So good morning everybody. I hope you had a good great evening and a good night and Okay, so we had an open mic session We have two posters to best poster awards that we'll present and we I'm glad to tell you that There's a hackathon team from the blockchain for signs track of Dora hex so we cooperated with them and this is the team that won the blockchain for signs track basically Talk about the project and what they did at the hackathon. Okay, okay? You just came just come and like introduce you like really briefly so cool Thank you that you actually come because you have a working day, right? You need to be at work later Okay, I just send the pictures via email. Yeah, okay You can just like put like five to ten minutes as you want Okay Okay, just your name and what you're doing and what the idea was of the hackathon Okay, just like first your name. Okay, and your little your background and then you talk about the project. Okay? Okay? Yeah, okay. Yeah Hello, everyone. Thanks for being here My name is Ignacio. I'm one of the members of the winning hackathon during last weekend I work currently at Pradaina a consultancy agency. We mainly focus on web development and yeah, so doing the past weekend We work on a project regarding the block propagation on a blockchain, which is a huge problem for current blockchains mainly because you have all these nodes getting transactions and if you want to Propagate a block during the entire blockchain. That's a huge problem so Bitcoin is obviously one of the biggest Blockchains affected by by this and you can think it as a problem similar to the DNS's work or sorry the CDNs work right now so it's a content delivery network, but Their main idea is to get content fast for the consumers So these are very similar problem regarding block propagation and the challenge for the weekend was how do we measure block propagation and How do we get the numbers of how much time do you take to? Propagate the block to it through the entire node so you can think of it as a problem of if I get my salary onto my bank account How much time do I need? for it to be registered on the blockchain and cross the streets and buy groceries something like that because obviously the transaction will be executed on different nodes and Because it's blockchain and it's only one database. You will have only like Eventually that transaction will be on the other node and you will be able to buy your groceries But the question is how much time do you need and so? Currently you have Bitcoin which takes around 10 minutes Ethereum which is around seconds and Cosmos for example, which is in this in the just a couple of seconds even even less so it's that question of how much time do you need to Propagate the blocks. So for this We went with the Cosmos as SDK and they provide an open API that we can query and to see which nodes The current node is connected to so what you see on screen is a graph of all the nodes and how they connect themselves So you can see with us This as each of the circles being a computer executing transactions and Which other knowledge are connected to that one? So if you're connected directly you will be the first one to to get that Transaction So what we did was we built a scraper or or a crawler a crawler that would traverse the entire graph Recursively and it will take a single node and see okay Which nodes are connected this node and then we go to that one and say okay Which nodes are also connected to that one and so eventually we'll have an idea of all the graph and how it's connected to every single node and so with that in mind we can have Diagnosis such as okay, how healthy is the blockchain or how prone to attacks it could be because if you have a very centralized network where you have only one or two nodes that Condense all the all the other nodes you have very very You have single points of failure they'll expose like a very easy way to attack the blockchain But if you have a dense a densely connected graph and you you have a truly decentralized network you'll be Protected against that so there was just so this is also a way to to see how how you can shield against attacks So this was the main idea of the project, but Again, we also needed to measure the time and see how much time did you actually took to to propagate this transaction? So I spoke during the weekend with one of the cosmos Developers and asking okay. How do how can I get access to the endpoint where transactions have been transferred? Like how do I get the bare metal access to this transaction and see what is going on to this node? Like what's going in and out of this node and he said well currently you cannot do that you have to modify the the SDK and Write some logs to see what's the actual time of the transaction So we did that during the hackathon and we forked the project. We rewrote some parts of the goal Code that they have and we included the script that will trigger a right to disk whenever it received a transaction and so the problem after that was We needed to connect ourselves to the test and what that is is we needed to deploy our Modified nodes into the network to see how much time would it take to to propagate this transaction and so We run into some problems doing that in the hackathon and we couldn't join this with our modified software And so what we did was okay. We only need We said we only need a test net to to see how much time doing it So let's go ahead and build our own test net because in the end we just need computers to run transactions So we went with digital ocean, which has it's an amazing tool to deploy servers easily and so we deployed servers all over the world and We included our modified software over all of these nodes and we started sending transactions over Bangalore, Toronto San Francisco and all these names that you see online and To put it even to stretch the the latency even more we connected them in such a way that If you wanted to route a transaction from Frankfurt to Berlin because there's only a way via the nodes You'll have to go to San Francisco and back So with that we can actually stretch latency even more and see how much time it actually take to propagate the block And so that was good. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So if I if I repeat it with my other words and if I go Correctly, so it's like before the blockchain is actually written and consented the switch the transaction opposite to the network, right? And I mean like a Bitcoin transaction for example, and you you've measured that a centralization or decentralization of this stage Before it's included into the blockchain Yes, I mean every transaction is to be validated So yeah, so yeah, it will be in the pros of validation of this transaction how much time to take Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so it's before it's included into the blockchain, right? And or During doing the block the indication of the block you have multiple stages where one node might say, okay This is done. Okay another one. Okay mining. So it's in the process of creating this new block. Okay. Okay. Oh, okay Okay. Yeah, okay. Okay. So, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Do you have anything to add or you want to say something? No, okay. Good. So I thank you very much for showing me for coming by and like letting us know that you just Like one and a half days, right? Yeah, did you stay overnight? Yeah. Wow. So you use one of the sleeping bag cushions. No Okay, obviously, okay. So thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. And Yeah Okay, and now we continue with the best poster about so There's one poster by Eva Kalmar. It's about Blockchain readiness and you will talk about it now. Okay Okay Thank you So thank you very much for providing me the possibility to present my poster here in front of you and thank you very much Of course for the price of to be one of the best posters I'm Eva Kalmar. I represent here the science communication group of of tail out. This is a technical University and We actually do research on on science We are social scientific group and I represent here the Research what I did with the scientists based on virtual research environments so We I'm currently running a project which is about a coalition form to Innovating blockchain. So I was really happy to see that blockchain is happening also in the scientific world But then I thought that virtual research environments or if you can stop here Yeah, virtual research environments if you are into the e-science world Then you probably have heard about those. So these are online innovative tools which are based for communities These are designed for scientists to help the communication to help data sharing the data storage processes it has lots of Functionalities as you may see so it is a kind of safe environment users can lock in and they can put everything they want to and Of course, they have the possibility to add customized tools So if scientists need a special tool to analyze their data, that's also possible to put these in and If I just read out the all the state ones which were Promised regarding virtual research Environments you can directly find analogy to blockchain. So these were set to change drastically the science processes the research practices and make research faster and more efficient and Transparent and they were supposed to speed up the shift between fundamental and applied sciences So that is why then Okay, thanks. Yeah, okay So policymakers still at the EU are are really pushing the agenda of applying virtual research Environments, but scientists are reluctant to use it. I was investigating why and there are different factors You can see here in the slide that there are different Levels so that can be due to personal motivation. So science some scientists are really happy to use these tools But some are completely not motivated Some of them say that it's completely against their practices So they communicate only personally with each other they pick up the phone and then call the other person I'm not going to log in there are interpersonal Factors, which are related to the work culture. They are institutional Factors technological scientific one and of course relating to the funding agencies so if we Go to the next part Based on literature study and interviews with experts who are actually developing these virtual research environments and interviews with scientists who are using these and who don't use these environments I have generated and modified technology acceptance model Which is named for collaboration readiness So basically it is about What are the factors that affect the actual system use the virtual research environment use and It is relying on the behavior intention to use these tools and it is dependent on the attitude towards the computer systems And then there are the factors which are contributing into three different areas In the blockchain field, you can also see that the infrastructure readiness is really Investigated there is a lot of effort put on how the infrastructure should look like what are the requirements? It should be user-friendly usable interoperability standing there, but there are crucial factors on the other side as well So one of them is collaboration technology readiness, which is relating to communication Practices data management practices and also project management practices and based on my experience Scientists are really on a different level regarding these issues some of scientists share their data They are aware of using metadata But some just have a USB stick or not even that and PhD students leave with their data and not leave anything behind So there is a need for Education of scientists and taking along in the whole process so that they are able to use virtual research environments and see the added benefits of those At the top you can see the collaboration readiness, which are more psychological issues and more social issues like what are the The needs for the different institutions to work together. What is the type of collaboration and so on? So I suggest to use This information and this knowledge when you are building a blockchain for scientists, please do not leave out the users use Social scientific research methods to sit down with scientists ask their needs as their practices every day working practices How can blockchain fit to them? Otherwise, there is a huge chance that blockchain for science will not be used only by just a small minority the really enthusiastic crowd and Then at the bottom of the the poster there is a quote from Sonkel's book Whether they be social networking sites electronic laboratory notebooks or controlled vocabularies These must be built to help scientists to do what they are already doing not what the tool design there feels They should be doing. Thank you very much. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much Are there any questions comments Thank you very much. This is an excellent study We are providing such an environment for the researchers and We would really like to Start asking those questions and Maybe some kind of a collaboration in the future is needed because We find ourselves very much always like what should we do or what do they really need kind of a dilemma as well So we're looking forward for your publication Nice nice presentation. Did you do you have the data that enable you to a control by age or at least get a segmentation or stratification of Responses based on age. I mean, it's commonly thought that that older scholars are those that are that are tenured And we may have less vested interest in Putting the extra effort into using using tools such as this versus younger Academics pre-tenure and such may be more amenable to them. Do you have any of those data? Thank you again Can I quickly answer so? Yes, we have some data And it is surprising to see that the PhD students are more reluctant to use and share Information because they are afraid that they won't have any stable future so they are more close and more afraid than PI's and Yeah, there is a tendency. So there is a clear cut that there are PI's or principal investigators Who are really open-minded and then they are willing to use and they have this as a policy for the research group So then the research group is sharing and then using these issues if the PI is not then the rest of the group is It's cannot break these eyes Thanks again And then we have the second award Just want to say who was in the team. It was Lori low-poiser agenda and wait one second Excuse me Alexander Benedict and Lombard. Okay, and I The second post award when is repurposing open source tools for open science a practical guide and it's by Moritz Corina Thomas and Bela and you're going to present it, right? Okay Okay Yeah, we have a poster which is called repurposing open source tools for open science a practical guide and This is joint work with Corina Bela and Thomas who is who is not here? So what what we did? So I think the common vision of our team is to make science more efficient and To do that with this poster. We share our methods in particular the methods how we write Scientific papers with latex another mission is to make science more fair and to do that we record everything a step in Using the blockchain using the trusted time stamping Origin stamp another method or another goal of our research group is to make science reproducible and To do that. We don't do experiments like On the on the run, but we write a script that then has a clear plan What are the steps to do and then to objectively execute the experiment? And of course, we are all different people's we have different Habits so we want to Facilitate scientific collaboration and to achieve that we lower the barriers for or the technical barriers to collaborate so As I said so to to to make the scientific process more efficient. We don't want everybody to Re-invent