8 ms·

I always assumed it was for exactly the reasons you list. Anyone with academic credentials can submit to arxiv, but that leaves out a huge group of non-academic

by dguest 3y ago

I always assumed it was for exactly the reasons you list. Anyone with academic credentials can submit to arxiv, but that leaves out a huge group of non-academic hobby scientists who haven't had a spare 6 years to find their way into the ivory tower.

I_am_uncreative 3y ago
But... You don't need academic credentials to submit to arXiv. Anyone can submit to it, and arXiv doesn't do peer review either, they just have a bare minimum amount of review to ensure you're not submitting things that clearly do not match reality.
- mindcrime 3y ago
  > But... You don't need academic credentials to submit to arXiv. Well... sure, that's true in the strictest possible sense. But in practice, arXiv does do a measure of gatekeeping that's heavily based around academic affiliation as a criterion. It's just that it's possible with some effort to work around that and submit as someone who is outside of formal academia. Or at least they say it is[1]. I've never tried the process myself and I've heard mixed stories from others who have, about how (easy|hard) it is to get endorsed in such a case. arXiv requires that users be endorsed before submitting their first paper to a category. <snip> arXiv may give some people automatic endorsements based on subject area, topic, previous submissions, and academic affiliation. In most cases, automatic endorsement is given to authors from known academic institutions and research facilities. arXiv submitters are therefore encouraged to associate an institutional email address, if they have one, with their arXiv account (see author registration help). This will expedite the endorsement process. <snip> If you need to be endorsed by someone, it is best for you to find an endorser who you know personally and is knowledgeable in the subject area of your paper. A good choice for graduate students would be your thesis advisor or another professor in your department/institution working in your field. So yeah, you can see that their whole setup is really heavily oriented towards members of formal academia. That said, they do explicitly acknowledge the need to occasionally reach out and solicit endorsements from people you don't know. So I assume this does happen. Alternatively this is the recommended way to proceed. Start by finding related articles in your field. Your preprint surely has cited works that are already posted in the arXiv, some of these works will be particularly relevant. Bring up these abstracts from the arXiv page. You can find somebody qualified to endorse by clicking on the link titled "Which of these authors are endorsers?" at the bottom of every abstract page. Using that information, you can then find the email address of the submitter on the abstract page just under the "Submission history" heading. But, again, I've heard mixed stories from people who have tried. I can't help but think there ought to be some mechanism that's a little more deterministic, but while keeping the overall spirit of arXiv in place, and keeping cranks out. But I'll admit I don't know exactly what form that would take off the top of my head. [1]: https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html
- mr_mitm 3y ago
  Having an email address of a known university or institute is usually sufficient as academic credentials. If you don't have that, you need endorsement.
semi-extrinsic 3y ago
If you are a non-academic hobby scientist who is actually doing interesting work, it's very easy to find someone in your specific field (even a PhD student) and ask them for an arXiv invitation.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- elashri 3y ago
  As an actual PhD student, I will find it very dangerous to endorse someone who I don't know very much personally and judge a hobbyist work in general. The consequences might be huge for any future academic career if this turned south. And I get emails from time to time asking about that or just people sending mass emails presenting their ideas/work. But graduate students are the bottom of pyramid who do most work but have the least authority and power. This is not even talking about that what you actually get most of the time is a complete non-sense and you don't usually have time to focus with the good stuff if you get something.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mindcrime 3y ago
    > As an actual PhD student, I will find it very dangerous to endorse someone who I don't know very much personally and judge a hobbyist work in general. How so? I mean, what danger is there in just endorsing somebody to submit to arXiv? It's not like you're endorsing their work as being correct or anything. An arXiv endorsement is saying nothing more than "this isn't pure bullshit / spam / pseudo-scientific nuttery". As they say: The endorsement process is not peer review. You should know the person that you endorse or you should see the paper that the person intends to submit. We don't expect you to read the paper in detail, or verify that the work is correct, but you should check that the paper is appropriate for the subject area. You should not endorse the author if the author is unfamiliar with the basic facts of the field, or if the work is entirely disconnected with current work in the area ... > The consequences might be huge for any future academic career if this turned south. How would it "turn south" though? What would that even mean in this context? If you read the paper and judged it to actually not be "pure bullshit / spam / pseudo-scientific nuttery" then unless you made one hell of an error in judgment, there shouldn't be any consequences. From what the arXiv page says, the worst thing that could possibly happen is you could lose your ability to endorse others in the future. Probably not exactly career ending? And note that your endorsement is not public information: The fact that you have personally endorsed or not endorsed a person (as well as any optional comments) is private between you and the arXiv administrators – this information will not be shared with arXiv users or the person requesting endorsement,
jszymborski 3y ago
Interesting, I wasn't aware of the arXiv endorsement system [0] before this. I've only ever submitted to bioRxiv, which doesn't have any such restriction (as far as I can tell). That said, it seems like it might be easy for someone to be endorsed if their work is scholarly. [0] https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html
kristopolous 3y ago
If you're doing something as a hobbyist you think is legitimate, hitting up your local university and asking to run it by an expert should probably be step 2 and at that point you have your endorsement. You can just email them or even hijack office hours if they don't respond. Some slouch off the street deeply enthusiastic in their subject and trying to do work in it is basically definitionally exciting for academics, trust me. Meeting the next Srinivasa Ramanujan is a dream like winning the lotto.
- mindcrime 3y ago
  Some slouch off the street deeply enthusiastic in their subject and trying to do work in it is basically definitionally exciting for academics, trust me. I will say this: I've never asked for an arXiv endorsement before, but I have cold emailed professors before to inquire about certain aspects of their work. Not often mind you, but once or twice. And I've told this story here before at some point, but the response I got the first time around was overwhelmingly positive. I'm pretty sure the guy was thrilled that anybody was interested enough to read his book and send a question about it. He sent the data I was looking for, a pre-print of another related forthcoming paper from his group, and a standing invitation to reach out with additional queries in the future. So based on that n=1 anecdote, I feel pretty good that at least some academic types would be happy to provide an arXiv endorsement to somebody doing work related to theirs. It's no guarantee of course, but my hunch is that if one is doing non-crank work, they can probably find an endorser with some effort.
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    I've done this multiple times to great results. People don't work in university research for the pay, it's garbage, I assure you. I was a research associate about 15 years ago. The top tier CS researcher at that leading university payscale was something like $70k, that was the cap out.
    - vostok 3y ago
      > People don't work in university research for the pay, it's garbage, I assure you. It's pretty good in the US. I just looked up a randomly chosen assistant professor at a public university and they make $200k. I only looked up one person's salary so this isn't cherry picked. I'm not saying that they're in it for the money. I'm only disagreeing with the part where you said that the pay is garbage. It's not an infinite amount of money and it's less than industry, but it seems not garbage considering job prestige, job benefits, etc.
theamk 3y ago
Sure, but why vixra? It has no arxiv's upsides, and your paper will be listed next to clear junk like P=NP proof. If you can't (or won't) post to arxiv, get a blog and post there. Plenty of people do so.

