Editorial Platform in Blockchain for Application in Higher Education

Stéphane Silva

, Francisco Pires

and Jorge Bernardino

1,3 a

Polytechnic of Coimbra – ISEC, Rua Pedro Nunes, Quinta da Nora, 3030-199 Coimbra, Portugal

Individual Consulting Research, Rua Arlindo Vicente, 3030-298 Coimbra, Portugal

CISUC - Centre of Informatics and Systems of University of Coimbra, Pinhal de Marrocos, 3030-290 Coimbra, Portugal

Keywords: Blockchain, Publishers, Authors, Higher Education.

Abstract: In the current publishing industry, all stakeholders are faced with problems ranging from copyright

management, to piracy, to the lack of transparency of the actual number of sales and the unfair division of

profit between the publisher and the author. In this paper, we propose an editorial platform for application in

higher education based on Blockchain technology in order to eliminate the problems that publishers, writers,

translators and readers currently deal with. The proposed platform aims to eliminate the prices and rules that

publishers impose on authors, redefining their responsibilities so that they are only in charge of the printing

and distribution of content. This proposal also allows to the royalties received by the author to increase by

50-90% of the value of the sale, a substantial increase compared to the 10-25% they receive in the current

panorama. In this way, new writers and other lesser-known writers who produce content related to the field

of education will have a greater opportunity to publish their content and be fairly rewarded.

1 INTRODUCTION

Transposing knowledge to books, articles,

magazines, newspapers or publications is the only

way to perpetuate it. Currently, for authors not to take

charge of the process involved, from writing to

delivery of the content to the reader, there is an

editorial system that facilitates it. However, there are

problems in the publishing industry that harm

publishers, readers and most importantly, authors.

Publishers face problems ranging from copyright

management and piracy to the management of

contractual components. As they also focus on profit,

they force bookstores to sell content that has big sales

figures and is authored by renowned writers. Thus,

from the perspective of the reader, when purchasing

his choice is influenced on these criteria and not on

what really matters, which is the quality of the

content. The author is not only subject to the rules,

prices and changes of the content imposed by the

publisher but also receives a small share of the profits

without a transparent way of confirming the actual

sales numbers. This is not only the case in the

academic publishing community, but also in

independent publications, newspapers, magazines,

among others.

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9660-2011

In this paper, a critical analysis is made to the

publishing sector. The main contribution of this paper

is a proposal of an editorial platform in Blockchain

applied to higher education.

The rest of this paper is structured as follows.

Section 2 defines concepts such as Blockchain

technology and its applications to higher education,

and in section 3 the state of the art is analyzed. Section

4 describes an already existing platform aimed at the

general public in order to make the proposed platform

easier to understand. In section 5, SCAMPER

analysis is defined and in section 6 the advantages of

implementing a Blockchain platform for Higher

Education are discussed. Finally, in section 7, the

conclusions and future work are presented.

2 KEY CONCEPTS

To understand the proposed model, it is necessary to

define some concepts. Blockchain is one of the most

innovative technologies in the world today, even

more revolutionary than the invention of the Internet

that began to take force in the 90s. It was

implemented by Satoshi Nakamoto (Nakamoto,

2008), a pseudonym used by the person or the group

Silva, S., Pires, F. and Bernardino, J.

Editorial Platform in Blockchain for Application in Higher Education.

DOI: 10.5220/0007978902150221

In Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications (ICETE 2019), pages 215-221

ISBN: 978-989-758-378-0

215

to keep their identity anonymous. This technology is

basically a chain of blocks that contains information.

It was first adopted in the creation of the first and

most well-known decentralized cryptocurrency -

Bitcoin. It is organized as if it were a digitally

synchronized book, allowing access to anyone

belonging to its network. Once data is recorded, it

becomes virtually impossible to change (By analogy,

once a page of a book is written, it cannot be erased

or torn; it remains intact and accessible to anyone who

wants to read it). Thus, any application in Blockchain

is immune to piracy. Given that Blockchain is a

technology based on an interconnected network of

computers, the most important aspect to consider is

its security. Therefore, this technology has three main

concepts: The hash that functions as a fingerprint that

is unique to the block; Proof-of-work that is a security

method that limits the addition of blocks by time; The

social consensus in which all the members of a

network have to evaluate each new block added,

which is only integrated in the network if it is

accepted by more than 51% of the members.

Each block contains its data, its hash, as well as the

hash of the previous block as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Blockchain network scheme (Savje, 2017).

