Blockchain in Academia: A Literature Review

James Pearce
james@jpearce.net

January 2019

1 Introduction

Blockchain technology was invented in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto. The idea of a distributed immutable
ledger enabled the creation of a decentralised cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin. The growth of blockchain
technology’s popularity has greatly increased over the past few years; the ability to prove the existence
of data at a specific moment in time has piqued the interest of many industries. This paper is a literature
review of work currently being done in the field of blockchain technology, with a focus on applications
of the technology in academia.

2 Academic Applications

Blockchain technology has had interest from the academic industry. Chen, Xu, Lu and Chen (2018)
identify several promising applications for further research.

One such application is a system for educational reward. This could be used to create a permanent
record of students’ credentials in the form of a transcript, as well as a method to reward students for
their work. Sharples and Domingue (2016) describe a system for educational reward which they call
Kudos. Kudos is a concept for a universal academic reputation system. Participants in the system
are awarded an initial amount of the Kudos currency based on current academic achievements such as
citations and published author rankings, this currency is used as a metric to measure an individual’s
academic credibility. The currency can be transferred to individuals or institutions to increase their
reputation, for example a university may transfer some of their Kudos to a student upon completion of
a course.

A disadvantage to Kudos may be that it requires a central authority to control access to the block-
chain, as well as to issue the initial currency. Schaub, Bazin, Hasan and Brunie (2016) explain that
centralisation in this manner could leave a blockchain based reputation system open to abuse; they
go on to define a completely decentralised system for use in e-commerce. A hybrid of their trustless
privacy-preserving reputation system and Kudos might be an ideal solution for use in academia.

Chen et al. (2018) discuss the features of data committed to a blockchain, they note that “data recor-
ded on blockchain are more specific, authentic, and anti-theft.” These features could have implications
wider than uses in academic evaluation and assessment, a system could be developed for the purpose of
enforcing academic integrity. If data on the blockchain is timestamped and immutable then it could be

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used to prove the originality of work in the academic field. Gipp, Breitinger, Meuschke and Beel (2017)
outline a system for academic peer review which includes such features.

Chen et al. (2018) identify the need for security and privacy when committing information to the
blockchain. They propose that potential privacy issues could be mitigated by using ID numbers, in place
of users’ real identities. Using ID numbers carries the risk of a user being linked to their blockchain
identity, at which point all of a user’s data would be viewable by anyone with access to the ledger
(Filippi, 2016). Henry, Herzberg and Kate (2018) discuss how blockchains are open to attack by people
seeking to de-anonymise users on the network. They say that privacy researchers have developed powerful
heuristics, which are able to link transactions to real world users. Chen et al. (2018) say that information
committed to an educational blockchain could be protected by a user’s private key. This would however,
defeat the purpose of having a publicly verifiable ledger in the first place.

3 Peer Review

Research is being conducted into the use of blockchain technology for the peer review process. The peer
review process can involve papers being submitted online, for review by several individuals or boards.
Researchers outline how blockchain technology could be used to prevent tampering and prove originality
as papers are submitted.

Gipp et al. (2017) propose CryptSubmit, a blockchain based system for automating the academic
peer review process. CryptSubmit aims to alleviate current weaknesses in arbitrary manuscript review
systems used by journals. The authors state that current systems are open to influence by involved
individuals with dishonest intentions. Several examples are cited in which work was plagiarised during
the review process itself. The examples are used to justify how a blockchain based peer review system
could help authors to prove ownership of their work in the event that it is plagiarised.

Whilst using blockchain technology to achieve secure time stamping, CryptSubmit does not implement
it’s own blockchain. CryptSubmit is a third party hosted system, it uses the Bitcoin blockchain to store
timestamped file hashes through a service called OriginStamp. There are inherent security problems
with a system which is not truly decentralised, as described by Schaub et al. (2016). It is possible that
a malicious individual within the organisation running CryptSubmit could tamper with the data.

CryptSubmit is a complete concept for a manuscript review system which uses the Bitcoin blockchain
to store immutable timestamps of work at the point of submission. The concept could be used to deter
those may plagiarise the work within the review process itself. While a solid foundation, the system is
open to potential tampering due to its reliance on a centralised system, as well as a third party API.
Further research into this field could result in a completely decentralised review process or document
time stamping system. Such a system could alleviate any trust related concerns.

