Validate and Curate
We believe that a vibrant scientific information sphere values diverse perspectives. All social features in DeSci Nodes are created with this hypothesis in mind. And while we recognize that privacy and anonymity are valuable in some contexts, the first, and most natural iteration of the DeSci Nodes social system is as open and transparent as possible. This means that all users are able to verify, react to, or comment on Attestations claimed by authors, contributing to the meaning-making process around scientific publications. Eventually, authors and/or communities may restrict who gets to verify which Attestations, and/or whether the information generated in the process is made publicly visible.
Attestations Guide Validation
Attestations are verifiable claims about a publication. The DeSci Nodes ecosystem uses Attestations as a coordination mechanism for collective work on the scientific record. Authors claim Attestations to invite validation and discussion about explicit aspects and attributes of their work, like "Open Data". Community members conduct atomic validation of Nodes by verifying individual claimed Attestations. Communities use Attestations as Curation Criteria for their Curated Nodes feed.
When viewing a Node, you may want to contribute to its validation, either to help the author gain recognition, contribute to your community's curated feed, or to boost your own reputation as a good actor in the scientific ecosystem. Scientific validation in the DeSci Nodes ecosystem is guided by attestations claimed by authors. This means that rather than writing general review reports, reviewers verify individual claims made by authors about their work in the form of Claimed Attestations.
By granularizing the validation activity around a publication, we hope to enable specialization and increased efficiency of the scientific validaiton process.
Attestation Overview
On every Node's Title Page, you will find a list of all Attestations that the author has claimed on this Node. This can help you guide your attention to the relevant aspects of a Node that need independent validation. For example, unless a Node claims the Open Code Attestation, there is limited use in checking if the Code used to create the key findings reported in the paper is provided as part of the Node. (Though this may be relevant info for you, and you may suggest the Author claims that Attestation if the code is indeed present via a comment).
You can get a full overview of all Attestations claimed on a Node by visiting the Attestations tab. This is also where all corresponding validation activity happens. Note that validation on a Node is scoped to one Attestation at a time, meaning that there's no general comment section or similar general validation mechanism. This allows you to pay attention to the types of Attestations that are within your area of expertise (or interest): If you are a master of programming, you may want to check for Open Code and/or Basic Reproducibility. If you are not, maybe don't bother. Instead, you may want to focus on the Commercializable or Big If True Attestation.
Verify an Attestation
To verify an Attestation, click on it to open it in Detail View. From here, you can check the explicit verification requirements stated in the description. Based on this, you may need to browse the Node further, either by following any links to components stated in the Attestation comments by the author, or via the Node Drive.
Verify
Before verifying an attestation, make sure you've checked all requirements detailed in the Attestation description are met. Once you've made up your mind, you can verify the Attestation for this Node by clicking the Verify button. This will lead to you being listed as a reviewer for this Node, allowing you to accrue credit as a reviewer.
Comment
Leave comments below an Attestation to share your questions and/or feedback around the topic of the Attestation with the Author. Comments are scoped to Attestations in order to prompt discussions around specific aspects of the Node as decided by the author. Down the line, certain Attestations may require reviewers to leave a comment before being able to verify, in order to invite more qualitative signals from reviewers.
Note that authors may claim the AMA Attestation, inviting open commentary on all topics, but may also choose to restrict comments to a certain set of attributes of their Node, represented by claimed Attestations.
React
You can leave a quick emoji reaction on any claimed Attestation to signal your opinion. Leave a heart to signal support, or a skeptical face to express doubts. Reactions are recorded as engagement, but have nothing to do with the actual verification of an Attestation and, in turn, the curation of a Node.
Curate a Node
DeSci Nodes use a bottom-up community curation model. This means that rather than an editor deciding which submission to curate (in a top-down fashion), curation happens as an emergent property of the community-organized validation process.
In short, once each Attestation selected as curation criteria has been verified by at least one reviewer, the Node is automatically curated into the community's feed.
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