Proof of Reference(PoR): A unified informetrics based consensus mechanism
This addresses the need for a reliable citation data source for researchers and stakeholders, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing bibliometric concepts.
The paper tackles the problem of multiple bibliographic databases by implementing a single database called 'conflate' for author publication and citation trends, and proposes a consensus mechanism 'proof of reference (PoR)' with three consent-based checks to provide a transparent and authentic data source for unified informetrics.
Bibliometrics is useful to analyze the research impact for measuring the research quality. Different bibliographic databases like Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar etc. are accessed for evaluating the trend of publications and citations from time to time. Some of these databases are free and some are subscription based. Its always debatable that which bibliographic database is better and in what terms. To provide an optimal solution to availability of multiple bibliographic databases, we have implemented a single authentic database named as ``conflate'' which can be used for fetching publication and citation trend of an author. To further strengthen the generated database and to provide the transparent system to the stakeholders, a consensus mechanism ``proof of reference (PoR)'' is proposed. Due to three consent based checks implemented in PoR, we feel that it could be considered as a authentic and honest citation data source for the calculation of unified informetrics for an author.