by dguest 3y ago

I_am_uncreative 3y ago

But... You don't need academic credentials to submit to arXiv. Anyone can submit to it, and arXiv doesn't do peer review either, they just have a bare minimum amount of review to ensure you're not submitting things that clearly do not match reality.

mindcrime 3y ago
> But... You don't need academic credentials to submit to arXiv. Well... sure, that's true in the strictest possible sense. But in practice, arXiv does do a measure of gatekeeping that's heavily based around academic affiliation as a criterion. It's just that it's possible with some effort to work around that and submit as someone who is outside of formal academia. Or at least they say it is[1]. I've never tried the process myself and I've heard mixed stories from others who have, about how (easy|hard) it is to get endorsed in such a case. arXiv requires that users be endorsed before submitting their first paper to a category. <snip> arXiv may give some people automatic endorsements based on subject area, topic, previous submissions, and academic affiliation. In most cases, automatic endorsement is given to authors from known academic institutions and research facilities. arXiv submitters are therefore encouraged to associate an institutional email address, if they have one, with their arXiv account (see author registration help). This will expedite the endorsement process. <snip> If you need to be endorsed by someone, it is best for you to find an endorser who you know personally and is knowledgeable in the subject area of your paper. A good choice for graduate students would be your thesis advisor or another professor in your department/institution working in your field. So yeah, you can see that their whole setup is really heavily oriented towards members of formal academia. That said, they do explicitly acknowledge the need to occasionally reach out and solicit endorsements from people you don't know. So I assume this does happen. Alternatively this is the recommended way to proceed. Start by finding related articles in your field. Your preprint surely has cited works that are already posted in the arXiv, some of these works will be particularly relevant. Bring up these abstracts from the arXiv page. You can find somebody qualified to endorse by clicking on the link titled "Which of these authors are endorsers?" at the bottom of every abstract page. Using that information, you can then find the email address of the submitter on the abstract page just under the "Submission history" heading. But, again, I've heard mixed stories from people who have tried. I can't help but think there ought to be some mechanism that's a little more deterministic, but while keeping the overall spirit of arXiv in place, and keeping cranks out. But I'll admit I don't know exactly what form that would take off the top of my head. [1]: https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html
mr_mitm 3y ago
Having an email address of a known university or institute is usually sufficient as academic credentials. If you don't have that, you need endorsement.

