one address. At the beginning stage ofPubChain, we will send a few tokens to each address for free, so that authorscan upload their papers to the platform. After PubChain is widely acceptedby authors and it has gained recognition as a reputable publications platform,we will stop issuing free tokens. From then on, to publish papers, authorswill have to find ways to earn tokens (e.g., by serving as reviewers for otherspapers) or else purchase tokens from others to pay the author fees. We believethe payment scheme will not reduce the number of submitted papers.

5Only authors of cited papers having a registered account with PubChainwill be rewarded. Each Paper is identified by the hash of the transaction thatregistered the paper on the blockchain.

Authors Reviewer Bonus PoolAuthor

ofPaper i

Reviewer

… … Tx

Reviewer That givesReview i,j

… …

To the authors of the cited papers

X

1a X

2a X

1 21 a a X

Miners

F

2b Y

1bY

1 21 b b Y

YTxTx

Block: new

PubCoins

Paid by the author via a Tx

F

Fig. 5. Token flows of the incentive mechanism in PubChain.

Besides receiving rewards from good reviews, a papercan also receive rewards when it is cited by another paper.Specifically if paper j cites K other papers that are also postedon PubChain, a2X tokens paid by paper j will be given tothe authors of the K cited papers. Each cited paper i willreceive a2X/K tokens from paper j. In this way, if a paperhas a long lasting influence on other papers, it may continueto receive rewards through the citation mechanism (i.e., longafter the review reward window has transpired, citation rewardmay continue).

B. Incentive Mechanism to Reviewers

In Pubchain, a reviewer submits the review of a paperby sending a transaction Treview to the blockchain. Thetransaction Treview includes the hash of the transaction thatpublishes the paper, the numerical score of the paper givenby the reviewer, and the blockchain address of the reviewer.In addition to the numerical score, reviewers can also writecomments on papers. Insightful comments are useful to theauthors in terms of improving future versions of their papers;they also let readers identify high-quality papers. The com-ments on papers are stored on IPFS and their IPFS address areincluded in the transaction Treview that is sent to PubChainfor record keeping.

We denote the review of paper i by reviewer j by Ri,j∆=

(Zi,j , Ci,j) where Zi,j is the numerical score and Ci,j isthe comments. PubChain treats the comments by reviewersas some sort of a special paper that are reviewed by readerspaper reviews are also reviewed, but with a numerical scoreonly. The score of review j depends on its review numericalscores given by readers. Readers will not give high scores toa paper review with only a numerical score without insightfulcomments. Review j of paper i receives a reward of gi,jPubCoins computed as follows:

gij = αFmax (Wi,j − λ, 0)∑

i,j

max (Wi,j − λ, 0)(2)

9

where Wi,j is the current average score of comment Ci,j , Fis the total reward in the review bonus pool during the currentblock interval 6, α is a ratio (0 < α < 1) that governs howmuch bonus in the current pool are distributed to reviewersduring this block interval, the summation of i and j is overthe comments recorded onto PubChain during the previous Mblocks. The bonus not used in the current block, (1 − α)F ,will be kept in the pool for release in subsequent blocks.

To incentive miners to include review transactions into theirblocks, a fraction β � 1 of the reward obtained by a reviewgij (i.e. βgij tokens) is released to the miner who included thisreview transaction into its block. Therefore, during each blockinterval, βαF = β

∑i,j gij tokens from the review bonus

pool are released to miners who included review transactionsassociated with all reviews j in the past M blocks.

Fig. 5 illustrates the token flows associated with our incen-tive mechanism. The incentive mechanism relies on the scoresthat can objectively reflect the qualities of papers and reviews.The next section will present a decentralized scoring systemthat can prevent malicious nodes from tampering with scores.

V. DECENTRALIZED SCORING SYSTEM OF PUBCHAIN

The financial rewards of PubChain are issued to authorsand reviewers according to the scores of their papers andtheir reviews. To earn more rewards, malicious nodes maydeliberately give scores that deviate from the true quality ofpapers and reviews. Therefore, a decentralized scoring systemthat can ensure objective scores in the presence of maliciousnodes is very important. In this section, we first propose adecentralized scoring system to compute the scores of papersand reviews. We then perform simulations to investigate theintegrity of the proposed decentralized scoring system.

