"As a person working in academic fields, I understand that the process of publishing journal articles is the cumbersome, time-consuming, costing and suffering process. I agree with the proposers that we urgently need a decentralized scientific platform. As I understand, the project was about associate the NFT to the already published peer-reviewed article. The articles are published in PubWeave, a full-stack decentralized peer-review academic publishing platform. In the proposal, the proposers explained clearly the mechanisms of publishing. The greatest benefits by using the blockchain technology were cost reduction for both the researchers and readers, transparent copyrights, and higher incomes for the researchers. In terms of the risks, the proposers already addressed well and had the in-detail strategic plan to mitigate the risks. The success of this project could gain great attraction in the scientific community, and I firmly believe a great number of researchers would use this platform instead of the traditional platform. This solution is well aligned with the challenge setting. "

This is a very interesting proposal which aligns well with the challenge because it offers a “ full-stack decentralized peer-review academic publishing platform“ as an alternative over the centralized system of academic publishing. This is a field which can be overlooked despite being crucial to long-term development in all fields, so it presents a unique opportunity to get more people onto Cardano. It would make Cardano the blockchain of choice and the only alternative to existing practices.

The type of audience the projects is aimed at also presents an opportunity in itself. In addition to increasing the number of people using Cardano, it would bring on board more scientists, which is surely the type of audience that, in time, are even more likely to bring added value to the ecosystem.

The solution perfectly aligns with Cardano values: it will ensure transparency, it will let authors keep the rights to their work and ease worldwide access, thus benefiting researches who would otherwise have a harder time trying to publish their work and enabling peer-to-peer review and progress. Last, but not least, ’ the project will make “open-access a priority through a smart-contract enabled treasury management system”.

The proposal is very thorough and clearly sets out potential risks and options to mitigate them, with details on how each option could work. The focus is on what I consider to be the most creative and interesting solution of the proposal: the treasury that fills automatically via an external system – the OpenScienceNFT Market Place (another project funded in Fund 6 and which is already functional).

This proposal is part of a triad which, initially, I saw as a slight inconvenient, especially since it appears that the parts need each other to function, though they are not dependent on one another. However, the solution is very cleaver in the sense that the parts are independent from each other and, should one fail, it will not affect the functionality of the others. And if they all succeed, which I believe the will, they will create a strong and self-sustaining ecosystem which can grow in time.

It seems that the team has managed to solve all technical issues and has thought seriously about potential challenges that might occur and set up a plan that would allow them time to fix any bugs.

One final point on impact – the team is multilingual and already plans to expand their blog and comms activities to French and Spanish which are native languages for some of the members, which is an absolute plus, as between English, French and Spanish, they will target markets of millions of native speakers.

PubWeave is the third independent part of a puzzle also composed by PanDAO and Veritheum (these last ones are the base for the first one). The aim with PubWeave is to have an independent and decentralized scientific publishing tool, where the articles will be peer reviewed, stored and published with reduced costs when compared to the current industry. That is indeed a project with huge impact for the scientific environment and also for Cardano ecosystem with potential to completely change the paradigm of scientific publishing industry, giving the chance for everybody to have access to state-of-the-art papers for very small value compared to the very expensive industry we have today, facilitating the access for the ones with less resources. Knowledge sharing would be equally shared through the academic public. In terms of risks, the team has raised some important topics to be monitoring closely, such as the technological component as this is a very complex project, however the team has splitted it into independent smaller parts, what was really clever, so if the totality does not succeed they would still have some good contributions to the community; the cross-chain risk as they use Arweave for storage as Cardano does not have a decentralized storage layer, being this risk addressed by using PanDAO (one of the independent parts of the puzzle); and traction where they expect to bring people to the platform through awareness and marketing campaigns. Impact section sounds completely logic and meaningful to me. Nothing to add here, just the necessity to be closely monitoring the risks raised by the team.

The Idea of this proposal is to decentralize the scientific research space because their main problem is that the academic journals have too much control. In the current system the scientist loose the right to profit from their research. I am currently in an academic space and see that this problem is real. The solution of this proposal is to decentralize the space with blockchain technology. This seems reasonable and creates new usecases for the Cardano blockchain. This project could bring many new highly educated users for many different academic fields Therefore it matches the goals of the challenge clearly. It is clearly defined articulated how the project can add value to the Cardano blockchain and the project is clearly scalable after the technology is developed. And the project makes the academic research space fairer and incentivizes the scientists to create more and better research because they earn money from their research. Therefore it makes the academic research space more sustainable.

