10 ms·

Einstein award going to Paul Ginsparg for creating arXiv.org

1128 points by endymi0n 5y ago

mschuetz 5y ago
ArXiv is great. I encourage anyone to submit their work there in addition to submitting to a peer-reviewed venue. Thankfully, they're compatible with overleaf nowadays. There was a time when arxiv didn't accept stuff from overleaf but it also didn't accept pdfs made from latex, so I had to pdf-print my pdf to submit it to arxiv.
- galcerte 5y ago
  Do you think it would be worthwhile to upload something like a master's thesis that ultimately did not get published through a traditional journal? That happens to be my case. I am alright with my supervisors' decision to not pursue publication, however I still wish to have it out there in some form, as it took a sizeable amount of effort, and it might be useful as a way to advertise myself. On a tangent, is publishing the LaTeX source of a paper or thesis on GitHub something that people do...? I was also toying with the idea of writing my thesis with org-mode while including the code snippets I used for numerical calculations and graphs.
  - eigenket 5y ago
    The tex for my thesis is on github but I don't expect anyone to ever look at it there (anyone who might read it will find it on arxiv), I just used github for backup & versioning (I'm not quite dumb enough to have a document representing 4 years work in one place).
  - jacobmischka 5y ago
    I can't attest to ArXiv publication, I didn't consider it actually (I may now, though to be honest mine is not groundbreaking research by any stretch of imagination), but publishing the LaTeX source on GitHub is definitely relatively common. I and a few acquaintances I knew from my Master's program did that.
    - galcerte 5y ago
      I imagine it depends on the field. Having perused your GitHub page and taken a look at what your program was about, I see why you might publish your thesis' source there. People working in theoretical physics aren't too inclined towards free software, so maybe that's why I haven't seen many related papers.
      - jacobmischka 5y ago
        Ah yes, I assumed computer science, apologies.
  - Bayart 5y ago
    >On a tangent, is publishing the LaTeX source of a paper or thesis on GitHub something that people do...? I've definitely seen it done, although I suspect the prime concern is versioning and backup.
  - Boywithhalo 5y ago
    "arXiv moderators expect submissions to be of scholarly archival interest to the communities they represent. A submission may be declined if the moderators determine it lacks originality, novelty, or significance. Submissions that do not contain original or substantive research, including undergraduate research, course projects, and research proposals, news, or information about political causes (even those with potential special interest to the academic community) may be declined." as explained in https://arxiv.org/help/moderation https://arxiv.org/help/moderation If your supervisors decided not to pursue publication then it seems likely that it does not match these criteria either. Note, this isn't a qualitative judgement about your thesis - as it says as much about academia as it does your thesis. Additionally, you might run into the endorsement system if you're new to arXiv. https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement
    - galcerte 5y ago
      > Submissions that do not contain original or substantive research Most, if not all master's thesis contain original research, and that is definitely my case as well. > undergraduate research, course projects, and research proposals, news, or information about political causes My thesis can't be classified under any of these categories, either. It does sound like I would be able to publish it there, but I'm going to have to reach out to my supervisors for an endorsement in arXiv, thanks for the tip. I believe they weren't inclined towards publishing it because I did not quite manage to fulfill their expectations with respect to the scope of the thesis. I came across quite a few bumps along the way which hindered my progress. It was still graded well enough, it has a good amount of original content, and I am relatively satisfied with its quality, though, so it's not like it was a complete disaster.
      - amcoastal 5y ago
        You should do it, but contact your advisor first. I know I'd like to upload my old masters thesis online, but the university retains a copyright on it. Its possible yours does to. I'm sure the information on that would be available on your schools website in the thesis format/guidelines sections.
      - 5y ago
