ArXiv.org Reaches a Milestone and a Reckoning - Scientific American

"What started in 1989 as an e-mail list for a few dozen string theorists has now grown to a collection of more than two million papers—and the central hub for physicists, astronomers, computer scientists, mathematicians and other researchers. ... When submitting to traditional journals, authors frequently wait half a year or more to publish; papers typically appear on arXiv within a day. Authors often submit manuscripts to arXiv and then subsequently publish them in a peer-reviewed journal, but increasingly, papers are released on arXiv alone. ... Growth has been explosive. In 2008, 17 years after it went online, arXiv hit 500,000 papers. By late 2014 that total had doubled to one million. Seven years later arXiv has doubled its library again but continues to grapple with its role: Is it closer to a selective academic journal or more like an online warehouse that indiscriminately collects papers?   Amid this confusion, some researchers are concerned about arXiv’s moderation policies, which they say lack transparency and have led to papers being unfairly rejected or misclassified. At the same time, arXiv is struggling to improve the diversity of its moderators, who are predominantly men based at U.S. institutions.... Among physicists, there is a common refrain: “If it’s not on arXiv, it doesn’t exist.” In other words, for a wide swath of research disciplines, arXiv has become indispensable, part of the scientific process itself. For the researchers that use it, arXiv is part of their everyday workflow: they may browse new releases with their morning coffee, submit a paper by noon and download reading material in the evening. This outsize role testifies to arXiv’s success but also shows how the repository’s problems are not just its own—they are science’s, too.... Currently, there is funding for only a handful of staff to help volunteer moderators handle up to 1,200 daily submissions. “We’re an old classic car, and the rust has finally come through, and the pistons are wearing out,” Sigurdsson says. “We are understaffed and underfunded—and have been for years.” ..."