Thread by @steinly0

Thread: @arxiv distributes somewhat over 10,000 e-prints per month across a range of order O(100) scientific categories, mostly in the physical and mathematical sciences.
It has become a significant useful resource for science communications

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The arXiv is currently a part of Cornell University Libraries, subject to University policies. It has a small budget and staff, and a group of volunteers who handle much of the work load.
NB the arXiv is in transition to move to Cornell CIS next year.

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Most authors are not consciously aware that the arXiv is curated and never encounter a non-process hold, or any hold.

The arXiv, as stated in the policy authors explicitly agree to, reserves the right to reclassify or reject any submission.

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The decisions may be appealed, but we do not engage in discussion about individual decision. The reasons for decisions are enumerated, and include "at our discretion"

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There are two levels of moderation - an adaptive automated algorithm, which flags submissions as it detects various issues, and a human layer of volunteer moderators.
The human mods are overworked, and human.

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The automated algorithm works surprisingly well, except when it doesn't.
Human judgement is still critical in a number of cases, and in particular edge cases.
There is always an edge: if we move the boundaries we just create new edges.

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The AAS launched #RNAAS a little over a year ago. It is not refereed and caters to ultrashort communications.
As a default, #RNAAS submissions violate multiple arXiv guidelines and are with high fidelity auto flagged for rejection.

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The astro-ph mods were asked and agreed to let this go, and consider RNAAS submissions on case-by-case basis.
As submissions increase this becomes a significant workload.
As RNAAS scope increased, some submissions became more out of scope, some were in-scope.

9/n

The issue (and other similar in other fields) are discussed by our Advisory Board. There was also an informal discussion at 2018 AAS meeting and multiple online discussions and smaller discussions at other meetings.
Opinion is very close to even split, so far.

10/n

The arXiv is much bigger than astro-ph, and there are strong pressures to have consistency across categories. There are also pressures to throttle the volume of eprints readers receive.
The arXiv will also not automatically conform to changes in publishers policy

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There are potential technological solutions to some of these issues, and there are stakeholder within the arXiv membership with strong opinions on these issues.
There is also an imperative to keep the arXiv functioning and not to add to its fragility.

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The arXiv is free and open to its readers and authors.
It has very limited resources and relies heavily on overworked moderators.
Publicly attacking our volunteers does not expedite any of this process.

13/n

The arXiv rules and guidelines emerged from mostly bottom-up evolutionary processes, they are under constant discussion and revision. This includes legal constraints from multiple jurisdictions.
The rules are incomplete, and have inconsistencies.

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As with all such systems, there is a temptation to game the rules, or play with legalistic interpretations of co-operative guidelines.
Playing with the rules breaks them and triggers systemic immune responses.
All of you understand this.
Please play nice.

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