We researchers suffer from the following paradox: 1. When we have an idea, we wish to publish it as fast as possible to receive credit for it 2. However, we are afraid that others finalize our idea before us
The solution to this problem is to publish the SHA-1 hash of our document. If someone else finds the same idea later, we can prove that we found it before them. We may also want to share our unpublished idea with others in order to receive feedback. But we are afraid that they copy it. Publishing the SHA-1 of our document as fast as possible solves this problem. This solution was used by Galileo: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/01/24/the-open-science-paradox/ The following algorithm that I designed provides this solution: flower-standard.org Cheers, Pars Mutaf PS: An alternative is to publish a technical report as Joe Touch suggested. But using flower standard you can also protect an idea if you are a freelance researcher, or if you do not have enough text for a technical report. _______________________________________________ IEEE Communications Society Tech. Committee on Computer Communications (TCCC) - for discussions on computer networking and communication. [email protected] https://lists.cs.columbia.edu/cucslists/listinfo/tccc