  - 8bitsrule 5y ago
    >worthwhile to upload something like a master's thesis That'd be great. Seems dumb to let talented, hard-working student papers moulder on some basement shelf. (Or do they file 13 'em?) I've run across several onlined, very readable and informative masters' works over the years. Tend to be less hidebound about fresh theories/tooling as well.
  - cozzyd 5y ago
    There are some theses on the arXiv but it's relatively rare. See e.g. https://arxiv.org/search/?query=dissertation&searchtype=all&source=header https://arxiv.org/search/?query=dissertation&searchtype=all&... Typically these are uploaded in some other archive that may be less open (e.g. often outsourced to proquest or something), but many universities have their own open archives. My PhD thesis is available on MIT dspace. Hilariously, it's a scanned copy of my printed thesis, since I had to print it out for submission, even in 2015. As for theses on GitHub, those happen but often people keep it private since they don't necessarily want the revision history exposed :).
- cozzyd 5y ago
  Yes, arXiv generally doesn't accept PDF's, preferring instead the tex source (which is amusing when people don't realize their comments show up. It uses something called autotex which has a few quirks (e.g. all images have to be in the same dir, etc.). Here is the makefile I use that also generates a .tar.gz for the arxiv (obviously won't help with Overleaf without cloning first, but) FIGURES=$(wildcard figs/*) TEXFILES=main.tex included.tex included2.tex ... main.pdf: $(TEXFILES) $(FIGURES) main.bib latexmk -pdf -g $< .PHONY: clean show clean: latexmk -C rm -rf forarxiv* forarxiv.tar.gz: forarxiv/main.tex forarxiv.pdf rm -f forarxiv.tar.gz cd forarxiv && tar --exclude=*.bib -cvzf ../forarxiv.tar.gz * forarxiv: mkdir -p $@ forarxiv/main.tex: main.tex main.bib | forarxiv latexpand --empty-comments $< | sed -e 's#figs/##g' > $@ forarxiv/main.bib: main.bib cp $< $@ forarxiv.pdf: forarxiv/main.tex $(FIGURES) forarxiv/main.bib ln -f $(FIGURES) forarxiv/ ln -f foo.sty forarxiv/ ln -f foo.bst forarxiv/ latexmk -cd -pdf forarxiv/main.tex latexmk -cd -c forarxiv/main.tex mv forarxiv/main.pdf $@ show: main.pdf xdg-open main.pdf
azalemeth 5y ago
Completely and utterly deserved. Arxiv, like Wikipedia and arguably sci-hub, is an absolute boon to humanity. What I find interesting is that its endorsement system does largely work at making it very easy to submit papers whilst reducing the amount of spam. Sure, there are some papers that are not completely brilliant -- or indeed, actually any good at all -- but they have the same "right" to be read as their huge CERN brethren. In some fields of physics, paid journal publishing is really a niche in comparison to stuff on the ArXiv. In others, and other areas of science, not quite so much yet. I also very much like the fact that it is open, mostly LaTeX based (machine-readable maths!) and free.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  Wikipedia is one of my refuges from the where the rest of the web seems to be going. It’s one of the few that don’t cause me to hit reader view (mobile safaris defacto ad blocker) immediately.
  - janto 5y ago
    Unfortunately Wikipedia has also been heading in a disappointing direction. I now expect everything on there to be filtered through a specific political perspective. Deleting information is much easier than adding, so pesky facts are unlikely to persist.
    - Kye 5y ago
      It does seem that many pages get claimed by one editor or another who sees it as their domain, but I haven't seen any study on the politics of these wiki fiefdoms. Most I see are conservative, sometimes extreme.
    - danielheath 5y ago
      Somewhat true of the main pages; if you want to know whether something controversial is being left out, check the talk page.
    - prionassembly 5y ago
anothernewdude 5y ago
A worthy choice.
reikonomusha 5y ago
Around 6 or 7 years ago, I went to a quantum computing conference and presented about a then newly developed quantum programming language that could run on a real quantum computer, showing a 1/2 decent simulation of dihydrogen energy in terms of bond length. I authored a paper about this quantum programming language but had no way to post it to the arXiv. I'm not a traditional academic, but I had posted on the arXiv before, long ago, at a previous job. Problem was that my arXiv credentials were associated with that job's long lost email. I gave the presentation in a giant ballroom, and afterward, sat down at my assigned spot at one of these large circular tables. Next to me, during a brief