In the evolving landscape of academic research, the need for verifiable authorship and intellectual priority has never been more pressing. As scholarly production expands across disciplines and regions, and as digital dissemination becomes increasingly common, ensuring the integrity and provenance of academic contributions presents both an opportunity and a challenge. Academic Timestamp emerges in response to this challenge as a free and non-profitable digital archive designed to serve the academic forum by providing a trustworthy and time-sensitive method of securing intellectual authorship prior to formal publication.
Academic Timestamp is grounded in a single, yet powerful, objective: to allow researchers to submit and preserve their academic works in a publicly accessible archive that offers incontrovertible proof of prior authorship. The platform enables users to upload their research papers—whether in draft, preprint, or final form—and to receive an immediate digital timestamp. This timestamp functions as a permanent, verifiable record of submission, effectively securing the author’s claim to intellectual ownership at a given point in time.
At the heart of the platform’s mission lies a commitment to accessibility and academic integrity. Unlike many commercial repositories or blockchain-based services, Academic Timestamp operates entirely on a non-profit basis. It does not charge fees, impose paywalls, or require institutional affiliation. All services are freely available to individual researchers, graduate students, and independent scholars, irrespective of discipline or geographical location. In this way, the platform seeks to democratise access to academic tools that are otherwise confined to privileged institutional contexts.
The process is intentionally streamlined to accommodate the realities of academic research. Upon submission, the uploaded document is assigned a secure digital timestamp using cryptographic hash functions, which are then anchored in a publicly verifiable ledger. This mechanism guarantees that the file cannot be modified post-submission without invalidating the original timestamp, thus preserving the authenticity and integrity of the archived work. For identification, all submitted papers receive a unique ID which can be used to prove the ownership of the submitted material by the registered user who uploaded it to the website. All submitted documents, their timestamp metadata, any subsequent alterations, and all received comments are stored on secure and encrypted servers, ensuring long-term confidentiality, reliability, and protection from unauthorised tampering or loss.
Authors retain full rights over their submissions and may later choose to publish their papers in journals or academic monographs. The timestamp, meanwhile, remains a fixed record, serving as real-time evidence of authorship in the case of priority disputes or inquiries concerning academic plagiarism.
In providing this service, Academic Timestamp addresses a pressing concern within scholarly publishing: the vulnerability of pre-publication research. In many academic disciplines—particularly in the humanities and social sciences—researchers invest months, sometimes years, in developing manuscripts that may remain unpublished or under review for extended periods. During this time, the ideas and findings remain susceptible to unacknowledged appropriation, whether accidental or deliberate. While journal publication ultimately confers official recognition, it often does so only after a lengthy peer-review process that offers little protection in the interim. Academic Timestamp intervenes precisely at this point, offering a method by which scholars may assert ownership over their work prior to publication, without compromising the eventual integrity of formal peer review.
It is important to note that Academic Timestamp is not a peer-reviewed journal. Submissions are presented exactly as they were originally uploaded, without editorial intervention or modification. This ensures that the archived material reflects the author’s work at the moment of submission and preserves the evidentiary value of the timestamp. Readers and researchers are therefore advised to treat the documents as pre-publication material unless and until the author indicates otherwise.
To foster scholarly exchange and constructive engagement, Academic Timestamp allows registered users to submit public comments on uploaded materials. This feature aims to promote open academic dialogue and to create a space where feedback, critique, and collaboration can take place prior to formal journal publication. All user interactions, including submitted comments, are preserved securely and attributed with timestamps to maintain a clear and traceable academic dialogue.
In addition to individual comments on uploaded works, Academic Timestamp also hosts the Academic Timestamp Forum—a collaborative space where researchers, students, and independent scholars from across disciplines can connect, share ideas, and contribute to a culture of transparent academic dialogue. Built on the same principles of accessibility, integrity, and scholarly freedom, the forum enables users to submit short posts, engage with others’ contributions, and offer feedback on pre-publication materials. Each interaction is recorded and timestamped, ensuring that the development of ideas remains accountable and visible. This dynamic forum provides an opportunity to receive early input, refine arguments, and nurture interdisciplinary exchange before formal publication. Respectful discourse is maintained through moderation, ensuring a safe and inclusive academic environment. Any academic topic from any subject may be discussed in the forum, and all discussions are actively moderated.
Academic Timestamp welcomes experts in their respective fields from around the world to serve as moderators in the forum and its various subsections. To qualify as a moderator, one must be affiliated with an academic institution and possess recognised expertise in the relevant subject area. This ensures that all forum activity remains rigorous, respectful, and conducive to scholarly progress.
Academic Timestamp does not belong to any particular country or region. It is an international platform, committed to the use of English as the language of global academic exchange. Accordingly, the website is open to working with any academic or research centre worldwide that shares its values of openness, transparency, and academic integrity.
Moreover, the platform facilitates a broader cultural shift toward transparency and open access in scholarly communication. By allowing authors to preserve and share their research openly, it fosters an environment in which the development of ideas can be tracked and acknowledged across time. This is especially valuable in interdisciplinary fields, where publication timelines and authorship conventions may vary. Through timestamping, researchers can establish a formal presence within ongoing debates, staking intellectual claims in a manner that respects both individual authorship and communal progress.
In summary, Academic Timestamp provides a practical and ethical solution to a critical issue in contemporary academic life. It does not seek to replace journals, preprint servers, or institutional repositories, but rather to complement them by ensuring that authors can establish verifiable evidence of their contributions. In doing so, it affirms a fundamental principle of academic inquiry: that the priority of an idea deserves recognition, not through commercial gate keeping, but through transparent and equitable systems of documentation. It is a platform built by scholars, for scholars, in service of a more just and accountable academic future.
Academic Timestamp has been created by Khashayar Irani, a mathematical logician and philosopher affiliated with the University of London. His aim in developing this platform is to support researchers across the world in protecting their academic work, encouraging open discourse, and promoting international collaboration.