High-Level Project Summary
Opitrust is a website in response of the incredible amount of fake news around the world of scientific knowledge. The website provides new functionalities and metrics like peer review, blockchain system that provides full transparency and immutability and the use of cryptocurrencies to provide new insights for the reach of open science and articles that are veracious, complete, and free.Its importance relies on the opportunity to diminish fake news percentage, provide truthful, valuable knowledge to community, and boost the formation of new articles by these innovative incentives.
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
Opitrust stores different scientific articles that had passed through a period of validation and verification by reviewers through a system of peer review, in which the science community provides valuable feedback, recommendation and their overall view of the article, to approve the validation of an article to be published on the website. Along this, the process of validation is incentivized using cryptocurrencies.
All this work is based by Blockchain. The Blockchain system is a complex database involved in systems of cryptocurrency, like the famous Bitcoin. This database helps achieve a complete transaction record, and security of data protection.
Its difference with other databases relies in the union and structure of blocks, containing an established capacity that, when they are filled, they close to create a chain of blocks with this data. Everything new incorporated after the chain’s creation will create new blocks that will be added immediately to the previously filled chain. These characteristics enhance the security, protection, and record of data, helping the website to be trustworthy for the users to feel safe and calm.
Along this system, we implement an option in which the reviewers can provide feedback via square text with all annotations, comments, for the improvement of the scientific article. After the collection of several reviews, the community reaches a consensus to validate the article to be public for all.
The donatives option will be side-to-side to review button, in which an individual is able to donate its preferable money amount to incentivize the investigator. All these features will be included using different pop-ups and buttons to scroll freely and more dynamic in the site.
Benefits
The website provides a long range of benefits for the average user, investigators, and reviewers, from free and veracious content to the economic incentive by the cryptocurrencies.
The investigators receive great benefits, like the following:
· Recognition from different reviewers
· Exposure to the users and masses to gain popularity
· Less wait time to finish the process of the article’s validation
· Security of protected data
· Economic incentive if their article is valid
With the base establishment of the website, Opitrust want to achieve an active community of science free of fake news, aiming to incentivize the development of scientific articles and the growth in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).
What we use for the project?
For the project development, we used different tools of different areas
For the planning and organization, we used the App Notion to keep track of our tasks and To-Do list, as well to copy links and valuable information to be used on the program.
In the Interface Design, we used the tool Figma to help us create different feeds of our liking. For all the coding behind the website, we used diverse assistance from different resources. We used GitHub, GitBash, React, Node.js, Next.js and Babel as tools to code; for the coding languages, we used Solidity and TypeScript. Finally, as our main software we used Visual Studio Code.
*Everything related to coding, libraries, and the development of the web program is placed on the GitHub in the References section.
Space Agency Data
In the Challenge’s Resources, we find out an Article about the European Space Agency that resonates deeply with our tasks in Opitrust and helped us to visualize the idea of using Blockchain.
The article named Information about the European Space Agency’s Open Science Efforts, addresses the need of transparency, results tracing, and the importance of data validation. With this in sight, we consider the Blockchain system the most viable to tackle this idea, being a space provides security, transparency, and an overall more satisfying environment for investigators and reviewers to share their ideas.
Hackathon Journey
Our experience in NASA Space Apps 2022 is a solid one. My team was composed of freshmen in college, and our project help us to connect and reunite to provide an innovative solution, as well to hang out, have fun, and explode our creativity. We learned the importance of trustworthy information and articles in the reach of scientific knowledge, the use of Blockchain system and the creation of website design and coding, it was a very multifaceted activity that force us to learn new things to achieve a satisfying result.
The team chose the challenge of Measuring Open Science because, as students, we are heavily influenced to the presence of fake news and fake scientific articles, so to tackle a safe and secure program like this will also help us in our college journey. Our approach was to establish the Blockchain as the building foundation for our website, however, we also added the metric of peer review and article validation, features that complement nicely with the idea of Blockchain.
Setbacks and challenges occur in the design of a new project, and OpiTrust was no exception. The whole weekend we stayed on campus and stayed up to 4 or 5:00 A.M to finish the daily tasks and advance smoothly with the project. We resolved this inconveniences or challenges by communicating constantly about our progress, and the issues we were facing now. In this project, we also learned to be listeners, trying to comprehend the others to face the problems.
We would like to thank our school, Tecnológico de Monterrey, for promoting constantly this activity for the students, and for being with us by mentoring, listening and motivating us the whole weekend.
References
All of tools and coding resources inside GitHub
GitHub: https://github.com/jbric16/opitrust
Hayes, A. (2022). Blockchain Facts: What Is It, How It Works, and How It Can Be Used. Investopedia. Recovered October 3, 2022, from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blockchain.asp
https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Digital_Agenda/Open_Science
Open Science. (n.d.). European Space Agency (ESA). Recovered October 3, 2022, from https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Digital_Agenda/Open_Science
Tags
#OpenScience #OpiTrust #Fakenews #Investigator #Blockchain #Peer Review #Cryptocurrency #Scientific Consensus