Blockchain and Scholarly Publishing Industry

Blockchain has broad application in academic publishing and addresses necessary benefits in cost containment, improved workflow, and business management. In particular, blockchain facilitates greater control over copyrighted content and royalty administration, citations, and billing and collection. Blockchain is a user-friendly technology that can improve profitability and cash flow while reducing administrative errors. Blockchain technology has become ubiquitous within various market segments but slow to be adopted within academic publishing environments, but with the pressure on revenue growth and cost containment, blockchain represents a new tool in the arsenal of workflow products to create more accurate reporting. In particular, royalty accounting has been an area of varying reliability and uncertainly, relying on many data sources and data aggregation generally confusing to authors, researchers, and writers. Blockchain takes the guesswork out of this process by documenting digital content access and usage through artificial intelligence engines and machine learning tools.