Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same reason CAs exist for signing certificates: trust.
If the peers were properly authenticated as such, then wouldn't that obviate the need for the journals, if trust is their only value add?
Library-managed 'arXiv' spreads scientific advances rapidly and worldwide
121–130 of 141 posts
Re: Library-managed 'arXiv' spreads scientific advances rapidly and worldwide
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the peers were properly authenticated as such, then wouldn't that obviate the need for the journals, if trust is their only value add?
you can be properly authenticated but not authorized, whatever it means in the context (something like not competent?) trusted journals are trusted for their competence in filtering crap out, not for being able to prove that authors are really authors.
If one were to build a system along that line, meant to replace prestigious academic journals of today, of course it would be gamed. But isn't the general consensus that the current system already is being gamed and usually at expense of the researchers doing valuable research and the public at large?
Re: Library-managed 'arXiv' spreads scientific advances rapidly and worldwide
#123Can I just make a general plea? You should upload your paper to arXiv. When you do, please upload your source (tex, or word I imagine), as well as a PDF. For the blind, PDF is the worst possible format, and tex and word are the best formats. Don't hide, or lose, the blind-accessible version of your paper.
> For the blind, PDF is the worst possible format I'm surprised. Nobody has created an accessibility solution for PDFs after all these years of ubiquity? What's the story?
Re: Library-managed 'arXiv' spreads scientific advances rapidly and worldwide
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I don't know about PDF, but PostScript, which it's based on is basically just a programming language for drawing symbols in specific positions on a page. Depending on how it was written (or more likely, generated) this could be readable, or incredibly unreadable. As an example, in post script the following example from Wikipedia would simply show the text Hello World: %!PS /Courier % name the desired font 20 se…
Almost all formats would similarly require content to be parsed from code; for example, consider HTML, Word, or Excel. It makes me wonder how screen readers work. Thinking out loud, it seems that the screen readers should let the applications (e.g., Word) handle their own parsing and presentation and obtain the data after that. Otherwise, the screen reader would have to reinvent many wheels, interpreting the code for…
With PDFs, all you have is the position of lines and characters on the page. There is no flow, ordering, or semantics.
Re: Library-managed 'arXiv' spreads scientific advances rapidly and worldwide
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I don't know about PDF, but PostScript, which it's based on is basically just a programming language for drawing symbols in specific positions on a page. Depending on how it was written (or more likely, generated) this could be readable, or incredibly unreadable. As an example, in post script the following example from Wikipedia would simply show the text Hello World: %!PS /Courier % name the desired font 20 se…
Well, less can extract the text; so I don't see why that's an issue.
Re: Library-managed 'arXiv' spreads scientific advances rapidly and worldwide
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You don't understand a thing and that was the proof of it, at least for me. The process of peers evaluating a paper takes a lot of time because it cannot be automated and is serious, especially for the better journals. Of course bouncing people (referees) is part of the process, to find the better and/or most available one. The time of the actual reviewing does not alter either of the two other time sinks that I po…
"The time of the actual reviewing does not alter either of the two other time sinks that I posted. The median post acceptance to publication time for the journal of clinical neuroscience is over three months, and other journals head over a year." Hey, you started claiming two years, no it's three months. Three months is perfectly acceptable for quality peer-reviewing. For good papers from experience authors (who know…
You're not interpreting this correctly. This is not the time for review, this is once the paper has been reviewed and accepted. The journal has agreed to publish the paper, but there is still a significant delay before anyone actually gets to read it. This is why I'm saying it doesn't take two years to review the papers. It won't have done, but it still took that long between submission and the time others could actually read it.
Re: Library-managed 'arXiv' spreads scientific advances rapidly and worldwide
#127Is there any reason why a project like this wouldn't be open sourced? Follow up question, how does a site like this have a $500k annual budget? I was napkin calculating the costs of running this and couldn't get anywhere close to $500k without having extensive staff salaries.
Re: Library-managed 'arXiv' spreads scientific advances rapidly and worldwide
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a (PhD student) mathematician and every paper I've uploaded has included the TeX. I looked at about 10 papers in math at random, and 9/10 of them also included the TeX. But this isn't something I've looked for in the past. So I wonder: in your experience, about what percentage of papers on the arXiv have included the source?
Almost nobody in experimental life sciences uses Tex. My advisor refused to read anything that wasn't in MS Word.
Re: Library-managed 'arXiv' spreads scientific advances rapidly and worldwide
#129Can I just make a general plea? You should upload your paper to arXiv. When you do, please upload your source (tex, or word I imagine), as well as a PDF. For the blind, PDF is the worst possible format, and tex and word are the best formats. Don't hide, or lose, the blind-accessible version of your paper.
It would be great if arXiv upload screen said this. Not sure if it does or not.
Re: Library-managed 'arXiv' spreads scientific advances rapidly and worldwide
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you can almost always find a free version of a published and potentially pay-walled paper. On personal research, I've used it for exactly this, but since what I've seen was only preprints, I've often wondered about the final version. It looks like I'm not alone.[1] Do many or any of the arXiv papers get updates with the improvements that come from peer reviews? Is there a need for arXiv for finals or do publishers…
Publishers (in this subfield at least) usually demand ownership only on the final typeset manuscript PDFs. Those cannot be uploaded, but people are usually free to update the arxiv manuscript by uploading their own "final" version files, with content equivalent to the published one. In the corner where I come from, I'd say this is done most of the time, especially if there are major changes. In practice, people often…