I understand your question in the following way: You are asking if a git repository can be used to add a "timestamp" to some idea, so that in case multiple researchers come with the same idea, you can prove that you were the first (whenever this is actually true). Unfortunately, dates in a git repository can easily be forged. See [here][1] for a stackexchange thread documenting this. [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20081916/github-shows-wrong-time-of-commits