The proposal is the most detailed and reasonable proposal I’ve ever read as assessor, providing a very logical baseline of reason the project exist and a very detailed plan and background supporting the idea. The project wanted to develop a open publishing platform for scholars, supported on Cardano blockchain to make the publication decentralized, accessible, and tamperproof, making it great in purpose of tackling the problem of lucrative business monetization from publishing industry towards researchers, by lowering the cost of publication while maintaining publicity of the document. They also already had an MVP close enough to the fully working product. Implemented successfully, this project would create a new possibility of users from scholar and academic industries, providing monetization and decentralization of academic publication that will be liked by the scholars, along with increasing the number of users and transaction in the network. Risk has also been comprehensively described and mitigated.

The proposer wants to create a full-stack peer-review academic ecosystem for a democratized open publishing platform, using Cardano ecosystem and Arweave for decentralized storage. The proposal aligns with the challenge settings which is to provide a product that supports Cardano ecosystem growth and subsidizing Open Access, that lowers the scientific process barrier. This proposal has a complete and well-writen description of the solution product, and provides information about product’s introduction complete with its benefit and background on publishing process. The proposer knows about the project’s risks, stating three major risks, including technological component, security, and traction, and describes about how the team’s approaches to mitigate those risks. Overall, this is a comprehensive, well-written proposal.

This proposal addresses one of the most challenging problems in academic publishing. As the team describes, the current system is rigged in a way that prevents the ownership of the scientists’ own work. What comes on top of it, is that citizens who actually paid for the research (with their tax money) are often prevented to read the work due to enormously high subscription costs of the journal. Additionally, the peer-review system creates no costs for the journals as scientists are currently doing it on a voluntary basis and are not getting paid for the work they are doing for the journal. The team is fully aware of these problems and outlines them clearly in the beginning. With their proposal, they want to break this unfair publishing cycle and instead make it more transparent, fair and accessible. The proposers want to develop a decentralized academic publishing platform which will use a treasury system to cover costs for editing and publishing. As decentralized science (DeSci) is becoming more and more popular, this proposal really hits the nerve of time and tries to solve one of the biggest issues in academic publishing. The team seems to have thought through the treasury system, nonetheless the proposers are aware of potential challenges (e.g. required social traction) that could impede the implementation of their dApp. What is currently missing is information on the peer-review process (are reviewers rewarded? If so, how much? Is this already accounted for in the treasury system), as this will be an important aspect of a peer-reviewed academic publishing platform. Overall, this proposal aligns well with the challenge. It not only brings a novel dApp to the Cardano blockchain but rather introduces a new ecosystem that, if successful, would attract thousands of people to Cardano and make scientific publishing more accessible to tax payers and give scientists back their ownership rights.

"There is a clear alignment between the key metrics of the challenge and the proposed solution, which is to apply Cardano blockchain technology to common use cases and expand the network by getting new people on board. The key features, functionalities, and benefits of the project have been clearly described, there are 3 scenarios mentioned: grants, a pay-per-view model, and a treasury. The team also provided an explanation of the publishing process, helping the community to fully understand their solution. There are reference links to other projects (funded in Funds 7,8 ), Pubweave’s UI code, and a blog concerning the process of publishing in academia. This will allow the catalyst community to have a broad overview of their project and better assess its expected outcomes. The main risks during the operation process are well foreseen. To deal with each risk, the team has carefully analyzed its causes, and impacts on the plan, thus offering corresponding solutions. The information is detailed and adequate for the community to review the risk management of the team. "

The project tries to create a full-stack peer-review academic ecosystem where funding is secured by a treasury optimized for long-term sustainability. Using DAO based on Cardano blockchain and Arweave for decentralized storage. The proposal is one of the most well-written in my experience as a Proposal Assessor. On top of that they also already have an MVP. If successfully implemented the project will add immense value to the Cardano ecosystem by bringing a very huge user class to the space. The proposal explains in comprehensive three main risks of the project. Technological risk, cross-chain risk, and traction. On each of those risks, the proposal provides a very detailed mitigation plan to overcome those risks.

This is a very good proposal. As we know, the content creation industry might face a sad truth when the benefits or profits created always belongs to a groups of people at the top because of the centralized control system. One of the industry we might rarely think of is the scientific publishing industry, in which big journals take most of the profits generated from scientists' work. Currently, there is no mechanism that scientists can claim their ownership and profits from their published research. Therefore, the proposer would like to create PubWeave, a full-stack decentralized peer-review academic publishing platform on Cardano blockchain. Their ecosystem is comprised of 3 main components: Veritheum, PanDao and PubWeave which will be run parallel. PubWeave is the subject of this proposal and contains parts that will have to be integrated with the other 2. The core technology is OpenScienceNFT Marketplace that allows the author to associate an NFT to their published academic article. In fact, this is an on-going project, it means they are successful in Fund 6 and 7, and the MVP is being deployed (link provided for community checking). This somehow shows the proposer's seriousness and ability in implementing this project. If successfully, their solution could bring a lot of positive benefits for scientists, publishers, the academic publishing industry, as a result, help onboard new people and increase the adoption of Cardano blockchain. I highly appreciate the proposer's effort for giving more information about the background of the academic publishing process for those unfamiliar, and clearly explain their idea and identify some risks and giving solution for mitigating these risks. In a nutshell, I would like to give a full mark for this park because of the details it provides.

