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Continue testing the arXiv Scientific Director position – In 2014, we created a new position to provide intellectual leadership for arXiv's operation and appointed Chris Myers as the interim Scientific Director. We’ll continue to test and refine the job description and also consider the effectiveness of the current arXiv team model. Myers' appointment extended to the end of 2016. Position need to be assessed, revised (if necessary), and posted in early 2016.
Setting development priorities - arXiv operates on limited resources therefore it is critical for us to identify and set priorities. In support of this goal, we’ll experiment with an online survey to get input from both SAB and MAB in ranking and commenting on this year’s technical agenda. Completed.
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arXiv’s role in scholarly communication ecology - We continue to get questions and requests from libraries, publishers, societies, and funding agencies in regard to arXiv’s role in supporting emerging OA mandates and providing features in support of compliance requirements. We will continue following the new developments in regard to open access mandates from funders and related compliance issues. Also of interest to the arXiv team are plans for integration of standardized metadata by use of IDs like ORCID, Grant-IDs, or Institutional IDs; SHARE & CHORUS. We will continue to explore issues related to depositing and linking research data associated with papers. Also, we are partnering with Hypothes.is on Alfred P. Sloan foundation grant to explore open annotations for scholarly communication. Work to be continued in 2016 - see Special Projects section below.
Interoperability of arXiv with other institutional and subject repositories. One of the important factors in our sustainability efforts is enabling interoperability and creating efficiencies among repositories with related and complementary content to reduce duplicate efforts and bring efficiencies. We will investigate interoperability requirements to enable communication/exchange between arXiv and institutional repositories (for instance, pushing copies of papers published by a scientist to his/her home institution's repository). We formed a MAB subcommittee to identify needs and assess if and how arXiv can provide such functionality. Also, we’ll continue to exchange information with publishers/societies represented in arXiv, especially in exploring issues such as version of record, linking pre-print to formal published version, etc. Draft interoperability needs assessment and requirement document completed. 2015_arXiv_IR_interop_plan_draft.pdf - project added in the Special Projects category as we need additional funds to accomplish our goals in this domain.
Special Projects
The current 5-year business plan represents a baseline maintenance scenario. It was developed based on an analysis of the arXiv's baseline expenses during 2010-2012. It does not factor in any new functionality requirements or other unforeseen resource needs. Although a development reserve was established to fund such expenses, it is not sufficient to subsidize significant development efforts through surplus funds. Stewardship of resources such as arXiv involves not only covering the operational costs but also continuing to enhance their value based on the needs of the user community and the evolving patterns and modes of scholarly communication. We need to pursue grants and engage in collaborations to secure funds to support the following goals:
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