workflows, so we publish our workflow and here We share on on this this github project seven step step-by-step guide how you can Collaboratively write your paper with with latex to do that We we use the version control system git And as a trusted time stamp stamping service origin stamp, which is tightly integrated so When we created a link from our github organization To origin stamp was only a single click so there's only one field You have to fill and then every repository open in your research group will automatically be time stamps So everything you upload to github gets time stamped and is there for reproducible So you can't change the history, which is normally possible with the version control system git As I said The other goal is that we can reproduce our experiments and to do that We reuse a well-known Continuous integration service From software development. We use a Travis, which is a service that automatically Initiates Virtual computers and then executes a scripted plan which can be for example in this use case to compile a latex paper But it can also be more complex tasks like running computer experiments To facilitate the scientific collaboration we use overlays because we We discovered that not everybody is a fan of latex And if some people in the team prefer to write their latex files using the eye and others prefer a more visual Interface we don't want to have this clash of technology Slowing down the scientific process. So we have different options to contribute to that and this overly as It's also integrated. So all the advantages we have with with git with time stamping and with Continuous integration services Automatically links if you change something using your virtual editor or your nice web ui It automatically propagates to git and it's automatically rebuilds the final outcome and of course we also have to Think about the next generation. So when when we are done Oh, we we upload scientific artifacts to to the nodal which is also nicely integrated to get so that's basically What what we presented at this poster? Yeah, so the idea for this project kind of initiated Was initiated because we saw there are all these open source tools already available So how can we maybe use them to do open science right now? And there are these amazing tools which are already being used But they're not being integrated into the cycle into the research cycle And so that's what we really proposed in our poster and our poster is still hanging in the poster room So during your coffee break just stop by and have a chat ask some questions Move it's an eye are from the University of Wuppa tile, which is near Cologne So if you're ever in that area as well Hi, and hope to see you later Very nice very nice. Yeah, so it's so it's like so obvious to do blockchain for science then right Yeah, okay, so are there any question comments are there any plans to convert this into some kind of a usable platform Or is it just a research test an idea? I mean we use it every day, so at least It's it's usable for us So and you can go to the website copy it and use it yourself so you can use it today You already have a good hub repo for your research then then very easy to use already So there's nothing else we would have to develop Other questions Okay, so you do the next session Yeah, cool, okay Yeah, hi, I'm Benedict And I'm happy to share together with Conrad first that is the the next session And it's gonna start with a period you in the blockchain. It's yours and Alex So please take the stage Good morning everyone. I'm Alex from catalysis Good morning. I'm yours from digital science First of all, it's nice to speak to a crowd that is very positive about blockchain for change So that's a good starter We go to the first slide. So we want to talk about our Blockchain for peer review initiative it's an initiative we started About half a year ago. I think a bit longer bit more. Yeah together with catalysis together with spring and nature Taylor and Francis Cambridge University Press and digital science And we want to talk today about progress about where we are what we aim to do with the initiative and also about lessons learned But I want to start with some general observations about blockchain for science and I think where we are at in our efforts and for me, it's it's a good moment because last year November we published the blockchain for research report And it's really amazing to see how much progress there is in the last year I think the first mentions of of blockchain and Application to research and scholarly communication was a few years ago. It started with some blog post I think 2017 was really the year of ideas Of course Sunke was instrumental very important that with his open documents And I think it's indication of you know your leadership that many of the ideas that you Actually suggested and proposed with your group are actually being realized at the moment So 2018 was really the idea at the year of of concrete applications So I haven't counted them, but I think we are in a dozens of applications. It's really encouraging At the same time, I think we're going to the next phase Which is and and the former speaker Ava talked about it is making sure it's actually used and I think that might be even more challenging than Thinking about it and building applications. So how can we move? The ecosystem how can we move researchers etc to use the blockchain? I think Albert Einstein said that politics is more difficult than physics And I think it's also the case for for a computer science So the big challenge really is going to be how can we make sure that this is going to be widely adopted in the industry? And I think that there are a couple of things that are going to be crucial in that First of all of course science and research didn't start yesterday It's it's something that is hundreds of years old and with that history becomes comes legacy Not only in technology, but also in processes in in culture and expectations And we have to also think about how to change that. So what is going to be the catalyst for us? So what is going to move the ecosystem to a new way of working? Is it going to be a government? Is it going to be funding or is it going to be researchers themselves? I think that's a very important question. We have to answer If it's about researcher, I actually liked your presentation very much I think it's very important to to make sure that they are on board and of course everybody's worried about openness about transparency about the metrics that are limited but at the same time of course the short-term goal of researchers is reputation and I think it's indeed It might be surprising on the first the first hand that young researchers are not open to new tools But I think it's very logical if you think about that they have to build their career So they have to build their publications and citations. So it's very important that we address the reputation aspect in blockchain The last remark I want to make is about open science I think it's a no-brainer that science has to be more open more transparent. I hear a echo. Is that just me? Do you still hear me? At the same time open science means different things and we have to think differentiate them and really think about what to focus here Open science means sometimes not commercial So getting the commercial companies out of the ecosystem It can also mean open access Which is of course a separate thing I mean open access doesn't mean that the commercial companies are not going to be involved in more So what are we focusing on? At the same time open access as a model also has its disadvantages Of course, I mean we have been around in this industry for 20 years The first talks about open access started 20 years ago, and we're still about 30% of the articles That are open access now. There are many reasons for that, but with open access also came some disadvantages Pre-publishing for example or the the challenges for researchers from the global south to get published And I think we should be open actually to alternatives Because the blockchain actually offers an alternative. That's micro payments. So let's also see whether that might be a more sustainable business model for the future Open science also means open data Of course, and I think there especially with blockchain we have huge opportunities with tokenization and ensuring intellectual property And sometimes it's also used in open peer review, and I think that's actually yet another topic Because the reason of course there is single blind and double blind models is not it's not because of commercial interest It's because of course confidentiality and Ensuring that that researchers are feel free to give a candid feedback on articles So without any giving any recommendation. I think it's important that we distinguish those those experts of open open science So let's talk about our initiative What we try to do with our initiative is solve one Challenging aspect of scholarly communication at the moment, and it's peer review And there are actually many challenges First of all Peer review is not recognized the way it should be Again researchers are mostly valued or assessed by a number of publications and citations But there are activities that are equally important and peer review of course is a very important one there And yes, there are efforts definitely. There's publons There's orchids of course, but still it's not as recognized as other activities are There's an increasing difficulty to find suitable reviewers There are more and more publications there are more and more publications from China and they are making Big developments in terms of publication, but they're not participating in the review process as much Yet so that's puts a lot of strains on the existing reviewer pool unfortunately, there are cases of fraud manipulation leading to retraction and Basically, the peer review process is just simply too much of a black box. I Think John Tennant said once we have to open the black box of peer review And I think exactly that's what we need. We have to be more open more transparent and Show more about what the press process entails Because again, it leads to a lack of transparency and it's a lack of trust in science And again, if you look at the problems around irreducibility and and frauds and manipulation, it's really something we have to work on Then the question is of course, what do we do about it? So what our mission is what we feel is that if we allow all the participants in the ecosystem to share the review information That's gonna make that's gonna solve Many of the problems I talked about For example, when you talk about finding a reviewer publishers are more or less dependent on their own Database of of reviewers But of course if you consider to select a reviewer for the review process It's very good to know that that the reviewer also did a review is for comparable journals at other publishers It's also great to know that hey that reviewer I might invite him or her But here he or she is actually involved in another peer review process at the moment So it might not be wise to invite the reviewer at the moment So we can coordinate the review process and make it more efficient by starting to share the information Recognition also of course starts with having your data If you don't know what the review process who reviewed what you can't recognize them so if we collect on a structural way information about review review process and the reviewers we can also properly recognize them And of course transparency We have predatory publishers. We have reviewer process which are not entirely incorrect if we Store information again the metadata about the review process We create an auditable trail so that we in case of questions increase of concerns We can always go back to the blockchain and show actually the review to place or didn't take place but it really adds to the transparency aspect of the Of the peer review process um very important aspect and We are Building a private blockchain within the ecosystem. So all the participants In peer review we invite to join us So we have the purposes I mentioned already we have orchids Which which joined as well and also important the funders Because the review process for journals is now more or less separated from the review process from the funders equally important But of course there's a big overlap between Those that review papers those that review funds. They're also combining that information will make the process more efficient and more transparent So what did you do exactly and where we are? We are now we build a proof of concept which we delivered in September according to planning, which is remarkable And in a proof of concept we're testing three things Within the range of possibilities to validate the process so that we using the blockchain can independently validate the review process So we don't have to rely on the publisher itself Recognition concretely whenever a reviewer Performs a peer review for the journals that are connected to the system Information about that is automatically sent to orchids but it adds to the recognition aspect and search so already starting to To use the system to make searching finding and selecting the right reviewer Combining the information from from from from multiple journals and multiple publishers more efficient And for the more technical details give the word to Alex Thanks, your is for the central So I'm from catalysis catalysis is extremely young in this industry only one year. So we have very fresh view Maybe a bit naive but what we Would like to do as a company is to democratize the value of online contents and to do that we leverage blockchain technology So our vision and it's not actually Contained to academia. It's more broad in terms of publishing is really to tie together the what we see is the three actors of the three main actors in this in in this this world of Creating and consuming digital contents. So we have contributors Who are interested in having their work attributed to them? Compensated as well You have consumers who want relevant contents, of course, and they want it to be available easily they wanted to be of a decent quality and they wanted at a fair price and You also have people who check the quality of the contents So reviewers so we believe that they seek appreciation sometimes compensation and also being able to comments truly rather than just want to make sure that They they commented so they want safety and being able to be To give their comments. So that's how we view how eventually the landscape should be So, how do we do this? So we're a tech company so we build on top of a Blockchain implementation using an Ethereum virtual machine and we build various modules That's basically provide specific functionality. So for instance, we have a micropayment modules, which allows you to get money from the Existing banking system so no cryptocurrencies are in and outs We have ways to identify content uniquely and register ownership and various of the modules that you can then sort of tie together into a Proper solution. So right now we have two solutions. We have a micropayment solutions So for instance, should you have a blog and should you have loads of friends or fans who are willing to pay for what you write? We provide a WordPress plugin that allows you to Effectively provides on payments for your blogs, but that's more the commercial publishing space in the peer review space we basically take some of these modules and Put them together to build what I will be discussing a bit more in a minute So to do this we stand on the shoulders of giant. We don't reinvent everything. We do not build our own blockchain There's just not enough time for this. So our starting point is The ethereal virtual machine, which is in the middle. However, we do not necessarily wants to be tied to a lot of other great