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alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

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Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#41

Post by aragilar »

Y_Y wrote: post #6
w-m wrote: post #4

Hey alphaxiv, you won’t let me claim some of my preprints, because there’s no match with the email address. Which there can’t be, as we’re only listing a generic first.last@org addresses in the papers. Tried the claiming process twice, nothing happened. Not all papers are on Orcid, so that doesn’t help. I think it’ll be hard growing a discussion platform, if there’s barriers of entry like that to even populate your p…

So you've put a fake email address on your papers? As in, one that you can't receive from? Why?

No, they used the email from the institute they worked at when the produced the paper.

They're no longer at that institute, and that email no longer exists (while some institutions give some leeway, I know of at least one major university which removes them the day the contract ends).

This is a common problem if you're providing services to academics and you've tied yourself to using emails as identifiers.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#42

Post by MereInterest »

gexaha wrote: post #14
chipdart wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you've put a fake email address on your papers? I think you're failing to understand the basics of the problem, and even the whole problem domain. Email addresses are not created/maintained for life. You can have an email address, them have your org change name and email provider switch, and not to mention that researchers leave research institutions and thus lose access to their accounts. You have multiple scen…

> You have multiple scenarios where papers can be published with authors using email addresses which they lose access to. Btw, why is it considered normal? I think it would be much better to mention an e-mail, to which you will have (more-or-less) permament access.

Here’s an example. I have a firstname.lastname@gmail.com address, which was intended to be permanent. Google turned on two-factor authentication, despite not having a second form of authentication available. Instead, they required the recovery address for 2FA. The recovery address was another Gmail address, which I haven’t used since 2010, and which also had 2FA turned on using its recovery address. That was an SBCGlobal address, a company which has long since been purchased by AT&T, and the email address is entirely defunct.

I place the blame here entirely on Google for misusing forms of identification. Two-factor authentication is having two locks on the same door, where recovery addresses are having two doors with separate locks. Using a recovery address for 2FA is absurd, and caused me to be locked out of my permanent email address.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#43

Post by acka »

atoav wrote: post #20
gexaha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have multiple scenarios where papers can be published with authors using email addresses which they lose access to. Btw, why is it considered normal? I think it would be much better to mention an e-mail, to which you will have (more-or-less) permament access.

Why would you expect any institution to support all email addresses of their ex-employees ad infinitum? This would be a security nightmare for them. It is pretty normal for universities to have some sort of identity managmemt system that automatically provisions emails when you are employed there and deprovision them once you are gone.

Why not have a system where students and staff have actual email inboxes but alumni have their email forwarded?

Most universities use a portal of some sort for easy access to personal information and preferences anyway, so it shouldn't be too difficult to limit access for alumni to only allow them to change a few personal details like name / address / phone number and the like, plus email forwarding settings. I think the extra cost is negligible compared to what universities already spend on alumni like newsletters, conferences, dinners, etc.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#44

Post by blackenedgem »

acka wrote: post #43
atoav wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you expect any institution to support all email addresses of their ex-employees ad infinitum? This would be a security nightmare for them. It is pretty normal for universities to have some sort of identity managmemt system that automatically provisions emails when you are employed there and deprovision them once you are gone.

Why not have a system where students and staff have actual email inboxes but alumni have their email forwarded? Most universities use a portal of some sort for easy access to personal information and preferences anyway, so it shouldn't be too difficult to limit access for alumni to only allow them to change a few personal details like name / address / phone number and the like, plus email forwarding settings. I think…

An awful lot of free student access programs revolve around the uni email address being accredited. Foe example Jetbrains will give you a full version of their products if you register with a uni email, then require you to verify it yearly.

If you forward emails automatically then you'd lose this accreditation. I suppose the solution would be an accreditatiom domain that forwards to your uni address only, but that's extra work now.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#45

Post by phreeza »

w-m wrote: post #39
phreeza wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you propose making claiming possible without the risk of hijacking/misrepresentation?