coffee break, an old man I didn't recognize told me my talk was very interesting, and asked me if my paper was published yet. "Not yet; we haven't chosen a journal. And posting to the arXiv is delayed, because my account is locked, so a colleague is planning to post on my behalf." The man responds, "Oh, it should be possible to fix that." I said that I figured as much and have just procrastinated contacting the admins. "They're at Cornell right?" He said, "No, I mean, I can fix that. You said your name was Reikon Musha right?" He opens his clunky laptop and continues, "I'm not supposed to do this. But I'm certain that if you gave an invited talk here, you're definitely not spoofing your name. Maybe you can show me your ID? No, no, just kidding." He continues clicking around. "Was xyz@example.com your old address? What's your new one?" I answered yes, and gave him my new address. He typed it in and said, "straight into the database it goes; just go and reset your password now." I was absolutely puzzled. I said, "Thanks?? Who are you?" He says, as a matter of fact, "I'm Paul, I invented the arXiv."
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  How does he (or people in general) pronounce arxiv?
  - reikonomusha 5y ago
    Like "archive". The X represents the Greek letter χ. Similar to TeX or LaTeX, which are pronounced like "tech" and "lay-tech".
    - Uehreka 5y ago
evanb 5y ago
The Nobel Prize in Physics often goes to "tooling" experimental work. Think: blue LEDs, CCDs, fiber optics, optical tweezers, things like that. Not that anybody asks me, but I would advocate a similar tooling award split between Berners-Lee (www), Knuth (TeX), and Ginsparg (arXiv). I can think of no people who had a more profound change in how physics is actually practiced.
- prionassembly 5y ago
  Maybe that's a sign that theory research in physics has become iredeemably suspect? The Swedish bank (not an OG Nobel prize, but effectively one of them) prize for economics pretty much alternates (A) sharing the prize between econometrics (ie. tooling) and empirical research and (B) awarding deep theory.
  - evanb 5y ago
    I would push back on this. Irredeemably suspect? The Nobel committee doesn't make theory awards until they are supported by experiment. There was basically no new particle physics data for 30 years. Then they found the Higgs and that's nothing else. Theory beyond this is speculative, nobody knows if it's important or not.
- bborud 5y ago
  That's a very good point. Surely people on Hacker News collectively know enough people to get a nomination done? :-) PS: the above list good, are we missing anyone important who ought to be on that list?
  - speedcoder 5y ago
    Maybe the HN community could set up an award?
    - ngc248 5y ago
      I second this. lets do one.
grouphugs 5y ago
it has too much garbage to be getting awards
boibombeiro 5y ago
The least controversial post of the year. Well deserved.
roastedpeacock 5y ago
IN a world of leeches like Elsevier, his work is much appreciated
brainwipe 5y ago
Been out of research for a while, didn't know about this. Will get my papers up there.
- DreamScatter 5y ago
  It's not a public website, I'm not even able to post my math research on arxiv https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl
the_cat_kittles 5y ago
just in case it hasnt clicked yet, the X is the greek letter chi, so the url is "archive" phonetically
- asdf_snar 5y ago
  I've been using the Arxiv for 10+ years. I always thought it was just a "cool" way of spelling it, like "ArXiV" or "eXtReme". Mind blown, thanks.
  - cmehdy 5y ago
    Now the game "arxiv vs snarxiv"[0] will also make more sense to you! [0] http://snarxiv.org/vs-arxiv/ http://snarxiv.org/vs-arxiv/
    - Yajirobe 5y ago
      What about vixra[0]? [0]https://vixra.org/ https://vixra.org/
dekhn 5y ago
Many years ago (think: 1994) scientists (mainly CS folks) published papers on the web as postscript files. Actually, they were usually on FTP sites, not the web, as almost nobody used the web at the time. I developed a huge aversion to postscript (it was clunky and the renderers weren't great) but the idea that every bit of published science would be freely available on the web seemed completely and totally obvious to me. When I later became an academic, I learned that when you write a paper and submit it, conditions for publication typically include signing away the copyright to the journal, possibly with a license to distribute a few preprints offline. My advisor at the time pointed out that he actually modified the contract (changing the terms to retain copyright), signed it and