ArXiv's Next Chapter

Join the discussion

• Hacker News
• This is exactly the play book that messed up scientific communication last time. Journals and research societies run by researchers and their institutions was spun off, sold, and made independent which in turn made it possible for a few publishers to gobble up everything.
  by tokai
• I have always liked arXiv's articles on information science and library science. I hope they continue publishing quality research.
  by NishanStepak
• Any examples or greatest hits you would care to share?
  by themikejr
• 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.

  by TomasBM
• >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.

  You say it as if replication crisis doesn't exist and publish or perish is not a thing.

  by GoblinSlayer
• You can even combine arXiv and peer review very neatly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48744030
  by gspr
• I volunteered for a project [1] with roughly this philosophy. Traditional publishing currently serves three purposes:

  - Organise peer feedback - Publish the work - Recognise good work, helping with both discovery and credit

  That latter part especially is what allows publishers to charge the ridiculous markup that they do.

  But with "modern" technology, feedback and publishing really doesn't require all that infrastructure - email and arXiv can easily be used to self-organise that. So we built a system of recognition that does not block publication, and can be used as a layer on top of arXiv and any other venue, allowing peers to vouch ("endorse") for a work.

  I had even proposed and implemented an integration for arXiv Labs that got accepted, but then never merged. I should follow up on that...

  [1] https://plaudit.pub/

  by Vinnl
• I think it's a great source for good information for specifics, but must know how to find the good papers and read them.
  by mahirsaid
• 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...
  by piokoch
• openai had billionaire "donors" who understood the company was going to operate as a PBC with a positive return for them instead of a true nonprofit.

  the heel turn to unlimited for profit was only possible because of their unique structure and the fact they were already selling commercial products. arxiv is not selling anything so theres no financial incentive to take over.

  by tancop
• The big challenge will maybe be governance more than infrastructure : staying community driven while becoming an independent nonprofit is not trivial
  by latentframe
• Thought-provoking closing paragraph from the linked Cornel Chronicle article about the transition:

  “It’s now difficult to prepare for the world three months from now if the median LLM-produced computer science paper is better than that produced by the median grad student.”

  https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2026/06/digital-research-re...

  by pbronez
• "Morrisett also said that arXiv needed to be more nimble when it came to hiring – and paying – staff than was possible under the Cornell umbrella."

  IOW, it's hard to hire the software engineers at the University payscale.

  by planetoftofu
• Should charge AI for training on top of it or get them to donate. A small amount can fund them easily.
  by rw2
• as if they would pay.... they would pirate the contents as they already did
  by nok22kon
• It would be nice if the corporations pay for the bandwidth. As arXiv corpus hosted on GCP, network charge cannot be small.
  by planetoftofu
• Part of the promise of open access and open science is that the information is free and open to all. Including robots.

  I submit to open things because I want my material to be openly available. If I wanted restrictions, I would submit to gated journals.

  by prepend
• Papers submitted to arXiv under its most permissive license should always be free, as in beer, speech, freedom. For researchers that contribute to it, that is the intention for a reason. It is to serve public and corporate good without restriction.

  This isn't me siding with AI companies by the way; it's a slippery slope argument.

  by hodgehog11
• That would be a trap. It's healthier for a non-profit to have many small funders than a few large ones.
  by jltsiren
• Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47450478

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

  811 points | 3 months ago | 291 comments

  by WalterGR
• I'm always grateful to arXiv. It allows non-scientists like me to access high-quality papers anytime. Thank you, always
  by jdw64
• I am thankful for arXiv only made minor adjustments to its UI over the years, and I hope arXiv keep it that way.
  by infinet
• There’s a lot of stuff on Researchgate. And with the evolution of European grants, there are a few publicly-available repositories, like hal.science (funded by the French government and the default repository for public research in France, I think you have to be with some kind of research institution so it’s not quite as open as arxiv but there are plenty of good articles there).
  by kergonath
• It is also valuable for scientists as it is often a 'directors cut' version of the paper. Journal submissions are heavy edited and shortened to fit into the page limits.
  by xdertz
• I always struggle to figure out what role arXiv should play in my information diet. On the one hand I support Open Access research. On the other hand, peer review is vital, and a substantial quantity of “papers” on arXiv are just blog posts in a LaTeX trench coat.
  by m-hodges
• Peer review WAS vital for a long time. Maybe the world looks different now, maybe LLMs can find value in things better than humans. When you make an assumption it's good to think about why you do so, in this case it seems to be for historical reasons.
  by augment_me
• For academia people who care about publication, arxiv is more like a place to claim a spot before others do and before a paper gets accepted somewhere. It's also easier to get open-access publications from arxiv, as some journals are still behind paywalls.
  by yiyingzhang
• The bibliography is more important, imo, than the peer review. I get the most use of arxiv surfing references and citations.
  by poslathian
• arXiv enables peer review!

  arXiv users are the peers doing the review.

  "Peer review" has existed for centuries before journals created their own bad for-profit version.

  by gowld
• Actually arXiv is frustrating from an open access angel. It is very much possible to put up documents without open licensing so the content is not always fulfilling the open access definition.
  by tokai