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Arxiv.org reaches a milestone and a reckoning

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Arxiv.org reaches a milestone and a reckoning

#11

Post by mananaysiempre »

adamnemecek wrote: post #2

I legit don’t get how come there isn’t some government funded publication platform. No other endeavor has as much bang for buck. Arxiv needs $2.5m a year https://arxiv.org/about/reports-financials which is chump change.

Funding for government-funded archival projects tends to begin with a bang but gradually fall through the cracks due to the project becoming politically unexciting, frequently with all data just completely lost one day with no warning, so I’d be disinclined to trust any such initiative. The French government made an attempt with HAL[1], but given how INRIA just unceremoniously deleted the software repository Gforge with no backups or redirects (and broke every GCC build out there, because the GCC dependency ISL was hosted on it[2]), I’m not sure it’ll survive once the nationalistic fervor is exhausted. Besides, a country-specific repository seems to be strictly worse than a country-neutral one.

On the other hand, PubMed exists.

My guess is, for a preprint archive, network effects are paramount, and ArXiv was there first. It’s not directly a government project, but is still funded by US government grants and hosted by Stanford (now that the international mirror network is shut down, which does give me a slightly jittery feeling).

[1] https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/

[2] https://groups.google.com/g/isl-development/c/JGaMo2VUu_8

Re: Arxiv.org reaches a milestone and a reckoning

#13

Post by mananaysiempre »

ahelwer wrote: post #9
thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't understand how there can so much money to throw at startups and not one person to "adpot-a-highway" for a year.

Because you cannot rely on the rich to fund common goods through voluntary donations. It is not a good idea and never will be. Other than some medical research, charity has never solved a single social ill.

The introductory econ course I once took mentioned the (apparently classic) lighthouse study[1], though now that I did a web search it doesn’t seem that unequivocal. Many 19th century projects were funded through public participation (the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty come to mind), even if the social value of some of them was questionable (though I think some railroads were built this way too?). Before that, I seem to remember that the Netherlands was made habitable (from essentially a coastal swamp) largely through private enterprise. In more recent times, the late engineer turned entrepreneur Dmitrij Zimin funded a significant portion of the Russian hard sciences in the 2000s and 2010s (after Soros grants got some of the people through the Soviet collapse in the 1990s and then ceased), though the problem is still far from solved.

It is peculiar that the model of fundraising via newspaper ads and a couple of wealthy donors (including in some cases the national government, yes) doesn’t seem to have survived past the world wars, but to say that private funding never resulted in any social good is preposterous. Something has happened in the last century or so, but it’s trickier than that.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/724895

Re: Arxiv.org reaches a milestone and a reckoning

#14

Post by goodcanadian »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #11
adamnemecek wrote: post #2

I legit don’t get how come there isn’t some government funded publication platform. No other endeavor has as much bang for buck. Arxiv needs $2.5m a year https://arxiv.org/about/reports-financials which is chump change.

Funding for government-funded archival projects tends to begin with a bang but gradually fall through the cracks due to the project becoming politically unexciting, frequently with all data just completely lost one day with no warning, so I’d be disinclined to trust any such initiative. The French government made an attempt with HAL[1], but given how INRIA just unceremoniously deleted the software repository Gforge w…

The Canadian Astronomy Data Centre is a good counter example of a successful government funded archival project:

https://www.cadc-ccda.hia-iha.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/en/

It probably helps that it is run under the auspices of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics.

Re: Arxiv.org reaches a milestone and a reckoning

#15

Post by onion2k »

henrydark wrote: post #5

The two sites I start my day with: hacker news and arxiv.

Why have you never submitted an article you've found on Arxiv to HN? Are you not finding anything interesting there? (Based on https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=henrydark ... I guess you could use a different account?)

Re: Arxiv.org reaches a milestone and a reckoning

#16

Post by consp »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #13
ahelwer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you cannot rely on the rich to fund common goods through voluntary donations. It is not a good idea and never will be. Other than some medical research, charity has never solved a single social ill.

The introductory econ course I once took mentioned the (apparently classic) lighthouse study[1], though now that I did a web search it doesn’t seem that unequivocal. Many 19th century projects were funded through public participation (the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty come to mind), even if the social value of some of them was questionable (though I think some railroads were built this way too?). Before that…

> largely through private enterprise

Calling a hoogheemraadschap a private enterprise is calling a government one. If it acts like a government it is one even if it is not benefitting everyone equally (still no difference though).

Re: Arxiv.org reaches a milestone and a reckoning

#17

Post by onion2k »

manquer wrote: post #4
adamnemecek wrote: post #2

I legit don’t get how come there isn’t some government funded publication platform. No other endeavor has as much bang for buck. Arxiv needs $2.5m a year https://arxiv.org/about/reports-financials which is chump change.

Arxiv is a indirect threat to publications. Publications lobby the government and also influence university grants and other bodies. We still don't have a proper open /free tax filing too from the IRS or tax computed by IRS only for us to verify/confirm as in some of other countries, primarily because intuit (and others) lobbied to make sure the government would never develop one (encoded in law no less), so it is no…

Arxiv is a indirect threat to publications.

It's incredibly annoying that publications try to continue to exist in order to act as a gatekeeper to exclusive papers. If journals added real value by peer-reviewing, collating, curating, offering editorial opinion etc then the fact papers are also available in the raw state somewhere else wouldn't much of a threat.

Re: Arxiv.org reaches a milestone and a reckoning

#18

Post by eecc »

consp wrote: post #16
mananaysiempre wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The introductory econ course I once took mentioned the (apparently classic) lighthouse study[1], though now that I did a web search it doesn’t seem that unequivocal. Many 19th century projects were funded through public participation (the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty come to mind), even if the social value of some of them was questionable (though I think some railroads were built this way too?). Before that…

> largely through private enterprise Calling a hoogheemraadschap a private enterprise is calling a government one. If it acts like a government it is one even if it is not benefitting everyone equally (still no difference though).

Isn’t it essentially a Corporation in its original definition where they were established for a given purpose (not just “maximize shareholder value” but rather something like “build and maintain some infrastructure” or whatnot)

Re: Arxiv.org reaches a milestone and a reckoning

#20

Post by WHA8m »

ahelwer wrote: post #9
thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't understand how there can so much money to throw at startups and not one person to "adpot-a-highway" for a year.

Because you cannot rely on the rich to fund common goods through voluntary donations. It is not a good idea and never will be. Other than some medical research, charity has never solved a single social ill.

Discard the last sentence. You're talking in absolute terms and that's leading nowhere. It's been some time, but this is what came to my mind immediately: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuggerei

That you can not rely on the rich to put their money in good use with the general public in mind is right. Does it happen? Yes. Does it happen often? Definitely not.

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