Smart Contracts for Research Data Rights Management over the Ethereum Blockchain Network

This article presents a new method for managing digital reuse rights of research data, which leverages technologies such as the blockchain and smart contracts. This allows, on one hand, the creation of a permanent record on the agreements between the authors of the data and the reusers, with the possibility of verifying compliance at any time, and on the other hand, a higher level of granularity on defining the conditions of reuse. A practical implementation of such a workflow using the Solidity smart contract language is included, along with a brief analysis over the Ethereum blockchain network. © 2018, Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. © 2018 Adrian-Tudor Pãnescu and Vasile Manta. © 2018, © 2018 Adrian-Tudor Pãnescu and Vasile Manta.