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Popular preprint servers face closure because of money troubles

nature.com

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Re: Popular preprint servers face closure because of money troubles

#11

Post by PaulHoule »

jessriedel wrote: post #6
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

Even arXiv has struggled at times. Elsevier has a sustainable business because they force university libraries to pay big $$$. The big $$$ can be fed back into sales, lobbying politicians, and other activities that leave enough money that the executives behind it can get paid big $$$. Academic databases might cost 1/1000 as much to run as commercial journals, but then there isn't any surplus they can use to get rents…

When was was the last time the arXiv was actually at risk of not having enough money?

The time they laid me off in the mid-2000's.

Re: Popular preprint servers face closure because of money troubles

#12

Post by dangus »

I could be wrong here but I was frustrated at how the article never really gave a summary of what a preprint repository is.

I mean, I can guess from context that it’s a place to store scientific studies. But I don’t know its role or why it’s any different from throwing some files in a Dropbox folder or a static website.

Re: Popular preprint servers face closure because of money troubles

#13

Post by dbpatterson »

dangus wrote: post #12

I could be wrong here but I was frustrated at how the article never really gave a summary of what a preprint repository is. I mean, I can guess from context that it’s a place to store scientific studies. But I don’t know its role or why it’s any different from throwing some files in a Dropbox folder or a static website.

There are (at least) several goals:

1. persistence, which obviously is hurt by them running out of money. Dropbox links apparently die eventually, static websites bitrot, etc. Things put on arxiv can be trusted enough to put links to them in papers, if needed.

2. Discoverability. Pre-print archives send out digests (usually people subscribe to particular areas). It's a low-effort way to distribute them. Related, by having things semi-centralized, it's easier to discover papers (they get indexed by google scholar, for example...).

Maybe other benefits? Not sure.

Re: Popular preprint servers face closure because of money troubles

#14

Post by jessaustin »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3

Even arXiv has struggled at times. Elsevier has a sustainable business because they force university libraries to pay big $$$. The big $$$ can be fed back into sales, lobbying politicians, and other activities that leave enough money that the executives behind it can get paid big $$$. Academic databases might cost 1/1000 as much to run as commercial journals, but then there isn't any surplus they can use to get rents…

It isn't clear from TFA, but COS might be going for that "surplus", themselves. When all their users were signing up, were they informed that what was free then would soon cost thousands of dollars?

Re: Popular preprint servers face closure because of money troubles

#16

Post by btrettel »

leemailll wrote: post #2

This sadly is a common theme for academic databases. Many databases were running on funding money. And after the funding gone, so is the database

Academics should make their databases easily archivable then.

One thing I don't like about COS preprint sites is how much they rely on JavaScript. I'm not sure the Wayback Machine can archive them correctly. It might take a specialized bot.

The Wayback Machine doesn't work right at all on one of my own COS preprints: https://web.archive.org/web/20200211103826/https://engrxiv.o...

Maybe I should contact ArchiveTeam...

Re: Popular preprint servers face closure because of money troubles

#20

Post by hyperion2010 »

I have had my doubts about COS's technical foundations and strategic abilities and this and a number of the comments here do nothing to reassure me, especially in light of the glowing stories about dedication to long term sustainability that I have been told by some of their representatives.
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