sent it back (no journal ever complained, and all his papers are available as PDFs online). arxiv is the closest thing to what I dreamt of some decades ago and I'm thrilled that Paul is receiving recognition. Personally, I think arxiv is a better path forward than scihub, entirely due to its "legitimacy". In the future, I will always work to "publish" on arxiv and not put my work in journals (fortunately, I am not in a publish or perish situation). My only complaint is that I don't particularly like PDF and wish there was an HTML-zip format that could be sent around and the browser did all the rendering work, while the udnerlying data tables are stored in well-defined formats so they can be programatically extracted.
- judge2020 5y ago
  > changing the terms to retain copyright), signed it and sent it back (no journal ever complained, and all his papers are available as PDFs online). Assuming the journals signed it first, this is most likely illegal since they didn’t know they were signing under the different terms. If they sign it after the professor signs it, they technically have the duty to confirm the language is the same, but it still might be seen as a deceptive practice on the professor’s part.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    I had this discussion with the professor in question. He had already consulted with his IP lawyers. As you say, they technically have the duty to confirm the language is the same, but we know they didn't because the paper was published with their copyright attached. I think he was trying to push the issue, gently, and hoped some published would make a stink.
ahurmazda 5y ago
Well deserved. I only recently learned about the origin of arxiv and the story surrounding Joanne Cohn. Highly recommended read https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20211108a/full/ https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.2021110...
DreamScatter 5y ago
I still have never been able to post my paper about my Grassmann.jl geometric algebra foundations research on arxiv. https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl Seems like a useless overrated website. I was able to post my article on my own website instead. Arxiv is really a useless website.
rib3ye 5y ago
Is arXiv openly accessible in China? I tried a quick search on the topic and saw that there are quite a few mirror sites but no definitive answer.
- _hzw 5y ago
  You can check whether a site is blocked by GFW with the following websites: 1. http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/ http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/ 2. https://www.comparitech.com/privacy-security-tools/blockedinchina/ https://www.comparitech.com/privacy-security-tools/blockedin...
codetrotter 5y ago
Neat, next award should go to Alexandra Elbakyan for creating Sci-Hub :)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
trox 5y ago
If you've ever wondered about the unusual arXiv.org website favicon: The original logo was a skull with bones as reference to the piratey nature of distributing preprints without the publisher's consent. The smiley face was added later in order to make it less offensive. Due to the conversion to a non-transparent format, the backgrond was filled with the green color. https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-story-behind-the-arXiv-org-favicon https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-story-behind-the-arXiv-org-f...
Cort3z 5y ago
Why does so many online articles refrain from adding a simple link to the product in question? https://arxiv.org/ https://arxiv.org/
grouphugs 5y ago
i remember them addressing all the garbage on there actually. he does deserve an award. i am in a mood due to severe lack of sleep, depression, and got hit with more sonic last night. phew doggy, let's go, gotta kill 'em all
Havoc 5y ago
That’s good. Sometimes I think stuff like this (supporting plumbing) moves science forward more than an individual discovery could.
p2p_astroturf 5y ago
What is the point of arxiv other than a file host but where people forcibly constrain themselves to the bureacratic process of creating a UN*X braindamaged tex / PDF with whatever academic publishing conventions? Someone in here even has posted makefile. For analogy to the problem I am alluding to, imagine needing a makefile to write an ASCII text document. Skimming through these comments, it seems like arxiv supports some kind of search or other metadata traversal. All this stuff could be done without a centralized server. No I am not advocating for your half working p2p network, cryptocoin, or startup.

