Managing scientific paper data assets as NFTs

Copyright as Intellectual Property Rights

deScier will help authors to hold their copyright. By doing so, deScier will develop a growing portfolio of scientific manuscripts which can be used by their creators as assets represented as NFTs, or scientific paper NFT (SP-NFT). deScier’s will act as a library repository for those SP-NFTs and will also allow the holder of an existing piece of SP-NFT to transfer it to a new owner within seconds. Digital asset identifiers for SP-NFTs are stored on immutable file storage networks, such as IPFS and Arweave. Furthermore, sensitive or descriptive data (or methodology) can be protected and obfuscated to only be accessed by the holder of the NFT, or by a key given to a third-party, as would be the case with a legal license or IP. Data can be made accessible via access right management frameworks on local federated data storage systems. Submarine technologies will be used in such papers.

Upon SP-NFT creation, the creator must sign a cryptographic message that prints their signature onto a transfer, or partial visualization, agreement. When the NFT needs to have their obfuscated part to be shown or changes owners, the transaction requires both buyer and seller of the NFT to sign a message that references the agreement, which includes references to the transaction, the buyer and seller’s respective identities, and legal signatures modeled after the legal Signature Algorithm pioneered by OpenLaw.

Initially, deScier will hold SP-NFTs in their repository library. This repository will enable deScier or its designated service providers to file for registering data of IP interest, monetize the assets for creators, and contract services to grow the value of the underlying assets such as marketing to increase and spread author’s impact. We believe that, in time, since the ownership of papers will belong to authors (and no longer to journals), deScier will create a secondary market for other repositories to desire owning SP-NFTs created by high impact authors which will in turn, attract people to their websites.

Data assets

Besides displaying SP-NFTs, deScier may also hold data assets and research outputs from the R&D its members produce. deScier will hold custody over these assets, while making them available to its members and others, via keys, and helping authors monetizing them via data marketplaces such as OpenSea Marketplace. deScier may attach these data assets to NFTs where useful and applicable.

Obfuscation of data assets and enabling secure computation on them will be a highly relevant use case that web3 protocols are able to facilitate. The applications around composability and interoperability here are manifold, and once deScier is live those applications will receive further exploration.

Appendix data assets are: laboratory updates, laboratory notebooks, reports, meteorological data, equations, experimental designs, models, analyzed and processed data, imaging, software, among others in any storage format.

Members wishing to engage with the author’s work to read or review data assets will require to submit KYC documentation and sign non-compete and confidentiality agreements. Only PhDs will act as reviewers.