 The data each block contains depends on the

Blockchain type. In Bitcoin Blockchain, for

example, it keeps the details of a transaction (who

sends, who receives and the number of transferred

Bitcoins);

 The hash is always unique, like a fingerprint, and

identifies a block and all its components. It is

calculated when its block is created and is changed

whenever it is modified (If the hash is changed, the

block is not the same.);

 The hash of the previous block is what makes

Blockchain so secure. Each block points to its

predecessor (unless it is the genesis block), and if

a block belonging to the middle of the string is

changed, it will make all of the following invalid

(A change occurred and therefore the hash was

recalculated.).

The hashes are not sufficient to prevent unlawful

manipulation. Computers are now very fast and

capable of computing hundreds of thousands of hashes

per second, so another layer of proof-of-work security

is needed. It is essentially a mechanism that limits the

creation of new blocks (In Bitcoin's case, it takes ten

minutes to calculate the proof-of-work needed to add

a new block to the chain.) so that in case there is an

attempt to tamper with a block in the middle of the

string, it will take, in minutes, the number of following

blocks multiplied by 10 to recalculate the proof-of-

work for all of them.

Instead of using a central entity that directs the

chain, Blockchain uses a peer-to-peer connection in

which anyone can join the network. When someone

enters the network, they receive a full copy of the

Blockchain and every time a block is created a copy is

sent to all those who belong to the network so that they

can verify that it has not been tampered with. If there

is no evidence to the contrary, each member then adds

the new block to its chain. This method builds

consensus on both valid and invalid blocks. Blocks

that have been tampered with will be rejected by

another member of the network. For a block to be

successfully manipulated, it is necessary to

manipulate all of the following, redo the proof-of-

work for all of them and control more than 50% of the

network.

Smart contracts are simple programs stored in the

Blockchain that facilitate and apply certain obligations

automatically without any external intervention. It is

an unalterable agreement that has specific logic

operations related to a real contract. Once signed, it

cannot be changed.

As the term "Blockchain" comes up more often in

publications, many publishers are beginning to

wonder about this technology and the impact it can

have on their business (Giri, 2018). As already

mentioned, this decentralized and secure public

platform allows for solving problems in the editorial

field not only in the higher education community, but

also among authors, editors and journalists.

The long-term practical impact of its use is that it

enables researchers, publishers, writers and authors to

work simultaneously on the same platform by

providing their input and ensuring universal and

secure access, making it possible to review all

changes made and her/his authorship.

Another immediate application is in the

management of digital rights. Locating content

ownership and licensing discussion is a difficult and

time-consuming task for the licensor. For the

licensee, tracking the use of the content after it has

ICE-B 2019 - 16th International Conference on e-Business

216

been granted is a challenge that implies a limited

potential in terms of financial opportunities.

Through Blockchain-based rights management,

content can automatically incorporate information

about them, and smart contracts can be created that

make sharing, licensing and use much easier. For

publishers, this will increase profitability through the

automation of rights information by freeing up human

resources to do other tasks and by monitoring the

contractual components, including the amounts due

and the availability of rights.

3 STATE OF THE ART

In this section we will analyze some real cases of

Blockchain's application in education (Bartolomé et

al, November 2017) in a general way, indicating for

each one the problem and the solution that this

technology allows to implement and finally three

concrete solutions already proposed are specified.

Education is one of the main focuses of any

developed country. There have already been a

number of very important, and some very deep,

contributions to how Blockchain might revolutionize

it, which will be addressed in the course of the article.

This is due to the fact that the future of important

areas such as science, medicine, agriculture, industry,

among others, are directly dependent on the level of

education in the country (Adão and Bernardino,

2003). Several applications (Ark, 2018) of

Blockchain in this area will be presented

(summarized in Table I):

Table 1: Applications of blockchain in education.

Use Cases

Problem

Solution

Diplomas and

Certificates

These can be

easily lost and

even falsified

Creation, emission,

visualization and

verification of diplomas/

certificates

Badges

Skills are

difficult to

prove

Open "passport" in which

users send requests that

will be verified by others

Identification

Identity

management in

institutions

Identity use on the Internet

Security of

Infrastructures

Networks are

vulnerable to

hacker attacks

Sharing security data

between devices

Cloud Storage

Local databases

are not secure

Cheaper and safer

alternatives to data

storage.

