ResearchHub’s Promise to Reinvent Publishing and Why it is Set for Failure

After ResearchHub’s recent announcement of a fresh investment of $5 million from BoostVC, we asked why have we so far never taken a deeper look in this purported “future of science publishing”. Well for one we did not believe that they can make any significant difference to the century old publishing system. However, here’s a deep dive at what the company is and what it seeks to do and the problems it is trying to fix and why it can’t fix them (we wish to be wrong on this one).

ResearchHub is an Decentralized Science (DeSci) publishing platform designed to “revolutionize” the way scientific research is conducted, reviewed, shared and rewarded. Founded by Patrick Joyce with heavy backers such as Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong, ResearchHub seeks to address several long-standing issues in the academic publishing ecosystem that many have attempted to solve before. However this time around by leveraging blockchain technology, open-access principles, gamification and decentralized collaboration, the platform aims to create a more equitable, efficient, and transparent environment for researchers. Below are some of the problems ResearchHub is Focusing on:

1. Slow and Inefficient Publishing Processes: Traditional journals often take months or even years to publish research due to lengthy peer-review processes and editorial backlogs. This delay slows down the dissemination of knowledge and hinders scientific progress. ResearchHub seeks to eliminate these bottlenecks by allowing researchers to share their work immediately, enabling faster feedback and collaboration.
2. High Costs and Paywalls: Access to scientific research is often restricted by exorbitant subscription fees and paywalls, limiting the ability of researchers, institutions, and the public to access critical knowledge. ResearchHub’s open-access model removes these barriers, making research freely available to anyone with an internet connection.
3. Lack of Incentives for Open Science: In the current system, researchers are primarily rewarded for publishing in high-impact journals, which often prioritize novelty over reproducibility or open data sharing. ResearchHub aims to shift this paradigm by incentivizing open science practices, such as sharing preprints, datasets, and code, through its cryptocurrency rewards system.
4. Centralized Control and Gatekeeping: Traditional journals are often criticized for their lack of transparency and the disproportionate power they hold over what gets published. ResearchHub’s decentralized approach seeks to distribute this power among the research community, allowing for more democratic and inclusive decision-making.
5. Fragmentation of Research Output: Scientific research is often scattered across multiple platforms, including preprint servers, institutional repositories, and traditional journals. ResearchHub aims to consolidate these outputs into a single, unified platform, making it easier for researchers to discover and build on existing work.
6. Underappreciation of Peer Review & Collaboration: Peer reviewers and collaborators play a critical role in the scientific process, yet their contributions are often undervalued, ignored and uncompensated. ResearchHub’s reward system aims to recognize and compensate these efforts, encouraging more researchers to participate in peer review and collaborative projects.

While the problem areas ResearchHub is focusing on is commendable, ResearchHub faces significant challenges that will likely prevent it from competing effectively against established traditional journals. Here’s a look at some of the reasons why:

Resistance Due to Lack of Prestige and Established Reputation

Traditional journals like Nature, Science, and The Lancet have built their reputations over decades, if not centuries. They are synonymous with quality, rigor, and prestige, key trophies in the collection of seasoned researchers. Researchers often prioritize publishing in these journals because doing so enhances their academic credentials, boosts career prospects, and increases the visibility of their work. ResearchHub, as a newcomer, lacks any sort of historical credibility. Academic institutions, funding agencies, and tenure committees are deeply entrenched in the traditional publishing ecosystem. These stakeholders have little incentive to shift their support to a new platform like ResearchHub, especially when the existing system works well enough for their purposes.

Without a track record of high-impact publications, it will struggle to attract any top-tier researchers who are incentivized to publish in well-established venues. Anything published will be treated similar to pre-prints published on arXiv and other pre-print servers. We believe that there is no future where the current publishing incumbents can be set aside to make way for a new form of publishing process.

Incentive Misalignment for Researchers

Academic success is heavily tied to metrics like impact factors, citation counts, and journal rankings—metrics that traditional journals dominate. Researchers are often evaluated by their institutions and funding bodies based on where they publish, not just what they publish. ResearchHub’s model, while innovative, does not yet offer a compelling alternative to these entrenched evaluation systems. Until it can provide tangible career benefits for researchers, it will remain a secondary option for many.

Peer Review and Quality Control Concerns

One of the cornerstones of traditional journals is their rigorous peer-review process, which, despite its flaws, serves as a quality control mechanism. ResearchHub’s open and decentralized model raises questions about how it will ensure the reliability and validity of the research shared on its platform. Without a robust peer-review system, the platform risks attracting the wrong sort of money focused reviewers thereby becoming a repository for low-quality or unvetted work, which could deter serious researchers and undermine its credibility. Until a few years ago, being asked to review a paper was considered to be an honor, however with a free-for-all model of reviewing, it diminishes the role great reviewers play in science communication.

Monetization and Sustainability Challenges

Traditional journals often operate on subscription-based or paywall models, which, while controversial, generate significant revenue to sustain their operations. ResearchHub’s open-access model relies on alternative funding mechanisms, such as cryptocurrency and community contributions. While this aligns with its decentralized ethos, it raises questions about long-term financial sustainability. Without a reliable revenue stream, ResearchHub may struggle to scale its operations and maintain the infrastructure needed to compete with well-funded traditional publishers.

Fragmentation of the Research Community

ResearchHub’s decentralized model, while innovative, could lead to fragmentation within the research community, directly opposed to the problem its aiming to solve. Traditional journals serve as centralized hubs where researchers can find curated, high-quality content. In contrast, ResearchHub’s open and decentralized approach might result in an overwhelming volume of unfiltered information, making it harder for researchers to identify relevant and reliable studies. This could limit its appeal to busy academics who value efficiency and curation.

Limited Adoption and the High Learning Curve

For ResearchHub to succeed, it needs widespread adoption across the global research community, someone who is infamous for being a late adopter. Achieving a tipping point for published papers is a monumental challenge. Especially considering the high learning curve ResearchHub has and the complexities involved with creating a crypto wallet, linking it with ResearchHub and then actually using it. Traditional journals already have been around for a while and most researchers have grown up reading pathbreaking papers in Nature, Lancet and others, dreaming of one day seeing their name in such a journal. ResearchHub, as a new entrant, must overcome the inertia of researchers who are accustomed to the existing system. Without critical mass, it will struggle to generate the network effects necessary to compete with established players and will end up as another attempt to fix the broken system.

Volatile Nature of Crypto

Last but not least, While rewarding reviewers with $RSC tokens for their contribution seems like a good idea on paper, the value of the token itself is uncertain. Recent examples of $BIO token’s listing on the crypto exchange platform Binance has shown that DeSci tokens are very volatile, they can lose 90% of their value in matter of days. This makes ResearchHub’s use of $RSC tokens a non-starter, already being compared to monopoly money. Token valuation depends on a lot of factors, hype being the most important factor of all. Hype or any form of news is hard to come by in traditional research circles.

Conclusion
While ResearchHub’s mission to democratize scientific research and foster collaboration is admirable, it faces significant hurdles in its quest to compete with traditional journals. Unless ResearchHub can address these challenges—by building credibility, building reputation, aligning incentives, ensuring quality control, and achieving widespread adoption—it is unlikely to disrupt the status quo in a meaningful way. For now, traditional journals are remain the gold standard in academic publishing.