Peer Review Aggregation utilizing blockchain technology

It is widely accepted that peer review is important to maintain the quality and integrity of scholarly communication [1]. However, recognition and discoverability of peer reviews in a systematic way is challenging because of the multitude of stakeholders and discrepancies between systems that report peer review statistics. We propose a blockchain-enabled application called PeerView that empowers researchers, publishers, and other stakeholders to integrate and access peer review information in a decentralized data structure, such as a blockchain. Furthermore, due to the cryptographic, immutable, decentralized, and autonomous nature of a blockchain, we can support data security, privacy, and provenance. Ultimately, this ensures that no central or individual entity will have complete ownership over the valuable data contained within, while still ensuring that peer review metrics can be properly attributed. We provide the initial prototype application along with an integration with an open peer review journal, F1000Research.