<p>"Blockchain" can't be made to prevent, or even detect plagiarism. The most useful thing related to your problem which the chain can help with, is it enables you to timestamp a document in order to prove that the document <em>must have existed</em> before a certain point in time. It can't tell you <em>when</em> the document was created or <em>who</em> the document was created by. It can only tell you who first pushed the document onto "Blockchain".</p>

<p>Assume author A publishes a document, by whatever medium, and person B receives the document. B checks "Blockchain" to see if the document has been published on it already, and if not, B publishes the document themselves, linked to an address which they have the private keys for.</p>

<p>Now B can go around pretending they created the document, and since A didn't pre-emptively publish the document onto "Blockchain", they are unable to use this tool to disprove B's copyright ownership. "Blockchain" <em>actively prevents</em> A from asserting their ownership this way because only B has the private keys.</p>

<p>So for such tool to ever have practical use, it would need to be absolutely ubiquitous in use, such that nobody would ever publish any document without first timestamping it onto "Blockchain" linked to their own private keys.</p>

<p>You also have the case of private key loss or theft, which would prevent an author being able to assert their ownership of the document using "Blockchain".</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-03-01T17:08:53.407Z
2020-03-01T17:08:53.407Z
Mark H
<p>One of the way of doing it is timestamping your content, in this case, a paper. </p>

<p>A paper in the digitized version would be a subject of hash function (usually SHA256) which will create a unique fingerprint of the content at this time. This fingerprint can be embedded into bitcoin blockchain by sending a transaction with OP_RETURN output containing the hash. Because of the bitcoin blockchain characteristic (immutable), this would be a proof of authenticity at the time, linked to a bitcoin account of the creator. The original content can be then published to something like IPFS for a reference.</p>

<p>Because sending these transactions on scale is unfeasible because of the fees, all the hashed content can be pulled together using merkle trees, into one hash. This is how <a href="https://opentimestamps.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://opentimestamps.org/</a> project operates, it's free to use and as most bitcoin projects: opensourced. </p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-03-01T15:56:00.887Z
2020-03-01T15:56:00.887Z
Tony Sanak
<p>I have a research in "plagiarism prevention using blockchain" topic, and it is specialized in scientific papers. Anyone has any idea to help me through this topic?</p>

<bitcoin-core><blockchain>
How we can use Blockchain to prevent Plagiarism in scientific papers?
Ghafor Yaqubi
# How we can use Blockchain to prevent Plagiarism in scientific papers?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-03-01)

I have a research in "plagiarism prevention using blockchain" topic, and it is specialized in scientific papers. Anyone has any idea to help me through this topic?

**Tags:** bitcoin-core, blockchain


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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2020-03-01. Score: 3

"Blockchain" can't be made to prevent, or even detect plagiarism. The most useful thing related to your problem which the chain can help with, is it enables you to timestamp a document in order to prove that the document *must have existed* before a certain point in time. It can't tell you *when* the document was created or *who* the document was created by. It can only tell you who first pushed the document onto "Blockchain".

Assume author A publishes a document, by whatever medium, and person B receives the document. B checks "Blockchain" to see if the document has been published on it already, and if not, B publishes the document themselves, linked to an address which they have the private keys for.

Now B can go around pretending they created the document, and since A didn't pre-emptively publish the document onto "Blockchain", they are unable to use this tool to disprove B's copyright ownership. "Blockchain" *actively prevents* A from asserting their ownership this way because only B has the private keys.

So for such tool to ever have practical use, it would need to be absolutely ubiquitous in use, such that nobody would ever publish any document without first timestamping it onto "Blockchain" linked to their own private keys.

You also have the case of private key loss or theft, which would prevent an author being able to assert their ownership of the document using "Blockchain".


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### Answer by username_2 on 2020-03-01. Score: -1

One of the way of doing it is timestamping your content, in this case, a paper.

A paper in the digitized version would be a subject of hash function (usually SHA256) which will create a unique fingerprint of the content at this time. This fingerprint can be embedded into bitcoin blockchain by sending a transaction with OP\_RETURN output containing the hash. Because of the bitcoin blockchain characteristic (immutable), this would be a proof of authenticity at the time, linked to a bitcoin account of the creator. The original content can be then published to something like IPFS for a reference.

Because sending these transactions on scale is unfeasible because of the fees, all the hashed content can be pulled together using merkle trees, into one hash. This is how <https://opentimestamps.org/> project operates, it's free to use and as most bitcoin projects: opensourced.


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