1128 points by endymi0n 5y ago

ArXiv is great. I encourage anyone to submit their work there in addition to submitting to a peer-reviewed venue. Thankfully, they're compatible with overleaf nowadays. There was a time when arxiv didn't accept stuff from overleaf but it also didn't accept pdfs made from latex, so I had to pdf-print my pdf to submit it to arxiv.

galcerte 5y ago
Do you think it would be worthwhile to upload something like a master's thesis that ultimately did not get published through a traditional journal? That happens to be my case. I am alright with my supervisors' decision to not pursue publication, however I still wish to have it out there in some form, as it took a sizeable amount of effort, and it might be useful as a way to advertise myself. On a tangent, is publishing the LaTeX source of a paper or thesis on GitHub something that people do...? I was also toying with the idea of writing my thesis with org-mode while including the code snippets I used for numerical calculations and graphs.
- eigenket 5y ago
  The tex for my thesis is on github but I don't expect anyone to ever look at it there (anyone who might read it will find it on arxiv), I just used github for backup & versioning (I'm not quite dumb enough to have a document representing 4 years work in one place).
- jacobmischka 5y ago
  I can't attest to ArXiv publication, I didn't consider it actually (I may now, though to be honest mine is not groundbreaking research by any stretch of imagination), but publishing the LaTeX source on GitHub is definitely relatively common. I and a few acquaintances I knew from my Master's program did that.
  - galcerte 5y ago
    I imagine it depends on the field. Having perused your GitHub page and taken a look at what your program was about, I see why you might publish your thesis' source there. People working in theoretical physics aren't too inclined towards free software, so maybe that's why I haven't seen many related papers.
    - jacobmischka 5y ago
      Ah yes, I assumed computer science, apologies.
- Bayart 5y ago
  >On a tangent, is publishing the LaTeX source of a paper or thesis on GitHub something that people do...? I've definitely seen it done, although I suspect the prime concern is versioning and backup.
- Boywithhalo 5y ago
  "arXiv moderators expect submissions to be of scholarly archival interest to the communities they represent. A submission may be declined if the moderators determine it lacks originality, novelty, or significance. Submissions that do not contain original or substantive research, including undergraduate research, course projects, and research proposals, news, or information about political causes (even those with potential special interest to the academic community) may be declined." as explained in https://arxiv.org/help/moderation https://arxiv.org/help/moderation If your supervisors decided not to pursue publication then it seems likely that it does not match these criteria either. Note, this isn't a qualitative judgement about your thesis - as it says as much about academia as it does your thesis. Additionally, you might run into the endorsement system if you're new to arXiv. https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement
  - galcerte 5y ago
    > Submissions that do not contain original or substantive research Most, if not all master's thesis contain original research, and that is definitely my case as well. > undergraduate research, course projects, and research proposals, news, or information about political causes My thesis can't be classified under any of these categories, either. It does sound like I would be able to publish it there, but I'm going to have to reach out to my supervisors for an endorsement in arXiv, thanks for the tip. I believe they weren't inclined towards publishing it because I did not quite manage to fulfill their expectations with respect to the scope of the thesis. I came across quite a few bumps along the way which hindered my progress. It was still graded well enough, it has a good amount of original content, and I am relatively satisfied with its quality, though, so it's not like it was a complete disaster.
    - amcoastal 5y ago
      You should do it, but contact your advisor first. I know I'd like to upload my old masters thesis online, but the university retains a copyright on it. Its possible yours does to. I'm sure the information on that would be available on your schools website in the thesis format/guidelines sections.
    - 5y ago
- 8bitsrule 5y ago
  >worthwhile to upload something like a master's thesis That'd be great. Seems dumb to let talented, hard-working student papers moulder on some basement shelf. (Or do they file 13 'em?) I've run across several onlined, very readable and informative masters' works over the years. Tend to be less hidebound about fresh theories/tooling as well.
- cozzyd 5y ago
  There are some theses on the arXiv but it's relatively rare. See e.g. https://arxiv.org/search/?query=dissertation&searchtype=all&source=header https://arxiv.org/search/?query=dissertation&searchtype=all&... Typically these are uploaded in some other archive that may be less open (e.g. often outsourced to proquest or something), but many universities have their own open archives. My PhD thesis is available on MIT dspace. Hilariously, it's a scanned copy of my printed thesis, since I had to print it out for submission, even in 2015. As for theses on GitHub, those happen but often people keep it private since they don't necessarily want the revision history exposed :).
cozzyd 5y ago
Yes, arXiv generally doesn't accept PDF's, preferring instead the tex source (which is amusing when people don't realize their comments show up. It uses something called autotex which has a few quirks (e.g. all images have to be in the same dir, etc.). Here is the makefile I use that also generates a .tar.gz for the arxiv (obviously won't help with Overleaf without cloning first, but) FIGURES=$(wildcard figs/*) TEXFILES=main.tex included.tex included2.tex ... main.pdf: $(TEXFILES) $(FIGURES) main.bib latexmk -pdf -g $< .PHONY: clean show clean: latexmk -C rm -rf forarxiv* forarxiv.tar.gz: forarxiv/main.tex forarxiv.pdf rm -f forarxiv.tar.gz cd forarxiv && tar --exclude=*.bib -cvzf ../forarxiv.tar.gz * forarxiv: mkdir -p $@ forarxiv/main.tex: main.tex main.bib | forarxiv latexpand --empty-comments $< | sed -e 's#figs/##g' > $@ forarxiv/main.bib: main.bib cp $< $@ forarxiv.pdf: forarxiv/main.tex $(FIGURES) forarxiv/main.bib ln -f $(FIGURES) forarxiv/ ln -f foo.sty forarxiv/ ln -f foo.bst forarxiv/ latexmk -cd -pdf forarxiv/main.tex latexmk -cd -c forarxiv/main.tex mv forarxiv/main.pdf $@ show: main.pdf xdg-open main.pdf

