<div>Hi Rowland,<br></div><div><br></div><div>Thanks for the below. We've consulted pretty widely with researchers here in Aus and overseas (two of the people on our team currently publish academic papers in their fields and we're working with a group Jon Tennant is involved with that are publishing a thesis around a better peer review process, our peer review process is going to be build around their findings). If it strengthens the application I can list out the different researchers and groups we've spoken with.<br></div><div><br></div><div>I'd contend we do need a technical fix to paywalls along with a community fix and we're looking to address both. F1000Research, PLOS ONE and others are great, even Sci-Hub if you feel adventurous, but I think we have some positives over existing solutions.<br></div><ul><li>Websites are a single point of failure, they can fall over through neglect or malicious actors. Aletheia is a decentralised and distributed database, no single point of failure.<br></li><li>Open access journals and preprint archives can be bought out by larger paywall journals. Aletheia is under a GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0, Elsevier is not buying us.<br></li><li>Open access journals charge for submissions, it's free to submit to Aletheia. We're looking at how the platform can be monetised but it won't be through submission of or access to content.<br></li><li>You can't see what open access journals spend their money on, we publish our financial records.<br></li><li>Open Access journals often die because they don't make profit, we're community run so as long as we have enough community nodes the contents of Aletheia is stored forever.<br></li><li>Open Access journals don't have publishing impact factor. We won't either, but we're building a reputation system based on submitted articles, peer review articles (our platform handles peer review), community participation and some other factors. This transparent reputation score is your contribution academia so we're looking to turn that into publishing impact factor once we are well established.<br></li><li>The community doesn't have a say in how open access journals are run usually, they are a bit of a block box. The community runs Aletheia as a decentralised autonomous organisation.<br></li><li>Open access aren't not open source, you can audit all our code, look at how we are storing papers and data sets, etc.<br></li><li>There has been little innovation in academic publishing since journals were established in the 16th centry. The only real change is the journals now have websites and databases. I think looking at doing something different in this space is worth the effort just for the exploration alone, and I'd rather open source communities do that exploring over corporations because if a better way is hit on it should be open from the start.<br></li><li>A decentralised and distributed database administered as a DAO has applications past scientific publishing, we want to prove it works in this space and then move into other areas. <br></li></ul><div>I'm not sure if this covers all your concerns, we have a white paper covering Aletheia's features if you're interested, <a href="https://github.com/aletheia-foundation/aletheia-whitepaper/blob/master/WHITE-PAPER.md">https://github.com/aletheia-foundation/aletheia-whitepaper/blob/master/WHITE-PAPER.md</a> <br></div><div><br></div><div>Regards,<br></div><div><br></div><div class="protonmail_signature_block "><div class="protonmail_signature_block-user "><div>Kade Morton<br></div><div><br></div></div></div><blockquote class="protonmail_quote" type="cite"><div>-------- Original Message --------<br></div><div>Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] Grant application to Linux Australia for Aletheia<br></div><div>Local Time: June 19, 2017 3:36 PM<br></div><div>UTC Time: June 19, 2017 5:36 AM<br></div><div>From: rowland.mosbergen@gmail.com<br></div><div>To: Kade Morton <kademorton@protonmail.com><br></div><div>linux-aus@lists.linux.org.au <linux-aus@lists.linux.org.au>, council@linux.org.au <council@linux.org.au><br></div><div><br></div><div dir="ltr"><div>Hi Kade,<br></div><div><br></div><div>As a person who works with researchers everyday at the University of Melbourne, the idea of paywalls is a very hot topic at the moment.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Open access publications such as F1000Research and PLOS ONE have provided researchers with more choices than ever before.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Yet the big publications can still provide paywalls due to the way that research funding is granted, based on publication impact factor. Being able to publish in Nature gives one an advantage the next time the NHMRC and ARC grants come around.<br></div><div><br></div><div>In my opinion, the issue around paywalls in research is very much one that needs a community fix, not a technical fix. And that fix is going to be a long and complicated journey.<br></div><div><br></div><div>I am unsure how much of this backstory you know or which researchers you have talked to from a range of disciplines like Life Sciences, Humanities, Astronomy etc. I would highly recommend engaging with these researchers if you don't have those relationships already.<br></div><div><br></div><div><div>In my opinion, this kind of project would be discussed at a University and Funding level (eg NHMRC) both nationally and internationally. I think the technical considerations would be of a very low priority<br></div><div><br></div><div>Regards,<br></div><div><br></div><div>Rowland Mosbergen<br></div></div><div><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div><br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div>On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 2:52 PM, Kade Morton via linux-aus <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:linux-aus@lists.linux.org.au" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">linux-aus@lists.linux.org.au</a>></span> wrote:<br></div><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote"><div>I've been asked to resend<br></div><div><br></div><div>***<br></div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite" class="m_-5320593009250776848protonmail_quote"><div>Hi all,<br></div><div><br></div><div>I wanted to make a grant for the open source project I
