A long time has passed since the last activity on PEvO - Publish and Evaluate Onchain/(Online). That much, a lot of the community might not even be aware the idea existed.
To quote the introductory post
Pevo will be a decentral long-term digital archive for scholarly publishing through the open access paradigm and a web platform facilitating continuous open evaluation.
If you are a in any way involved with the scientific publishing process, bare with me. You might be exactly the person I've been looking for since then...
To me, the internet has always been a tool to distribute knowledge. At one point many years ago I asked myself why scientific publishing still happens in print magazines, and the simple answer has been that links aren't a reliable source to quote from, as the underlying content might change.
Since then, the problems with centralized publishers have become more clear, with pricing models which make universities stop their subscriptions, countries like Iran being denied access due to sanctions, and results like illegal mirrors (scihub) and pre-publishing servers run by individual universities at a huge cost. Not even starting to talk about the lengthy and costly peer-review process, and the general ineffectiveness of the system in revoking results which have shown false.
PEvO has been an attempt to introduce blockchain technology in combination with decentralized storage like IPFS to create a new way of scientific publishing and discourse. It was started in April 2016, and in the following months we have been able to write a whitepaper, create a logo and design, website, as well as introducing it to several key figures in the science and decentralization fields. Unfortunately we didn't get the necessary traction in the scientific community - the project needs people from different scientific fields to work together, to create a publishing experience that works, or it won't even be used. We have tried to approach scientists at conventions, but when the word blockchain came up they either switched their focus to getting funding through it (which isn't part of the concept at all), or liked the idea but were too busy with their own projects (and publications in magazines) to seriously contribute.
This is a last attempt to get back on track. The hive community has developed, grown, and spread. Are there people here who are interested in changing how scientists work, make the process more transparent, dynamic, decentralized? If so, show yourself in the comments, maybe join our Discord (that's dead though...), and who knows - maybe the time for the idea has come? I'd sure be happy to work on it again.