Renewable

Energy

Management

Intermediaries

do not allow the

sale of energy to

other entities

Decentralized network of

power generation systems

allowing institutions to

buy and sell it to neighbors

Smart Contracts

Excessive

paperwork and

bureaucracy

Validation of completion

of tasks and attendance

triggered by a check-in,

paying the teacher and

transferring micro-credits

to the student

Records

management

Most records

are saved in

physical format

Reduction of processes in

physical format (paper)

minimizing fraud

Libraries

Management of

copyrights

Creation of protocols that

aim at a more efficient

management of digital

rights

Publishing

Publishers

receive the

largest share of

profit and

lesser-known

writers find it

difficult to see

their books

published

Creating a level playing

field and encouraging

collaboration between

authors, editors, translators

and journalists

State Aid

The use of these

social aids is not

controlled

Payment of social benefits

in separate funds for

different expenditure

These use cases are described in more detail

below:

 Higher Education diplomas, school certificates

and other supplementary courses may be lost, just

like the original itself. As soon as they are inserted

into a Blockchain network, information about a

student's classifications and the courses they have

completed will never be lost nor will it be possible

to change or falsify this information. However,

anyone can access such data with the consent of

the owner;

 Certain skills can be verified and communicated

through a digital badge. A "passport" with multiple

badges can be created for students to share with

potential employers;

 With the dissemination of applications and

services, identity management is a major problem

in education. Hence, Blockchain-based platforms

allow their users to access different decentralized

applications (DAPPS) and decentralized networks

always having the portability of their guaranteed

identity;

 As institutions buy more surveillance cameras and

sensors, they need to protect their networks from

possible attacks;

 With the constant increase of data stored both by

students and by the institutions themselves, a

decentralized cloud storage service can offer a

cheaper and safer alternative;

Editorial Platform in Blockchain for Application in Higher Education

217

 Although in Portugal it is not something common,

institutions that have renewable energy sources

can use Blockchain to generate, buy and sell

energy to their neighbors, avoiding the need for

intermediary regulatory entities, thus monetizing

the surplus of energy;

 Smart contracts can be used to sign contracts

automatically as soon as certain predefined

conditions are met;

 Another indisputable advantage of Blockchain is

the dematerialization of documents, by replacing

physical for digital support. It is also possible to

eliminate the risk of loss and/or falsification of

those documents;

 Libraries can also expand their services by

building a metadata file and facilitating more

efficient management of digital rights;

 In the publishing sector, this technology has the

capacity to revolutionize multiple areas, from the

management of copyright to piracy. Blockchain-

based platforms offer better conditions that

encourage collaboration between authors, editors,

translators and journalists;

 With this technology, it is also possible to

streamline the public social security system by

dividing the aid into separate funds for different

expenditure, allowing for greater transparency and

ensuring that the aid is being used for the intended

purposes, as these would be transferred directly to

a given entity without being passed by the citizen.

For example, a student of higher education who

benefits from a scholarship does not receive the

monthly tuition amount, which is automatically

transferred to the educational institution.

Blockchain can be used for the issuance, monitoring,

validation and sharing of diplomas (Kolvenbach et al.,

2018). Although physical diplomas are easily stored,

they can be presented to anyone for any purpose and

are difficult to falsify if they have built-in security

methods. For a third party, an extra effort is required

to validate the diploma. This verification is obtained

by contacting the entity that issued the said diploma;

that is, they have to maintain a file with all the

diplomas issued in the long term.

It can also serve to create a system of credits and

evaluation as demonstrated in EduCTX (Turkanović

et al., 2018). This platform is based on the European

Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS)

system. This is a credit system with the aim of

facilitating their transfer between European countries.

Taking into account that it is based on the

competencies developed and the workload of a

curricular unit, a student of higher education can

transfer ECTS credits among Universities in order to

continue her/his studies. EduCTX represents a

credible and decentralized assessment and credit

system that provides a unified view for students and

higher education institutions, as well as for other

potential stakeholders such as companies and

organizations. Based on a distributed global network,

the platform processes, manages and controls tokens

that represent the credits students receive for

completing curricular units, equivalent to ECTS. This

proposal is the first step towards a more transparent

and technologically advanced system applied to

higher education.

Another similar platform, though based on

Ethereum, is used to store student classifications and

provide a cryptocurrency (Rooksby and Dimitrov,

2017). In this platform, the following problems were

identified:

 The use of Blockchain in storing and managing

grades is interesting because it supports auditing.