azalemeth 5y ago

Completely and utterly deserved. Arxiv, like Wikipedia and arguably sci-hub, is an absolute boon to humanity. What I find interesting is that its endorsement system does largely work at making it very easy to submit papers whilst reducing the amount of spam. Sure, there are some papers that are not completely brilliant -- or indeed, actually any good at all -- but they have the same "right" to be read as their huge CERN brethren. In some fields of physics, paid journal publishing is really a niche in comparison to stuff on the ArXiv. In others, and other areas of science, not quite so much yet. I also very much like the fact that it is open, mostly LaTeX based (machine-readable maths!) and free.

quickthrower2 5y ago
Wikipedia is one of my refuges from the where the rest of the web seems to be going. It’s one of the few that don’t cause me to hit reader view (mobile safaris defacto ad blocker) immediately.
- janto 5y ago
  Unfortunately Wikipedia has also been heading in a disappointing direction. I now expect everything on there to be filtered through a specific political perspective. Deleting information is much easier than adding, so pesky facts are unlikely to persist.
  - Kye 5y ago
    It does seem that many pages get claimed by one editor or another who sees it as their domain, but I haven't seen any study on the politics of these wiki fiefdoms. Most I see are conservative, sometimes extreme.
  - danielheath 5y ago
    Somewhat true of the main pages; if you want to know whether something controversial is being left out, check the talk page.
  - prionassembly 5y ago

anothernewdude 5y ago

A worthy choice.

