RIP-14: Gitcoin Grants Peer Review Fund Deployment

SUMMARY: ResearchHub Foundation was lucky to be part of the Gitcoin Grants Beta DeSci Round. As part of this endeavor we received a total of $2,500.24 in matching funds (txn hash: 0x95d51e84cc1487f845559ac78833b04063f1ba44d4049d6e68048a5b67e4b9a6), for which we propose to establish “Peer Review Bounties” around specifically pre-print publications (including but not limited to biorxiv, arxiv etc).

MOTIVATION: Peer review bounties on pre-prints are specifically designed to incentivize the generation of quick turnaround, high quality peer reviews on pre-prints. We believe providing high rigor scientific feedback and review on pre-prints will help accelerate the pace of scientific research. The goal of this initiative will be to 1) provide the authors with feedback that can be implemented and adjusted to pre-empt reviewer feedback for their publication process and 2) give the broader scientific community more context and perspective around the pre-print so they can use it informationally or to springboard their own research.

PROPOSAL: Provide $150 bounties across approximately 16 different pre-prints to incentivize the generation of quick turnaround, high quality peer reviews on pre-prints

• Q: How will papers be decided on to be peer reviewed?

• A: A committee of 3 editors from 3 separate fields will determine the allocation of the bounties across topic areas

• Q: How will successful peer reviews be identified?

• A: As it currently stands, peer reviews can be performed by anyone on the platform. Therefore, it will be up to the discretion of the editor of that hub to determine if a peer review meets a minimum degree of rigor to be awarded the bounty. Alternatively, the amount of upvotes on the peer review can be used as a proxy, if no editor exists, to ascertain the quality of the peer review.

ACTION: The “ResearchHub Foundation Community Treasury” will convert $2500 DAI into ResearchCoin (RSC) and subsequently deposit these funds onto the ResearchHub Platform in order to be able to create the Peer Review Bounties