It's a surprising and unfortunate fact that the majority of the world's research, mostly conducted with public funding, is kept behind paywalls run by a tiny number of publishing corporations. But perhaps it doesn't have to be this way.

There are rules in place for how things are executed and smart contracts which make them actually happen. There are basically no intermediaries to setting up and executing these (which can also make decisions permanent, posing other issues).

Left to its own devices, research tends to become more specialized and abstracted from the real-world problems that motivated it and to which it remains relevant.

This suggests that a problem may be tackled effectively not my commissioning more research, but by assuming most or all of the solution can already be found in various scientific journals,... See more

Still in its infancy, DeSci lies at the intersection of two broader trends: 1) efforts within the scientific community to change how research is funded and knowledge is shared, and 2) efforts within the crypto-focused movement to shift ownership and value away from industry intermediaries.