ArXiv's Next Chapter

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47450478

“ArXiv declares independence from Cornell” (science.org)

811 points | 3 months ago | 291 comments

ArXiv is a good complement to the modern peer review, IMO. As long as someone "vouches" for you, and you adhere to its minimal standards, you're able to post a paper. Other readers can decide whether the paper is worth their attention, and whether the presented ideas or results are valuable.

It's also good that it doesn't gatekeep with the paywalls that you can pretty much only afford by affiliating yourself with a toll-paying institution.

Obviously, there are plenty of flaws with this system:

1. If you're associated with a brand (e.g., Google, MIT) or have a recognizable co-author (e.g., Yann LeCun), you'll get attention and citations no matter what.

2. "Vouching" can also just mean accepting someone's email request without ever having met or known them.

3. It puts the effort on the readers to decide whether each paper is valuable, and particularly scientifically valuable, for which most readers will be unequipped.

4. "Minimal standards" can be gamed by AI-generated submissions.

I'd love to see a synthesis of arXiv, open-access publishing and artifact reviews, like the following:

- Have a number of reviewers on retainer, or design a reward system similar to bug bounties. The reward mechanism probably shouldn't be based on money or allow a winner-takes-all strategy.

- Have a number of badges with respect to the quality and value of the paper. For example: validated by peers (i.e., reviewed by at least 3 peers with minimum borderline accept consensus), valuable (i.e., reviewed by at least 5 peers with a valuable indicator), etc.

- Allow vouched comments on the platform, and moderate for self-promotion, toxicity, etc. Obviously a big ask.

- Improve the "vouching" system, or add badges like "vouched by X people" or "vouched by established scientist".

Hope their new organization will implement some of these improvements.

Should charge AI for training on top of it or get them to donate. A small amount can fund them easily.

I'm always grateful to arXiv. It allows non-scientists like me to access high-quality papers anytime. Thank you, always

That worries me a bit. ArXiv was and is great and so useful to humanity, giving access to otherwise closed knowledge, hold by publishers cartel, that I would not like to see it is turning into a "non-profit" of OpenAI kind...