Trusted Identity Authentication for Digital Scholarship Participants Based on Verifiable Credential

Current identity authentication methods in digital academic research fail to fully ensure the authenticity and credibility of participants’ academic identities while also lacking user control over identity data, leading to potential privacy breaches. To address this issue, this paper proposes a trustworthy identity authentication method for digital academic participants based on verifiable credentials and trust evaluation. The method ensures both the authenticity of participants’ identities and the credibility of their behavior. The former is achieved by designating academic authority nodes to endorse identities and issue verifiable credentials, while also allowing selective disclosure of identity information using hash algorithms. The latter relies on trust credentials generated from academic background, behavioral authenticity, and interaction satisfaction scores. This approach aligns with the needs of existing digital academic applications and establishes a reliable trust foundation for open academic exchange.