projects that are pushed on the blockchain therefore we use a Great blockchain technology a tendermint, which for those of you who were there yesterday have heard a lot about so we use this as our consensus engine and it exposes to us an ethereum virtual machine and All of our top layer stack is swift Which is a very nice language So then what do we do with it? So we build our own libraries on top of the EDM so we have a number of smart contracts which we interact with using libraries that we've built and Because the libraries end up being in a server-side environment We also have access to traditional technologies such as databases or payment Systems we can enter interface with mobile clients web applications You name it the interesting aspect of using the EDM is that we're not tied just to Tendermints as a consensus engine so we can actually Replace that bottom layer by a number of other blockchain inventations. Of course there's ethereum There's quorum from JP Morgan. There's burrow from Onax and Yeah, and we use that for minutes So let's go a bit deeper in how we build this So we provide a parser which extracts information from Manuscript management systems Which are basically where the reviews are done We process this data by chopping it up into various Categories the three categories that what I will go over in the next slide and We push some of that data in the blockchain We push some of that data to orchids which interestingly enough helps a researcher to start to To annotate their profiles with information that can be verified on a blockchain So yesterday Rob had a question around. Oh, what if I have 20 different profiles? Then the thing is once you start to accumulate Information that pertains to your profile in one profile Effectively, it's not in your best interest to start to have 20 profiles because you don't link the profiles so we start to give more value to a profile and The way orchid is done, of course It's not just us that can add value other parties can add value and then you can have a complete profile, which is more interesting On the top we have a peer review query system So that's that's an interesting part because that's the that's the part that allows us to open up the data that you may not want to store on the blockchain to external parties and This process resides very close to where the data is stored Which means that as a commercial party, for instance, you're able to Selectively grant access to data that you have within your company Based on very sort of sophisticated permissioning systems, which are stored on the blockchain Which means that you can use the best of both worlds as then you can share some data on the blockchain But the things which you feel shouldn't be shared just publicly. You're also able to share it and control access to it So taking a step back, how do we partition the data? So functionally we have three types of data We have public data, which we're okay and Parties who want to work with our technology are okay to share publicly. So it's data that's You should assume that you give it away No one will a or everyone will be able to access it forever. It's a blockchain after all For us that means relationship between entities so for instance relationship between a an anonymized ID Which represents a reviewer for instance and a manuscript? It represents the states in which a review is so for instance if I've been invited to review a paper It it stores when I've been invited it stores when I come back with my reviews It doesn't store the review itself. However, it's stored It stores potentially ways to go back into the review information So the second one is personal information. So of course, we will never store any Data which can identify me or any reviewer on the blockchain? Because then it's there forever and then we have a problem with the European authorities around GDPR We store information that allows People to claim that they are part of relationship and Then the last one is competitive information. So that's how I explained that our query engine allows you to expose data Externally without giving away the control so effectively how this translates is that the blockchain stores references Which are protected using a permission system back to internal systems So the data flow High level the publisher provides us with data So in this slide, we've mostly extracted The the high level data that we store to as an example So what we get is a manuscript which is tied to a reviewer And which has a specific review states we process it first so that we extract the information that allows us to identify people uniquely and We have a mechanism whereby we can then Hand over to an orchid profile, for instance And if people do not have an orchid profile or do not want to take ownership of this information That's also okay, but it means that the data that we will store in the blockchain is basically useless for anyone forever and The we annotates the data that then goes in the blockchain with this unique identifier So we design this unique identifier such that it's not possible So let's say if you review for two different manuscripts, you will have two different unique identifier So that you cannot sort of try to do some statistical analysis on who has done what and come up with the identity of the person so What I've described is basically a nodes in our blockchain system. So how would it work then? Then it's really multiple participants who are able to give access to their internal data To other participants. So the way we started We were working with spring in nature tiller and Francis Cambridge University Press Cargher joined recently and we're feeding our data to orchids and really the blockchain is this this this connector in the middle which allows the information to flow between All the parties but also to aggregate the information of all the parties So then I've added a question mark, which is anyone else who would be interested to add more data to the system The little people on the sides are basically also the fact that while we do currently use a Private blockchain it's mostly because at the end of the day blockchain is a very very young technology and Yesterday we talked about how actually it's difficult to provide a system that is perfect Day one which means that you do not need to perform any upgrades or this and that and We realize that we're not at the stage where we can say there will never be any upgrades so we want to at least for the next couple of months keep enough control of that system so that we can go through multiple upgrade cycles and at one point be able to say with confidence, okay, we open it up and people can start to use it and We're also aiming eventually to provide an API so that people can add more services on top of it So now I'm gonna go through an example Of what you could do with this as Juris says in September we completed the first part of the proof of concept Which is mostly a backend system But there's no UIs and without UIs no one's ever gonna use it So the next step for us is to start to implement It's a user interfaces which will make it extremely easy and obvious as to what the benefits of such a system is So let me take you through an example now So let's say a publisher Through their own internal systems have a certain view on a reviewer So they can see that this professor Aldous Dumbledore has done a number of reviews for them But it looks like this guy is actually not really interested in doing any reviews if you look at some of the statistics for instance, you see that the acceptance rate is relatively low and The most reviews are not delivered within expected times you have no clue whether the guy is available or not and You don't know if he's engaged in any other reviews than your own because effectively you have your own view Now you go to another publisher for instance It's the same thing they have their own view and for this one actually this guy is actually top-notch, right? He's really delivering things on time and all the time he accepts a review and Yeah, they're very happy with him third publisher has yet a different view and the pattern I'm starting to expose there is that The the axis we basically have every party has access to part of the data and what we aim to do with this blockchain is to Allow people to share some of the data so that instead of doing statistics on a subgroup You can start to do statistics on a bigger Group so when we tie all this information together What you could get to is actually a much better picture of what reality is So that's quite interesting Now what if we expose this to third parties or more people who have access to this information And who can also add some more information on that blockchain for instance What if this professor? Actually is extremely willing to state that not only right now. They have nothing to do So they're available for reviews, but also they are gonna go on holiday in a couple of or they've gone on holiday already And they are on holiday also now, but what if you could also push that information on the system? then effectively you can start seeing that you can continue to enhance the information and Take this even further because you can give an even better view of what? Your current availability is So that's one example of what could be done with such a system and the back end is There so we're seeding it with data More or less as we speak And we're hoping to work on the UI sides in the next couple of months and now I'll hand it over to yours Last couple of slides Maybe something about the the planning so again, it's very early days. We are more or less half here down the road but Yeah, this of course will be successful if all Participants in the ecosystem contributed all journals basically Share their data and funders and institutions for example start to use the data as well. So when we tested the proof of concept Then it would definitely for next year. We will add more participants We go to the MVP a summer plan for the summer of 2019 and now we're discussing with the participants And what kind of functionality would like to see in there? And of course indeed is going to be a mixture of making sure we have a robust back end But also showing functionality that really triggers publishers editors with also researchers again to get To ensure that the adoption is higher But again, this is all still something that has to be decided I Want to end with some lessons learned a Couple of of things that that really surprised us or positive or negative one is Einstein said politics is more difficult than than physics, but Legal is even more difficult Especially of course because of the GDPR Implementation legal teams are extremely cautious. And of course we understand that The complexity here, of course is that we're talking about blockchain is a new technology So, yeah, really the delays we suffered are really partly due because of legal consideration GDPR and Explaining and what it entails taking away the worries is really taking a lot of our a lot of our efforts The second is managing the hype Hype can be a good thing because it means people talk about it But it can also mean a negative thing it can that people for example They are interested for the wrong reasons or they they don't really understand what what what it is So it's really make finding the balance of using the hype and sometimes steering away from it for example by stressing the advantages for the reviewers and the authors and not not even talking about blockchain sometimes sometimes that just simply helps and The third is again tied to that Yes, it's patience and education We are in an extremely early phase Again, only the last couple of years and we should be really patient We should not think expect big changes next year or even the year after but we should really steadily Work towards improving the ecosystem in various ways With I think the long-term in mind Because if we rush too much people might be disappointed and the hype can really work against us So we did I would like to end Thank you very much and welcome any questions So there's one question right next to me and the others who have a question just raise your hand and I come and get bring the microphone Thanks for the nice talk very nice concept in the idea I would like to go a little back to the to the initial part that you said that you have kind of all planning to have a non-profit organizations running this and I think governance and The concept behind this would be very interesting because you know, we Scientific community we had the issue that we basically relying too much on on commercial entities and are kind of locked in this and From this was like really like that. You are going for for non-profit What is what is the aim and how can people participate in there and houses government actually this would be my key questions here Yeah, yeah, it's a very a very good question You have scientists complaining about I don't want to have yet another system have to work with and equally you have publishers that That say I don't want to have another non non-for-profit body that I have to work with The good news is that in academic community, of course, we have fantastic organizations that already work on a non-for-profit basis to improve certain aspects of scholarly communication or kids of course is a fantastic example, but also crossref You have trade organizations like STM So on the long term it might very well be that's that's the organization will be you know placed on the one of these Again, we don't want to have yet another body The good thing about crossref for example is that like 4,000 publishers are already part of it So that the confidence could be very well Fitted there, but again, that's that's all for the future, but I definitely think that's that's an avenue we have to explore Hi, I'm warning. That's a really good presentation I'm curious about the first thing you talked about where you said there are a lot of papers coming in from China and not enough reviewers and I didn't really understand how your particular system addresses that problem Yeah, it's it's It means that we have to stress more on coordination it means that we have to give the editors the tools To pinpoint the right editors. It means that we have to make sure that reviewers are not inundated with review requests So again, if we can make it more efficient if we can give the reviewers the tool to say I would not select that reviewer because he's not gonna answer because he's doing two other reviews or hey look at that reviewer He's actually new in the field and he you know, he raises his hand Please let me do a review for the journal and we can basically make it more efficient and therefore Again degrees the review times Yeah Yeah Yeah, I think definitely another efforts on the way I mean the publishers are doing that themselves for example again We cannot solve that's a very good point to make blockchain cannot solve all the problems and are definitely people recognize this so this is This is definitely something that is that is being worked on. It's we don't see it as our responsibility We just want to make sure that things are more efficient so that you know the pressure is managed in a more efficient way Hi Here in the back. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah, so I just I just had land breakfast and I watched the Presentation I had to rush back to comment on that because I watched in the last few they have to tell you I'm friendly But this is not blockchain for science and I would even say that what you're doing doesn't even require a blockchain, right? so it's basically a presentation of an engineering approach to to the problem of peer review that does not exist and It's actually quite dystopian, you know, you're throwing around with terms like identity you showed this Example of having this Gryffindor Person and then you might even want to tie in his holiday plans I mean, I think it's great at Cambridge University wants to work with you But I think that's the reason why then I wouldn't want to work there anymore because it's just terrible This is not how research works and I mean, it's just a engineering approach Rally writing on the on the blockchain hype. Okay, but it's not what really blockchain Means in the context of knowledge creation Thank you for your opinion at the end of the day, and I think it came through prior talks Where I mean if you As a scientist you need to use tools a Lot of scientists are happy to build their tools others are not interested in building tools The previous presentation was about taking open source tools and trying to fit them so that they could become something useful This is also what we're trying to do if you don't find it useful. That's absolutely fine We believe it serves a purpose Hopefully it will otherwise someone else will come up with something else, but thanks for your opinion Thanks guys for the presentation I wanted to ask address this question Alex to you mentioned that you the reason why you're using a private blockchain is because you want to Test a lot of things before you go public. Why not use test net then? One answer crypto kitties Basically and maybe so I have a corporate background for for a while I don't like when I'm not able to control a system. That's Allows me to guarantee a certain level of of Usability for the people who use it the problem with test nets or a theorem or any public blockchain is that Because you have this original goal of being open to anyone who wants to use your system it means that you're also accepting to share resources and for certain things, it's okay, but I believe that's if you want to be able to provide a system with Any level of granularity of a reliability you need to have more control on what you have to give you an example I am not sure that CERN will allow anyone to use the Their their their systems for instance because they want to come up with their nice physics experiments Simply because you need to be able to control what's The systems you use to be able to get to proper measurements So we could use a test net especially at the current stage because we don't have any scalability issues or anything yet however, we would be exposed at later stage to someone coming up with an amazing app such as crypto gitties that then takes down the network and We don't have much to say to the people who use our system Correct the though again, I mean the Ethereum community is doing an enormous amount of work to be able to scale the blockchain Personally as the technologists I'm much more comfortable with the approach that tandem intakes and I would for now go for that. However, we've kept this compatibility compatibility layer which allows us to switch back to a theorem at one point if we're If we get to the point where we think it's better So there are actually many questions, but the time for the slot is over. Do we allow more questions? Yeah, okay Cool, so then you Could you please clarify what are the incentives for scientists to switch to your system in their articles and reviews Yeah Actually, I think it might very well be the case that scientists don't realize that they're using the blockchain Because we're not replacing the existing system. We're not placing submission systems. We're not replacing Any of the tools they work the only thing that what we want to do with the blockchain works in the background So that's again the selection of the reviewer is better So the reviewer will just notice In the end that he gets more targeted invitations that he can proactively indicate their interest That's the and the office will realize that the review times become smaller So again, it's not a system that that's we will That the the research themselves will actively work with it's Again the publishers and the institutions and things like orbit will interact with the system Do you have any? Forms of like appeal or accountability within your system. Why you know, what's the point of the open peer review and? Immutable record of it. What's the point of sorry open peer review? Yeah, what's the point of the immutable record and the trail of the record if I'm asking you to have any systems of appeal or accountability for the review process or if I do a review and it's biased what's what's You know, how how is your open? blockchain Immutable record solves the problem of the bias Very good question If you look at it in a different way so right now We're we're building a system and we're opening it up to Big publishers who have access to a lot of review data and and smaller publishers also but the main point there is that We do not build a system that only big publishers can use We hope that at one point anyone who is Custodian of such data can see the data there then because it's an open system. It's a blockchain. It's immutable. It's public We also hope that everyone can decide whether they feel that if they see for instance in an Orchid profile That someone has done a review for a given journal from a given publisher They may decide that they think oh these guys I hate them and I don't like what they do what they write So I rate them as maybe 10% trustability That's for everyone to decide Maybe as an individual you want sort of only to work with certain Publishers who have specific ways of working that you believe in in which case it's all good Our system doesn't preclude you from doing this on the contrary. It allows you to basically be able to choose What source you want to use and at the end of the day maybe in 10 20 years time all The big publishers and the small publishers that we can't really know about maybe they won't be there anymore Maybe they will but that's not for us to decide the markets and you guys as researchers as scientists will decide and If they're still there then maybe the answer will be at the end of the day They do provide some service that is good enough. Maybe it's not perfect But it's good enough what we hope is that we provide a way to give choice. That's it And so as as someone who's had a lot of papers rejected One of the really frustrated One of the really frustrating parts of the scientific publishing process is that you go through the review process Your paper gets rejected and then you start all over again with a different journal with a different publisher and also as a reviewer What is also really frustrating is that you review a paper you give constructive feedback the paper gets rejected and You might as well have not given all that constructive feedback So what would be incredibly useful would be a system where the reviews can be passed between journals And so you're not starting from scratch and I know that some Publishers do that like within their own Sweep of journals but doing that cross would be would be really cool Yeah, that's actually that's actually we have two slides decks And that's actually the fourth point on one of the other slide decks portability and it's definitely one of the things we're aware So recognition transparency Review coordination and portability Indeed in the case of cascades that that you can give permission to one publisher to the other saying please take over this review Process and here's access for example review board, but also in case for example the ownership change of a journal We can come along so that's definitely on the agenda All right, we are already running a bit late. Thank you very much for this talk if you have a question, please Catch Alex and Yoris in the break. Thank you again So in the next talk is the future of indexing and secondary Publishing and blockchain based approach Dave Kosher cool. Good morning next presentation The it's good to be here again. We were artifacts was at this conference last year. We had just formally organized the the organization and Had yet yet to release a product It's wonderful to see the progress that that the folks Here in the room today and many that aren't represented here have made in this made in this field We what I'm here today to really speak to is is the future of indexing and secondary publishing and I have a colleague of mine Jason Rawlins whom some of you may may have already met and I'd encourage you to To catch up with Jason here over the course of today We're also going to be at the work attending the workshop tomorrow and Thursday where we will be focusing on showing our products Both what's currently live. What's in our near term and medium term road development roadmap So our vision where I'd where I'd really like to begin is is a reference And I'd like to also echo a theme that the Eorus and Alex began this morning and it has to do with recognition Eugene Garfield Quoting a Robert Merton the Merton description of normal science describes citations as the currency of science scientists make payments in the form of citations to their preceptors Our vision the artifacts vision is to change the outdated inefficient process of how researchers receive credit for their work Breaking through existing delays and constraints Empowering researchers to collaborate in real time Share their work earlier in the process and get credit They deserve every step of the way advancing both their careers and simultaneously advancing research So scholarly communications today the published article is principally the single format of discoverable research today Citations that are critical to discovery and research or reputation are formerly recorded for only a subset of published articles in indexes that are deeply retrospective break prone and inconsistent and Until artifacts arrived on the scene. There is no mechanism for linking and associating Related and valuable research artifacts this inhibits discovery or research attribution cannot be formally received now those of you who are researchers and Who are tenured or pre-tenured? You all recognize that research researchers depend on and universities spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year for these limited indexing and attribution tools and While we know that research is that discovery is is a critical input to research and innovation worldwide Those same limited data sets those same limited indexes are relied upon for measuring performance determining determining hiring practices as well as As well as tenure reviews Tim Berners Lee talks about has talked about all of the data that's merely sitting in scientists computers and currently not shared The Dora declaration good science is good science regardless of where it is published And we would cut we would add to that by saying regardless of whether it's published Because as we all know there's a great deal of valuable science and knowledge that is never published Let alone index And as John has pointed out We're basically applying a 17th century communications format Here we are in 2018 Now the lack of change in everyone yesterday and probably throughout the rest of today will lament The slowness of change here, and this is not merely. It's not just a technical technology problem This is a reputation recognition and attribution problem from the artifacts perspective So the model of scholarly communications that we like to begin with Moving from left to right a project begins Perhaps it's pre-funding some research is done a funding application is submitted funding is received The research begins the data the information the artifacts that researchers generate throughout that initial and continuing phase of their research Activities continues to build that knowledge then it begins to compress and it compresses into an article form factor and That further compresses in peer review because not all the manuscripts that are that are authored that are submitted are accepted for publication and There is delay in that acceptance Ultimately works are taken through peer review, and we're hopeful that blockchain applications such as Such as what yours and Alex walked through will begin to take hold in this arena, but ultimately these published works Only a minority of them are indexed Only 20% of the scientific technical medical publications Are indexed 80% of that content Not being indexed makes it extremely difficult to find those resources let alone any of the artifacts that are associated with those publications So artifacts allows research outputs to be indexed and cited from the earliest stages of research Creating persistent link at persistent and linked chains of these transactions so in brief Everything is indexed in real time while research is underway with all artifacts linked and searchable Intellectual property is established and managed by the creator. We very much respect the creator owner relationship of intellectual property and Transactions can occur there where intellectual intellectual property rights move certainly That's the case with a manuscript, but it can also be the case with other artifacts that are generated throughout throughout the research effort Citations can be given at any point to research outputs at any time So we're breaking the barriers and the boundaries of only being able to cite an article only being able to cite a monograph Possibly cite a patent We're essentially enabling citation Citations to be given to any type of research this facilitates we believe community sharing and We'll lower the barriers and the resistance and the fears and risks that as we learned earlier Early early stage researchers are oftentimes Withholding information and that's a common behavior throughout most scientific disciplines And what we believe we're providing is transparent and consistent data set that creates the ability for new types of analytics and dimensionality to citations So for example today if Jason and I author a paper We submit it to the catalysis system It's process. It's published We're indexed Perhaps by one of the indexes that are widely used and One of you picks up our research you conduct your work You eventually publish and our index you cite us now that may occur that citation May occur five seven years down the line We're pleased to receive a citation We have no idea why you cited us and so the dimensionality here that we speak of is providing contextual information metadata around a citation that illustrates or that describes The reason for the citation is it a confirmation? It were were was the other party unable to reproduce results. It could be anything in between or or beyond that Now the artifacts platform. We believe can begin to address Certainly contribute to addressing many of the issues that that are listed here whether it's certainly focused on reputation research integrity Peer review we believe we can we can facilitate and compliment reproducibility definitely and data access But here's the crux of the challenge in secondary publishing Right primary publishers are the parties that that publish the articles and the monographs Secondary publishing is the echo effect. It's the indexing of the research itself, right? Well, the fundamental problem in this in this field is that none of these if you think of these indexes as bank accounts None of these indexes agree none of the balances agree which one is correct? Why is it correct? Which should we use? Which does our institution require? Which would I prefer? I mean the numbers here are vastly different Google Scholar has nearly 68,000 citations Web of science has a couple of different numbers itself and that depends upon the content that is being viewed and used to accumulate those and measure those citations if this were your bank account and You received which bank would you rather go to right? We'd all rather go to Google here But if this were your bank account It would make the entire system highly suspect So the artifacts research workflow platform, which is live and in the wild today We released it in March of this year enables