Nowadays, scientific experiments are conducted collaboratively. In collaborative scientific experiments, we must consider aspects such as interoperability, privacy, and trust in shared data to allow the reproducibility of the results. A critical aspect associated with a scientific process is its provenance information, which can be defined as the origin or lineage of the data that helps understand the scientific experiment results. Another concern when conducting collaborative experiments is confidentiality, considering that only authorized personnel can share or view results. In this paper, we propose BlockFlow, a blockchain-based architecture, to bring reliability to the collaborative research, considering the capture, storage, and analysis of provenance data related to a scientific ecosystem platform (E-SECO).
In scientific collaboration, the data sharing, the exchange of ideas and results is crucial to promote knowledge and accelerate the development of science. Trust is extremely important in this context as well as reproducibility. Although in scientific workflow the provenance has been the basis for reproducibility, in collaborative environments it is necessary to ensure integrity and trustworthiness of this provenance data. One of the technologies that have emerged and can help to address these issues is blockchain. A blockchain-based provenance system for collaborative scientific experiments could lead to a trustworthy environment for scientific experimentation. In this vein, this paper presents the specification of an architecture, named BlockFlow, that provides trust for distributed provenance data.
In scientific collaboration, the data sharing, the exchange of ideas and results is crucial to promote knowledge and accelerate the development of science. Trust is extremely important in this context as well as reproducibility. Although in scientific workflow the provenance has been the basis for reproducibility, in collaborative environments it is necessary to ensure integrity and trustworthiness of this provenance data. One of the technologies that have emerged and can help to address these issues is blockchain. A blockchain-based provenance system for collaborative scientific experiments could lead to a trustworthy environment for scientific experimentation. In this vein, this paper presents the specification of an architecture, named BlockFlow, that provides trust for distributed provenance data.
In scientific collaboration, data sharing, the exchange of ideas and results are essential to knowledge construction and the development of science. Hence, we must guarantee interoperability, privacy, traceability (reinforcing transparency), and trust. Provenance has been widely recognized for providing a history of the steps taken in scientific experiments. Consequently, we must support traceability, assisting in scientific results’ reproducibility. One of the technologies that can enhance trust in collaborative scientific experimentation is blockchain. This work proposes an architecture, named BlockFlow, based on blockchain, provenance, and cloud infrastructure to bring trust and traceability in the execution of collaborative scientific experiments. The proposed architecture is implemented on Hyperledger, and a scenario about the genomic sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is used to evaluate the architecture, discussing the benefits of providing traceability and trust in collaborative scientific experimentation. Furthermore, the architecture addresses the heterogeneity of shared data, facilitating interpretation by geographically distributed researchers and analysis of such data. Through a blockchain-based architecture that provides support on provenance and blockchain, we can enhance data sharing, traceability, and trust in collaborative scientific experiments.
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