Short presentation at Hypothes.is/Sloan workshop on Peer Review. Gives some arXiv background, some past and existing work relating to commentary and review on arXiv, and plans for annotation experiments

1. Annotations on arXiv
to support review
and comment
Simeon Warner
(Cornell University Library)
Peer Review Meeting, Washington DC,
May 15-16, 2014

3. 4th largest “publisher”*
Publisher New articles per year
Elsevier ~260k (2012, [1])
Wiley ~180k (2013, pers. comm.)
Springer ~150k (2009?, [2])
arXiv ~100k (2014, projected)
Taylor & Francis ~60k (2010, [3])
[1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/scholarly-pubs-
(%23168)%20Elsevier%20submission.pdf
[2] http://www.springer.com/us/partners/society-zone-issues/springer-s-author-satisfaction-
program/4496
[3]
http://editorresources.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/?p=1816
* if we are happy comparing apples and oranges, and publish = to make public

4. Cost and effort
• 2.75 FTE admin, 2.5 FTE developer
• 149 volunteer moderators
– correct classification, appropriateness
• mgmt. + advisory boards
CY2014 budget $885,987
=> budget per new article < $9

5. Fast
Fair
Efficient
(Let’s not get hung up on things like open
access for now. For the current discussion that
is just an obvious part of fair and efficient)

6. Commentary on arXiv
• Comment articles
• Separate discussion sites:
- CosmoCoffee
- Journal Club for Condensed Matter Physics
- ...
- Facebook experiment
- Blogs and trackbacks

11. Comment and review
(by peers) is an
essential part of
scholarship
The question is whether our fast, fair and
efficient scholarly communication infrastructure
can assist with these elements of the process

12. arXiv experiments
1. Allow users to see annotations on arXiv
articles or formally published versions of
same article
– handle arXiv formats and versioning
– ids: arXiv <-> DOI <-> ADS <-> Inspire
2. Allow interaction with authenticated,
external annotation services to support
overlap journals or journal clubs
– filtered access

13. opt-in
authenticated/curated
external
(and tied to ORCID iD)

17. Similarly to tie to
formally published
version.
Bidirectional.
Q. When not
appropriate? How
to indicate?

18. That’s all folks...
simeon.warner@cornell.edu
@zimeon