researchers and scientists to do three simple things Establish proof of existence authorship and confirm provenance at any time protect and manage intellectual property While concurrently and importantly we believe facilitating knowledge and content sharing To provide and receive valid breakproof attribution and assignment of credit at any point of research So not only are we enabling Researchers to establish proof of existence proof of authorship, but we chain those Artifacts together if it is a if it is an artifact that evolves over time a data set a draft manuscript a Protocol etc Those modifications those version changes are chained together as well as the relationship of the set of artifacts That are involved that are associated with the overall research project So to make this happen now, we need more than the perspective solution and the perspective solution is what we launched As a as an early-stage release in March, that's what I've been speaking of But let me turn attention to the added component that's necessary here what we call the retrospective system We've added an historical index here because when artifacts launched in March It began to accumulate users started using it It began to accumulate artifacts from live projects from live work that was being conducted and that content is Progressively building over time, but we also know that scholars and scientists need to claw back need to reach back Into the literature and the research information that's available So we know we knew we needed to add some historical content Historical research index that that that we will bring forward that we're bringing forward it will be better than today's existing tools We're going to leverage the power of the community and provide systemic rigor That's required of an authoritative research solution and will maintain research support through Community ownership So we will use a token-based system that will bring unprecedented curatorial power here So to model this out for you in terms of how the knowledge and how the information content builds over time This first view illustrates how the how the progressive index is Is is building out content? As we add the historical index initially it comes in as an over 200 million record machine index data set Well, there are lots of machine index data sets out there, right? But the curatorial power that we will bring to bear here is that we will rely on the community to correct those flaws fill those gaps and Augment the historical record so if your name is misspelled in a publication if your If there are is other if there are other errors in the bibliographic information if for example the indexing that had been done Didn't pick up four of your references because the indexer didn't also happen to index those publications All of this historical content can be improved To be sure There are gaps even in the 20% of the literature that's indexed there are errors and flaws and gaps in that index furthermore the community of researchers we believe will then go back to their prior publications and Augment them with the research artifacts that are associated with them and we believe the reason they will do this the incentive for them to do this is That this added knowledge is going to enable them to improve their Ability to be recognized to be discovered to be credited and overall contribute to the success of their research careers So how does the system work and why will it work? It combines a token with a community Engaged in curation activities. So a token will be used as compensation for for curation Community member holds tokens for stake in a star in the historical index and they're able to spend it on Services and that's not a that's not a one-for-one trade-off the stake that researchers that the community Creates for themselves in building that historical index will continue to grow over time and Give them governance rights and Authority over that historical index and ultimately ownership the structure that we're that we're applying here for that ownership is to Create is to imbue a public benefit corporation with these tokens So many of you would know the company Patagonia Patagonia is structured as a PBC a public benefits corporation and that enables a nice hybrid of a If you will a commercial entity to engage actively in commercial in in public good Not only will we give the community rights and ownership over this historical index, but artifacts will Feed proceeds back to the research community in the form of funding that this community Governing the allocation of those funds will be able to allocate to research Not that we're anticipating becoming the next national institutes of health that annually funds 32 billion a year in Research, but we do want to make sure we find a way to give it back to the community and that's the vehicle so the community The community recognition for curating levels and expertise and quality there will be challenges and quests as I referred to earlier There are gaps and errors and flaws in the historical index My colleagues and I Jason and I have worked for many years building those indexes And we're quite familiar with where they are and we know where to point the research community to make further improvements and enhancements in an important point here in the trailer is that We're not the first to ask researchers to contribute to building something Particularly in the area of indexes and archives But in the past they receive nothing tangible for this effort Perhaps other than personal gratification And they ultimately own nothing here. They will receive incentives recognition and own what they build so The the ecosystem here that I'm illustrating Our concept is and our vision is to coexist within the existing Research and development ecosystem. We're realists We respect open science We also respect that there is an extremely mature and diverse set of stakeholders that Facilitate both the funding of science the creation of science and the communication of science and we believe it's incumbent upon us To operate and and to play nice with it with all stakeholders Our intention is to live in the researchers work flowing and engage with trusted enterprises. So I'm hopeful that maybe perhaps not as soon as this conference next year But in the near future We won't be talking about blockchain applications. You know the subtitle of my talk won't be a blockchain approach It will be how we live in the researchers workflow and facilitate in advance their research their career goals So I've spoken about the researchers a bit the bottom comment the lower circle in the lower left I think is important because that illustrates our intention to Integrate and interoperate in the tools and applications that researchers are using so that artifacts is operating in the background In the future, you won't even have to know that artifacts is there if you're in an electronic lab notebook and Where where where your labs at data are all being compiled and so forth We'll provide a plug-in. We'll provide an API or work with that that third-party's application so that Proof of existence proof of creation citations given and such can operate as Researchers are using the tools that their customary their customary in their in their daily workflow, but also importantly Beyond the index that we're building and the expansion of knowledge that we believe it will deliver It's incumbent on us to interoperate With all of the key stakeholders whether they're funding organizations universities publishers corporate R&D organizations and Societies and certainly the open community as a co-founder of orchid. I'm I'm Extremely pleased to hear Rob's presentation yesterday and hear the progress that they've that they've made There's much more to do there. I think I think we all recognize that it's it's also nice to be able to also say that you know the the persistent Identifiers that Rob spoke of yesterday artifacts is in a position to support those They're machine-readable and they are persistent and and supporting that pit infrastructure is valuable Not only for the open community. It's valuable for research broadly This is just a bit on our timeline We're we're pleased with our progress and we're we're also Frustrated as any developer as any new developer would be on the time that it takes to actually bring product and evolve product to market And the points that yours made earlier about legal legal complications and constraints Certainly compounds the challenge in this market. We're extremely pleased to have University of Saskatchewan as our first academic partner That's standing up a node for for artifacts. They will become an important both research partner and entrusted node in supporting our system our co-founders are listed here across the top our advisors across the bottom and And again Jason Rollins who drives our product development efforts very pleased to be here today our vision You've seen this before with the exception of the final point at the bottom We want to let scientists do science Thank you So we have a few minutes for questions. There's one Thank you for the nice presentation as a science communication professional. I remembered my article from 2014 published in genome biology And it is mentioning a Kardashian index for scientists who are at the social media and I dissecting The social the scientific results to the public Can that be an artifact? Can that be part of artifact? Yeah, the platform what scientists actually share with the society Can a museum exhibit with the expertise of a scientist be part of the artifacts? So so clarify again what the specific artifact there is What is the artifact there? Yes Yes, yes, so I Think that the simplest way to think of artifacts is that any digital Representation can become an artifact and if it's sightable Whether it's sighted or not it certainly can become an artifact. So if it's a blog comment Yes, although I'd have to say that our focus here is around is around enabling citations to citable materials So any type of any type of contribution that researcher makes That is in digital form certainly can become an artifact. Yes okay That's an interesting thing and you do you have any plans to? Influence like what will be an artifact like in terms of like the size or I mean a tweet can like contain a great idea or Like a one-shot picture of like a new finding can be like very important We're all like other things can be very long and unimportant So and you have you have it now in your hand to influence its culture, right? Well, yes, I think Influence is is a yes. I think we're in a position to influence I think we're very much going first of all there is no restriction in terms of file size Or the type of information content and I should also point out that artifacts never takes possession or control of the content We certainly have a facility where researchers can can store content, but we interface with commonly used Commonly used resources dropbox github and others and in a corporate R&D setting We would certainly engage with with any private storage facilities. We don't take control and ownership of the artifact We can influence this process, but we're very much going to turn those types of questions back to the research community and Specifically the scientometric community to help us help us determine I Speak of contextually relevant citations Well, we have our ideas as to what context should be should that a citation should be should be Incorporated in a citation But we don't we don't want to be the party to try to unilaterally push our views on the research community That needs to emerge from the community itself So that's a great example of if it is a citable item We want the scientometric bibliometric community to help us work through the the metadata Requirements for contextual relevance if that addresses your question. Yeah, yeah Thank you for the very interesting talk Dave I had a question you said the University of Saskatchewan is has the first trusted node for university partner Can you elaborate a little bit on the blockchain technology? You're using is it a permissions? Ethereum blockchain or what exactly is it sure sure so we're we're in a We're betwixt in between we're in the process of migrating so when we initially stood artifacts up Stood the in a release the the product in March We were using we were using an off-chain variant of Ethereum and Transactions were recorded and able to be viewed through Robston now That was basically a test environment for us to have something that was up and working We had a we have a product we had a project workspace to be able to accumulate artifacts to be able to associate artifacts To give and receive attribution and so forth We're in the process now of In the next print or two probably the second sprint from where we sit today that we won in mark There will be one in November and one Probably six weeks down the road. We're in the process of migrating to hyper ledger sawtooth Now in terms of nodes these are permissioned nodes So we envision having some n number of permissioned nodes that support this ecosystem We our preference is to have representation from the key types of stakeholder organizations Again universities as we start with Saskatchewan funding organizations publishers certainly Societies and and the open and the open community so it will be a permissioned node system and There are several reasons for that Maybe the two to highlight are the economics It's a it's very cost-effective with a kind with a volume of transactions that this system over time needs to scale to It will be very cost-effective to take that approach Secondly, it's important for us to engage with the organizations that house or directly support the researchers Whom we want to use a system so whether they're funders whether the universities all of those stakeholder organizations, we believe that adopt standing up a node as Trusted parties will have an incentive to encourage their their communities to use the system that answers your question Sure, so and we have one last question here Yeah, I'm really sorry about this. I'm really curious about your name artifacts because in physics and the natural sciences And in signal processing artifacts are actually an error. You've seen your experiments. It does not exist So when you sending a paper, maybe you have an image and you say oh, this is like the greatest thing in the world Mm-hmm, and it's actually a piece of dust. We call that an artifact And so I'm actually quite curious about your name generation here because yeah, yes That's an interesting fact that we were we were perhaps not aware of the the derivation of the name art from the social sciences humanities set of disciplines art and Facts from if you will the hard sciences sciences So it's an attempt to be a supportive across all disciplinary fields and such. Thank you for that comment All right. Thanks So it's a great pleasure to announce the next speaker Lambert Heller from TAB in Hannover Lambert will talk a little bit about peer-to-peer approaches or peer-to-peer view on the whole concept here, so Before to this Okay, maybe thank you Yeah, thank you so much. I'm super happy to be here and Yeah, I remember very well talking with Sönke maybe three or four years ago I don't know. Do you remember think about how crazy it would be to timestamp? scientific publications or something and and it's amazing to see how far we have come since then so it's really amazing and Sorry, what? Yeah, but really great. Yeah, and yeah, as you maybe know, I Sometimes I prefer to frame it as okay. It's it's an endeavor in Moving Science and research towards peer-to-peer. It's not only about blockchain blockchain is only one particular means in the space But okay, let's let's have a closer look. So first just a very few words about my employer TIB so in fact, maybe surprising I'm a librarian, right? So TIB is