Unlock the value in academic research

Introducing a new research marketplace to empower academics to benefit from commercially viable work.
Connecting researchers and companies since 2019.

Researchers can share their work for free download for non-commercial purposes. They can licence it to companies who want to implement their work commercially.

Researchers have the flexibility to choose how and when to licence their work – putting the power of their IP truly in their hands.

Companies wanting to fund research or purchase rights to intellectual property now have one easily accessible marketplace.

Companies can access world-class research and only licence it if it totally suits their intended use-case. The open research movement prevails, while ensuring research is justly acknowledged.

How does UniCoin work?

Step 1

Researchers register on the platform, with their identities attested to by ORCID, a digital identifier for academics

Step 2

Research is uploaded to the platform, available freely for download, with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0

Step 3

Entities wishing to use any research for commercial purposes can browse the platform and purchase a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence, giving them permission to utilize the research for commercial purposes

Step 4

Funds securely transferred to researchers through an Ethereum smart contract can be automatically distrubuted to influential works of research, ensuring foundational research is recognized and compensated

Step 5

Researchers can use UniCoin as a platform for funding their research! Institutions wanting to allocate funds towards specific research topics can use UniCoin to fund research in advance, ensuring that all the right parties receive an allocation of that funding as well

The technology behind UniCoin

Ethereum smart contracts

Immutable fund processing and issuing of non-fungible token licences.

Through our smart contract, written in Solidity and tested in JavaScript using Truffle, we issue licences to commercial rights through the issuance of an NFT. Licences are cryptographically unique and only allow the buyer to those commercial rights.

InterPlanetary File System

We utilize this peer-to-peer network for distributed storage of accounts and research files.

To avoid as many slow transactions with the blockchain as possible, we make use of IPFS for the storage of all research media on our platform. Data is hashed and spread across a wide network, allowing efficient access and ensuring security of material on the platform.

Integration with ORCID

We leverage the de facto digital academic identifier to prove researchers' identity.

ORCID is the leading standard for digital identities for academics, so we leverage their existing auth0 system to validate researchers' profiles. Researchers attest to the ownership of an Ethereum wallet, which can only be done on successful ORCID validation of their identity.

MetaMask and Portis web3 injection

Both one-click access to the blockchain, and a frictionless user experience.

Clients can access web3 through MetaMask if installed, which allows the direct interaction with Ethereum dApps without running a full Ethereum node. Portis aims to ensure a frictionless experience for users without a wallet, and will allow a much broader class of users to interact with us.

The people behind UniCoin

Chris

Head of Marketing

Helda

Blockchain Developer

Luke

WebDev Lead