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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

#181

Post by cma »

data_maan wrote: post #148

What I don't like about this is that they had to build a separate system. Why wasn't it possible to contact arXiv and do this in collaboration with them?

Seems like it could just fill the role of the exploitative publishers if it takes off. Community does the work (scientists volunteer peer review), site gets the profit and locks everyone in due to network effects of being the hub for discussion. Eventually starts charging for boosting your paper with guaranteed return in citations etc. I'm just assuming it is venture backed due to having a team of advisors and stuff and about page being LinkedIn but sorry if I'm off on that and it is nonprofit or something.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#182

Post by data_maan »

cma wrote: post #181
data_maan wrote: post #148

What I don't like about this is that they had to build a separate system. Why wasn't it possible to contact arXiv and do this in collaboration with them?

Seems like it could just fill the role of the exploitative publishers if it takes off. Community does the work (scientists volunteer peer review), site gets the profit and locks everyone in due to network effects of being the hub for discussion. Eventually starts charging for boosting your paper with guaranteed return in citations etc. I'm just assuming it is venture backed due to having a team of advisors and stuff…

This is precisely my worry!

While it says "a Stanford project" at the top, this could mean anything. It could in particular allude to the fact that Stanford professors are advisor.

The advisors are well-known professors, but some, like Sebastian Thrun, have an entrepreneurial background, so probably a company sits behind this.

For me, the entire project gets a NO CONFIDENCE vote because I can't tell who they are, who pays for moderation (which they claim to do etc.).

I'd feel much more at ease if this was done by arXiv, or at least endorsed by arXiv.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#183

Post by lucioperca »

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.

Probably it would be better to merge the project with Arxiv and tie it to the accounts there.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#184

Post by gwern »

generationP wrote: post #153
gwern wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I increasingly recommend against the Arxiv HTML version. I thought it had an acceptable start and they would fix the remaining problems and rapidly become on par with the PDF, but that seems to not be happening. The HTML version is seriously buggy; and the worst part is, a lot of those bugs take the form of silently dropping or hiding content. It's bad enough when half the paper is gone, because at least you notice t…

I think development on the TeX-to-HTML compiler has slowed down at some point, and it's far from perfect yet. Some of the issues are probably HTML5 limitations, unlikely to be fixed any time soon (unless one wants formulas to become graphics). But there is another problem: It takes too long to load on mobile and doesn't reflow. I thought mobile was one of the reasons people wanted HTML in the first place!

> Some of the issues are probably HTML5 limitations, unlikely to be fixed any time soon (unless one wants formulas to become graphics).

You can convert a lot of formulas into either Mathjax/Katex-style fonts or MathML, or even just HTML+Unicode. (I get a very long way with pure HTML+Unicode+CSS on Gwern.net, and didn't even have to write a TeX-to-HTML compiler - just a long LLM prompt: https://github.com/gwern/gwern.net/blob/master/build/latex2u... )

But that's missing the point. Who cares about all of the refinements like reflow or pretty equations, when you are routinely serving massively corrupted and silently incomplete HTML versions? I don't care how good the typography is in your book if it's missing 5% of pages at random and also doesn't have any page numbers or table of contents...

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#185

Post by westurner »

westurner wrote: post #154
michaelmior wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that the paper would have be changed regardless, including the full email address is a relatively easy solution. ORCID is probably easier than requiring public keys and a lot of journals already require them.

W3D Decentralized Identifiers are designed for this use case.

Decentralized identifier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_identifier

W3C TR did-core: "DID Decentralized Identifiers 1.0": https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/

W3C TR did-use-cases: "Use Cases and Requirements for Decentralized Identifiers" https://www.w3.org/TR/did-use-cases/

"Email addresses are not good 'permanent' identifiers for accounts" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38823817#38831952

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#186

Post by michaelmior »

westurner wrote: post #154
michaelmior wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that the paper would have be changed regardless, including the full email address is a relatively easy solution. ORCID is probably easier than requiring public keys and a lot of journals already require them.

W3D Decentralized Identifiers are designed for this use case.

I'm sure that would work, but most researchers already have an ORCID are required to provide it other places anyway.

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#188

Post by barmstrong »

karencarits wrote: post #64

There is also https://pubpeer.com/ I worry that fragmentation of this space might not be beneficial, so it would be nice if these services could collaborate in some way, perhaps using activitypub or something

Same with https://www.researchhub.com/

Re: alphaXiv: Open research discussion on top of arXiv

#189

Post by westurner »

michaelmior wrote: post #186
westurner wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

W3D Decentralized Identifiers are designed for this use case.

I'm sure that would work, but most researchers already have an ORCID are required to provide it other places anyway.

In comparison to DIDs, ORCIDs aren't sk/pk pairs that can be used to cryptographically sign.

A person can generate (and optionally register) additional DIDs if they please.

A person can request additional ORCIDs if they please

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