the German National Library of Science and Technology So they say so they call it and but at the same time we are also University of Hannover's University Library and Being this special library Means that we have a huge research and development departments We have several professorships within our library and so on you can maybe imagine that and So sorry, I have to tell you a little bit about that just to frame a little bit more So for instance a few years ago TIB came up with the idea of data site Who in this room knows about DOIs and data site? Do you know this so so okay? Not not everybody. So this was hugely important this idea of applying Unique identifier not only to every publication, but to every data set so to make raw data raw research data citable referable to have to have a description about every piece of research data and So we kicked off this worldwide network of research data centers Before it was cool Nowadays everybody is talking about research data and research data management But back then ten years ago this was new and and the spin-off this TIB spin-off data site We still host it and we are proud we take proud in that and and we we continuously do new stuff and try new stuff For instance have a look at Generation R. This is a platform that my team just kicked off a few months ago Jen R. EU and that is a platform where we kind of bundle the discourse on open science in Europe Or we try to do that at least for instance a few weeks ago we ran a theme on decentralized web and We had also contributions from some of the people who are actually sitting here and and we we are leading This discussion on open science decentralized web and and stuff or to name another thing We have the AV portal, which is kind of a YouTube for science, but it does much more than YouTube It does for instance it supports researchers by having a In-speech Recognition of text so we can search in the actual words that are spoken during a presentation that we have as a video there and then this speech is tagged matched with dbpdr terms and so on okay Just have a look for yourself if you like to so now a little bit closer To where I am coming from as I mentioned I have a little bit of a background and social sciences I'm an educated as an academic librarian and work in this field for several years and five years ago I kicked off this team and TIB's research and development department and yeah And what are we actually doing there? So what I'm concerned with is on the one hand just to give you two examples we Made this approach of Did anybody of you hear about current research information systems like pure or something? So yeah, yeah a few people know this so this is a huge development in the recent years So universities now have databases where they try to capture all of the research outcome of their researchers So you have researcher profiles there you can look for how expertise expertise developments and Departments can you can compare by numbers the the outcome and so on and so on and Until recently until five years ago or so Nobody in Germany knew that there's an open source linked open data approach to this vivo And so we committed to that and by now today We have a 15 around 15 research institutions in Germany who use vivo for like monitoring research output in some way this is from my perspective, this is huge and And so if your research institutions is considering to trust Elsevier with their research output and to let them manage this with their offering in this field like With sky well or pure or so think again and consider instead using this approach vivo It's a worldwide alliance taking care of this piece of free and open source software and you can use this instead and To give just another example so so research infrastructure the technical conceptual thing It's only one thing as you all know The the the change towards open science is more like a cultural change. It's a change in attitude It's about knowledge and it's about what what researchers know about this environment And what what is possible and what are the constraints and so we take care for this very much and To give you one example. We had the books brand in February this year where we invited 15 Experts from all over Europe from 10 different countries in fact and within a week We guided them through the process of writing a book So we came up with this foster open science training handbook and that this is written by people who actually do workshops seminars on stuff like open science and data science and and so on and Because yeah, we need to cultivate and grow that knowledge This is a fast-moving target and we you have to take care for that and we actually do that So have a look at this book if you plan your next open science webinar workshop or whatever and Yeah, and of course cause it's a CC zero licensed So it's absolutely open and it's on GitHub and everything what you can imagine So but okay, let's move closer to the actual topic of today. So sorry for the bragging But I need to do that a little bit so a few months ago We STIB acquired together with strong partners from all over Europe our first horizon 2020 Funding in this particular field And this is a project led by the National Technical University of Greece and Athens Which is called quality chain and quality chain is concerned with Blockchain backed educational certificates and higher education So some of you may know that that already since two and a half years ago Or so there are actual institutions who are doing this, right? So they they notarize their like diplomas and so on all kinds of certificates using Blockchains and what is new about this project which which is about to start next year is that we want to create a Fuller to a fuller extend a landscape around this So for instance, we have public employers in mind should be easy for them to receive and and and check those certificates and make a smarter use of them and so on and And please look up for instance what the open University in the UK is doing in this field since more than two years With their open blockchain. It's very well explained on their page I can really recommend that and this is always inspiring because higher education is so close to what we do, right? to research and they are actually Maybe one or two steps ahead So we should learn from them and take take take their building blocks and build upon them I will go into that a little bit more later and Okay, what I think and what maybe many of you in this room is not not particularly new now This idea is this this this kind of approach will set new standards in research as well At least I hope so it has this potential and this means that Researchers will be allowed to directly own their identity. Yes without detours without having necessarily to rely on someone's platform, right and And this is this is at the very core from my perspective at what is what is possible with blockchain and to have like less delegated trust and more permissionless protocols Like we have in other spaces already and you know What kind of innovation the invention of the World Wide Web set off In the beginning of the 1990s and this was due to the fact that this was permissionless protocols And now we have permissionless protocols allowing for permissionless innovations and value transfer as well This is fantastic and it will shift information markets to say the least At least there's a good hope a good perspective for that So yes, but this is not particularly new. So let's have a little bit of a closer look What what does it mean to apply a block this blockchain approach to? Educational certificates and higher education and it's kind of funny because here in the front row We have Osula Georgi professor from from University of applied science and Cologne And we just recently had a bachelor student writing his thesis about Exactly this and this was really fun interesting experience. So this will be a German language But I hope he will publish it. So so he compares different approaches For a digital educational certificates. So what what is the interesting thing now with the with this? Block search approach. So when MIT Media Lab came up with this in 2016 they coined this open standard which they call block search and the idea is here that you set up your note on a peer-to-peer public Blockchain and then you ask somebody who Who gave you the certificate to verify the claim that you got the certificate and of course? this happens on chain and So the interesting thing about this is from the moment on when you receive this verification of your claim So verifiable claim is also a community draft for a w3c standard by now. I will mention this Later again Then You are much more independent with this, right? So if it turns out let's take for example Malta For some reason I never understand this but for some reason I mentioned this. I think yesterday also You have these many language schools in Malta, right? But what happens if one of these schools goes down the drain or what happens in the case of Hungary? This is not made up, but this happened only a few weeks ago. So the government of Hungary Decided that there is some particular University of the open science institutes that they don't like and they force them out of the country So what do you do when you are an alumni of this? Institution and you rely on your future employees that that they believe you that you have your diploma from there But but it's not not there anymore. Yes, they move to another country. So what do you do and? And here Blockchain delivers really an elegant nice solution.  This is what you do for instance using if you want to Zero knowledge proofs so that you know that that only one particular aspect or only one diploma of many diplomas You show if you want to to a particular employee you don't need to show this in public but you have the proof out there and It's impossible to to to remove it or to strip you off of that thing that you achieved So let's move to a slightly different Building block or what I see as a building block. So some of you may know This approach to peer-to-peer To this peer-to-peer approach and science funding, I guess that Ulrich dir nagel in his keynote yesterday mentioned that So what would you guess how often is Johan bollen in this paper? Mentioning crypto economics or blockchain. What what is your guess any number? Zero right, okay, you know that okay, so Okay, yeah zero that's interesting thing So so this is completely not not about crypto economics, but about a good idea and that is to to to to Introduce a new concept and research funding, but actually with crypto economics. We have the means to Realize such an idea to to to to make it a reality In a very efficient and lean way right so the idea is here to to to to have a basic funding for every researcher and to force every researcher to Redistribute a tiny slice of their own funding to other researchers Yes, and and with crypto economics. We can actually do that and I point you to this because I think we don't have to Constantly reinvent the wheel, but instead we should try to connect the dots the buildings blocks that are already out there This is a great idea and actually Johan bollen Ran a simulation on that yes, and and he kind of showed already that this has Certain advantages over the traditional way of research funding so and then we already are in this phase That we do not only have nice ideas and some implementation of ideas, but also more generalized concepts That we have as standards For instance, we have concepts like self-sovereign identity if you are not familiar with the term yet But it was mentioned already yesterday look it up Christopher Allen wrote a fantastic blog posting on this kicked off this development, but also charming fortune gear that now you have this W3C community draft on that and The basic idea again, but more generalized is what I already told you from the At you take educational certificates example so a verifiable claim is when you set up your note on a Blockchain and then you can ask virtually anybody to verify virtually anything about you and you can Think about lots of the transactions that happen in research like peer review for instance Just or any kind of assessment as such a transaction, right? but in this case in this scenario it would be owned by those who own their note on a blockchain and So the idea here is that we have this already in place we have a Standards that make sure that this is not just out there as some Implementation on one particular blockchain, but it's like you have the language That tells you what what happens there independent of the programming language or the framework or the blockchain where you implement this actually and You have working examples for that in the wild So this is virtually everything we need. Yes, and I think again we need to connect the dots for instance We have already great standards describing How we can attribute How somebody contributed to some piece of research we have a Vocabulary in place to describe things like a Peer review or other forms of research assessment. So if we wonder how to Have a machine readable executable plan for blockchain based research funding We already have all the buildings black a building blocks for that there, right? So what we need to do next from my perspective is to Integrate this and connect these thoughts. So for instance, we we would need to have a Certain way to speak about how a certain type of research funder Makes use of a certain attribution to execute their funding on this, right? So that they can just press a button hit the button and and decide, okay Here we go. We we take care that somebody who Yeah, let's take for instance You you are a software developer and you developed you developed a certain Software library that is again and again used in Certain pieces of software you could use this transitive credit approach from Daniel cuts have a look at this it's very interesting and Based on this you could make sure that that a research funder could indirectly Fund this kind of software development, right? So you would have a machine executable research funding plan for this kind of software development And we have we have all of the building blocks there And we should take care that we target this waste of the hourglass, right? So It should be we we should formulate this idea Independent from the blockchain where this is implemented in or some certain programming language and It should also be independent From what research fund funders then would actually make of it. You get my point, right? So this is a waste of the hourglass. We should make Read highly reusable Standards and vocabularies to make sure that we are on the same page here and we have reusable concepts for things like this so Towards the end I Thought I come up with a wish list for the blockchain for open science community and let's discuss this a little bit Maybe if we have time for that so one thing is Okay, we have we have competition in this room and this is not not not bad, right? And we will have certainly some Deplication of efforts due to this as well. So there are a similar project here in this room and you will You will hardly avoid this, right? We will sometimes reinvent the wheel But in order to succeed to make this whole field succeed together I guess it's super important to agree on some standards and this takes time and work We need some at least loose consensus on vocabularies and patterns Again, that's the waste of the hourglass We we need to make sure that we can talk about ways of research funding in consistent ways and to connect it to ways of assessing research where we already have this vocabulary in place and And and this this takes time to develop standards like W3C standards or with other organizations But you should even as a startup even as an ICO you should set aside some time and Some yeah Something of your energy to to take