In Nature erscheint heute ein Essay ArXiv at 20 von ArXiv-Gründer Paul Ginsparg.
Das ArXiv hatte noch in der Vor-Web-Ära begonnen als ein Preprint-Archiv, dessen Abonnenten über die e-Mail-Adresse hep-th@xxx.lanl.gov automatisch bei Neuerscheinungen informiert wurden. Gedacht war ursprünglich an ca. 100 Artikel pro Jahr und die Preprints sollten nur für 3 Monate gespeichert werden.

Inzwischen werden ca. 75000 Artikel pro Jahr gespeichert.
In dem Nature-Artikel gibt Ginsparg nun bekannt, daß das ArXiv künftig komplett von der Universitäts-Bibliothek Cornell administriert wird
For me, the repository was supposed to be a three-hour tour, not a life sentence. ArXiv was originally conceived to be fully automated, so as not to scuttle my research career. But daily administrative activities associated with running it can consume hours of every weekday, year-round without holiday. So, from September, the site will be entirely in the hands of the staff of Cornell University Library in Ithaca, New York. I will remain on the advisory board and continue some research projects in text and data mining and in supporting next-generation document formats and information filters.
und nutzt den Anlaß für Reflektionen über das ArXiv und Themen wie Qualitätskontrolle, Finanzierung und Integration neuer Werkzeuge.

In einem historischen Abriß berichtet er zunächst über die Vorreiterrolle des ArXiv bei vielen technologischen Entwicklungen und meint "building the technology was simpler than managing the sociological and financial aspects". Ein Teil der Finanzierung des ArXiv erfolgt über die Anfang letzten Jahres diskutierte freiwillige Kostenbeteiligung von Universitäts-Instituten, ein längerfristiges Geschäftsmodell existiert aber bisher nicht.

Und er diskutiert natürlich die anstehenden Entwicklungen: manche Nutzer hätten gerne Kommentarstränge zu den einzelnen Preprints, aber das Administrieren solcher Diskussion wäre sehr aufwändig. Aus dem selben Grund wird es kein konventionelles Peer-review geben:
Even the minimal filtering of incoming preprints to maintain basic quality control involves significant daily administrative activity. Incoming abstracts are given a cursory glance by volunteer external moderators for appropriateness to their subject areas; and various automated filters, including a text classifier, flag problem submissions. Although the overall rate of such submissions is well below 1%, they tend to cluster in specific areas (such as general relativity, quantum mechanics and unified theories in physics; proofs of the Riemann hypothesis, Goldbach's conjecture and new proofs of Fermat's last theorem in mathematics; P versus NP problem in computer science).
Und er diskutiert natürlich auch das Thema traditioneller vs. Online-Zeitschriften:
The transition to article formats and features better suited to modern technology than to print on paper has also been surprisingly slow. Page markup formats, such as PDF, have only grudgingly given way to XML-based ones that support features such as manipulable graphics, dynamic views, linked annotations and semantic markup. Part of this caution is a result of the understandable need to maintain a stable archive of research literature, as provided by paper over centuries.

Ginsparg: "ArXiv at 20", Nature Volume: 476, Pages: 145-147

In Nature erscheint heute ein Essay ArXiv at 20 von ArXiv-Gründer Paul Ginsparg.
Das ArXiv hatte noch in der Vor-Web-Ära begonnen als ein Preprint-Archiv, dessen Abonnenten über die e-Mail-Adresse hep-th@xxx.lanl.gov automatisch bei Neuerscheinungen informiert wurden. Gedacht war ursprünglich an ca. 100 Artikel pro Jahr und die Preprints sollten nur für 3 Monate gespeichert werden.

Inzwischen werden ca. 75000 Artikel pro Jahr gespeichert.
In dem Nature-Artikel gibt Ginsparg nun bekannt, daß das ArXiv künftig komplett von der Universitäts-Bibliothek Cornell administriert wird
For me, the repository was supposed to be a three-hour tour, not a life sentence. ArXiv was originally conceived to be fully automated, so as not to scuttle my research career. But daily administrative activities associated with running it can consume hours of every weekday, year-round without holiday. So, from September, the site will be entirely in the hands of the staff of Cornell University Library in Ithaca, New York. I will remain on the advisory board and continue some research projects in text and data mining and in supporting next-generation document formats and information filters.
und nutzt den Anlaß für Reflektionen über das ArXiv und Themen wie Qualitätskontrolle, Finanzierung und Integration neuer Werkzeuge.

