A Decentralized Framework for Ethical Authorship Validation in Academic Publishing: Leveraging Self-Sovereign Identity and Blockchain Technology

TL;DR

This paper proposes a decentralized, blockchain-based framework utilizing Self-Sovereign Identity and cryptographic techniques to enhance ethical authorship validation, consent verification, and conflict-of-interest detection in academic publishing.

Contribution

It introduces a novel decentralized system combining DIDs, VCs, and ZKPs to improve transparency, accountability, and ethical standards in scholarly communication.

Findings

Stakeholder survey indicates increased trust and confidence.

Framework effectively verifies authorship and consent.

Enhances conflict-of-interest detection without compromising privacy.

Abstract

Academic publishing, integral to knowledge dissemination and scientific advancement, increasingly faces threats from unethical practices such as unconsented authorship, gift authorship, author ambiguity, and undisclosed conflicts of interest. While existing infrastructures like ORCID effectively disambiguate researcher identities, they fall short in enforcing explicit authorship consent, accurately verifying contributor roles, and robustly detecting conflicts of interest during peer review. To address these shortcomings, this paper introduces a decentralized framework leveraging Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) and blockchain technology. The proposed model uses Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs) to securely verify author identities and contributions, reducing ambiguity and ensuring accurate attribution. A blockchain-based trust registry records authorship consent and peer-review activity immutably. Privacy-preserving cryptographic techniques, especially Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), support conflict-of-interest detection without revealing sensitive data. Verified authorship metadata and consent records are embedded in publications, increasing transparency. A stakeholder survey of researchers, editors, and reviewers suggests the framework improves ethical compliance and confidence in scholarly communication. This work represents a step toward a more transparent, accountable, and trustworthy academic publishing ecosystem.