part and those activities yes, we I guess we need this really and Then the other thing this might sound like Okay, not not so surprising but again we should apply Open science standards to what we develop here and by that I mean we should develop open source software We should okay. Sometimes white papers are interesting. They can be the starter of a certain discussion They can be inspiring and so on but more important is to build things in the open be open for contributions and Yeah, try things in public and I guess this is tried and tested this works in open source this works and open science Let's let's apply this as a best practice here in our field as well as often as possible and Then last point and I'm not sure about this. This is just a suggestion or thinking out loud I wonder if there are some things. I mean if we have this common goal to make Blockchains a mean for the advancement of open science and and more agency for researchers and so on maybe We should even have some organization around this yes to make sure that we take care for our advancements and that we Talk with one voice to the public about this maybe because we have good examples how this works Out there from both fields from the open science world and from the blockchain world Thinking about spark and its role and advancing open access in the early days and still or also thinking about the aetherium foundations role now think about what we heard from Defconn for Just a few days ago. So the aetherium foundation turns out to be really helpful for this whole community which was their diverse projects and helping them to to develop new standards and setting the agenda for advancing aetherium and Maybe I don't know maybe we need something like this for blockchain for open science as well and Thanks to Zürnke. We already have an organized organization around this. Maybe this could be a Starting point for that. I don't know let's discuss this. Yeah, so that's all okay Thank you so much Lambert. This was really great and especially the last thoughts. I can just underline We need to do this in the open. We have to do this together and We have to unite to bring this further other questions then Maybe maybe I would like to ask one The the quality chain that you mentioned before what is the the timeline there and is it around so far? Is it is widely used and what are you wishes maybe in that direction? Yeah, very good question. So the open university in UK that I mentioned One of the partners of this project So I guess this is one of our most important building blocks that we already have and what we are missing yet is like an Instrumentation for people who then should make use of these certificates like like for instance public employers Yes, we focus on them in particular in this project and in different countries with different roles and so on And we also make sure that okay so far. This is established somewhat to some extent in higher education But what about professional qualifications that you earn while working in some company? We don't have proper tools for this yet. So this is a kind of Things that we look at and we will certainly have to make sure that we come up with good standards and vocabulary There as well, that's for sure and yeah, join us if you like to Over there's one question wait a second until we have the mic You have already great. Thanks. Thank you very much. That was a really great presentation I wanted to ask you about this Scientific agency that would be funding research has anybody tried to put that in practice What would be your point of view? How far away are we from making it a reality? We have the right resources You are talking about Like more agency for researchers or funding So yeah, that's a very good question So yeah, this is something that concerns me very much in the last few weeks and months and I guess we need to Have this conversation with funding agencies so far I don't know much about this in this area whenever I have the opportunity to speak with people from Progressive funding agencies like welcome trust or stifter for Bund in Germany. They always tell me yes We are absolutely interested, but we need to further this conversation and make sure that we agree on certain standards and so on But this is still to be done. Absolutely important question. Yeah Okay, we're running a little bit out of time But maybe with one final question otherwise we and of course next to research funding agencies There might be other since it's now much easier. Thanks to blockchain to have micro funding things like science What science data is doing? Now without blockchain and so on We will have to look out for other types of funders and funding as well. This is exciting Thank you so much Next speaker we have Alexandra and she will talk about data protection and copyrights and how this can be aligned with the blockchain. Thank you much Hi So I'm Alexander agenda Pulu as I told you yesterday I come from the blockchain and society policy lab from the University of Amsterdam and Today I'm going to talk to you about How are we applying data protection rules on distributed architectures and on the blockchain? So before before I start some preliminary remarks about Well decentralized technologies, so Developing developing decentralized technologies at scale has always been the the holy grail of the ideals of decentralization for organizing social structures and Blockchain technology is the latest example of that of that effort. This has been shown for example late lately at the Decentralizer web summit that happened here a couple of weeks ago So everyone is looking at how blockchain technology will help eliminate unnecessary intermediaries Solve the problem of trust Etc. So The problem that arises with data protection is that by trying to have specific the specific goal of Solving trust and going away with Unnecessary intermediaries and enhancing individual user agency There is there is a conceptual incompatibility with with the GDP with the GDPR in general data protection rules So on the one hand we look to the same goal, which is enhancing control of users user agency and giving them back control over that over their data, but the way that the technology of the law try to approach this problem is Completely different. So on the one hand, we have Decentralization giving more autonomy on the users creating a distributed user base but on the other hand the law what would end it up doing is that it ended up identifying few central actors Who would be liable and about how they process data how they control? Users data and also by giving more power to users through express consent through the power to to withdraw consent and by Reinforcing their agency. So are these two are these two? applications of enhancing individual autonomy of Completely incompatible or is there any way to find a way to make blockchain applications compliant with the GDPR? Another thing that we need to Remember is how we identify different actors in the on the blockchain. So We identify by the way that they control and process Data and that is either by their role in the architecture of the technological infrastructure or They're also their role in the decision-making processes of when and how and if are we going to process this data By combining these two features both technological and governance role, then we can lead read Legal qualification and of course the obligations that come with that legal qualification To start off with examining whether the GDPR is also Is compliant on blockchain technologies? We have to first of all go with definitions. So which data we're talking about? Blockchain technology is technology that It's basically a distributed database that runs worldwide. So necessarily it needs to be compliant to some extent with data protection data protection laws first of all we have Data that are stored on the blockchain Plain takes data, but those are kind of unnecessary and they are not very very often Lee used and Then a data that referred to the transactions. How are the the data? Stored on the blockchain. They're either well the metadata the hashes and Encrypted personal data. So for example public keys So Yeah, what does the law say about this data? The law the GDPR makes a distinction between anonymous data and pseudonymous data. So anonymous data are not Do not fall under the scope of the GDPR But pseudonymous data do What does that mean? How are the definitions? Put in the in the GDPR So anonymous data are only the data that are impossible to identify or to lead to an identifiable Natural person while pseudonymous data are personal data that cannot no longer be directly attributed to a natural person But with Combining different information that can be held by for example third parties They can lead to the identification of Of a natural person of the the subject of the personal data What does that mean for a blockchain data? so The article 29 working party, which is what you would call your right now you would call it European data protection officer Has given opinions about Anonymization, what does that mean? How do we? How can we read reach anonymization? those are They are it's an instrument that helps interpret interpret the law So they're not but per se legally binding but they help guide the decisions of especially European courts So the article 29 working party on an anonymization has said that Processing of personal data should be should irreversibly prevent identification and By that statement that means that hashing and a symmetric cryptography. So public keys cannot fall under that category of Anonymization because for example An analogy would be think about dynamic IPs That the court of the court of justice of European Union has said that even if The the necessary information is held by the internet service provider That is enough to qualify the dynamic IP as a pseudonymous data and not as an anonymous Data so similarly for hashing and a symmetric cryptography They fall under the category of pseudonymous data and then obviously as you can understand poses a very very big problem for all blockchains Why because well There are some data that we simply cannot put off change that we cannot do without it some of the personal data That are on the blockchain are absolutely necessary for the function if of the blockchain data for example, there's there can be no Blockchain if we do not have a hashing of blocks. That's the that's the idea behind the whole the whole technology And also, this is one aspect that is very problematic for the blockchain and the second aspect is the fact that the it's an append only an append only distributed database that Makes it impossible to eliminate eliminate data and so that means that a lot of data that have been Qualified as anonymous now, but they will stay on the blockchain forever Maybe with the advertisements of technology. They will be Well re identified in the future with other technological processes. So that also poses a second problem with The data that will store on the blockchain This is not a new problem this has been discussed for quite a while now there are some technical solutions that have been applied because of the one positive one positive aspect of People that of the technical people that are working on blockchain application is that they are very privacy aware So they are looking to build privacy and hasing technologies in their in their blockchain to begin with so the most simple the most simple solution that that People offer is to store most of the data blockchain but off-chain But as as I've said before this is not possible for a lot of types of personal data So we need to find ways to create privacy enhancing technologies and this also exists in a lot of ways so As your knowledge proof have been mentioned a lot of times or maybe creating a ring signatures or other Technologies that have been proposed especially by some cryptocurrencies However when we talk about Privacy enhancing technologies that could lead to anonymization Is there going to be a standard? Are we going to standardize? Specific technologies that we all agree lead to anonymization or are we just keep? Are we just going to keep a list that needs to be continuously updated as a suggestion because even if it's simply a list That means that it would not be it would not be legally binding in any way and Secondly when we're going to standardize technologies Who is going to standardize them that poses problems on the governance side of? of blockchain technologies and communities so Do you have any legal solutions for that? Officially no officially there is no There's no legal solution to to adopt this this problem But what has been what has been proposed is the fact that we need to accept that some of the data that are circulating on the blockchain are essential on the functioning to the blockchain and What we need to remember is they are the application of a lot of rights that are given to data subjects are relatively Are relative to the the the applicable technology so depending on the limits of the technology that We where the the data subject Goes to claim the the application of the rights This these rights are going to be enforced according to the limits of the of the of the technology So taking taking in consideration the fact that this specific data is essential to the functioning of the blockchain could lead to a possible solution Adopt a lot of the two blockchain standards is something that has also been Proposed but this is highly unlikely specifically because it took us a lot of years and a lot of negotiations to reach to the the enforcement of European Regulation so this is something that I don't think is going to happen So some of the consequences With this with this proposed solutions is first of all the data minimization that I mentioned here is the obligation to take a technical technical the necessary technical measures to control and process as as little personal data as possible and But that could mean that if we accept that there are some privacy enhancing technologies that could be applied And if we standardize those technologies does that mean that users who would have the right to turn to the blockchain technology? developers and because they didn't use a more or less or the specific new technology that creates a more a better application of data minimization obligations and Also, that would mean when data we're not anonymous data that are stored forever on the blockchain If they become pseudonymous because of because of the advanced advancement of technology What does that mean for user rights? Do the do the do the users need to consent about the data that would That would Processed a while ago and how do what are what are the obligations of the actors that are? Related to to that specific blockchain and that leads us to the second part of this presentation Which is? Yeah, blockchain actors and GDPR compliance You've probably heard again of those terms so what are the the two main actors that the GDPR creates for data processing is We have article 4 of the blog of the GDPR data controllers are the people the institutions the actors that determine the purposes and the means of the processing of personal data, so there are the the people that are in charge of the decision-making processes and About processing and collecting personal data and the data processors that are simply processing the personal data on behalf of the controller so here I'm going to take a very a very very simple Example of a blockchain technology is not at all representative of what actually happens But this is just for the sake of the of the discussion to give you some of the examples of the of the problems that would arise so we're going to examine those those actors that More or less exist on on blockchains. We have nodes full nodes Simple nodes. We have the miners. We have the developers that creates the the blockchain and