Emmadi, Padmaja Maddali and Sarkar (2019) propose a MaRSChain, a decentralised manuscript
review system. Similar to CryptSubmit by Gipp et al. (2017), MaRSChain aims to allow authors to prove
the originality of their work after it has been submitted for review. Unlike CryptSubmit, MaRSChain
is designed to operate in a completely decentralised manner; the authors assert that this can guarantee
fairness for all involved parties.

Like CryptSubmit the MaRSChain implementation utilises a third party blockchain, in this case

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Hyperledger. While used to demonstrate their proof of concept, the authors say that a third party
blockchain is not necessary for their framework. Hyperledger allows for additional features that the
Bitcoin network (as used by CryptSubmit) does not (Emmadi et al., 2019).The authors explain the
advantages of these features over a network designed to handle monetary transactions.

Emmadi et al. (2019) go on to explain the advantages of using a permissioned blockchain, that is a
blockchain that allows a central authority to define who is allowed to access certain features. The authors
show how this can be used to manage a decentralised review system, an example being the ability to link
pseudonymous identities to original identities. The ability to control which data is accessible by specific
entities in a permissioned blockchain could address issues in the concepts outlined by Chen et al. (2018),
where an obfuscated ID number was the privacy solution.

MaRSChain is designed to function in a completely decentralised manner, with only the access per-
missions being defined by a single entity. The fact that all of the processing is carried out peer-to-peer
has significant advantages over other systems which also use a blockchain, the transparency that this
affords means that any involved party can be assured that no data has been tampered with.

Spearpoint (2017) presents a concept for a blockchain based currency for researchers. The currency
is aimed at providing potential peer reviewers with a non-monetary incentive to review papers. They
state that the currency could be used as a metric to measure an individual’s academic credibility, similar
to how the number of authored journal publications and citations are used today.

Like Gipp et al. (2017), Emmadi et al. (2019), Spearpoint is critical of the current academic review
process, he cites the lack of incentive to review a paper in a timely manner as the reason for lengthy peer
review times. The lack of transparency is also criticised, he proposes a mechanism to track the review
process as a part of the system. According to Spearpoint:

“The (current) review process exhibits various forms of bias, including a sometimes arbitrary
outcome as to whether a paper gets rejected or not.” (Spearpoint, 2017)

Spearpoint does not provide a direct solution to potential reviewer bias in his concept, but implies
that the transparency of the blockchain based system would deter it.

The research currency described by Spearpoint (2017) is comparable to the Kudos educational reward
currency presented by Sharples and Domingue (2016). Both systems offer a blockchain based metric to
measure academic credentials. Spearpoint (2017)’s system is created specifically for the review process
with mechanisms to aid it. For either system to experience widespread adoption, a feature necessary
for a distributed blockchain based system to be secure (Lin & Liao, 2017), the intended purpose of the
system should be as generic as possible. A hybrid of both concepts to form a unified academic reward
and credibility system might be pertinent.

4 Academic Transcripts

Several institutions are conducting research into the possibility of blockchain technology being applied to
academic transcripts. This is the idea that members of academic institutions can have their qualifications
and credentials committed to a blockchain. Such a system would make this information immutable and
independently verifiable (Jackson, 2018).

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 Jackson (2018) outlines developments in the field of blockchain for academic transcripts. The article
cites several academic institutions, identifying issues pertaining to fraudulent diplomas. Jackson explains
that the frequency that the University of Washington finds fraudulent diplomas is representative of
academic institutions nationwide; most universities will have people attempting to forge credentials from
them. In addition to traditional transcripts being relatively easy to forge in comparison to a blockchain
based solution, Jackson explains that traditional transcripts suffer from other issues; the student who
owns the transcript may find it difficult to obtain a copy for example.

Jackson asserts that a blockchain transcript could be used to provide students “immediate access to
their own data in a secure manner.” It is not clear from this statement whether the credentials themselves
are assumed to be secure, or the process of accessing the data itself. While data on the Blockchain can be
assumed to be secure provided that there are enough nodes to maintain integrity, any user with access to
the blockchain is able to access all other records (Filippi, 2016); in this sense student credentials would
be immutable but not private.

Several institutions are identified which have already implemented, or are in the process of developing
a blockchain based academic transcript solution. Stanford University is identified as one such university
with an implementation, although specific details are not expanded upon. Central New Mexico Com-
munity College is another institution which is shown to be making advancements in the field, with digital
certificates available to students. Jackson states that the college is looking to implement a blockchain
solution in the near future.

