The fundamental problem blocking open access and how to overcome it: the BitViews project

Abstract

In our view the fundamental obstacle to open access (OA) is the lack of any incentive-based mechanism that unbundles authors' accepted manuscripts (AMs) from articles (VoRs). The former can be seen as the public good that ought to be openly accessible, whereas the latter is owned by publishers and rightly paywall-restricted. We propose one such mechanism to overcome this obstacle: BitViews. BitViews is a blockchain-based application that aims to revolutionize the OA publishing ecosystem. Currently, the main academic currency of value is the citation. There have been attempts in the past to create a second currency whose measure is the online usage of research materials (e.g. PIRUS). However, these have failed due to two problems. Firstly, it has been impossible to find a single agency willing to coordinate and fund the validation and collation of global online usage data. Secondly, online usage metrics have lacked transparency in how they filter non-human online activity. BitViews is a novel solution which uses blockchain technology to bypass both problems: online AMS usage will be recorded on a public, distributed ledger, obviating the need for a central responsible agency, and the rules governing activity-filtering will be part of the open-source BitViews blockchain application, creating complete transparency. Once online AMS usage has measurable value, researchers will be incentivized to promote and disseminate AMs. This will fundamentally reorient the academic publishing ecosystem. A key feature of BitViews is that its success (or failure) is wholly and exclusively in the hands of the worldwide community of university and research libraries, as we suggest that it ought to be financed by conditional crowdfunding, whereby the actual financial commitment of each contributing library depends on the total amount raised. If the financing target is not reached, then all contributions are returned in full and if the target is over-fulfilled, then the surplus is returned pro rata.

What flowers can bloom in a green open access landscape? Imagining a future with BitViews.

“…The basic concept of BitViews was first published in [1] and further illustrated in [2], but it may be helpful to describe briefly its key features:…”

“…In its initial release, BitViews will set privacy controls to their highest setting. Specifically, BitViews records 2 https://sfdora.org/read/ . 3 In stage 1 participating libraries indicate the maximum pledge they are prepared to contribute to fund the US$400,000 target (this is the set-up cost of the project); a pledge is not a binding commitment, but a mere indication of interest -no funds are disbursed.…”

“…The second implication of BitViews will be a re-alignment of the research impact of journals. For example, in [2] we analysed one specific discipline (emergency medicine) for one specific region (Africa) for the period 2014 to mid-2019, by counting all articles by at least one author with an African affiliation as recorded in the Scopus/SciVal database. If citations are replaced by online views/downloads, top-tier journals (mainly paywalled) see their rankings drop precipitously and, conversely, mainly Open Access journals soar in the rankings.…”