of course different third parties. We have Exchanges we have wallets. We have decentralized applications, etc so Can we find any liability? To any of those actors Let's start with the miners What do the miners do so the miners are going to verify transactions are going to add blocks on the blockchain Are they controllers Well, they they do validate Submitted data, so they do participate in the in the processing of the personal data But however, they do not determine the mince and purposes of the block of the of the processing of the personal data So they are not alone. They do not take autonomous decisions about How the blocks are validated and how the processing is being done, but are they processors so? so The the French data protection authority the Kneel recently gave a public report about GDPR compliance and the in the blockchain and said that the miners could be data processors Processing personal data, but that poses a problem of who is the controller for whom are they? are they Processing those personal data and what is the relationship between those two actors? Developers so the developers let's say I've always taken the example of the of the Bitcoin Blockchain so they define how the data is processed through by by maintaining the protocol are they controllers Yeah, so They could be considered to determine The means and purposes of the product of the processing, but they are not alone in that process they are always bound by the consensus and that and the by technological requirements and So they do not remain autonomous in how they they they determine the means and the processes of Of the processing of the personal data and also that could mean that if we actually believe that the developers are data controllers that Bleak to Applications about all open source developers. Are they all data controllers? Can they all be liable under the GDPR? Next we have the third party. So we have as I told you exchanges wallets digitalized applications, etc So they analyze blockchain data for commercial purposes Let's say an ICO for example They could qualify as data controllers for the data that they request for the users again Think of the ICO example all the public keys that they that they are going to to publish the transactions They're going to publish once they collect the funds They are going to be responsible for all the data that they store off-chain However Regarding the on-chain data still we need to find if they could also be the processors But they do not they do not that does not appear to be the case think for example A decentralized application that runs on the on the theorem blockchain Does that mean that we will qualify the third party as a data controller and then the if you The theorem foundation the theorem blockchain Foundation as the data processor, but there is no contract contractual relationship between the two So that also seems quite problematic very unlikely to happen Finally we have well almost finally we have the full nodes So we we take the example of the full nodes because they are there was a download the whole blockchain the download the blocks and the Transactions the very and to verify them against consensus rules again Similarly, there has been a there has been a proposal that they could be Contrary that they could be considered as joint controllers So all the nodes all the full nodes could be considered as the people that take the decisions About how the the process the processing of the personal data is going to happen However, there is no contractual relationship between the nodes and they all act individually but and also We cannot be considered as individual controllers because they are Similarly as the developers they are subject to the rules that are the design rules that are created by the developers So this is like a reciprocal relationship Finally We have the users so a user that just simply goes to To make a transaction on the blockchain They could be this they could be data controllers and data subjects at the same time So data subjects that have control of their data because they can use their private key they are bound by the consensus of the blockchain and so They cannot be they cannot be even though they are they could they can be subject To be considered as data controllers for their own data. They cannot be considered data controllers for the data When they participate on the full network. So that again means that they do not they cannot be qualified as data controllers in general for all blockchain data so Conclusions first of all the as all lawyers are going to say in this in this case is that it depends everything depends on the blockchain Everything depends on the governance of the blockchain. Are we examining? On the on the third-party's perspective. Are we examining whose personal data are we examining? So we need to look at the specific governance structure of a given blockchain onto the specific use case and also the specific data personal data that are at stake And finally the GDPR principle of controllership So how we identify those actors could be rethought again given the fact that one a lot of personal data are Essential for the functioning of the blockchain and two that we're talking about an architecture That was not thought of when the GDPR was was being discussed and was being Enforced at the end of May. So yes, that's all. Thank you Thank you very much that are really important kind of essential questions that were addressed here I Still have the feeling it is not clear, right? I mean this is as often unfortunately It is not clear so far other other questions Over there And maybe you can wait until the microphone Thank you for your talk One of the aspects of the GDPR that I think you didn't cover in your presentation is the article on chapter 5 about transfer of personal data To third countries, which is something that for example in a public blockchain If you are you know processing something data might be processed by someone that it's outside the EU I do you have any comment on that? Well the so the specific problem about enforcing the GDPR is specifically exactly what you said is that once you have either a node a user a minor a company that Processes data that refer to a European citizen Then the GDPR applies to the whole blockchain. So this goes both ways goes to either taking taking the data outside of two to third countries or also Even when one individual from the blockchain Is part of the of an EU country or processing data that refer to to to to any you citizens so that's that's Yeah, that's the big problem actually This means that if I'm a company that is going to process This data for European citizens I am automatically obliged to use a private blockchain Well, I know all my miners are inside the EU So, yeah, the different the difference between permission and permission less Blockchain is that in a permission blockchain you can actually control that so that means that you it's much more easier to identify the actors in You have specific miners. You have specific parties identified people that That take part in the decision-making processes. So in that case Applying being compliant to the GDPR is easier But in the public blockchain as you would say the permission in the permission less one. This is where a lot of problems Occur because there is no way to of knowing how to enforce Hi, you started off by a definition and that definition contained two words natural person I was wondering if you've done any thinking on unnatural persons thinking of AI agents literature Like deep mind recites itself. I think so just wondering if the law had thought of unnatural persons and consequences of well Yeah, we're talking about natural persons because personal data referred to the data subjects and that means individual people So though those are the data that we protect and we do not protect data that refer to an AI So that was that that's the that's the yeah, that's a meaning behind natural persons Can wait for the mic, please. Thank you. I have a rather uncomfortable comment to make and that is That such a thing as a permission to blockchain does not exist because a block blockchain is by definition decentralized and Immutable, which means a permission blockchain is not a blockchain, but an encrypted ledger It's just a comment to my knowledge, there is no official definition of the blockchain So that is to be determined. Yes There are some definitions about the blockchain. There's a lot and that is it has no single one though so I mean we'll say properties and Being decentralized and permission Decentralized and immutable are five of the central definition points of a blockchain. I mean, yeah We could say permission distributed ledger. Yes, if that makes you more comfortable. Yes All right further questions Otherwise, I think we have deserved at first you have deserved a big applause and Then we have deserved a break and Zunke clearly said half an hour because this is for networking So we will we reconvene at 1205 Here again with the next session, right? there Exactly so content is clean so 12 or five back here again. Thank you very much 130 at lunch Otherwise, we won't get any food. I checked with the hotel and I'm sorry for that. It's my fault. Please blame me We'll do it better next time and the crypto economy is actually very exciting for science Okay, so Mahoney will guide us through the session and All right Okay, everyone we're gonna start a really cool session now involving more focused on crypto economics First up we've got you've Jenny a now you've Jenny has come in from Vienna where she is based at the Research Institute for Crypto economics first University in Austria to actually create a Institute especially for crypto economics. So that's really exciting and Her background as she can explain a bit more she was previously at stone and then Was teaching more in the entrepreneurship field and now is teaching students from undergrads to post-grad all about crypto economics apparently the courses there are Really really popular and they're getting loads of students wanting to Explore this field. So she's gonna give a quick overview She's not feeling overly. Well, I'm sorry about this So we're gonna keep it brief and then we'll open up for some Q&A. So Yeah, welcome Thank you Sorry, I'm very ill today. So I'm Struggling a little bit with my voice Yes, I'm coming from the Research Institute for Crypto economics that is based at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and I'm very grateful for the opportunity actually to be here and to present briefly what we are doing because the last meeting of the Of this community took place exactly in Vienna in spring 2018 and we were sitting in a small room with around 25 or 30 people. So it's growing and growing and I'm very happy about that and so We as a research Institute were founded around one year ago With a mission to contact interdisciplinary research around the blockchain paradigm in Technology economics business and law We are not only the classical research Institute in a sense that we do not only publish the scientific papers Which we of course also have to do But we also cooperate with the different startups and with the industrial partners and of course with the universities in Austria and abroad So this is our research agenda, which is Divided into four parts The first one, which is now central and the most important for us are the micro economic foundations of the token economy And here we have the researchers that are doing the game theory the incentive design Monetary theory and agent based modeling. So all the things that are actually at the core of the token economy Then we also cover the technical aspects such as scalability and security issues of the networks We are the University of business and and economics That's why we are very active in the research regarding the blockchain applications together with our industrial partners For example, we have now an exciting project about blockchain and sustainability So how can you program the tokens in order to incentivize the sustainable behavior? We're also active in supply chain and trade finance field and identity in the business process research And Legal aspects are also very important. That's why around fourth of our researchers coming from the Legal perspective and they also cooperate with the policy makers to understand how to regulate the whole thing so Talking a little bit about the token economy and the token engineering. This is a very new direction for our research Institute that we started a couple of months ago and what we started from we started to look what is actually over there and How can we structure and do a kind of the taxonomy of the tokens? so Tokens is not a new thing because the term was used also before the blockchain arrived It was used in economics as just a small and flat, you know around piece of plastic or metal that Can sometimes be used instead of money for example in casino or with the in the middle ages with the nice and nights tokens that the nights were carrying these pieces of Metal and use them within the specific ceremonies In the economic sense token is a limited legal tender So a promise to be exchanged for something of the value in the future Token is also used as the part of the loyalty program as the voucher gift card in Computing token means something different is just an object in software and hardware that represents the right to perform some operation Now talking about the blockchain token. There is no unified definition of actually. What is it? You're just a couple of them that we find useful. So from a technical perspective Token is implemented as a list of blockchain addresses or user accounts That have a number associated with them together with first of all a set of methods used to manipulate that list transfer and tokens from a to b and Rules to determine who can manipulate the list and in which way Another simplified definition is token as a digital asset that can be transferred between two parties Without requiring the concert of any other Third party the most important point here is that token has definitely a technological perspective without technological perspective It doesn't go to program it but it's not only a technological term. It's not only technological construct It's a social technological construct. So from the technological components it's an entry in a blockchain database and from the social thought perspective or socio-economic perspective its Reason why it exists its reason to be and it is defined by an agreement between a group of people and in this sense Token represents some aspect of the relationships between individual members of the group and here as a lot of previous speakers already have mentioned the central thing and The reason why the tokens are becoming the kill application of the blockchain are the power of incentives because you can program them in a Certain ways and you can make with them people to do some stuff But how to do that? It's not only technological question. That's a question where you need the researchers That's why we have also 30 associated researchers from different perspective that are going to work on that Right now from the scientific point of view There is no clear taxonomy of the tokens and we decided that we could look at them From four different perspective the technical perspective the rights perspective So which types of rights are added to the token from the legal perspective? How is it regulated and from the fungibility perspective fungible and not fungible? So from the technical perspective, maybe it's not in you for for lots of you. So I'm just Going quickly There are protocol tokens and these are the tokens that incentivize the users to behave In a sense of the protocol it can be block validation incentives as a minor reward Can be a transaction spam prevention as a ripple for example? the app Tokens