A View into the Future of Academic Publishing.

The exponential growth of academic knowledge production in present times, compared to historical evolution, has led to the Open Access movement as a means of sharing knowledge with the community. However, this development also gave rise to unexpected predatory behaviour on the side of many publishers, turning the publishing system upside-down. The present-day challenges faced by academic publishing call for modern information science-based technologies such as Distributed Ledger and Distributed Database, as well as Virtual Money, to democratise the process. This article proposes the DAP initiative and project, which aims to provide a free, democratic, and trustworthy open access publishing platform with Virtual Money, the DAP Ergions, for recompensation of work, and recognition and ranking of high-quality work and all DAP users. The DAP internal economy and the spread towards external economy using the Ergions provides a generic opportunity to all academicians, citizen scientists, and the global population to be involved in the progress of gathering new human knowledge. This initiative is critical in our times, given the significant lowering of trustworthiness of published work due to predatory publishing practices and the complete lack of transparency in the review and work ranking process. Besides, the democratisation of academic publishing will ensure that retired academicians, citizen scientists, and the global population can contribute their intellectual potential in solving the huge social and ecological problems caused by human behaviour and activities.