2015 arXiv Roadmap
Technical
Items are listed in approximate priority order and may be adjusted based on ongoing discussions with the Scientific and Member Advisory Boards. The focus of work in 2016 is improvement of facilities for administrators and moderators in order to streamline their workflows, and to improve clarity and transparency of arXiv communications. A number of other tasks address legacy software issues.
...
Tidy arXiv code and version control systems, improve test coverage, remove unused code - arXiv's codebase has evolved over more than 20 years and while there have been a number of reorganizations over this time, and work to add tests, focused work on improving structure and test coverage will improve maintainability and development productivity. We also need to remove unused code and re-evaluate legacy bug reports.
User Support and Moderation
Define and implement new tools and interfaces for moderators – Continue ongoing work with moderators and arXiv IT to define and implement new tools and interfaces to support the work of moderators.
...
Systematize arXiv's individual archive pages - The 'home' pages for individual archives within arXiv have grown organically over time and are inconsistent with each other and in some cases outdated.
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 needs to be assessed, revised (if necessary), and posted in 2016.
...
Changes to the arXiv team model - In order to strengthen the daily oversight of arXiv, we will transition to a team model that has two full-time managers, one for IT and the other one for user support. Here is a slide that shows the current and new model: arXiv Org Chart
New Partnerships & Communication
arXiv’s role in scholarly communication ecology - We will continue following the new developments in regard to public access mandates 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; and depositing and linking research data associated with papers.
Interoperability of arXiv with other institutional and subject repositories. Based on last year's investigation of interoperability issues, we will continue exploring how arXiv should should 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). This work is added to the Special Projects category below 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. From users' perspective, arXiv continues to be a successful, prominent subject repository system serving the needs of many scientists around the world. However, under the hood, the service is facing significant pressures. The conclusion of the 2015 SAB and MAB annual meetings was that the arXiv team needs to embark on a significant fund raising effort, pursuing grants and collaborations. Based on the ideas and recommendations gathered last year, we've concluded that we need to first create a compelling and coherent vision to be able to persuasively articulate our fund raising goals. We’d like to use the approaching 25th anniversary of arXiv as an important milestone to engage us in a series of vision-setting exercises. Please see our nascent arXiv Review Strategy for more details.
...