However, the most important thing would be to

make this functionality stand-alone rather than

simply being used as an auditable database;

 Grades are not generated by an algorithm. The use

of smart contracts stored in a Blockchain to

calculate grades is problematic since there is no

formal algorithm to calculate them. Some

discretion on the part of the teacher is used in

specific cases, and the limits of the grades are

usually flexible (In the case of a student who

obtains a final grade of 9.4 but who has good

results in another component, the teacher may

have the wisdom to pass the student, thus sparing

a new evaluation phase, if any);

 Reputation and trust are linked. Universities use

their status to build trust and a Blockchain can be

counterproductive in the sense that trust is based

on an external audit rather than on the reputation

of the institution;

 Ownership and scope would be problematic

considering that it is not known who the

Blockchain system will belong to and whether it

will even be controlled by a University, or by a

group of Universities or even by a public network

just like Ethereum. Where and what limits to set

are quite uncertain.

Thus, in order to solve these problems, the proposed

system would keep all the information regarding the

students' academic progress, their grades and the

equivalent final certification. It would have a specific

cryptocurrency for each University that would be

automatically paid by smart contracts to the best

students of each course, promoting and rewarding the

merit of the school. In this way, the best students from

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each curricular unit would receive a reward that could

be used inside the institution for the payment of

tuition, lunch passwords or expenses in the bar.

4 AUTORSHIP PLATFORM

The Authorship platform allows authors to publish

their content in it. Readers can buy books using

Authorship Tokens (ATS), which is a cryptocurrency

based on Ethereum (Ark, 2018), and authors receive

90% royalties in that same currency. They have the

publish and distribute it wherever they wish.

It is described as follows:

 The author simply has to register on the platform,

upload the content and it is available

automatically;

 A translator has a similar process. He/She

registers, translates the book and uploads it. The

translator’s share will increase considering the

number of books translated and its quality;

 Since writers, readers and translators are all on the

same platform, publishers do not need to look for

better opportunities;

 The reader has the possibility to buy the digital or

physical version of the book. If the reader selects

the digital version, when the payment is made, the

respective translator and author are paid

immediately (the author receives 90% of this

amount). If the reader prefers the physical version,

the publisher is responsible for printing and

sending the book, and the purchase value is

divided equally between the author and the

publisher.

4.1 Problems That the Platform

Intends to Solve

These are the current problems that the authors face

and that Authorship aims to solve:

 The appearance of publishing technology and

publishers have served as the intermediary role in

publishing the book between authors and readers;

 The process from publication to launch can take

from 18 to 24 months. This wait can be quite

frustrating for the authors;

 The way the current publishing industry deals with

unsold books creates a huge problem for authors.

Unsold books mean less profit;

 Low profits for the author. Publishers keep a large

part of the revenue generated by sales while the

author receives only 6 to 10% of the net value;

 New authors are constantly contributing to the

publishing industry; however, the competition has

never been as intense as it is today and they do not

always have the visibility they want;

 Throughout the process of publication and

distribution, one of the fears that lingers in the

author's mind is the "fear of selling" (if no one buys

the book, it will not be profitable);

 Discovering the content of new writers has

become a major concern since the emergence of

local retailers;

 Although large bookstores have played a major

role in the book distribution process, they typically

sell only the best authors and bestsellers to ensure

that sales come to fruition.

4.2 Authorship vs. Current Publishing

Industry

On the Authorship platform authors are paid even

though they do not charge for their content. Free

books will be used as a reference in paid books and if

they are purchased, the author of the free book will

receive a share. All books are available in any

language and profits will be divided between the

original author and the translator of the intended

language. This creates a great opportunity for

hundreds of thousands of translators around the world

who can decide which books they intend to translate

without having to worry about copyright and other

agreements.

Table 2: Authorship advantages over the current industry.

Authorship

Current industry

Authors receive 50%

royalties from the sale of

books in physical format

and 90% from eBooks

Authors receive 10% royalties

from the sale of books in

physical format and 25% from

eBooks

Thousands of publishers

compete by offering the

lowest print price ensuring a

higher profit for authors

Authors are forced to use prices

and rules imposed by the

publisher. Many publishers

force the author to pay upfront

for the stock of books

Authors are paid

immediately upon each sale

Authors are forced to wait

several months for royalties

and it is virtually impossible to

accurately track sales

5 SCAMPER ANALYSIS

Creative thinking and problem-solving are crucial

Editorial Platform in Blockchain for Application in Higher Education

219

parts of the process of transforming ideas into

innovation. A method of creative analysis -

SCAMPER (Elmansy, 2015) was used in order to

facilitate the identification of improvement

opportunities to be implemented in the proposed

platform.

