The leading science journal Nature presents the DeSci project ResearchHub

Nature – one of the most cited scientific journals in the world – ResearchHub, a decentralized science (DeSci) protocol, has now proposed a move that could alert the wider scientific community to DeSci and cryptocurrency.

In a Dec. 11 article, Nature — which sees 9 million viewers per month — offered the ResearsHub platform, which pays peer reviewers $150 in cryptocurrency to independently review new research papers.

It's also proven to be a financial opportunity for some, Nature reported in its article — pointing to Sao Paulo molecular-biology consultant Pedro Paulo Gatai Gomez, who told ResearchHub he now makes more money than he did in his role as a professor at academic institutions.

The scientist said he reviews an average of 15 papers per month, earning $150 of ResearchHub's ResearchCoin token (RSC) for each review, he told the magazine:

“It's justice to get paid to review, because in my opinion, it's not fair to work voluntarily and not even get a thank you.”

Being published in Nature can be considered a major win for DeSci, as Nature has a very high journal impact factor score of 50.5 – the average number of times each of its journals are cited.

RSC has rallied nearly 20% to $1.01 in the past 24 hours, CoinGecko data shows. The market value is set at 96.1 million dollars.

In the year ResearchHub, the DeSci protocol launched in 2020, was backed by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who spoke at the launch of ResearchHub's journal last month in San Francisco, California.

“It is a curious quirk of history that peer reviewers are unpaid. What they do is important and we should recognize it, reward it.

However, Nature Research Hub said it could struggle to get off the ground because of its “radical nature”, citing some of the “issues” in the science.

Of course, many scientists may have trouble cashing out RSC for fiat currency because using decentralized exchanges like Uniswap, RSC is sent to a centralized exchange before being able to exchange it for more popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) or USD Coin (USDC). Fit and turns from Ramped.

However, ResearchHub has taken steps to simplify the process with RSC being officially listed on the Gate.io centralized exchange on November 29th.

When the journal officially launched last month, ResearchHub is paying referees to review, comment or vote on preprints uploaded from May 2023.

ResearchHub users can mentor each other for good work or pay others to perform research-related tasks, such as generating data for evaluation.

Authors pay a $1,000 article processing fee and ResearchHub takes a 7% cut of any ResearchCoin transactions on the site — 2% of which is “returned” to the community, according to Nature.

Nature ResearchHub notes that the journal has not published its own papers and is not indexed in bibliographic databases such as Web of Science or Scopus.

Related: Decentralized science is like the first DeFi in 2019: Crypto VC

Decentralized science is becoming a hot topic in the industry, hitting a five-year high on Google Trends last month in November.

It aims to address challenges in traditional science such as lack of funding, data sharing or collaboration, and its use cases can range from advancing research and cheap genetic tests to curing baldness.

The industry's top DeSci tokens have a market cap of more than $1.2 billion, according to CoinGecko data.

Magazine: DeSci: Can crypto improve scientific research?