EUREKA token from EKA Blockchain Solutions GmbH

INTRODUCTION

EUREKA brings the Blockchain
EUREKA Blockchain Solutions GmbH (incorporation and registration in process), will become
a provider of technology to publishers both indirectly and directly, and will develop all the
blockchain-based technology to enable a more efficient and trustworthy publishing process
by introducing the EUREKA Platform for timestamping discoveries, rewarding reviewers and
decentralising publishing.

Furthermore, the EUREKA token powers the REWARD system,
which supports to solve fundamental issues inherent to the current scientific research
systems. This allows publishing houses, such as ScienceMatters, to be a single observation
publishing house while running their operations over the technology platform provided by EUREKA Blockchain Solutions GmbH. Publishing houses will paylicense fees to EUREKA
Blockchain Solutions GmbH for the use and integration of the EUREKA Platform.
ScienceMatters on blockchain - Introduction to the EUREKA Platform

The EUREKA Platform, operated by EUREKA Blockchain Solutions GmbH (incorporation
pending), is a token-operated science publishing ecosystem on a blockchain. Using smart
contracts on the EUREKA Platform, the whole publishing process – including submission,
reviewing, rating, decentralised publishing and funding decisions can be made more
efficient.

Problems and Solutions
Academia is facing well-documented serious challenges from current models for scholarly
publishing including:
a) Long delays in publishing research
b) Overreliance of trust in researchers, peer reviewers and publishers that
creates irreproducibility and unreliability in science
c) Absence of fair credit for contribution

The EUREKA Platform will enable institutions, universities, societies and funders to rapidly deploy their own journals, with journal metadata and hashes recorded on Ethereum

The EUREKA peer-to-peer scientific data publishing platform will be the first to publish peer reviewed articles enhanced with a blockchain based ratings and review system, called ‘EUREKA’. ScienceMatters started publishing articles in February 2016, and since then has conducted peer reviews and published research from Harvard University, the University of Oxford, the University of Zurich, as well as many other institutions.

The founder of EUREKA and of ScienceMatters, Dr Lawrence Rajendran is a professor of neuroscience at the University of Zurich and at the King’s College London and is known in academic circles for his pioneering research into Alzheimer’s disease. His inspiration for EUREKA and ScienceMatters came about because of his frustration with the limitations of the existing scientific publishing system. The Chair of the scientific advisory board of ScienceMatters is Dr. Thomas Südhof, a professor at Stanford University who was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and he features in a recent video clip supporting the project.

Currently, there is a winner-takes-all mentality where the first researcher to publish a finding beats other researchers to the publishing finish line. The main scientific journals only publish novel work, so the other researchers who have conducted studies that confirm or cast doubt over results published elsewhere may never themselves get published. This leads to uncertainty as to whether published research can be replicated.

The advantages of using blockchain technology within the scientific research process are numerous. First, data recorded on a blockchain is immutable and cannot be tampered with. Secondly, it is decentralised and open, meaning it can be verified by anyone. Using smart contracts, we can automate the transfer of ratings and rewards in a fast and fair manner.

According to a survey of 1500 scientists conducted by the science journal Nature, more than 70% have been unable to reproduce another scientist’s experiments. Even more worryingly, over 50% of those surveyed were unable to reproduce their own experiments.

As a result, much time and billions of dollars are wasted pursuing drug candidates which have already been found in unpublished research not to be effective. This is what is known as the ‘reproducibility’ crisis, and it is estimated that in the US alone, $28 billion is wasted each year by pharmaceutical companies researching drugs which are shown in trials to be ineffective or which have negative side effects. EUREKA will enable companies to access replication studies, and where these are insufficient or non-existent, firms can incentivise and reward researchers on the EUREKA platform with EUREKA tokens for conducting replication studies around the world, thus speeding up the process and saving research costs.

EUREKA tokens will be used to reward reviewers to conduct peer reviews, to reward reproducibility studies, reward studies which give negative as well as positive results and also enable funding of hypothesis and scientific proposals. The tokens will also grant voting rights to the holders, allowing them to influence decisions put to a vote, and also to rate by upvoting and downvoting on scientific studies. Currently, most peer reviews are carried out for free by academics who have the luxury of being able to donate their time to journals. This leads to very long wait times, and it severely limits the number of articles that can be reviewed and published. By incentivising reviewers with EUREKA tokens which will vary automatically depending on demand, this will accelerate the peer review process by making peer reviewing accessible to a larger pool of qualified academics. However, not only reviewers can be incentivised, token payments will also go to referenced authors.

REWARD System Powered by EUREKA

REWARD will be the system which underpins the platform at each stage of the research process: Revelation, Evaluation, Worth Assignment, Award, Replication, Data Analytics

Experienced team: The team behind EUREKA has experience in science publishing, software engineering and business development, and is from the established open access Swiss science publisher ScienceMatters www.sciencematters.io

Prototype ready: A functional platform prototype and DAPP have been developed in house, and a MVP will be completed by end 2018

Software as a service: The EUREKA Platform will enable institutions, universities, societies and funders to rapidly deploy their own journals, with journal metadata and hashes recorded on Ethereum

First client in place: Sciencematters will integrate the EUREKA Platform in 2019

Established publishing infrastructure: Editors, reviewers, and publishing expertise from ScienceMatters will be provided as a service to clients with journals running on the EUREKA Platform

Huge potential market: EUREKA will provide organisations with their own open access and 'Plan S' compatible journals. The 11 EU 'Plan S' countries have a total research output of €10.81 billion per annum

ICO website: https://www.eurekatoken.io/

Read the white paper: https://eurekatoken.io/whitepaper_v3_1.pdf

Follow EUREKA on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eurekatoken/

Follow EUREKA on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tokeneureka

Like EUREKA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tokeneureka

Bitcointalk Thread : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5043012