Discipline-Specific Parent Inscription for Open Science on Bitcoin
description
This parent inscription establishes the first discipline-specific framework for connecting scientific research to its underlying data directly on-chain using Bitcoin Ordinals. Structured around a parent–child–grandchild hierarchy, this model reflects the core elements of the research process outlined in the metadata hierarchy.
This system embraces the principles of the Open Science movement—promoting transparency, reproducibility, and data accessibility—while addressing a critical limitation: centralized data repositories often restrict long-term access, threaten permanence, and introduce gatekeeping barriers.
By inscribing essential components of empirical research (especially non-identifiable, aggregate data structures) directly onto Bitcoin, this approach ensures verifiable, tamper-proof access to data necessary for replication and critical reanalysis. It offers a novel, decentralized alternative to traditional repositories—one where the foundational elements of scientific inquiry are permanently preserved on-chain.
This parent inscription anchors the broader research lineage within a given academic discipline, from which future inscriptions (children and grandchildren) will branch to document the intellectual and empirical contributions of individual studies and their data.