Ledger, a peer-reviewed Bitcoin academic journal, is launched

Ledger, the first peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, was launched today.

Ledger, co-founded by the University of Pittsburgh and the MIT Media Lab and partly rented out by Coin Center, seeks to lead the way in the research being done in the cryptocurrency space.

Dr. Peter R. Rizun, co-editor-in-chief of Ledger, told CoinDesk that he wanted to establish an efficient peer review mechanism within the bitcoin community, adding:

“I want to establish an academic, interdisciplinary communication channel so that the smart minds in economics, sociology, physics, law, and political science can make the greatest contribution to the development of Bitcoin.”

Currently contributions mainly come from core developers.

He added, “I believe Bitcoin would benefit from more diverse leadership.”

Not just about Bitcoin

Ledger editor Richard Ford Burley shared with us the magazine’s goals:

“Ledger aims to provide the cryptocurrency world with something that is currently missing: an academic, peer-reviewed forum that brings together multiple disciplines to discuss new ideas and research.”

He continued: “While there are spaces online to discuss issues both old and new in cryptocurrency, they sometimes lack the openness and reliability of a public peer review system.”

But Ledger isn’t just about Bitcoin, Ford Burley said, adding that the editorial team is particularly interested in topics related to cryptocurrencies, shared distributed ledgers, cryptographic proof-of-work systems, and distributed consensus.

The team of scholars from Oxford, Stanford, Cornell, MIT, and Duke universities plans to publish the first issue in the University of Pittsburgh library system by the end of the first quarter of 2016.

Ledger will timestamp all published articles via the Bitcoin blockchain and urges authors to consider digitally signing their manuscripts.

The call for research tasks will open today and close on December 31, 2015.