co-founded, Aletheia.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Project name: Aletheia<br></div><div>Aim of the project: To provide an alternative to publishing
scientific research behind paywalls and to popularise
decentralised autonomous organisations.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Aletheia is a decentralised and distributed database which
we're applying to academic publishing. Basically a a database
that is free to upload to and access from, administered by the
community as a decentralised autonomous organisation. Aletheia
would be an alternative to publishing research behind paywalls.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Have a look at our source code here: <a href="https://github.com/aletheia-foundation/aletheia-app" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">https://github.com/aletheia-<wbr>foundation/aletheia-app</a><br></div><div>Have a look at our community documentation here: <a href="https://github.com/aletheia-foundation/aletheia-admin" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">https://github.com/aletheia-<wbr>foundation/aletheia-admin</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>Key stages or milestones of the project: <br></div><div><br></div><div>Completed<br></div><ul><li>Onboarding documents up to standard that newcomers can come
onto the project, documents hosted on GitHub.<br></li><li>Participated in the Mozilla Global Sprint <a rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener" href="https://mozilla.github.io/global-sprint/">https://mozilla.github.io/<wbr>global-sprint/</a><br></li><li>Get application running on Ubuntu<br></li><li>Get application running on Mac<br></li><li>Cofounder to complete courses through Mozilla to help create
avenues for Mozilla's continued support for Aletheia<br></li></ul><div>To be Completed<br></div><ul><li>Get application running on Windows<br></li><li>Finish MVP (aiming for 27th of October 2017)<br></li><li>Run presentation about Aletheia and the applications of
decentralised and open source technology in science at
MozFest (application made, waiting to hear for acceptance,
presentation will be in London, 27th of October 2017) <br></li><li>Finish Aletheia 2.0 (aiming for 1st of July 2018)<br></li></ul><div>How the success of the project will be measured: Number of
downloads, number of active community users and number of
documents stored in Aletheia<br></div><div>Estimated cost breakdown of the project, including any
materials, projects or online services that are required to
deliver the project. The cost breakdown should include estimates
of labour costs and/or professional services:<br></div><ul><li>$15,000 for Extra Credits to create a video covering
Aletheia.<br></li><li>$10,000 legal fees, up front consultation and ongoing<br></li><li>$2,000 incidentals incurred so far (server costs, custom
domain name, travel expenses we have coming up)<br></li><li>$5,000 to have website professionally built.<br></li></ul><div>These are a great deal of costs. I'd be happy to just apply
to have the video covered. We think a professionally created
video that's engaging and made by a talented group of people
with a large fan base that's easily sharable on social media and
can be given to anyone who asks "what is Aletheia?" would be the
greatest boon to our project. We need to get the word out about
our project and increase the rate of volunteers coming on to the
project, we think the visual medium of a video is the best way
to do this. Unfortunately we don't have any video editors
working on the project yet, and we've attempted to negotiate an
"open source rate" with Extra Credits but they have said $15,000
is the lowest they will go. This single cost can be paid and
therefore count as incurred before 30th of September 2017.<br></div><div><br></div><div>The project team, their credentials and professional
capabilities, especially their history of open source, open
data, open hardware or open culture contributions:<br></div><ul><li>Kade Morton, Mozilla regional coordinator for Brisbane,
Mozilla techspeaker, completed the Mozilla open leadership
course for open source projects, organised Aletheia's
contributions to Mozilla's Global Sprint 2017, board member of
Electronic Frontiers Australia<br></li><li>Roo (wishes to remain anonymous) cofounded Aletheia with
Kade, works for ThoughtWorks on a number of open source
projects, is extremely active in running privacy, online
security and decentralisation meetups locally. If our
application hinges on the identity of Aletheia's cofounder I
can approach him and ask if he would mind his name being
disclosed to the council but as a blanket rule he has asked
for anonymity. <br></li></ul><div>Person responsible for project: Kade Morton<br></div><div>A statement including a willingness to provide regular
project updates on the project: I would be more than happy to
provide Linux Australia with regular status updates on Aletheia
and how our client is coming along.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Regards,<br></div><div><br></div><div class="m_-5320593009250776848protonmail_signature_block"><div class="m_-5320593009250776848protonmail_signature_block-user"><div>Kade Morton<br></div><div>Twitter: @cypath <br></div><div>LinkedIn: <a rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener" href="http://linkedin.com/in/kade-morton-34179283">linkedin.com/in/kade-morton-<wbr>34179283</a><br></div><div>Keybase: <a rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener" href="https://keybase.io/kademorton">https://keybase.io/kademorton</a><br></div></div><div class="m_-5320593009250776848protonmail_signature_block-proton m_-5320593009250776848protonmail_signature_block-empty"><br></div></div><div><br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>______________________________<wbr>_________________<br></div><div>linux-aus mailing list<br></div><div><a href="mailto:linux-aus@lists.linux.org.au" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">linux-aus@lists.linux.org.au</a><br></div><div><a rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener" href="http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus">http://lists.linux.org.au/<wbr>mailman/listinfo/linux-aus</a><br></div><div><br></div></blockquote></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div>