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ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

science.org

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Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#171

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

bonoboTP wrote: post #121
domoritz wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arxiv can recompile latex to support accessibility and html. Going to pdf submissions would be a major step backward.

Make it an external service then, and leave the thing that's already working great to just be. The reason authors like and use arxiv is that it gives 1) a timestamp, 2) a standardized citable ID, and 3) stable hosting of the pdf. And readers like the no-nonsense single click download of the pdf and a barebones consistent website look. All else is a side show.

You have to keep in mind that an increasing portion of their time and labor is going towards moderation and filtering due to a mass influx of nonsensical AI generated papers, non-academic numerology-tier hackery, and other useless drivel.

Spinning the service off forces other the labor out onto other universities rather than leaving them to solely Cornell

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#172

Post by PaulHoule »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #145
0x3f wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit more complex than an S3 bucket though because the value comes from the reputation network, which can't really be replicated easily. Though, saying that, I suppose all the reputation data is kind of public. Apart from emails/accounts.

> It's a bit more complex than an S3 bucket It’s even less. I would bet if it’s not now, for the vast majority of its life it was a machine at someone’s desk at Cornell.

When I was involved it was an x86 machine in a rack in Rhodes Hall.

I had a copy of the whole thing under my desk though in Olin Library on a Pentium 3 machine from IBM that was built like a piece of military hardware. In April the sun would shine in the windows of my office, the HVAC system was unable to cool my office, and temperatures would soar above 100F and I'd be sitting there in a tank top and drinking a lot of water and sports drinks and visitors would ask me how I could stand it.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#174

Post by whiplash451 »

I'm not sure why we're so focused on filtering what gets into arxiv (which is an uphill battle and DOA at this point) vs fixing the indexing, i.e. the page rank of academia.

Google "sorted out" a messy web with pagerank. Academic papers link to each others. What prevents us from building a ranking from there?

I'm conscious I might be over-simplifying things, but curious to see what I am missing.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#175

Post by groundzeros2015 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #172
groundzeros2015 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a bit more complex than an S3 bucket It’s even less. I would bet if it’s not now, for the vast majority of its life it was a machine at someone’s desk at Cornell.

When I was involved it was an x86 machine in a rack in Rhodes Hall. I had a copy of the whole thing under my desk though in Olin Library on a Pentium 3 machine from IBM that was built like a piece of military hardware. In April the sun would shine in the windows of my office, the HVAC system was unable to cool my office, and temperatures would soar above 100F and I'd be sitting there in a tank top and drinking a lot…

Thanks for confirming. We need to stop marketing for AWS by talking about the ability to use the internet in AWS branded product terms.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#176

Post by mastermage »

auggierose wrote: post #37
mastermage wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zenodo is more for IT Papers and also datasets isn't it?

It can host large datasets as well, yes. It is hosted by CERN, so it is not specifically IT in any way. It also allows you to restrict access to the files of your submission. It has no requirements to submit your LaTeX sources, any PDF will be fine. There are also no restrictions on who can publish. You'll get a DOI, of course. Everything published on arXiv could also be published on Zenodo, but not the other way aro…

oh interesting I didnt know this

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#177

Post by justin66 »

swiftcoder wrote: post #91
mort96 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salaries in the US are so bonkers. Everywhere else outside of the US, $300,000 is an outlandish high salary. To call it "mid to high" is insane.

Even in the states, it’s more a distortion caused by the big tech centres. A software engineer in Ohio doesn’t command that kind of salary, but in San Francisco or Seattle that’ll buy you a moderately-senior engineer. And while academic salaries are generally not great, tenured professors at big universities tend to make a fair bit (plus a lot more vacation time and perks than is normal in the US)

> A software engineer in Ohio doesn’t command that kind of salary, but in San Francisco or Seattle that’ll buy you a moderately-senior engineer.

On the other hand, a CEO of a well-known nonprofit might command that kind of salary in Ohio. People often underestimate how much the leaders of nonprofits pay themselves.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#180

Post by jballanc »

PaulHoule wrote: post #169
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…

Review papers are interesting. Bibliometrics reveal that they are highly cited. Internal data we had at arXiv 20 years ago show they are highly read. Reading review papers is a big part of the way you go from a civilian to an expert with a PhD. On the other hand, they fall through the cracks of the normal methods of academic evaluation. They create a lot of value for people but they are not likely to advance your car…

I exited academia for industry 15 years ago, and since then I haven't had nearly as much time to read review papers as I would like. For that reason, my view may be a bit outdated, but one thing I remember finding incredibly useful about review papers is that they provided a venue for speculation.

In the typical "experimental report" sort of paper, the focus is typically narrowed to a knifes edge around the hypothesis, the methods, the results, and analysis. Yes, there is the "Introduction" and a "Discussion", but increasingly I saw "Introductions" become a venue to do citation bartering (I'll cite your paper in the intro to my next paper if you cite that paper in the intro to your next paper) and "Discussion" turn into a place to float your next grant proposal before formal scoring.

Review papers, on the other hand, were more open to speculation. I remember reading a number that were framed as "here's what has been reported, here's what that likely means...and here's where I think the field could push forward in meaningful ways". Since the veracity of a review is generally judged on how well it covers and summarizes what's already been reported, and since no one is getting their next grant from a review, there's more space for the author to bring in their own thoughts and opinions.

I agree that LLMs have largely removed the need for review papers as a reference for the current state of a field...but I'll miss the forward-looking speculation.

Science is staring down the barrel of a looming crisis that looks like an echo chamber of epic proportions, and the only way out is to figure out how to motivate reporting negative results and sharing speculative outsider thinking.

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