Validate and Curate
Last updated
Last updated
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 and discussion about explicit aspects and attributes of their work, like "Open Data". Community members conduct of Nodes by verifying individual claimed Attestations. Communities use Attestations as for their 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 , or to boost your own reputation as a good actor in the scientific ecosystem. Scientific validation in the DeSci Nodes ecosystem is guided by . 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.
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.
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 .
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.
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.
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.
DeSci Nodes use a . 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 has been verified by at least one reviewer, the Node is automatically curated into the community's feed.