[nonameiguess]

All that is needed here is distributed storage. Whether or not it has anything to do with blockchain is immaterial. The value add, if any, of blockchain is verification of the provenance of the files stored on the blockchain, but if a third party is copying scientific papers in to begin with, the chain of custody has already been disrupted. Theoretically, scientists could digitally sign and upload their own work, but they can already do that. The reason they publish to journals instead is the actual scientific validity of published work isn't verified by being of known provenance, but by peer review.

So unless you have some idea of how to do peer review by blockchain.

I mean, that's probably not impossible, but good luck. Since the idea would be preventing anybody from making money off of it, it kind of goes against what blockchain is actually used for. Scihub is trying to create abundance, not scarcity.

[skybrian]

A site that just publishes metadata and SHA-256 hashes for published papers could bootstrap this effort and might actually be legal, or at least would be an interesting court case to follow. I wonder if there have been any interesting legal decisions for that sort of thing?

[etiam]

If nothing else it would be fascinating to see the variation due to watermarking...