A. Decentralized Scoring System

The effective score Wi,j of review Ri,j = (Zi,j , Ci,j) iscomputed by averaging readers’ scores on Ri,j . If review Ri,j

has received scores from less than Nrs readers, its effectivescore is fixed to Wi,j = 0; otherwise, the effective score Wi,j

of review Ri,j is obtained by excluding the highest and lowest10% readers’ scores and then averaging the remaining scores.To avoid conflict of interest, if a participant has submitted areview of a paper, she/he cannot score the other reviews of thesame paper as a reader. In addition, to avoid score flooding,a reader can at most score Nrc review comments of the samepaper.7 The effective score Wi,j of review Ri,j is for two

6In the consortium-chain phase of PubChain, F = (1− α)F ′ + a1XN ,where F ′ is the total reward in the review bonus pool during the last blockinterval, N is the number of the published papers and a1XN is the totalamount of the tokens paid by the published papers during this block interval.In the public-chain phase of PubChain, F = (1− α)F ′ + a1XN + b1Y ,where b1Y is the amount of tokens released to the review bonus pool by thecurrent block interval.

7For implementation, we need a way to identify participants on PubChainand associate each participant ID with a unique address on blockchain.To achieve this, we can use the affiliation emails or ORCID IDs of theparticipants as their IDs on PubChain. Moreover, identifying reviewers usingtheir affiliation emails or ORCID IDs means that our scoring system is areal-name system. This can avoid the dishonest review behavior in which apaper is intentionally given high scores by many reviewers from the sameaffiliation.

purposes. First, it is used in (2) to incentivize reviewers toperform high-quality reviews. Second, it is used to computethe effective score Si of paper i.

We employ the review results of paper i, encoded in theform of {(Zi,j , Ci,j ,Wi,j)}j=1,2,··· to compute the reviewscore Si of paper i. First, we normalize the scores Wi,j ofreview Ri,j given by the readers as:

Wi,j =Wi,j∑j

Wi,j(3)

for all j. The normalized score Wi,j takes value between 0and 1. Then, we compute Si as a weighted sum of scores Zi,j

given by reviewers to paper i using the normalized scores Wi,j

as their weights:

Si =∑j

Wi,jZi,j (4)

The computed Si is an evaluation on the quality of paper iand is used to reward the author by the reward distributionmechanism. In essence, the effective score Wi,j made byreaders to review Ri,j reflects the quality of that review andis an indication of the extent to which readers agree with thescore Zi,j by reviewer j on paper i.

B. Simulation Investigations

We next present simulation results to validate that ourproposed decentralized scoring system can ensure fair reviewsof papers, even in the presence of adversary reviewers with abiased interest.

Consider one poor-quality paper, paper i with a ground-truthscore of S. The author of this paper is an attacker who wantsto gain more rewards by controlling a set of malicious nodesfaking as reviewers and readers so that the paper can obtaina much higher score S′ � S on the platform. We assumethe scores {Zi,j}j for a paper i given by honest reviewersare Gaussian distributed with mean S and variance σ2

s . Thescores given by honest readers to a particular review j ofpaper i are Gaussian distributed with mean WP − |Zi,j − S|and variance σ2

s , where WP is the mean score for a perfectreview that assigns the same score to the ground-truth score(i.e., Zi,j = S).

We consider two strategies for the attacker. The first strategyis to have all malicious nodes serve as reviewers of the paper.All malicious nodes will give a high review score Zi,j = S′,for all j ∈ MS, where j ∈ MS is the set of the maliciousnodes controlled by the attacker. In our simulations, we assumethere are totally 1000 review scores given by reviewers topaper i, among which Nmn scores are given by the maliciousnodes. We assume each review Ri,j = (Zi,j , Ci,j) is scored byNrs honest readers. Then, the effective score Wi,j of reviewRi,j is obtained by first excluding the highest and lowest10% scores from Nrs readers’ scores and then averaging theremaining scores. Finally, we compute the final score Si ofpaper i according to (3) and (4). The results are shown inFig. 6 and Fig. 7, where the final scores Si are evaluated withrespect to different numbers of malicious nodes Nmn. We treat

10

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000

The number of malicious nodes: Nmn

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

The

com

pute

d pa

per

scor

e: S

i2s=10

our scoring method, Nrs

= 10

our scoring method, Nrs

= 100

our scoring method, Nrs

= 300

our scoring method, Nrs

= 600

the average of review scoresthe ground-truth score

Fig. 6. The curve of Si vs. Nmn with σ2s = 10 for the first attack strategy.

