DecentraSec has officially launched ScholarMark, a platform powered by artificial intelligence and blockchain that is designed to improve research integrity, protect intellectual property, and make the academic publishing process more reliable. The launch took place at the National Incubation Center for Aerospace Technologies at the National Aerospace Science and Technology Park in Islamabad, in collaboration with PASTIC, an institution under the Ministry of Science and Technology. The National Incubation Center Hyderabad, which supports the startup, congratulated Fahad Ghouri and the DecentraSec team on the milestone.
ScholarMark targets problems that affect scholarly publishing at several stages. It addresses manuscript screening, so that submissions can be checked before they reach a journal, along with research verification and peer review. These are areas where the academic world faces growing strain, from the volume of papers submitted to concerns about plagiarism, duplicated work, and fabricated results. By combining artificial intelligence, which can scan and flag problems at scale, with blockchain, which can keep a tamper-proof record of who submitted what and when, the platform aims to give publishers, universities, and researchers a clearer basis for trusting what is published.
Protecting intellectual property is the other half of the pitch. Researchers who share unpublished work during review risk having ideas copied or credit disputed, and a verifiable record of submission can help show who produced a piece of work first. For a country where universities are producing more research each year and where the quality and credibility of publications is a policy concern, a locally built tool that sits between authors and journals could be useful to institutions that need to check work before it goes out.
The National Incubation Center Hyderabad said it was pleased to see a startup from its ecosystem build solutions for challenges that matter at a national level. The announcement did not give details on pricing, the institutions that will use the platform, or how it will be rolled out beyond the launch. What it made clear is that a young company incubated outside the capital has reached a launch backed by a government science body, and that its product is aimed at a problem of growing concern in research and publishing.
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