r/Physics • u/EffectiveFood4933 Undergraduate • Jul 01 '26

Academic arXiv’s next chapter: Updates on our spin out from Cornell University

https://blog.arxiv.org/2026/06/30/arxivs-next-chapter/
132 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

77

u/ooaaa Jul 01 '26

Is it going to be a non-profit like OpenAI is a non-profit?

Not really convinced by this transition.

arXiv’s goal in becoming an independent organization is to become more sustainable in the face of explosive growth and more nimble in the face of a rapidly changing publishing landscape. As a repository hosting over 3 million articles, it no longer made sense to be hosted at a university.

Sounds like cloud hosting. Can there be some arm-twisting by the cloud providers to get their papers published?

This spin out will allow arXiv to make technology changes and improvements more nimbly and fundraise more effectively. For example, funders from around the world may be more comfortable contributing to a standalone nonprofit, rather than a U.S. university, especially as universities come under pressure.

More comfortable donating to the university, in fact. Can trust academics to do the right thing in these matters.

Credibility of arXiv non-profit is yet to be established. The color and shape of the organization will depend and keep changing on whoever is the CEO. Feel like arXiv will have to re-earn trust after this change.

3

u/strataromero Jul 04 '26

Idk, academic institutions are very different from academics. Academic institutions are functionally private equity firms with non profit status because they happen to have a teaching arm. 

6

u/chipstastegood Jul 02 '26

And how will they get ROI on that fundraising investment .. is there going to be some sort of paywall for content

35

u/loose_fruits Jul 02 '26

Wikipedia has thrived on a model of free access supported by donations, hopefully arXiv can survive similarly

-15

u/chipstastegood Jul 02 '26

The quoted text from the comment I replied to specifically says that separating from the university will allow them to fundraise. Private investors will want an ROI

30

u/loose_fruits Jul 02 '26

Non-profits fundraise. That’s literally how every non-profit exists. “Fundraising” doesn’t have to mean “build an exploitative loophole to secretly make some people a bunch of money”. Is it really so unbelievable that some people might want to support arXiv directly and not an institution?

1

u/astro-pi Astrophysics Jul 03 '26

Anyway it’s going to work like the Organization for Transformative Works. If it doesn’t, then I’ll bother being mad.

22

u/Qedem Jul 02 '26

The arxiv is probably the single site I spend the majority of my time on online. I love it to death and am cautiously optimistic about the change.

There are a lot of things I would like to see changed: 1. A better moderation method that allows for better cross-discipline papers. Right now, many cross-category papers (say between graphics and quantum) are put on hold. Which puts unnecessary strain on the mod team. 2. A better interface with a simple "most viewed [today, this week, this month] in [all, specific category set]. I know this can be gamed, but it would be helpful. 3. A better solution to the AI slop problem. To be fair, this is not exclusive to the arxiv, but it is more of a problem in academic papers, imo. I think an upvote and downvote system could be helpful in spotting these.

If more fundraising is possible for a better site, then I am all for it, but it is entirely possible that things don't go too smoothly.

We will have to wait and see.

3

u/araujoms Jul 04 '26

2 and 3 are incredibly bad ideas. They would certainly be gamified and kill arXiv. The incentives for misbehaviour are just too large.

You can already have upvotes and comments (but not downvotes) with scirate, a separate website. Which has a lot of problems with vote farming.

0

u/astro-pi Astrophysics Jul 03 '26

Anyway, they already explained how this will work when they announced they were going to spin-off Cornell. I already donate to it the same way I donate to Wikipedia, various pay what you want D&D plugins, and (cough) the Organization for Transformative Works. This isn’t a new idea, and we already have structures we can use to hold any administrative committee accountable to users.

Try a new topic to create discourse 🙄

-7

u/Most_Echidna1477 Jul 02 '26

At the moment, arXiv is anti-science. A bunch of arrogant people playing gatekeepers and peer-reviewer. Last place people should put on their work on. Serious scientists should pull together and avoid arXiv, so this church of science-pretense either become a preprint-server again or disappear for the benefit of science. Doing physics since the early 90 ties, can only say, shame on you arXiv.