Re: Cryptographic Peer-reviewing Solutions

If the reason for the cryptography is to support restricted access to a limited set of individuals, then PDF (ISO 32000-1) supports (has for about 20 years now) the ability to encrypt a PDF to one or more X.509 certificates – thus enabling only those users with the matching private keys (and associated passphrases) to open the PDF.   The PDF can also have various digital rights applied, so that the author could choose to (for example) allowing commenting.

Leonard

From: Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski@hotmail.com>
Date: Friday, October 7, 2022 at 8:03 AM
To: public-credentials@w3.org <public-credentials@w3.org>
Subject: Cryptographic Peer-reviewing Solutions

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W3C Credentials Community Group,

Hello. Has anyone explored centralized or decentralized cryptographic approaches to enabling groups of scholars or scientists to be able to peer-review one another’s digital documents? Technologies with which to enable forms of both closed and open peer review are of interest.

I’m thinking about digital signatures, verifiable credentials, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and other technological topics with which to enable teams, groups, or communities of end-users to be able to peer-review their digital documents, e.g., PDF- and HTML-based articles.

Are these topics of any interest? Could anyone recommend any software projects or publications on these topics? Thank you.


Best regards,
Adam Sobieski