reikonomusha 5y ago

Around 6 or 7 years ago, I went to a quantum computing conference and presented about a then newly developed quantum programming language that could run on a real quantum computer, showing a 1/2 decent simulation of dihydrogen energy in terms of bond length. I authored a paper about this quantum programming language but had no way to post it to the arXiv. I'm not a traditional academic, but I had posted on the arXiv before, long ago, at a previous job. Problem was that my arXiv credentials were associated with that job's long lost email. I gave the presentation in a giant ballroom, and afterward, sat down at my assigned spot at one of these large circular tables. Next to me, during a brief coffee break, an old man I didn't recognize told me my talk was very interesting, and asked me if my paper was published yet. "Not yet; we haven't chosen a journal. And posting to the arXiv is delayed, because my account is locked, so a colleague is planning to post on my behalf." The man responds, "Oh, it should be possible to fix that." I said that I figured as much and have just procrastinated contacting the admins. "They're at Cornell right?" He said, "No, I mean, I can fix that. You said your name was Reikon Musha right?" He opens his clunky laptop and continues, "I'm not supposed to do this. But I'm certain that if you gave an invited talk here, you're definitely not spoofing your name. Maybe you can show me your ID? No, no, just kidding." He continues clicking around. "Was xyz@example.com your old address? What's your new one?" I answered yes, and gave him my new address. He typed it in and said, "straight into the database it goes; just go and reset your password now." I was absolutely puzzled. I said, "Thanks?? Who are you?" He says, as a matter of fact, "I'm Paul, I invented the arXiv."

Rebelgecko 5y ago
How does he (or people in general) pronounce arxiv?
- reikonomusha 5y ago
  Like "archive". The X represents the Greek letter χ. Similar to TeX or LaTeX, which are pronounced like "tech" and "lay-tech".
  - Uehreka 5y ago

evanb 5y ago

The Nobel Prize in Physics often goes to "tooling" experimental work. Think: blue LEDs, CCDs, fiber optics, optical tweezers, things like that. Not that anybody asks me, but I would advocate a similar tooling award split between Berners-Lee (www), Knuth (TeX), and Ginsparg (arXiv). I can think of no people who had a more profound change in how physics is actually practiced.

prionassembly 5y ago
Maybe that's a sign that theory research in physics has become iredeemably suspect? The Swedish bank (not an OG Nobel prize, but effectively one of them) prize for economics pretty much alternates (A) sharing the prize between econometrics (ie. tooling) and empirical research and (B) awarding deep theory.
- evanb 5y ago
  I would push back on this. Irredeemably suspect? The Nobel committee doesn't make theory awards until they are supported by experiment. There was basically no new particle physics data for 30 years. Then they found the Higgs and that's nothing else. Theory beyond this is speculative, nobody knows if it's important or not.
bborud 5y ago
That's a very good point. Surely people on Hacker News collectively know enough people to get a nomination done? :-) PS: the above list good, are we missing anyone important who ought to be on that list?
- speedcoder 5y ago
  Maybe the HN community could set up an award?
  - ngc248 5y ago
    I second this. lets do one.

grouphugs 5y ago

it has too much garbage to be getting awards

boibombeiro 5y ago

The least controversial post of the year. Well deserved.

roastedpeacock 5y ago

IN a world of leeches like Elsevier, his work is much appreciated

brainwipe 5y ago

Been out of research for a while, didn't know about this. Will get my papers up there.

DreamScatter 5y ago
It's not a public website, I'm not even able to post my math research on arxiv https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl

the_cat_kittles 5y ago

just in case it hasnt clicked yet, the X is the greek letter chi, so the url is "archive" phonetically

asdf_snar 5y ago
I've been using the Arxiv for 10+ years. I always thought it was just a "cool" way of spelling it, like "ArXiV" or "eXtReme". Mind blown, thanks.
- cmehdy 5y ago
  Now the game "arxiv vs snarxiv"[0] will also make more sense to you! [0] http://snarxiv.org/vs-arxiv/ http://snarxiv.org/vs-arxiv/
  - Yajirobe 5y ago
    What about vixra[0]? [0]https://vixra.org/ https://vixra.org/