I have been following the progression of this ecosystem proposal since its inception on Fund 6. Albert’s idea and writing is always impressive, enjoyable and easy to understand. He often makes relevant analogy to open our mind. This kind of project with serious impact to world through resolving tough and real issues on a grand scale is still rare in Cardano ecosystem and community. Albert is always thinking forward and holistically and it is evident in the highly integrated but decentralized ecosystem he is trying to build through the series of proposal he has written in Catalyst Funds.

His proposal is educating and exciting readers’ thought through the variety of information he provided about the academic publishing industry. This proposal explains clearly how the advantages and benefits of blockchain and cryptocurrency could empower weaker-positioned stakeholders over the exploitative actors and middlemen. This idea can be a multi-billion-dollar worth when we realize that global publishing market size is roughly a hundred billion USD. Project Catalyst must take part in this grand initiative, sending the message to the world that Cardano blockchain technology is transforming the world into a much better place slowly but surely. If this proposal is not rated five starts, I am not sure what kind of proposal is worthy of it or if I even assessing correctly all this time.

The problem statement chosen recognizes the fact that academic publishing industry is affected by its centralized nature because of which only a few number of journal which publish these academic research works are solely beniifited for works of millions of scientists who provide insights of all their work for free sometimes even pay inplace of actually getting the fruits of it. The solution proposed is to create an ecosystem which can host a platform for publishing scholary research paper in a democratized decentralized way with provision for peer-review and funding by treasury in a democratic way for long term sustainability. The platform "PubWeave"that will bedeveloped through this proposal will help bring one of the key paerts of "DeSci" movement and help cardano become a go to blockchain as such a platform will bring n number of academias onboard as it becomes a portal which is decentraized, permissionless and censorshi resistant in nature and boost cardano in the related communities. This proposed solution definitely solves the chosen problem statement hence effectively addressing the challenge.

It was good that the project progress was updated weekly. Moreover, blog articles were provided for updates and educational purposes. The provided KPIs/metrics were sufficient. One more good point was that the KPIs/metrics are specific, in-line with the roadmap set above and have a clear timeline to accomplish. Overall, I think it was very easy for community to audit the project.

The roadmap is very clear and the proposer used specific KPIs at each phase to track success. They have and will continue to publish weekly updates and offer monthly reports on their progress, making is extremely easy and timely for anyone to check the implementation.
I really see no issues in this category, which is I believe they deserve a full score.

The team is committed with auditability, and they will keep all their coding open, available for audit as they evolve, also providing frequent reports on their developing. Besides that, they will be tracking a wide range of indicators (number of commits, number of articles, number of subscribers, new institutions gathering, and so on) that will help check and audit their evolution. The way they see the success of the platform is having enough treasury in middle term to finance all scientific publications for the next 10 years, getting more and more audience with time, becoming a reference in the scientific publishing industry. Way to go!

They have set clearly measurable KPIs like 1 new article per month in the first three months. So everybody can check for their success. The roadmap is clear, understandable and reasonable. They have set their success goals as an example 2 years into the future. They clearly address the stated problem and solve a real problem.

A very detailed and comprehensive targets defined on each platform for each phases, making everything should be auditable easily. They also mentioned several quantifiable number of targets, such as Github commits, interested institutions, 2 new presentation, 1 publicly viewable report per month, etc. New enrollment also accounted as their target. The success points are quite much also outstanding, defining a short to long term plan as the project being implemented and how the users will make use of it. I myself this project will be very auditable in many point of time as it progresses, and by how large the world of impact it would bring, I’m looking forward for the project implementation if it is funded. Kudos!

The proposer provides details about how they will provide regular updates through their blog article and GitHub page. The team also provides measurable indicators to track progress of each development phase, including GitHub commits, number of articles, new followers, and many others. The proposer mentions their success vision in not only their product improvement, but also the impact in scientific publication world and interaction with Cardano ecosystem, divided into short, medium, and long term, which is great to prove that this project can last for a long period of time.

