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ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

science.org

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Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#221

Post by [deleted] »

Aurornis wrote: post #155
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…

> and with just enough moderation to not devolve into spam and chaos arXiv has become a target for grifters in other domains like health and supplements. I’ve seen several small scale health influencers who ChatGPT some “papers” and then upload them to arXiv, then cite arXiv as proof of their “published research”. It’s not fooling anyone who knows how research work but it’s very convincing to an average person who th…

[deleted]

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#222

Post by prepend »

OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote: post #166
kingstnap wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

arXiv doesn't need much. All they do is host static pdfs uploaded by someone else with free CDN services from Fastly [0]. I'm sure they could get academics to volunteer moderation services as well. In reality you could host the entire thing for well under $50k/year in hardware and storage if someone else is providing a free CDN. Their costs could be incredibly low. But just like Wikipedia I see them very likely very…

> arXiv doesn't need much. All they do is host static pdfs uploaded by someone else with free CDN services from Fastly [0]. I'm sure they could get academics to volunteer moderation services as well. This just isn't true. arXiv nowadays has to deal with major moderation demands due to the influx of absolute drivel, spam, and slop that non-academics and less-than-quality academics have been uploading to the site. Mode…

Volunteer moderators are a valid option. And I think may work out better than paid employees.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#223

Post by pessimizer »

binsquare wrote: post #41
kolinko wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article lists the reasons quite clearly.

For everyone else, The reason is because arxiv is growing significantly leading to 297,000 deficit in operating costs for 2025 alone. Corenell has helped with donation a long with other organizations that pay membership fees. As a result, donors + leaders of arxiv think it's best to spin off to increase funding.

> The reason is because arxiv is growing significantly leading to 297,000 deficit in operating costs for 2025 alone.

Dollars? So 300 people's cable bill? That's basically nothing. They're spending too much, and it's still nothing, and the solution is going to be to privatize it and eventually loot it.

You can't hand out a collection plate and get $300K for Arxiv? Your local neighborhood church can. Civilization is obviously collapsing.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#224

Post by swiftcoder »

ryukoposting wrote: post #194
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.

Silicon Valley is the only place in the United States where $300K is even close to the "middle" of anything. I just moved to SV a few months ago from the Midwest (and not a particularly cheap part of it). Telling my coworkers who aren't from the US what a house costs in Wisconsin, you'd have thought I was the one who moved from a foreign country.

> Silicon Valley is the only place in the United States where $300K is even close to the "middle" of anything.

It does heavily cluster around SV, for sure, but Seattle/NewYork/Boston/Arlington will all get you there, and Chicago/Austin/etc aren't all that far behind at this point

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#226

Post by godelski »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #212
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…

> Unfortunately, over the years, arXiv has become something like a "venue" in its own right, particularly in ML, with some decently cited papers never formally published and "preprints" being cited left and right. This has been a common practice in physics, especially the more theoretical branches, since the inception of arXiv. Senior researchers write a paper draft, and then send copies to some of their peers, get a…

And this is really how it should be. Honestly the only thing I want arxiv to do is become more like open review. Allow comments by peers and some better linking to data and project pages.

It works for physics because physicists are very rigorous. So papers don't change very much. It also works for ML because everyone is moving very fast that it's closer to doing open research. Sloppier, but as long as the readers are other experts then it's generally fine.

I think research should really just be open. It helps everyone. The AI slop and mass publishing is exploiting our laziness; evaluating people on quantity rather than quality. I'm not sure why people are so resistant to making this change. Yes, it's harder, but it has a lot of benefits. And at the end of the day it doesn't matter if a paper is generated if it's actually a quality paper (not in just how it reads, but the actual research). Slop is slop and we shouldn't want slop regardless. But if we evaluate on quality and everything is open it becomes much easier to figure out who is producing slop, collision rings, plagiarist rings, and all that. A little extra work for a lot of benefits. But we seem to be willing to put in a lot of work to avoid doing more work

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#227

Post by prepend »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #200

I am sure it’s a dumb idea but why is there a problem for say the National Science Foundation or something to run a website that replicates ArXiv - if you are from an accredited university or whatever you can publish papers, fulfilling the “pdf store” function. Then getting peer reviewed is a harder process but one can see some form of credit on the site coming from doing a decent reviewers job. I suspect I am missin…

The moderation is difficult but not unprecedented.

I think NIST hosts the CVE repo (through a contract to MITRE)

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#228

Post by davnicwil »

vulcan01 wrote: post #216
davnicwil wrote: post #19

Very unrelated to the article, but I think 'arXiv' as a brand is bad, and really detrimental to what the institution aims to accomplish. That is, it's not readily parseable, it really gives an insider term vibe - like this isn't for you if you don't already know what it means or how you should read or say it. It sort of reminds me of the overuse of latin and latinate terms generally in the old professions and, well,…

By your criterion, Google, Apple, and Amazon are terrible names as well.

> if you don't already know what it means or how you should read or say it

Google I'll grant you, though it's still pretty phonetic and easy to read. The other two not at all, they're incredibly well known instantaneously recognisable words.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#229

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

prepend wrote: post #222
OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> arXiv doesn't need much. All they do is host static pdfs uploaded by someone else with free CDN services from Fastly [0]. I'm sure they could get academics to volunteer moderation services as well. This just isn't true. arXiv nowadays has to deal with major moderation demands due to the influx of absolute drivel, spam, and slop that non-academics and less-than-quality academics have been uploading to the site. Mode…

Volunteer moderators are a valid option. And I think may work out better than paid employees.

volunteer moderators are a valid option however this is also the way peer review works and the system is unfortunately very problematic and exploitative.

First pass sanity checks are also a lot less fun than proper peer review so paying moderators to do it is probably safer in the long run or else you end up with cliques of moderators who only keep moderating out of spite/personal vendettas against certain groups or fields.

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