Jackson outlines how institutions are looking to include student behavioural information on tran-
scripts, including disciplinary notations. This has possible ethical implications due to the permanent
nature of blockchain transactions, further research may be appropriate.

Overall Jackson provides a good summary of current developments in blockchain transcript tech-
nology. Several institutions are cited and the need for blockchain transcripts is sufficiently justified.
Jackson does not discuss the potential ethical implications of what is effectively a permanent, immutable
student record. As it is possible for items on a transcript to be erased or modified, two processes which
the blockchain is specifically designed to prevent, it would have been pertinent for the author to discuss
this.

Jirgensons and Kapenieks (2018) present a report on the potential of blockchain technology for
assessment and credential management in education. They claim that a blockchain based educational
credential management system can reduce administrative costs for both the student and the institution,
this is supported by AACRAO (2018). They find that the cost for a student to obtain a copy of their
transcript could be as high as 100 US Dollars.

Similar to Jackson (2018), Jirgensons and Kapenieks (2018) explains how a blockchain-based tran-
script could benefit from inherent security and immutability. They go further to say that the traditional
transcript is too limited; it could include descriptions of skills achieved for example. Digital badges are
identified as a potential alternative, or supplement to the traditional transcript.

The authors cite Mozilla’s open digital badges as the current digital standard for online credentialing.
Open badges was designed to allow students to share their achievements on different social networks,
with a goal to increase student motivation (Santos et al., 2013). Jirgensons and Kapenieks (2018) explain
how digital badges suffer from a lack of security; if badge issuing institutions cease hosting of their public
keys then there would be no way to verify that the badge is authentic. This would render the badges

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invalid.

The authors discuss how a blockchain based credentialing solution could solve the issue of badges
becoming invalid over time. They say that the blockchain could be used to create redundant copies
of the badges. MIT Media Lab’s Blockcerts is identified as a potential blockchain based credentialing
solution. Blockcerts is a certificate verification platform which is designed to match the specifications
of Mozilla’s open badges as closely as possible (Jirgensons & Kapenieks, 2018). Blockcerts is based on
the Bitcoin network, a network designed for the exchange of monetary value. This is not ideal, as using
Bitcoin for purposes other than exchanging the currency is against the best practices and may even be
considered spam (Bitcoin Community, 2016). Further work could be done to implement a similar system
on a purpose-built network.

5 Conclusion and Further Study

This paper has evaluated the current state of academic uses for blockchain technology; several such uses
have been identified. Sharples and Domingue (2016) found that blockchain technology has the potential
to motivate students as they earn a currency. The concept of an academic currency was also used by
Spearpoint (2017), who showed that their research coin could be used to provide an incentive to peer
reviewers, as well as a metric to measure academic credibility.

The need for a permanent and immutable record of academic credentials was identified by both
Jackson (2018) and Jirgensons and Kapenieks (2018). Jirgensons and Kapenieks (2018) proposed that
the blockchain could enhance traditional academic transcripts with extra information about the learning
experience. This could be relevant to colleges and employers.

All of the literature attempts to show how the digitisation of established processes can speed them
up. They show how the blockchain can provide security and an element of trust. It is possible that
trust in a service could be misplaced if a blockchain implementation is not sufficiently secure. Lin and
Liao (2017), Henry et al. (2018) describe how heuristics could be used to compromise privacy on a weak
implementation. According to Wust and Gervais (2018):

“In general, using an open or permissioned blockchain only makes sense when multiple mu-
tually mistrusting entities want to interact and change the state of a system, and are not
willing to agree on an online trusted third party.” (Wust & Gervais, 2018)

Therefore while developing systems which contain potentially sensitive data, it is important that
blockchain technology is implemented and used correctly, and only when necessary. Use of the blockchain
for certificates or badges for example, would require a high degree of public verifiability and transparency.
This however comes at the cost of privacy (Wust & Gervais, 2018), which is important to take into
consideration.

If a blockchain network is to be successful then it must be robust. This is accomplished with many
nodes, which can help a network resist attack (Lin & Liao, 2017). For a system to experience widespread
adoption it must be targeted towards a large enough audience. Further work should be carried out to
create a generic system which is capable of performing enough tasks to guarantee this security.

Additional further work could be carried out to resolve security issues when trusting public keys

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over a network. In a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) it is not possible to know for sure who you are
communicating with, without manually verifying keys (Ellison & Schneier, 2000). Technology developed
for the purpose of verifying academic credentials should have a mechanism to confirm that any names
associated with keys are genuine.

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