viXra Press Release 14 July 2009

Twenty years ago physicists used to send copies of their new papers to CERN who would distribute them as preprints to other research institutions around the world by post. This service was essential because the process of peer review and publication is just too slow to keep up with the rapid pace of development in many fields of science. In 1991 Paul Ginsparg recognised that the CERN preprint system was just not fast enough so he invented his e-print archive in Los Alamos to distribute new research electronically on the internet. The arXiv, as it is now called, caught on rapidly and Ginsparg won a MacArthur award for his visionary approach.

But the arXiv faced a social problem - how to efficiently filter out e-prints regarded by the community as unscientific. In time the process of doing this manually for each submission became unmanageable so various systems were used to automatically filter the articles. Suddenly people would find that submitting from a .com internet address was less likely to work than using a .edu address, and so on. By 2004 control of the arXiv had shifted to Cornell University who oversaw the introduction of a new endorsement system. Filtering submissions then became the responsibility of scientists selected from universities around the world who became arXiv endorsers.

The stated intention was that scientists who had used the system before would have no difficulty continuing to do so, but the reality was a little different. In practice some people found that they could no longer submit their work without an endorser and endorsers are hard to find if you don�t have the right contacts. The reason for this is spelt out clearly at the end of the arXiv's explanation page for the endorsement system:

"We reserve the right to suspend a person's ability to endorse for any reason. If you endorse a person who makes an inappropriate submission, we may suspend your ability to make endorsements. If you feel uncomfortable about endorsing an author for any reason, don't do it -- ask the person to find another endorser."

In principle it should be possible for any scientist with a reasonable article to submit it as an e-print. In reality these threats are pretty strong stuff. Because of them, endorsers will only approve the work of researchers in their own field whom they know and trust. The danger of being banned from submitting themselves is otherwise too high a risk for most of them to support someone from outside the circle of respected research institutions.

Not surprisingly the endorsement system has its detractors. Some physicists including Nobel prize winner Brian Josephson have tried to submit only to find that even having a friendly endorser is not enough. The arXiv administrators have kept an extra tier of filtering and will remove any e-prints they consider inappropriate. Josephson and others like him founded the ArchiveFreedom.com website to highlight their plight. They claim they have been blacklisted by an unacceptable system of censorship, but if they hoped they could change the system by drawing attention to it they were wrong.

The fact is that most scientists who use the arXiv support the endorsement system. They resent the suggestion that they should share their archive with people that they consider "crackpots". there is a lot of material published on the arXiv each day and they appreciate the removal of papers that they say would waste their time. A closer examination shows that the situation is not so simple. Different scientists seem to have very distinct opinions about what they regard as bad science. If every e-print that someone thought was rubbish was removed, the arXiv might be left with only the most safe papers that stick to well established facts. Surely nothing new and interesting would survive. Why then do scientists accept a filtering system that removes papers from view according to criteria that are not even made public? There lies one of the biggest problems with the arXiv. Few people know what is actually being excluded, either by direct blacklisting or simply because the endorsement system is too big an obstacle for some scientists to get past.

The radical response to this situation is a new archive called viXra.org. Launched on the 9th July 2009 it is designed to directly challenge arXiv.org. In contrast to the arXiv, the submission policy of viXra is very open. Any papers will be accepted unless they commit a serious act of scientific abuse such as plagiarism, or false claims of affiliation. The objectives of viXra are to clarify what papers are being excluded from arXiv and to give them a permanent home.

viXra was founded by independent scientist Philip Gibbs in response to discussions in the blogosphere as well as his own difficulty in using the arXiv. Gibbs left academia in 1987 after attaining a PhD in theoretical physics at Glasgow University. Since then he has worked as a software engineer including a seven year stint as a Java web developer at the European Fixed Income Analytics department at ill-fated investment bank Lehman Brothers. There he rose to the rank of Senior Vice President before leaving to found his own web business in 2006. So what were his motivations for starting viXra?

"I left academic research early on because of the poor career prospects in UK science, but I never lost my interest in physics and mathematics. Just a few years later I was working for an organisation in France developing new air traffic control systems. I had easy access to the internet just as the World wide Web was being created. I was delighted to learn about the Los Alamos e-print archive where I could submit what I was working on and have it seen by physicists all over the world. My work did not go unnoticed. As well as receiving healthy numbers of citations, some of my work drew positive responses by e-mail from well known scientists such as Leonard Susskind, Lee Smolin and David Finkelstein who helped me publish my work in scientific journals. It was nothing revolutionary, but not bad for an independent physicist completely disconnected from academic life. As the scope of the arXiv expanded to cover mathematics I also used it to communicate my work in number theory with similar results.

Then in 2004 it all stopped. The new endorsement system introduced by Cornell University meant that I could no longer use the arXiv. Sure, in principle I should be able to find an endorser, but I can't expect people inside the system to risk their professional position by supporting my amateur work. This happened just as some of the ideas I had been proposing started to become of interest to other groups of physicists. I was glad to have my former work in the arXiv to establish the extend of my priority, but disappointed that I could not publish more to draw attention to what I had found and expand the details. The idea of starting an alternative archive for people excluded from the arXiv started to take form, but it was not until recently that I had the hardware resources and the time to do it.

