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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

#71

Post by Retr0id »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #47

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…

> rather papers should be voted on like comments.

I don't think this is an inherently better approach, but maybe there should be an option for different ranking mechanisms. You could also rank by things like cite-frequency, cite-recency, "cite pagerank", etc.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#72

Post by msteffen »

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.

That is just not always possible. An example that should be familiar to HN: I worked for a period at startup, and used my email at that startup (my only work email at the time, as that’s where I was working!). Then the startup ran out of money money and was sold. Hence the email no longer worked.

Should I have waited until the startup had more revenue? We were profitable at the time (we were B2B and the layoffs did us in)

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#74

Post by [deleted] »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #50
phreeza wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#75

Post by TibbityFlanders »

auggierose wrote: post #19
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…

Upload a new version of your paper on arxiv, this time with an email address that works.

[dead]

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#76

Post by parpfish »

noobermin wrote: post #10

This seems like a horrible idea. I know we need an alternative to peer review but an online comment section feels like something worse than that.

The whole thing gives my anxiety.

Writing a paper and dealing with the inane requests from three reviewers was already frustrating and stressful. Now you open up a never ending review process of random people making demands (“unless you do X follow up analysis, this is worthless”).

also you need to be able to say a paper/project is done and let yourself move on. If your job turns into “respond to feedback on every paper you’ve ever written, every day” you’ll never start anything new.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#77

Post by parpfish »

tc4v wrote: post #28
geysersam wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you feel that? I think it seems excellent. Comments will be scrutinized and sorted by the community. People can choose if they want to participate in the discussion under their own names or not. I don't know how this page organizes moderation, but I imagine there will be some kind of moderation like on most online discussion forums.

But it's a very difficult problem. Am open forum offers a platform to troll and misinformation. You could pretend that the community will be able to filter this out but I seriously doubt this project is equipt to fight against bots/fake accounts better than huge companies like twitter and facebook.

Agreed. Journals have a hard time getting quality reviews from known scientists working in the field. Opening it up to randoms will be a nightmare.

Remember all that hype around LK-99 room temp superconduction a few months back? The substantive scientific discussion would absolutely be drown out by curious laymen and/or grifters

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#78

Post by sundarurfriend »

I wish for either:

1) Zoom buttons just for the paper - the article text is often tiny, and zooming in with the browser messes up the page layout and makes the page practically unusable.

OR

2) A simple direct button to download the PDF directly. This would alleviate the zoom problem since I can view it in my local PDF reader with the best settings for me. Having to go to arxiv to download the PDF for every paper would be a nuisance over time though, so a button in the top bar would make the experience a lot better.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#79

Post by Y_Y »

qwertox wrote: post #59
Sophira wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say that John Smith at XYZ Corp has authored a paper. The company obviously wants recognition and so they use their corporate email address "jsmith@xyz.com". John has since moved on and is earning more at ABC Corp instead. XYZ Corp has duly reclaimed John's old email address, and John cannot receive emails at said address any longer. This is the situation the OP is in. It was never a "fake email address". They…

Ok, so they used a template on the paper, namely "{first}.{last}@hhi.fraunhofer.de", while the email addresses, if the names are applied to the template, do in fact yield valid email addresses. It sounded as if they were using "john.doe@hhi.fraunhofer.de" while in reality it was an invalid email address (" because there’s no match with the email address "), that he would have tried to claim co-authorship via his "rea…

This is what I was asking about and I thank you and GP for clarifying the situation. There also send to be an unnecessary flamewar about the impermanence of email addresses generally, that's an unfortunate accident.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#80

Post by Y_Y »

crvdgc wrote: post #18
Y_Y wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Preprints are not required to be fully typeset and publishable. In some cases, literally "first.last@org" is used as a placeholder for email addresses (to be replaced in typesetting). This is more like a mismatch between "fully edited open-acess papers" and "trying to use arxiv preprints as an approximation of the former".

For the record, at least in my field Arxiv is where the action happens and journals are an afterthought. I don't put placeholders for contact details in my preprints because 1) the adresses likely won't change between drafts and 2) lots of readers are going to be reading that version so I want them to have access to the real info.

Of course most of that is moot for professional scientists because you likely know (or at least be able to find out about) the authors already. For example some papers have old non-working email addresses for the authors who have since moved institution. It's not a problem, since I'll just look them up by name if necessary and usetheir current email.

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