The data on which authors are part of which arxiv papers is already in the arXiv database, and in Google Scholar, and in other libraries. I appreciate that it's not an easy task to get that as a third party. But the burden should be on the operators of alphaxiv to figure out a solution for this platform to take off, not for me as a user?

Yea I agree it shouldn't be on you as a customer, was more asking out of curiosity.

I don't think Google scholar has this fully solved either, I've seen many misattributed papers there.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#46

Post by epanchin »

MereInterest wrote: post #42
gexaha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have multiple scenarios where papers can be published with authors using email addresses which they lose access to. Btw, why is it considered normal? I think it would be much better to mention an e-mail, to which you will have (more-or-less) permament access.

Here’s an example. I have a firstname.lastname@gmail.com address, which was intended to be permanent. Google turned on two-factor authentication, despite not having a second form of authentication available. Instead, they required the recovery address for 2FA. The recovery address was another Gmail address, which I haven’t used since 2010, and which also had 2FA turned on using its recovery address. That was an SBCGl…

“I place the blame on Google because I didn’t update my recovery address to one that worked”

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#47

Post by amadeuspagel »

Great idea.

- The frontpage should directly show the list of papers, like with HN. You shouldn't have to click on "trending" first. (When you are logged in, you see a list of featured papers on the homepage, which isn't as engaging as the "trending" page. Again, compare HN: Same homepage whether you're logged in or not.)

- Ranking shouldn't be based on comment activity, which ranks controversial papers, rather papers should be voted on like comments.

- It's slightly confusing that usernames allow spaces. It will also make it harder to implement some kind of @ functionality in the comments.

- Use HTML rather then PDF. Something that could be trivial with HTML, like clicking on an image to show a bigger version, requires you to awkwardly zoom in with PDF. With HTML, you would also have one column, which would fit better with the split paper/comments view.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#48

Post by [deleted] »

phreeza wrote: post #45
w-m wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data on which authors are part of which arxiv papers is already in the arXiv database, and in Google Scholar, and in other libraries. I appreciate that it's not an easy task to get that as a third party. But the burden should be on the operators of alphaxiv to figure out a solution for this platform to take off, not for me as a user?

Yea I agree it shouldn't be on you as a customer, was more asking out of curiosity. I don't think Google scholar has this fully solved either, I've seen many misattributed papers there.

[deleted]

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#49

Post by scarlehoff »

eigenket wrote: post #31
scarlehoff wrote: post #29

I believe this site is missing a very important thing, direct links to the different categories with a list of papers. This is at least how I (and I believe many others) browse arXiv. I open it up in the morning, scroll through a few categories and open a few papers that look interesting to me. I could see myself using alphaxiv for that, and then, if there's a comment section, I might even read it, and, who knows, le…

It sounds like what you want is scirate. As far as I understand from this post this new thing is just scirate but lacking the interface you're talking about here.

Indeed. Scirate (I didn't know about it) looks exactly like that.

Sadly, the last comments in HEP are more than 2 years old (which explains why I had never heard about it, it seems it never gained any traction)

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#50

Post by supriyo-biswas »

phreeza wrote: post #5
w-m wrote: post #4

Hey alphaxiv, you won’t let me claim some of my preprints, because there’s no match with the email address. Which there can’t be, as we’re only listing a generic first.last@org addresses in the papers. Tried the claiming process twice, nothing happened. Not all papers are on Orcid, so that doesn’t help. I think it’ll be hard growing a discussion platform, if there’s barriers of entry like that to even populate your p…

How would you propose making claiming possible without the risk of hijacking/misrepresentation?

The only way I see this working is for paper authors to include their public keys in the paper; preferably as metadata and have them produce a signed message using their private key which allows them to claim the paper.

While the grandparent is understandably disappointed with the current implementation, relying on emails was always doomed from the start.

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