As described in the proposal, the work of this project can be split into four phases. The first three phases will be covered in this proposal. Every phase has an allocated time of three months. For each phase, the team has provided several indicators based on which the progress will be measured. Indicators in phase 1 are github commits, number of blog articles, the catalyst progress report and public presentations. For each category, the team has provided clear aims. The range of github commits is quite wide (which the team has stated as well), but reasonable and a good indicator for the technical progress of the project. Number of blog articles on Medium are important due raise awareness for the project and increase social traction. Depending on how well this goes, the team might consider increase the number of articles per months (e.g 2-3) and providing a thorough FAQ. Public presentations will also be a decisive indicator and potentially even a success metric. This is because in the scientific world, knowledge is often shared and presented during talks and presentation (seomtimes even at large conferences (> 500 people)). Following these presentations will be useful to audit the progress in a non-technical manner (in contrast to Github commits). In phase 2, a new indicator is introduced which are the number of academics/institutions expressing interest. While in principle this is a good metric to assess the overall progress and success of the project, the aims stated here is quite vague. What does it mean “1 new institution in talks with our team”? This could imply so many different things, starting from general interest up to really interested in using PubWeave. It would have been good if the team had provided a more precise aim for this indicator. In phase 3 emphasis is put on new researchers signing up and the number of preprints uploaded. While both metrics are useful to assess the success of the project, the latter is the decisive one, as this will determine whether researcher actually want to use PubWeave or not. Without any preprints uploaded in that phase, PubWeave will most likely fail.

The auditing process has been made easy and transparent since the description of this part is very complete, the community can base on specific KPIs provided to understand if the project is achieving what it intends. In each phase, there are solid goals and particular numbers which clearly indicate the progress and development of the project. These numbers are realistic and achievable, keeping the team stay on track and ensuring operational efficiency. All the platforms and tools (e.g. intellart) supporting the measurement of the project’s performance are provided, allowing the community to keep track of and interact with the results.

The proposal provides comprehensive and detailed metrics used to track the project progress, mainly consisting of Github commits, number of institutions interested, number of blog posts and followers, monthly reports, and public presentations. Each has different goals depending on which phases. The defined success is divided into short, medium, and long term. With the long-term goals as the platform has funds in its treasury to finance all scientific publications for the next 10 years, and academic institutions are starting to collaborate.

Auditability part is very well detailed. Following their roadmap, the proposer provides a very detailed KPIs for each phrase, so community could base on these quantificable indicators to follow the project's progress. For example, for Phrase 1, the proposer aims to have 20-60 Github commits per week, 1 new article person, 10 new subcribers per month on Medium, 1 publicly viewable report per month, 2 new presentations by the end of this phase to increase awareness of the project. Additionally, in their official website, they have a separate part for weekly updates of the project in a succinct manner ( intellart.ca/#/weeklyUpdate), so community could track what they have finished, when they have finished it. Moreover, they will have a official member whose focus in writing blog articles (blog.intellart.ca) ranging from project updates to education content and community engagement. Besides, their team is public on Twitter, Youtube channel, deeply connected with Arweave community with detaily provided contact. In short, I am very pleased with this auditability part from the proposer.

Since this proposal also has cross-chain (with ARWeave) and open-source property, both putting them in a very good position in auditability aspect. Attention and traction of the project are high and maintained through its life cycle since the expectation will be absolutely high. The team is really living the value of crypto and blockchain. Metrics are also really detailed and open while also being quantifiable. A testament to their devotion to this proposal and dedication to the Cardano ecosystem. Although the one or two-liner weekly updates in their website is concise we may want to see more solid updates such as Twitter or Medium blog posts and open AMA sessions so we have more conviction about the team and project. Lastly, I must also attest that this Fund 9 proposal is much more developed compared to the Fund 8 version and the Intellart team is showing some real and promising progresses and result with their funded proposals, especially through the Github repo and commits they made. To conclude, I believe Intellart deserves further funding to fuel their final grand pursuit here.

The team has layed out a beautiful proposal considering all the the sections of the proposal giving detailed insight behind the motive for the problem statement chosen and the proposed solution. They team has layed out details regarding each phase of their solution implementation (3 + 1) and how they will work beyond solution implementation. They have provided clear details regarding timeline for each of the phases which can be key point in measuring the progress of the proposal as they advance from one phase to the next (3 months a phase). The team has also provided details regarding a descent fund breakdown based on hourly charges for the resources and also the timeframe for which the resources are used based on timeline of their phases (prices quoted seems a little high but justification provided for the same). They have also listed down the risks they have identified in the process and have adrressed regarding how they will be mitigated. They have covered a very detailed list of KPI metrics especially such a git-commits, public representations, cademic institution intreset tracking, end users(researches) onboarding distributed accross each of the phases which can be clear indicators to measure the progress of the project along with vision into success of the project. Provided these details the proposed solution implementation is quiet transparent and is pretty sufficient the audit the progress and success of the proposal/