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ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

science.org

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Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#71

Post by bonoboTP »

swiftcoder wrote: post #66
vl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is unclear why they need stuff of 27 and 6.7 million to operate essentially static hosting website in 2026.

The "essentially static hosting" isn't the cost centre (although with 5 million MAU, it's nothing to sneeze at). The real costs are on the input side - they have an ingestion pipeline that ensures standardised paper formatting and so on, plus at least some degree of human review.

Do you mean that the CPU compute cost of turning latex into pdf/HTML is the main cost?

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#72

Post by stared »

frankling_ wrote: post #40

The recent announcement to reject review articles and position papers already smelled like a shift towards a more "opinionated" stance, and this move smells worse. The vacuum that arXiv originally filled was one of a glorified PDF hosting service with just enough of a reputation to allow some preprints to be cited in a formally published paper, and with just enough moderation to not devolve into spam and chaos. It ha…

> arXiv fulfills its function better the less power it has as an institution

It is an interesting instance of the rule of least power, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_least_power.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#74

Post by lou1306 »

swiftcoder wrote: post #66
vl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is unclear why they need stuff of 27 and 6.7 million to operate essentially static hosting website in 2026.

The "essentially static hosting" isn't the cost centre (although with 5 million MAU, it's nothing to sneeze at). The real costs are on the input side - they have an ingestion pipeline that ensures standardised paper formatting and so on, plus at least some degree of human review.

The PDF formatting is all but standardised. They ingest LaTeX sources, which is formatted according to the authors' whims (most likely, according to whatever journal or conference they just submitted the manuscript to). I'll concede that the (relatively novel) HTML formatter gives paper a more uniform appearance. They also integrate a bunch of external services for e.g., citation metrics and cross-references. Still hard to justify such a high cost to operate, but eh.

Also, the "human review" is a simple moderation process [1]. It usually does not dig into the submission's scientific merits.

[1] https://info.arxiv.org/help/moderation/index.html

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#75

Post by swiftcoder »

bonoboTP wrote: post #71
swiftcoder wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "essentially static hosting" isn't the cost centre (although with 5 million MAU, it's nothing to sneeze at). The real costs are on the input side - they have an ingestion pipeline that ensures standardised paper formatting and so on, plus at least some degree of human review.

Do you mean that the CPU compute cost of turning latex into pdf/HTML is the main cost?

No, I mean that the pipeline requires software engineers to build/maintain, and salaries are (as in basically every tech organisation) the dominant cost

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#78

Post by bonoboTP »

aragilar wrote: post #34
koakuma-chan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it just hosts pdfs, no?

It does do a fair amount of filtering of submissions, and it's a long term archive (e.g. for the next 100+ years). I suspect both (but with the former dominating) are the issue.

Just put out a torrent and people of the sort at r/DataHoarder will keep it alive for longer than bureaucrats.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#79

Post by bonoboTP »

freehorse wrote: post #38
koakuma-chan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it just hosts pdfs, no?

Well, technically, it can also compile your tex file if you upload the tex file instead of the pdf directly, which helps a lot in standardizing the stylistic structure between preprints. Most other repositories are wild west and inconsistent. I really appreciate the similarity in style applied to most preprints there. Moreover, this means you can also download not just the pdf, but the source tex file to, which can b…

The similarity in style comes from conference and journal templates, not from Arxiv. You can style your paper with latex in any style, Arxiv doesn't care. On Arxiv you mostly see preprints that people submit to conferences and journals and they enforce the style.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#80

Post by bonoboTP »

swiftcoder wrote: post #75
bonoboTP wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean that the CPU compute cost of turning latex into pdf/HTML is the main cost?

No, I mean that the pipeline requires software engineers to build/maintain, and salaries are (as in basically every tech organisation) the dominant cost

Then drop it and make people upload a pdf and a zip of the latex sources.

Most people I talk to hate that pipeline and spend a lot of debug hours on it when Arxiv can't compile what overleaf and your local latex install can.

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