For centuries, the way we publish and evaluate scientific research has remained largely unchanged. Researchers submit their work to journals, wait months, sometimes even years, for peer review and often face significant paywalls and accessibility challenges. However, the growing movement of decentralised science (DeSci) is challenging this outdated model. Philipp Koellinger, CEO and co-founder of open science pioneer DeSci Labs, explains this reshaping of the scientific publishing landscape and explores what it means for scientists worldwide.
DeSci
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Scientific publishing is meant to facilitate the open exchange of knowledge and advance scientific discovery. However, the current system often does the opposite.
Researchers are generally impeded by long publication delays, high publication fees, or restricted access to existing literature due to paywalls. Academic publishing is dominated by a handful of powerful publishers who profit substantially from controlling who can publish their findings and who has access to publications.
They do this while relying on scientists to peer review each other’s work voluntarily, profiting from billions of dollars’ worth of unpaid labour from some of the world’s brightest minds in the process.
This outdated system limits collaboration, slows innovation, and prevents many scientists, especially those in lower-income institutions, from accessing the latest developments in their fields.
The rise of DeSci
Pushing back against the existing system and its in-built limitations is the DeSci movement. At its core, DeSci leverages blockchain technology and open-access principles to create a new model for publishing and funding research.
Open science solutions, such as DeSci Publish, offer transparent, immutable research records while facilitating the open sharing of research by scientists without intermediaries controlling access.
The DeSci movement is built on three core principles: open-access publishing, where research is freely available, increasing visibility and collaboration; incentivised peer review, where qualified, independent experts get rewarded for fast, high-quality evaluations of new research findings; and blockchain verification, which ensures provenance and gives credit to all contributors through transparent and tamper-proof records.
This is further enhanced by user-friendly web applications that allow the publishing and sharing of scientific data and code in addition to manuscripts that are typically published in the current model. This helps address the replication crisis that is gripping the scientific community as researchers can deep dive into existing work and act to build on it, accelerating scientific progress in the process. Web3-based solutions such as DeSci Publish strengthen this by marking each item uploaded with a unique identifier, protecting against link rot and content drift, to create a truly persistent scientific record.
The DeSci movement is generally underpinned by direct funding mechanisms as smart contracts allow funding organisations or scientists to back specific research projects without institutional gatekeepers.
The future of scientific publishing
By removing barriers to knowledge, DeSci enables a more democratic and collaborative approach to science. Scientists can control their own work, gaining increased recognition as a result, and readers can access cutting-edge research without paywalls. This also creates the possibility for new funding models to emerge.
These new funding models could enable us to, for the first time, reward editors and reviewers for their time. This also creates the possibility to accelerate the peer review process as paid referees would inevitably work faster than those volunteering their time.
Furthermore, these new funding models enable society to decide more directly and much faster what type of research it wants to see. For example, replication studies of highly influential but controversial findings or funding for rare disease treatments.
As more researchers adopt DeSci, the scientific community will move towards a system that prioritises openness, transparency, and innovation, accelerating scientific progress in the process.