FAQs
Can I start an official scientific journal on DeSci Publish?
Yes, you can! Start a journal that publishes code, data, manuscripts, or everything in one place, without author publication charges (APCs) or paywalls. Create a fully customized review process and curation criteria that fit your needs. DeSci Publish is “diamond open access” as it should be! Come talk to us and explore the possibilities!
Does DeSci take any copyright?
No, we will never take copyrights away from the creators of the content. Instead, we give users a variety of licenses to choose from that allow them to share their work publicly under standardized terms, while protecting their own interests. Authors always maintain the freedom to publish their content elsewhere (e.g. in a journal of their choice), while having control over whether they allow others to distribute, remix, adapt, or build upon their work; whether they want to be credited for the content they created; or whether to allow others to use their work for commercial purposes. All our licences ensure that the content remains openly accessible.
How much does publishing cost?
DeSci Publish is free to use - for authors and readers. There are no author publishing charges (APCs) or paywalls. Users can store up to 100 GB of data free of charge. If you want to store larger amounts of data, please contact us at info@desci.com.
Is my data secure for the long term?
Your data is securely stored on the DeSci Labs cloud infrastructure and IPFS. In the future, we will offer long-term data availability guarantees that are facilitated by our decentralised storage approach, where multiple copies of the same content will be stored by several storage providers using the same DPID address. Our goal is to provide the most secure, open, long term, transparent and platform-independent storage solution for research outputs possible.
How does DeSci preserve scientific content for the future?
We use unique machine-readable decentralized persistent identifiers (DPIDs) to protect against content drift and link rot. You can easily import published data or code into local programming environments by copying a single line of code from the Publish interface. This allows you to write code that will always use the correct inputs and keep running - even if files have been deleted or moved on your local machines. DOIs are used as synonyms for DPIDs in our system. This approach has several advantages: It combines the deterministic resolution of DPIDs with the possibility to index published content in established scholarly databases such as CrossRef and OpenAlex. Our DPID technology also makes all content findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) by design. This preserves the scientific record for future generations and allows true open research.
Does Publish link to the official scientific record?
Yes. DeSci Publish is integrated with CrossRef, ORCID, and OpenAlex. Currently, DOIs are automatically generated and indexed in CrossRef when a submission package is generated for the first time, or when an “Open Data”, “Open Code”, or “Scientific Manuscript” attestation has been validated by the DeSci Foundation. We will extend the possibilities to “mint” entries in the official scholarly record over time, according to user needs. Authors who signed in using ORCID can get automatic credit for having published data or code on their ORCID profile, even before their work gets published in a journal. All you have to do is claim the Open Data or Open Code attestations and get it validated by the DeSci Foundation. We will keep rolling out new features and possibilities for scientists to get credit for all the work they are doing.
How is DeSci Publish different from open access journals?
DeSci Publish enables diamond open access publishing that allows scientists to run community-owned journals on our technology, without author publication charges and with a better and faster peer-review process that will reward referees. Truly open science requires a total rethink of the current science publishing model. The current pay to publish model (e.g. gold open access) incentivizes quantity over quality which has led to an explosion in articles in the last 20 years and a rapid increase in publication costs. Our approach facilitates best open science practices and prioritises high quality content creation over quantity of research articles. Current open access journals can only support manuscripts, not the data, code and other artefacts that inform the final paper. This stands in contrast to our approach, where all research artefacts can be published and updated over time to create a verifiable and replicable track record of how a scientist reached their results. DeSci Publish is truly open access, no more paywalls or author publication charges, and no more link rot or content drift.
How is DeSci Publish different from preprint servers?
You can think of DeSci Publish as a decentralized preprint server on steroids - for all fields of science. In contrast to existing preprint servers, DeSci Publish does not only support manuscripts, but also data, code and all other valuable research artefacts. Furthermore, DeSci Publish is fully versionable: It is super easy to add new files over time or to update already published ones, without overwriting the original version. This allows authors to create a transparent track record of how they arrived at their results and to get credit for their ideas and their work long before they publish in a journal. In short, DeSci Publish is built to make best open science practices easy.
What is DeSci Publish?
DeSci Publish, launched in July 2024, provides the infrastructure to create a fully open version of the scientific record. Based on the CODEX protocol, Publish uses free-to-use open-source software that cannot be bought, shut down, or censored. All content shared is stored on an open peer-to-peer network. With DeSci Publish, scientists can create versionable research objects and prepare submission packages with all data, manuscripts, figures and code in one convenient place, providing a verifiable track record of how they reached their results. Currently, there are three primary use cases. (1) To run journals that publish data, code, manuscripts, or everything in one place, (2) to continually upload data, code and other artefacts throughout the research process to create a transparent track record, and (3) to prepare submission packages that maximise publication chances in the journals of your choice. Future plans include AI-analytics of research content (e.g. novelty scores) and a marketplace for scientific validation services that improves the review process and rewards referees. DeSci Publish allows creating a digital version of the scientific record with no siloes, no content drift and full transparency.
What does DeSci Labs do?
DeSci Labs is the first software engineering company to successfully build an open science publishing infrastructure based on Web3 technology (DeSci Publish). Scientists can share their research without paywalls or publication charges on an open peer-to-peer network that enables data sovereignty. All files obtain an automatic persistent identifier that protects against link rot and content drift, making all shared content FAIR by design. Learn more by reading our blog posts.
Who is DeSci Labs?
DeSci Labs was founded in July 2021 in Switzerland by Dr. Christopher Hill, Prof. Philipp Koellinger, and Sina Iman. Our mission is to radically improve how scientific research gets published and incentivized, tackling the replication crisis at its root, and making research findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR). Since then, DeSci Labs has raised more than €7 million in funding, grown to a team of 14 engineers and scientists and launched DeSci Publish.
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