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Complete development issues from 2012-09-21 Scientific Advisory Board meeting - The SAB agreed to a number of changes in the way arXiv should send emails to moderators and control user selection of categories. Changes also add the ability for moderators to comment on and put submissions on "hold" without the need for arXiv admin interaction, a first step toward empowering moderators though more direct facilities. Work was started in 2012 and will be completed in early 2013. Status: DoneCompleted
Complete move of servers to virtual machine (VM) infrastructure - In 2012 we migrated two out of three of arXiv's server machines to new VMs. We will complete the move by migration our main web server to pair of load-balanced VMs managed by IT@Cornell. This arrangement will support scaling to additional web front-ends as necessary. As part of this transition we will formalize the update and maintenance process for these machines, and remove access by non-CUL or IT@Cornell staff. Status: DoneCompleted
Change email handling to support arXiv admin and moderation ticketing system - The "Request Tracker" software has been selected and we will rework email filtering software to use this instead of the current email-based arXiv admin workflows. Status as of 8/13: Partially complete. Have moved help mailbox, not yet moderation mailbox. After discussion with SAB and moderators it is clear that discussion with moderators should not move to Request Tracker at this stage: Completed
Add automatic classification checks to submission system - We will use classifier software developed by Paul Ginsparg to classify incoming submissions according to our category scheme. Where these automatic classifications differ significantly from the user-selected classifications we will add a warning to the moderator alerts. Status as of 8/13: In discussion with Paul Ginsparg to get software
Improve tools and interfaces to support moderators - We will work with the SAB and moderators to define and develop better tools that allow moderators to interact more directly and efficiently with the arXiv system and administrators. The overarching aim is to make best use of available moderator effort by making the work of moderators as quick and convenient as possible, consistent with achieving the quality goals and following policies set out by the SAB. Status as of 8/13: Good discussion with SAB and moderators, currently refining list of tasks generated: Work-in-progress
Implement new category aliases for cs/math/stat and add a new category for q-fin - In the past the creation of category aliases (e.g. math.IT/cs.IT) and associated recategorization of articles has required a mix of manual DB edits and one-off scripting. We will develop tools to safely do bulk edits of this sort. Testing is also required to ensure that having articles where the primary classification does not match the old-style id as a result of these new aliases is handled correctly everywhere. Status as of 8/13: Not done
Improve author identifier support and data export - Add basic support for ORCID and other author identifiers associated with arXiv accounts. Add periodic data dumps for all public authorship data. Status as of 8/13: Not done
Improve dataset support - Review use of and experience with the Data Conservancy pilot and then either discontinue or improve interaction. Decide on a medium-term strategy for data and consider assigning DataCite DOIs for ancillary files. Status as of 8/13: The Data Conservancy pilot was discontinued (http://arxiv.org/help/data_conservancy) experience reviewed. We will continue to support modest sized datasets and other materials using the existing ancillary files mechanism (http://arxiv.org/help/ancillary_files), and will ingest data from the pilot as ancillary files to support it long-term. We have subscribed to the EZID service and will assign DataCite DOIs to ancillary files.
Security and login, email privacy - There are significant deficiencies which should be addressed. Issues include: all password entry and authenticated interactions should occur via https; domain based cookies should not be sent to mirror sites; and user email addresses should be more carefully protected. Status as of 8/13: Not done
Alerting system - The email alerting system remains popular but the mechanisms for subscription management are outdated. Users should be able to see and control their subscriptions from their user account page. New software will be developed to replace the extremely old and hard to maintain software implementing the current email subscription system. Status as of 8/13: Not done
User Support and Moderation
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