dekhn 5y ago

Many years ago (think: 1994) scientists (mainly CS folks) published papers on the web as postscript files. Actually, they were usually on FTP sites, not the web, as almost nobody used the web at the time. I developed a huge aversion to postscript (it was clunky and the renderers weren't great) but the idea that every bit of published science would be freely available on the web seemed completely and totally obvious to me. When I later became an academic, I learned that when you write a paper and submit it, conditions for publication typically include signing away the copyright to the journal, possibly with a license to distribute a few preprints offline. My advisor at the time pointed out that he actually modified the contract (changing the terms to retain copyright), signed it and sent it back (no journal ever complained, and all his papers are available as PDFs online). arxiv is the closest thing to what I dreamt of some decades ago and I'm thrilled that Paul is receiving recognition. Personally, I think arxiv is a better path forward than scihub, entirely due to its "legitimacy". In the future, I will always work to "publish" on arxiv and not put my work in journals (fortunately, I am not in a publish or perish situation). My only complaint is that I don't particularly like PDF and wish there was an HTML-zip format that could be sent around and the browser did all the rendering work, while the udnerlying data tables are stored in well-defined formats so they can be programatically extracted.

judge2020 5y ago
> changing the terms to retain copyright), signed it and sent it back (no journal ever complained, and all his papers are available as PDFs online). Assuming the journals signed it first, this is most likely illegal since they didn’t know they were signing under the different terms. If they sign it after the professor signs it, they technically have the duty to confirm the language is the same, but it still might be seen as a deceptive practice on the professor’s part.
- dekhn 5y ago
  I had this discussion with the professor in question. He had already consulted with his IP lawyers. As you say, they technically have the duty to confirm the language is the same, but we know they didn't because the paper was published with their copyright attached. I think he was trying to push the issue, gently, and hoped some published would make a stink.

ahurmazda 5y ago

Well deserved. I only recently learned about the origin of arxiv and the story surrounding Joanne Cohn. Highly recommended read https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20211108a/full/ https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.2021110...

DreamScatter 5y ago

I still have never been able to post my paper about my Grassmann.jl geometric algebra foundations research on arxiv. https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl Seems like a useless overrated website. I was able to post my article on my own website instead. Arxiv is really a useless website.

rib3ye 5y ago

Is arXiv openly accessible in China? I tried a quick search on the topic and saw that there are quite a few mirror sites but no definitive answer.

_hzw 5y ago
You can check whether a site is blocked by GFW with the following websites: 1. http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/ http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/ 2. https://www.comparitech.com/privacy-security-tools/blockedinchina/ https://www.comparitech.com/privacy-security-tools/blockedin...

codetrotter 5y ago

Neat, next award should go to Alexandra Elbakyan for creating Sci-Hub :)

deleted 5y ago
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trox 5y ago

If you've ever wondered about the unusual arXiv.org website favicon: The original logo was a skull with bones as reference to the piratey nature of distributing preprints without the publisher's consent. The smiley face was added later in order to make it less offensive. Due to the conversion to a non-transparent format, the backgrond was filled with the green color. https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-story-behind-the-arXiv-org-favicon https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-story-behind-the-arXiv-org-f...

Cort3z 5y ago

Why does so many online articles refrain from adding a simple link to the product in question? https://arxiv.org/ https://arxiv.org/

grouphugs 5y ago

i remember them addressing all the garbage on there actually. he does deserve an award. i am in a mood due to severe lack of sleep, depression, and got hit with more sonic last night. phew doggy, let's go, gotta kill 'em all

Havoc 5y ago

That’s good. Sometimes I think stuff like this (supporting plumbing) moves science forward more than an individual discovery could.

p2p_astroturf 5y ago

What is the point of arxiv other than a file host but where people forcibly constrain themselves to the bureacratic process of creating a UN*X braindamaged tex / PDF with whatever academic publishing conventions? Someone in here even has posted makefile. For analogy to the problem I am alluding to, imagine needing a makefile to write an ASCII text document. Skimming through these comments, it seems like arxiv supports some kind of search or other metadata traversal. All this stuff could be done without a centralized server. No I am not advocating for your half working p2p network, cryptocoin, or startup.