Key Highlights:
- Opscientia (OpSci) is an open source DeSci project leveraging the power of Web3 to grow, sustain, and continuously improve a decentralized science movement to drive progress in scientific research, making it easier for scientists around the world to share data. The project is focused on data sharing, research fellowship, community building, and automation for knowledge curation.
- The OpSci community’s Commons project is a data commons using Filecoin Plus to provide free archival, indexing, search, and discovery for neuroimaging datasets. Commons is a permanent home for large open access data repositories such as Open Neuro, ABIDE, and Neurovault; with more being indexed.
- In exchange for storing their scientific data in OpSci’s free archives, users must prove academic credentials on-chain using Verse, an OpSci dApp. Published data must pass an automated validation that checks whether data conforms to a reproducibility standard. The goal of the OpSci project is to incentivize reproducible data publishing with impact certificates to fund researchers that perform open science practices.
- OpSci contributors have indexed 500TB of high quality open access data into the project’s archives via the Filecoin network. The community has grown to almost 700 contributors, where 40% self-identify as researchers.
- OpSci is designed to facilitate a peer-to-peer science data commons for web-native scientists. The Filecoin network, IPFS, and other decentralized web technologies are key components of this vision.
- OpSci was one of the earliest DeSci DAOs with a strong academic contributing core. OpSci has been utilized to fund a number of community events, starting with the Open Web Fellowship, the first DeSci conference at ethDenver, and later helping prop up the DeSci.eth community fund.
Read the full Filecoin Foundation Case Study: OpSci - How an Open Science Commons Project Built on Web3 Infrastructure Empowers Community Discovery.