Oya Y. Rieger, arXiv Program Director, Cornell University Library, June 2016
Acknowledgements: Many individuals were involved in designing and testing the survey and helped out with the data analysis. Special thanks go to Vandana Shah, Deborah Cooper, Andrea Cruz, Jim Entwood, Martin Lessmeister, Gail Steinhart, Leah McEwen, Chloe McLaren, Jake Weiskoff, Andrea Cruz, and Simeon Warner, Chris Myers, Vandana Shah, Gail Steinhart, Simeon Warner, and Jake Weiskoff. Also, we are grateful for the guidance from the arXiv’s Member Advisory Group Board and Scientific Advisory GroupBoard.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
As part of its 25th anniversary vision-setting process [insert link], the arXiv team at Cornell University Library conducted a user survey in April 2016 to seek input from the global user community about the current services and future directions. We were heartened to receive 36,000 responses, representing arXiv’s diverse community (See Appendix A). The prevailing message is that the users are happy with the service as it currently stands. 95% of survey respondents said that they are very satisfied or satisfied with arXiv. Furthermore, 72% of respondents indicated that arXiv should focus on its main purpose, which is to quickly make available scientific papers, and this will be enough to sustain the value of arXiv in the future.This theme was pervasively reflected in the open text comments. A significant number of respondents suggest keeping to the core mission and enabling arXiv’s partners and related service providers to continue to build new services and innovations on top of arXiv.
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