ResearchHub Online SciCon 2022

1. Event outline

The ResearchHub Science Conference 2022 will be the first online event organized by the ResearchHub (RH) community. ResearchHub's mission is to accelerate the pace of scientific research; anyone on ResearchHub is able to upload articles (preprint or postprint), upvote and downvote content, and discuss science in a completely open and accessible forum. The event will officially start on Friday, July 15th and it will end on Sunday, July 24th, comprising two days of plenary talks and panel sessions with academics and representatives of the Decentralized Science (DeSci) movement.

Date	Event	Description
Friday, July 15th	Event Kickoff	Opening talk by RH team describing event rules and content Opening talk by jury member describing the main tracks for submission
Friday, July 22nd	Submission Deadline	Last day available for submission
Saturday, July 23rd	Plenary Talks	Entire day dedicated to talks from the DeSci community and academics. (schedule TBD) First review round (Editors only) and selection of top 20% submissions
Sunday, July 24th	Closing Day	Entire day dedicated to talks from the DeSci community and academics. (schedule TBD) Second review round (Jury members) and selection of winners “Present your research” competition Closing talk by RH team, announcement of winners and distribution of prizes.

2. Main topic and tracks

The topic of the event will be “Metascience meets DeSci”. Metascience (‘the science of doing science’) aims to improve the robustness of research methodology and challenge the weak incentives in academia. Similarly, the nascent movement of DeSci strives to tackle problems of scientific research utilizing web3 technology such as blockchain and decentralized networks. Hence this event originates at the intersection of these two fields. The submissions could focus on any subject related to the main topic. Some suggested tracks include:

Peer review and the role of incentives in academic research
The reproducibility crisis
Reputation in science: beyond citations and impact factors
The dynamics of research funding
Citizen science
How to manage a lab effectively
Better way to manage IP
What is good science?
Science communication: open access, micropublications and going beyond PDFs
How to make the pipeline and workflow in science more streamlined
New research organizations
Empowering early career researchers

3. ELN Submission Competition

Prospective participants will be able to register for the event either as individuals or small teams. Submissions are accepted through the registration form on our dedicated website. The ResearchHub team will facilitate matchmaking for those that wish to participate in a team. Participants will have a full week (July 15th - July 22nd) to work on a free-format submission that should be posted on the ResearchHub website. Participants will be asked to register to ResearchHub in advance and get familiar with the notebook feature. The participants will make use of ResearchHub ELN feature to work on their piece of content individually or collectively, that will then have to be published on the platform before the submission deadline. As the submission is free format, the participants will have complete freedom in deciding upon the content of the post. Some of the outcomes might include, but are not limited to:

Introduction to a metascience topic
A project proposal
A small experiment or data analysis

The use of images, videos, and references is suggested. When using non-original images and videos participants will have to make sure they are not infringing copyright laws. Once the submission window closes, the ELN posts will undergo two stages of review:

The first stage of review will be performed by editors that will collectively vote on the top 20% submissions to be selected for the second and last stage of review.
The second stage of review will be performed by a selected jury of academics that will decide the three best submissions.

The submissions will be evaluated using ResearchHub native peer review feature, assigning to each post a score from 0 to 10. An average of the scores will then be calculated, and the top submissions will pass the first selection. In the second selection, the jury will also conduct peer reviews on the selected content and the final score will be calculated. The top three submissions will receive a prize.

The prizes will consist of pots of RSCs and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) as follow:

First prize: 50’000 RSC + Commemorative NFT
Second prize: 30’000 RSC + Commemorative NFT
Third prize: 10’000 RSC + Commemorative NFT

4. “Present your Research” Competition

Participants will also have an opportunity to present their own research through a short video. The “Present your Research” competition will take place on the final day of the event, and it will consist of a three minutes video aiming to explain the content of each participant's research in simple terms that could be understood by a non-technical audience. Each participant must register for the competition by the first day of the event (Friday, July 15th) in order to allow the organizers to create a dedicated schedule on the last day before the closing talks.

Each individual participating in the “Present your Research” competition will be awarded a Proof of Attendance Protocol (POAP) NFT. POAPs are essentially digital tickets that certify your presence at an event. In this case POAPs will be distributed to anyone taking part to the competition. They will unlock additional benefits on the ResearchHub platform, and they will entitle the owners to participate in future RSC raffles, reputation boosts or access to premium features. Similar to a poster session, the community will vote on their preferred content, which will be awarded a special commemorative NFT.