Fundamental physics has reached a blockage with only slow progress being made in areas such as string theory and its alternatives. The last thing needed at this time is a rapid dissemination system that filters out any new ideas and encourages people to stick to well established paths. I hope that one way or another viXra will play its part in finding the much needed breakthrough.

Most scientists from within the professional academic community do not expect good research to come from outside despite such historical examples as Einstein. The feeling was summed up by Chiara Nappi in a recent new Scientist interview about her husband Ed Witten. 'Techniques have advanced so much that it's not conceivable these days to be able to do your work in a patent office in Berne' she says. The same scepticism was echoed by arXiv founder Paul Ginsparg who explained to Physics World that the arXiv aims 'to accommodate the interests of people within the research community' and not 'outsiders' who he says want to add more 'garbage'. I see his opinion as just a form of prejudice. He believes that because some non-professional scientists produce bad science then all non-professional scientists should be excluded. I disagree. Over the past two decades many of the brightest post graduates have been leaving academia to take advantage of the financially rewarding jobs offered in industry. They retain an interest in science research and are capable of following the latest trends using the internet. Their colleagues who remained in university departments are often constrained to work on established subject areas in order to find funding. It is therefore perfectly conceivable that the next big new idea could come from outside the system just as it did 100 years ago. I don�t expect that breakthrough to come from me, but perhaps by starting viXra I will encourage someone else to participate, just as the arXiv encouraged me 15 years ago.

A lot of people put the case that if someone makes a great discovery then it will be recognised and brought to the attention of the scientific community no matter who discovers it. They also argue that anyone can publish on the web and submit to journals for an unbiased peer-review. I think they are missing the point. Great discoveries are not always appreciated quickly even when made by well known scientists. For the less well known it takes a lot to get people to take notice of what they are doing. Past experience shows that When an amateur makes a discovery it may not be recognised until another scientist rediscovers it. results posted on personal websites are likely to be neglected. A few journals are open to submissions from outsiders but the better read ones are more concerned with their impact factor. Even well connected scientists have difficulty publishing anything that does not fit accepted patterns. Submissions from an outsider are most likely to be sent straight back with a glib comment about suitability. Of course these points also ignore the fact that most scientific work does not come in the form of great discoveries. Ordinary scientific progress also needs to be recognised and it won�t be unless it is available in an archive where the specialists who need it may find it useful even if they only come across it some years later.

Of course this is not just a problem that affects independent physicists like me. Scientists who wish to remain within the academic system are under enormous pressure to stick to safe ideas, especially when they are young and potentially at their most creative time. This is partly due to the funding structure which encourages short term projects and quick publications in high impact journals, but the arXiv is also playing its part. Their endorsement policy limits scientists willingness to publish their more speculative ideas until they have a safe reputation. Most become disillusioned and abandon their research long before it flourishes.

I know that many scientists are paranoid about the damage that they think can be done by people they see as "crackpots". I don�t think that warrants a strict system of filtering out all novel ideas from the scientific literature. Where I come from that is referred to as cutting off your nose to spite yourself. Different scientists have different ideas about what is good science, especially in theoretical physics. They need systems that can help them set up their own filtering and selection criteria so that they find the kind of stuff of interest to them. The arXiv could help with that by developing the necessary technology. Instead they unilaterally remove the material that they find inappropriate using criteria that are hidden from scrutiny.

I am not suggesting that the arXiv should adopt a policy as open as the one we have for viXra. Many scientists would not accept that. However, I definitely think it is very important that the arXiv becomes more open about its criteria for what it considers inappropriate and about who is making the decisions. The secrecy and scare tactics are what is doing the most damage. If I had control of the arXiv I would add a new category that accepted submissions without endorsements. It could be called speculative physics or open science. Nobody would be forced to read it so why should they complain?

Experimentalists working on particle accelerators have shown that marvellous things can be done with neural networks and other methodologies for selecting interesting data from their experiments. Theorists should be capable of using the same techniques to process the vast pool of literature that they work from. Indeed Ginsparg himself has developed physics inspired algorithms for clustering arXiv.org subject areas. It would be nice to see some of these put to practical use on the arXiv.org website. viXra is running on a dedicated server with the hardware resources necessary to support that kind of system. If it gets enough support from the community I will be able to find the time to try out some interesting ideas of my own.

In part viXra is a parody of the arXiv intended to draw attention to their inhibiting submission policies. It is also an experiment designed to find out truly what sort of material they are excluding or discouraging, because at the moment nobody really knows. Most of all it is a permanent e-print archive that is open to submissions from scientists from all walks of life. So far the response looks promising. Of course I don't expect it to ever have the same kind of reach and recognition that the arXiv has, but when it gets to the point where people find themselves citing papers from viXra I hope they will at last start to get the point."