In einem historischen Abriß berichtet er zunächst über die Vorreiterrolle des ArXiv bei vielen technologischen Entwicklungen und meint "building the technology was simpler than managing the sociological and financial aspects". Ein Teil der Finanzierung des ArXiv erfolgt über die Anfang letzten Jahres diskutierte freiwillige Kostenbeteiligung von Universitäts-Instituten, ein längerfristiges Geschäftsmodell existiert aber bisher nicht.

Und er diskutiert natürlich die anstehenden Entwicklungen: manche Nutzer hätten gerne Kommentarstränge zu den einzelnen Preprints, aber das Administrieren solcher Diskussion wäre sehr aufwändig. Aus dem selben Grund wird es kein konventionelles Peer-review geben:
Even the minimal filtering of incoming preprints to maintain basic quality control involves significant daily administrative activity. Incoming abstracts are given a cursory glance by volunteer external moderators for appropriateness to their subject areas; and various automated filters, including a text classifier, flag problem submissions. Although the overall rate of such submissions is well below 1%, they tend to cluster in specific areas (such as general relativity, quantum mechanics and unified theories in physics; proofs of the Riemann hypothesis, Goldbach's conjecture and new proofs of Fermat's last theorem in mathematics; P versus NP problem in computer science).
Und er diskutiert natürlich auch das Thema traditioneller vs. Online-Zeitschriften:
The transition to article formats and features better suited to modern technology than to print on paper has also been surprisingly slow. Page markup formats, such as PDF, have only grudgingly given way to XML-based ones that support features such as manipulable graphics, dynamic views, linked annotations and semantic markup. Part of this caution is a result of the understandable need to maintain a stable archive of research literature, as provided by paper over centuries.

Ginsparg: "ArXiv at 20", Nature Volume: 476, Pages: 145-147

Unread, but looks like a new data point on the "engineering and science research is jammed into silos that never talk to one another" histogram: this is a solved problem in the GP community.

We review our current understanding of how the first galaxies formed at the end of the cosmic dark ages, a few 100 million years after the Big Bang. Modern large telescopes discovered galaxies at redshifts greater than seven, whereas theoretical studies have just reached the degree of sophistication necessary to make meaningful predictions. A crucial ingredient is the feedback exerted by the first generation of stars, through UV radiation, supernova blast waves, and chemical enrichment. The key goal is to derive the signature of the first galaxies to be observed with upcoming or planned next-generation facilities, such as the James Webb Space Telescope or Atacama Large Millimeter Array. From the observational side, ongoing deep-field searches for very high-redshift galaxies begin to provide us with empirical constraints on the nature of the first galaxies.

We go through the many considerations involved in fitting a model to data, using as an example the fit of a straight line to a set of points in a two-dimensional plane. Standard weighted least-squares fitting is only appropriate when there is a dimension along which the data points have negligible uncertainties, and another along which all the uncertainties can be described by Gaussians of known variance; these conditions are rarely met in practice. We consider cases of general, heterogeneous, and arbitrarily covariant two-dimensional uncertainties, and situations in which there are bad data (large outliers), unknown uncertainties, and unknown but expected intrinsic scatter in the linear relationship being fit. Above all we emphasize the importance of having a "generative model" for the data, even an approximate one. [...]

"We study the degree to which a character string, $Q$, leaks details about itself any time it engages in comparison protocols with a strings provided by a querier, Bob, even if those protocols are cryptographically guaranteed to produce no additional information other than the scores that assess the degree to which $Q$ matches strings offered by Bob. We show that such scenarios allow Bob to play variants of the game of Mastermind with $Q$ so as to learn the complete identity of $Q$."

ÑfòfX¨ PhilSci Archive