The SCAMPER method enables the creation of

ideas for new products and services through questions

based on different perspectives that help identify

ways to innovate and improve current products,

services, problems and ideas. It starts from the

assumption that something new is actually the

modification of something already existing and was

created with the purpose of solving problems and

stimulating creativity in brainstorming meetings. Its

name is an acronym for seven techniques:

Substitution, Combination, Adaptation,

Modification, Put to another use, Elimination and

Reorganization. The SCAMPER method does not

require the sequential use of these and any suggestion

is accepted regardless of whether it is logical or not.

The process is described as follows:

 The (S)ubstitution technique focuses on the parts

of the product, service or solution that can be

replaced by others. It intends to propose

alternatives to those with decision-making power

so that they can reach an agreement;

 The (C)ombination tends to evaluate the

possibility of adding several ideas, processes or

products into a more efficient one;

 (A)daptation refers to a reflection discussion with

the objective of improving or adjusting the current

products or services. These adjustments can be

small or adjustments that cause radical changes.

This is one of the most efficient techniques for

strengthening the current system;

 The (M)odification, (M)inimization or

(M)aximization refers to the changes that can

trigger innovation capacities;

 (P)ut to another use intends to find new purposes

or new ways of using the product for problem-

solving;

 As the name implies, the (E)limitation focuses on

the identification of processes that can be

eliminated;

 Finally, the (R)eorganization determines the

potential when a change is made.

6 BLOCKCHAIN EDITORIAL

PLATFORM

Applying the SCAMPER analysis to the publishing

market, more specifically in the area of Education, the

following innovations are proposed:

 (C)ombining a Blockchain-based platform like

Authorship with this sector is the main focus of

this article. A higher education institution would

pay for the ability to assign digital rights to its

students and teachers, thus gaining symbolical

capital of innovation, creativity, trust, and

honorability. From the perspective of students,

they would be attracted by the concern of the

adherent institutions with their future, by the easy

access to better quality content and with a lower

price since there would be no intermediaries. In

addition, they would also have a platform available

to publish their own contributions and may even

be monetarily rewarded with their micro-coins for

each comment/review, which would be used to

purchase other content, for example. Teachers

would also benefit from the fact that the book

distribution process of their authorship would not

be vulnerable to publishers' impositions on prices,

rules and often content itself;

 The (A)daptation of an evaluation system by

readers who have acquired it, as well as by a

community specialized in an area (teachers). Both

would be rewarded, and given that teachers' rating

would have more weight, they would have an

opportunity to create a new source of income;

 In current bookshops, physical or online, books

with a greater number of sales, with hot themes or

that were written by famous authors are always the

ones getting recommended. This takes visibility

away from lesser-known writers although they

may deserve the same merit. Taking into account

the suggestion of the previous point of an

evaluation system, the books that would be

recommended would be those with the best

evaluations in a given area, thus prioritizing the

quality of the content ((P)ut to another use);

 As was also discussed in the course of this article,

the current role of publishers is an obstacle to

smaller writers and those without financial means

and to the freedom of authors regarding the sale

price of their content and often to the content itself.

Therefore, the new role of publishers would be

simply to print and distribute books on a global

scale, competing amongst each other to offer a

lower price maximizing the profit

((M)odification). This suggestion may be taken as

a disadvantage for publishers. However, we are

faced with a paradigm shift. All intermediate

entities will disappear or have fewer

responsibilities. The sooner they accept this, the

faster the industry moves forward;

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 (R)eorganizing the way books are used in colleges

would also be advantageous for all parties.

Currently, teachers refer to works on the course

sheet on which they were based for the creation of

their content (as PowerPoints) or simply as a way

to broaden their knowledge. However, this

assumes that students will have the autonomy to

do so. Using these works directly in teaching

would lead the students to have direct contact with

what is used for the transcription of the knowledge

used since always. In this way, works selected by

teachers and / or institutions would be used on a

much larger scale, which is the goal of any writer:

to bring their content to as many readers as

possible instead of being on a waiting shelf for an

indefinite time or in the middle of dozens of other

books in a shelf.

7 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

In this paper, we propose an Editorial platform in

Blockchain for application in higher education. This

platform takes full advantage of Blockchain

technology in order to create a completely

redesigned, transparent and easily auditable editorial

system with the aim of benefiting the publishers,

authors, translators, readers and higher education

institutions. In addition, suggestions were made to

improve the publishing sector from a more general

perspective, such as the adoption of a method of

content evaluation so that this is the reader's choosing

factor when purchasing.

As future work, we intend to analyze in a more

profound and critical way the actual use of the

Authorship platform and others that may arise in the

meantime, identifying problems and disadvantages.

From this study, we intend to implement a functional

platform that solves the disadvantages encountered.

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