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2015 Roadmap Link
Technical
Items are listed in approximate priority order and may be adjusted based on ongoing discussions with the Scientific and Member Advisory Boards.
Improve moderator web interface, add personal checkbox - We want to encourage moderator use of the web interface to streamline their workflow. The moderator web interface was significantly extended and improved in 2014. Work will improve clarity based on the feedback we have received and provide each moderator with the ability to mark submissions as checked.
Allow moderators to recategorize articles via the web interface - We want to encourage moderator use of the web interface to streamline their workflow and to avoid unnecessary reliance on admins as intermediaries. Moderators should be able to make specific category change recommendations via the web interface that result in alerts to other appropriate moderators.
Develop and integrate internal automatic overlap detection for new submissions - Develop pipeline for checking of new submissions against existing corpus and staged submissions. Develop warnings for administrators and moderators based on overlap check results. Make these warnings available for administrators and moderators.
Subject category aliasing for cs/math/stat - There are three subject category merges (aliases) requested in order to better represent subject areas that span major discipline boundaries. Some of these require extra work because there are pre-0704 (old identifiers, see http://arxiv.org/help/arxiv_identifier) submissions where the primary category is becoming an alias and thus the historical primary archive to identifier prefix correspondence will be broken. In the past aliases have been made on an ad-hoc basis and without the need to change existing primary archive designations. We should instead work out and document procedures for such changes. Includes work to create tools for the bulk re-categorization of submissions affected by this and later merges.
Update, reorganize and better document the TeX system - TeX is currently a central component of our article processing, approximately 85% of submissions are TeX or PDFTeX source. We need to put effort into updating our TeX installation, improving our packaging so that it can more easily be deployed and updated, better documenting our installation, and increasing experience within the current development team. We need to update the tex binaries to the current version of TeX Live (currently TeX Live 2011, should use 2014), update our set of style files (last update was 2011), and also update our ghostscript installation.
Migrate functions away from old PHP/Tapir codebase and into Perl/Catalyst - We have been gradually replacing old PHP/Tapir code with more maintainable and better integrated Perl/Catalyst code.
Develop and integrate internal instance of classifier code - We should integrate the classifier code into the arXiv production system rather than using API to code running on Paul Ginsparg's research machine. This was agreed by the SAB on 2013-09. Work was postponed in summer 2014 to allow quick initial deployment and to allow Paul Ginsparg time to tidy his code. There are uncertainties here because we haven't seen Paul's code and perhaps when we do we will want to rewrite some of the client-side code to reflect that understanding.
User Support and Moderation
Define and implement new tools and interfaces for moderators – Continue working with moderators and arXiv IT to define and implement new tools and interfaces to support the work of moderators. See "Improve tools and interfaces to support moderators" in Technical section above.
Improve arXiv administrative processes – Work with Scientific Director and others to evaluate arXiv administration processes, and to define and implement an optimal administrative staffing configuration, in light of evolving moderation tools and staffing needs.
Publish arXiv category definitions – Complete the development of public subject category descriptions for existing physics categories. Only a small number of physics categories currently have public descriptions. Defining the scope and boundaries of the categories will help users, moderators, and administrators.
Review arXiv endorsement policies – Review current arXiv endorsement procedures and policies across all subject categories, seeking greater uniformity and transparency. Work with IT to implement any polices that can be programmatically enabled.
Systematize the arXiv moderation appeal processes – Work toward a uniform arXiv moderation appeal process across all subject categories. Provide public documentation of the process.
Review arXiv user communication – Begin to review the many "stock" messages used by arXiv administrators when communicating with submitters and other arXiv users. Some of these messages are outdated, cryptic, or unnecessarily brusque. Work toward identifying these and improving their usefulness.
Develop arXiv moderator assessment metrics – Define, develop, and implement metrics for evaluating moderator performance, to share with subject committee chairs.
Develop criteria for accepting new subject domains – arXiv is occasionally asked to add a new subject domain. While there is considerable experience within the organization about what to consider regarding new domains, this has not been documented. Gather and document a set of criteria to be used when considering the feasibility of adding new subject domains to arXiv.
User Support and Moderation
Business Model & Governance
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.
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