Nature -- one of the world's most cited scientific journals in the world -- has just featured ResearchHub, a decentralized science (DeSci) protocol, a move that could potentially alert the wider scientific community to DeSci and cryptocurrency.
In a Dec. 11 article, Nature -- which sees 9 million viewers monthly -- featured ResearchHub's platform, which pays peer reviewers the equivalent of $150 in cryptocurrency to give an independent review of new research papers.
It's proven a financial opportunity for some too, Nature noted in its article -- pointing to São Paulo molecular-biology consultant Pedro Paulo Gattai Gomes, who said he now earns more money reviewing for ResearchHub than what he made in his professorial roles at academic institutions.
The scientist said he reviews an average of 15 papers a month, earning $150 worth of ResearchHub's ResearchCoin token (RSC) for each review, telling the journal:
"Getting paid to review is justice, because in my opinion it is very unfair to work voluntarily and not even receive a thank you."
Being featured in Nature could be viewed as a big win for DeSci as Nature boasts a very high Journal Impact Factor score of 50.5 -- the average number of times each of its journals are cited.
RSC rallied nearly 20% over the last 24 hours to $1.01, CoinGecko data shows. Its market cap sits at $96.1 million.
The DeSci protocol ResearchHub, which launched in 2020, is backed by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who spoke at the launch of ResearchHub Journal in San Francisco, California, last month:
"It's a strange oddity of history that peer reviewers don't get paid. It's a valuable thing that they do and we should recognize, reward it."
However, Nature said while ResearchHub addresses some of the "issues" in science it might struggle to take off due to its "radical nature."
Nature said many scientists may experience trouble cashing out RSC for their fiat currency as they need to use decentralized exchanges like Uniswap to swap RSC for a more notable cryptocurrency like Bitcoin BTC $97,604 , Ether ETH $3,692.25 or USD Coin USDC $0.9996 before it can be sent to a centralized exchange, converted into fiat and off-ramped.
However, ResearchHub has already made steps to simplify that process with RSC officially being listed on Gate.io's centralized exchange on Nov. 29.
While ResearchHub Journal officially launched last month, it has been paying referees to review, comment or vote on uploaded preprints since May 2023.
ResearchHub users can also tip each other for good work or pay others to complete research-related tasks, such as generating data for a review.
Authors pay a $1,000 article-processing charge and ResearchHub takes a 7% cut of any ResearchCoin transactions on the site -- 2% of which is "ploughed back" into the community, Nature noted.
Nature pointed out that ResearchHub Journal hasn't published a paper of its own and is not indexed on bibliometric databases like Web of Science or Scopus.
Related: Decentralized science is like early DeFi in 2019: Crypto VC
Decentralized science is becoming an increasingly popular topic within the industry, scoring a five-year peak on Google Trends only last month in November.
It is aimed at addressing challenges in traditional science such as lack of funding, data sharing or collaboration and its use cases can range from advancing research and getting cheaper genetic tests to even curing baldness.