{"id":2285,"date":"2016-09-05T09:00:02","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T14:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/?p=2285"},"modified":"2017-12-27T19:08:05","modified_gmt":"2017-12-28T00:08:05","slug":"happy-birthday-dear-arxiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/2016\/09\/05\/happy-birthday-dear-arxiv\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Dear arXiv"},"content":{"rendered":"

On August 14, the beloved preprint server arXiv.org<\/span><\/a> turned 25. For many mathematicians, including me, it\u2019s almost impossible to imagine doing or reading research without it or the over a million<\/a> papers it lovingly collects and stores for us.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Happy

Happy birthday, arXiv! I made and devoured a delicious cake for you. Image: Evelyn Lamb<\/p><\/div>\n

Physicist Paul Ginsparg started arXiv while he was a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and now it lives at the Cornell University library, where Oya Rieger is the program director. In recent years arXiv has been concerned with funding and has launched a membership model<\/span><\/a> where university libraries and the Simons Foundation (disclosure: I have written for the Simons Foundation) contribute to help maintain the site. (Perhaps surprisingly, arXiv does not receive funding from the NSF<\/a>, even though it is a vital component of research for\u00a0many mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists<\/span>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

This year, in honor of its 25th anniversary<\/a>\u00a0and as part of an upcoming site overhaul<\/span>, arXiv conducted a survey<\/span><\/a> to see how they might better serve their users. The most divisive issue seemed to be comments sections. In an arXiv paper about the survey, Rieger writes that people were hesitant about the idea, and even people in favor noted that implementation of a good comment system would be tricky. Like Izabella Laba<\/span><\/a>, I think internet comments sections are often not worth the pixels they’re printed with, and I share her concerns about women being subject to unnecessary scrutiny about their credentials or even abuse.<\/span><\/p>\n

But on to more important things, by which I mean trivial questions about the scientific\/mathematical\u00a0vernacular. Earlier this summer I set up a highly non-scientific online survey<\/a> to address a burning question: what do we call the preprint repository with the web address arXiv.org? The official arXiv preference is to refer to it without the definite article, but I usually hear people saying \u201cthe arXiv\u201d when they talk about posting things there. I this post I\u2019m following my policy of referring to people (or in this case entities) the way they wish to be referred to, but it sounds weird to me without the definite article, and I\u2019m curious about what the rest of you say.<\/span><\/p>\n

So far 65%\u00a0of survey respondents say they tend to use the definite article when referring to the website with the address arXiv.org. The answers so far do not appear to correlate with respondents\u2019 scientific fields, native languages, or status as arXiv volunteers. Some respondents wonder if “the” might be a marker of unhipness: “Older folks talk about ‘the Google’; maybe folks younger and cooler than me drop the ‘the’ from ‘the arXiv’?” So far, age does not seem to correlate with direct article use, but perhaps in 10 or 20 years it will only be backwards Millennials and older who will be saying “the arXiv.” I did not think to ask about people’s geographical location, but another respondent notes that Northern and Southern Californians have different customs when it comes to highways: “people from northern Cali call a freeway by its number: “take 80 to 580″ while SoCal people say, take the 405 to the 5.”\u00a0If you would like to chime in with your responses, theories, or silly comments (“people should not be taking the Christ out of arChristiv.org”), the survey is still open and will be until September 30<\/a>. I\u2019ll update this post with the final results then. [Update: final results were virtually identical to results at the time of posting.]<\/span><\/p>\n

How should you celebrate arXiv\u2019s birthday? By reading open-access math papers, obviously! (Or physics, computer science, or whatever your favorite arXiv-using discipline is.) You might consider Grigori<\/span><\/a> Perelman\u2019s<\/span><\/a> papers<\/span><\/a> solving the Poincar\u00e9 conjecture, which are only available on arXiv, Paul Ginsparg’s reflections from five years ago on the occasion of arXiv’s 20th birthday, or if you’re feeling whimsical, an economic analysis of the ramifications of destroying Death Stars<\/span><\/a>. If you want to go all-out, you could submit a paper to arXiv or one of the overlay journals such as Discrete Analysis<\/span><\/a> that have sprung up recently<\/span><\/a>. You could even surf over to bioRxiv<\/span><\/a>, a biology preprint server, sociology\u2019s SocarXiv<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0 <\/span>or another<\/a> discipline-specific preprint server<\/span><\/a>, or take a walk on the wild side with viXra<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

For a hit of nostalgia, try partying like it\u2019s 1991. The Billboard<\/i> number-one hit song in August 1991 was (Everything I Do) I Do It For You<\/span><\/a> by Bryan Adams, big hair was in, and Star Trek: The Next Generation <\/i>had just finished its fourth season. That sure sounds like a party to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

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On August 14, the beloved preprint server arXiv.org turned 25. For many mathematicians, including me, it\u2019s almost impossible to imagine doing or reading research without it or the over a million papers it lovingly collects and stores for us. Physicist … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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