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000

The number of malicious nodes: Nmn

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

The

com

pute

d pa

per

scor

e: S

i

2s=100

our scoring method, Nrs

= 10

our scoring method, Nrs

= 100

our scoring method, Nrs

= 300

our scoring method, Nrs

= 600

the average of review scoresthe ground-truth score

Fig. 7. The curve of Si vs. Nmn with σ2s = 100 for the first attack strategy.

the simple average of the review scores, i.e., Si =∑

j Zi,j , asour benchmark. In the simulations, we set S = 40, S′ = 80 ,WU = 90 and Nrs ∈ {10, 100, 300, 600}. Fig. 6 and Fig. 7show the results for σ2

s = 10, and σ2s = 100, respectively. As

we can see, our scoring method is robust to the attackers fakereviews. When more and more malicious nodes are involved(large Nmn), the attacker becomes more successful in biasingthe score toward the fake score. Large readership on thePubChain platform means large Nrs , and large Nrs makesthe system more robust against large Nmn.

The second strategy is to have a fraction δ of the maliciousnodes be fake reviewers and the rest be fake readers; and halfof the fake readers will support the fake reviews by givinghigh scores, and the other half of the fake readers will attackthe honest reviews by giving them low scores. For example,suppose that there are Nmn = 100 malicious nodes and δ =0.1. Then, 10 of the malicious nodes are fake reviewers thatgive review score S′ to paper i and 90 malicious nodes arefake readers that can give a total of 90Nrc fake scores to all

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000

The number of malicious nodes: Nmn

30

40

50

60

70

The

com

pute

d pa

per

scor

e: S

i

Nrs

=10, Nrc

=4

our scoring method, = 0.1our scoring method, = 0.2our scoring method, = 0.5the average of review scores, = 0.1the average of review scores, = 0.2the average of review scores, = 0.5the ground-truth score

Fig. 8. The curve of Si vs. Nmn with Nrs = 10 for the second attackstrategy.

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000

The number of malicious nodes: Nmn

30

40

50

60

70

The

com

pute

d pa

per

scor

e: S

i

Nrs

=40, Nrc

=4

our scoring method, = 0.1our scoring method, = 0.2our scoring method, = 0.5the average of review scores, = 0.1the average of review scores, = 0.2the average of review scores, = 0.5the ground-truth score

Fig. 9. The curve of Si vs. Nmn with Nrs = 40 for the second attackstrategy.

reviews of paper i. Among the 90Nrc fake scores to reviews,45Nrc scores of VU are given to the fake reviews put up bythe attacker (each of the 10 fake reviews is assigned with45Nrc/10 scores of VU ), where VU is a very high score usedto support the fake reviews ; 45Nrc scores of VL are givento the honest reviews (each honest review is assigned with45Nrc/90 scores of VL), where VL is a very low score usedto attack these honest reviews.

In the simulation, we set S = 40, S′ = 80 , WP = 90,VL = 20, VU = 100, Nrc = 4, δ ∈ (0.1 , 0.2, 0.5}. Fig. 8and Fig. 9 show the results for Nrs = 10, and Nrs = 40,respectively. From the results, we can observe that with largeNrs, our scoring method is still robust to this attack strategy.

VI. SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION

We have implemented a proof-of-concept prototype for thePubChain platform. The implementation of the blockchainreuses Ethereum, which means we can realize the virtual

11

machine layer of PubChain using the EVM smart contractmechanism. The prototype uses IPFS for the storage layer.We have deployed the PubChain interface to a network nodewith address http://120.78.71.240:3000/. Users (i.e., publica-tion players) can use the JSON-RPC protocol to remotelydeploy and invoke smart contract via this network node toconduct their activities on PubChain.