semi-extrinsic 3y ago

If you are a non-academic hobby scientist who is actually doing interesting work, it's very easy to find someone in your specific field (even a PhD student) and ask them for an arXiv invitation.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
elashri 3y ago
As an actual PhD student, I will find it very dangerous to endorse someone who I don't know very much personally and judge a hobbyist work in general. The consequences might be huge for any future academic career if this turned south. And I get emails from time to time asking about that or just people sending mass emails presenting their ideas/work. But graduate students are the bottom of pyramid who do most work but have the least authority and power. This is not even talking about that what you actually get most of the time is a complete non-sense and you don't usually have time to focus with the good stuff if you get something.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mindcrime 3y ago
  > As an actual PhD student, I will find it very dangerous to endorse someone who I don't know very much personally and judge a hobbyist work in general. How so? I mean, what danger is there in just endorsing somebody to submit to arXiv? It's not like you're endorsing their work as being correct or anything. An arXiv endorsement is saying nothing more than "this isn't pure bullshit / spam / pseudo-scientific nuttery". As they say: The endorsement process is not peer review. You should know the person that you endorse or you should see the paper that the person intends to submit. We don't expect you to read the paper in detail, or verify that the work is correct, but you should check that the paper is appropriate for the subject area. You should not endorse the author if the author is unfamiliar with the basic facts of the field, or if the work is entirely disconnected with current work in the area ... > The consequences might be huge for any future academic career if this turned south. How would it "turn south" though? What would that even mean in this context? If you read the paper and judged it to actually not be "pure bullshit / spam / pseudo-scientific nuttery" then unless you made one hell of an error in judgment, there shouldn't be any consequences. From what the arXiv page says, the worst thing that could possibly happen is you could lose your ability to endorse others in the future. Probably not exactly career ending? And note that your endorsement is not public information: The fact that you have personally endorsed or not endorsed a person (as well as any optional comments) is private between you and the arXiv administrators – this information will not be shared with arXiv users or the person requesting endorsement,

jszymborski 3y ago

Interesting, I wasn't aware of the arXiv endorsement system [0] before this. I've only ever submitted to bioRxiv, which doesn't have any such restriction (as far as I can tell). That said, it seems like it might be easy for someone to be endorsed if their work is scholarly. [0] https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html

kristopolous 3y ago

If you're doing something as a hobbyist you think is legitimate, hitting up your local university and asking to run it by an expert should probably be step 2 and at that point you have your endorsement. You can just email them or even hijack office hours if they don't respond. Some slouch off the street deeply enthusiastic in their subject and trying to do work in it is basically definitionally exciting for academics, trust me. Meeting the next Srinivasa Ramanujan is a dream like winning the lotto.

mindcrime 3y ago
Some slouch off the street deeply enthusiastic in their subject and trying to do work in it is basically definitionally exciting for academics, trust me. I will say this: I've never asked for an arXiv endorsement before, but I have cold emailed professors before to inquire about certain aspects of their work. Not often mind you, but once or twice. And I've told this story here before at some point, but the response I got the first time around was overwhelmingly positive. I'm pretty sure the guy was thrilled that anybody was interested enough to read his book and send a question about it. He sent the data I was looking for, a pre-print of another related forthcoming paper from his group, and a standing invitation to reach out with additional queries in the future. So based on that n=1 anecdote, I feel pretty good that at least some academic types would be happy to provide an arXiv endorsement to somebody doing work related to theirs. It's no guarantee of course, but my hunch is that if one is doing non-crank work, they can probably find an endorser with some effort.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  I've done this multiple times to great results. People don't work in university research for the pay, it's garbage, I assure you. I was a research associate about 15 years ago. The top tier CS researcher at that leading university payscale was something like $70k, that was the cap out.
  - vostok 3y ago
    > People don't work in university research for the pay, it's garbage, I assure you. It's pretty good in the US. I just looked up a randomly chosen assistant professor at a public university and they make $200k. I only looked up one person's salary so this isn't cherry picked. I'm not saying that they're in it for the money. I'm only disagreeing with the part where you said that the pay is garbage. It's not an infinite amount of money and it's less than industry, but it seems not garbage considering job prestige, job benefits, etc.

theamk 3y ago

Sure, but why vixra? It has no arxiv's upsides, and your paper will be listed next to clear junk like P=NP proof. If you can't (or won't) post to arxiv, get a blog and post there. Plenty of people do so.