Sustainable open access publishing using Blockchain, Interledger and Web Monetization

One of the main problems the academic community faces is the high prices of publishing and accessing academic papers. Authors and reviewers usually work for free or even pay for their work to be published, while the revenue generated goes to the big publishers. This project is centered around studying the technologies that would be best suited for the creation of a system or platform for donations to journals and researchers. Various centralized and decentralized technologies have been studied. Regarding centralized technologies, PayPal has been the main focus, and regarding decentralized technologies, Blockchain, Interledger and Web Monetization have been studied. Their advantages and limitations have been analyzed, as well as their different integration possibilities. These technologies have been used to implement a system that allows donations by different centralized and decentralized means. The donations can be sent between any two centralized or decentralized currencies. The system’s main feature is a donation button that can be integrated in any journal’s web page. JavaScript and React were used for the front-end implementation. This connects with the underlying subsystems that manage the different types of payments. To test the possibilities of the decentralized technologies, a new ERC20 token was implemented and integrated in the system. It was concluded that centralized technologies are easier to use for implementation, better documented and more intuitive for the user. However, PayPal, for example, imposes certain barriers and limitations that block the developers’ work. Decentralized technologies, on the other hand, are newer, so they have less documentation and are a bit more cumbersome to use. But they have proven to be way more flexible and adaptable and easier to integrate with. So, despite their limitations, they have potential to become an important part of online donations and payments in the future