Algorithm 1 Smart Contract for Posting Papers1: struct Paper{2: string ownership;3: string paperName;4: string paperHash;5: string paperKeywords;6: }7: function stringsEqual(string storage a, string memory

b) internal view returns (bool) {8: bytes storage a = bytes( a);9: bytes memory b = bytes( b);

10: if (a.length != b.length)11: return false;12: for (uint i = 0; i ¡ a.length; i ++) {13: if (a[i] != b[i])14: return false;15: return true;16: }17: }18: function storeData(string userName , string paper-

Name , string paperHash , string paperKeywords ) pub-lic {

19: require(!stringsEqual(paperInfo[paperName ].paperName,paperName ) && !stringsE-qual(paperInfo[paperName ].paperHash, paperHash ),”one paper one upload”);

20: paperInfo[paperName ] = Paper({21: ownership: userName ,22: paperName: paperName ,23: paperHash: paperHash ,24: paperKeywords: paperKeywords ,25: });26: function getPaperHash(string paperName ) public view

returns (string) {27: return paperInfo[paperName ].paperHash;28: }29: function getPaperOwnership(string paperName ) public

view returns (string) {30: return paperInfo[paperName ].ownership;31: }32: }

With smart contracts, we have implemented the functionsof paper posting, paper reviewing, review scoring. The scriptcodes of smart contracts are stored on blockchain. The smartcontracts are triggered by transactions sent sent to their addresson blockchain. Algorithm 1 shows the script codes of thesmart contract that implements the function of paper posting.To post a paper on PubChain, an author needs to carryout the following procedure: 1) upload the paper (possibly

including some program codes, multimedia materials) withher/his signature to the IPFS system and obtain the IPFSaddress of this paper (i.e., the paper hash); 2) include thepublication information about the paper, i.e., its ownership(the address of the author on blockchain), IPFS address, papertitle, key words, etc.) into a paper metadata record; 3) pack themetadata of the paper to a transaction; 4) issue the transactionto the blockchain system. After the smart contract receivesthe transaction, it can be executed by some miner to write themetadata of the paper to the blockchain. Fig. 10 shows thewindow of Remix Ethereum IDE [30] after the paper postingsmart contract is triggered by a transaction that posts our paperto the deployed Ethereum testnet. The procedures and smartcontracts for other functions are designed and implemented insimilar ways.

Currently, we have not implemented the proposed incen-tive mechanism that requires extensive modifications on theblockchain program codes. This is the most important part ofour follow-up work.

VII. CONCLUSION

To overcome the drawbacks and limitations of existingpublication platforms for research papers, we exploit recentadvances in decentralized technologies (i.e., blockchain, IPFS)to design a decentralized open-access publication platformnamed PubChain. Compared with the existing centralizedpublication platforms, PubChain has several advantages: (i)PubChain breaks the pay wall imposed by publishers so thateverybody can enjoy free access to papers. (ii) PubChaineliminates undesired effects of information islands and hasthe potential to become a unified database for global sharingand recording of papers. (iii) PubChain, as a decentralizedsystem, provides uninterrupted service without single pointsof failure. (iv) PubChain incentivizes participants to makepositive contributions to the platform with an incentive schemeimplemented over blockchain technology.

Importantly, unlike many other publication platforms, Pub-Chain is not meant to be a profit-oriented platform. Thedonation of cryptocurrency injects initial financial values toPubchain. We propose to use a two-way pegging techniqueto lock donated cryptocurrency to a special address of theparent chain that cannot be spent by any individual address.The project development team, as volunteers, will not receiveany cryptocurrency

This project will be successful only if it can recruit theparticipation of authors, reviewers, and readers who believein the tenet of free dissemination and free open access totimely research results. We invite more volunteers to join theproject and work with us to improve the design of Pubchain,and to serve as advocates for the new way of knowledgedissemination for the benefit of humanity.

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Fig. 10. The window of Remix Ethereum IDE after the paper posting smart contract is triggered by a transaction that posts our paper to the Ethereum testnet.

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