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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 update 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 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.
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Use HTTPS for all of web interface - The web is rapidly moving toward secure communication (using HTTPS, HTTP over SSL) and all arXiv accesses occur over HTTPS. All existing HTTP URIs URLs should still resolve but they should do this via a redirect to the equivalent HTTPS URIURL.
Refine process for addition of overlap notices - Following the September 2016 2015 recommendation of the Scientific Advisory Board, we will implement a process to put submissions on - hold when overlap with other articles is detected by Paul Ginsparg's system. This will provide authors an opportunity to respond to warnings before overlap notices are added.
Consolidate web presence at the main site - The arXiv mirror network was very useful in the early days of arXiv and web. However, geographic locality of servers is much less useful now than it was when the mirror network was established, the mirrors a are little used, and maintaining support for mirrors impedes development of new features on arXiv. We will discontinue the remaining six arXiv mirrors and improve capacity of the main site network. A presence at Los Alamos National Laboratory will be retained to support http://xxx.lanl.gov/ URIs URLs and we will investigate support for TeX processing for A4 paper.
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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.
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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archives within arXiv have grown organically over time and are inconsistent with each other and in some cases outdated.
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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 needs to be assessed, revised (if necessary), and posted in 2016.
Continue the membership drive & identify new funding sources - We continue to be encouraged with the five-year pledges and increasing number of arXiv member institutions. Creating a broad and international network of supporters require requires ongoing efforts. We are entering the fourth year of our 5-year business plan. One of the goals this year is to start planning for the next 5-years. Based on last year's online fund raising pilot (Give button), we aim to assess and repeat the strategy to create an additional revenue stream.
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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
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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.
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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 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.
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- Add metadata fields for funding information, article status and migration of old content - arXiv team has received several requests for support for additional metadata such as funding information, version information (author manuscript, publisher version, etc.), and publication information. These changes will require extensions of our internal metadata format and handling in appropriate submission interfaces, admin interfaces, moderator screens, search systems, and data export facilities.
Support arXiv-IR interoperability -Test and implement the interoperability requirements identified to enable communication/exchange between arXiv and institutional repositories (e.g., pushing copies of papers published by a scientist to his/her home institution's repository). This work may also involve working with publishers/societies represented in arXiv to exploring explore issues such as version of record, linking pre-print to formal published version, etc.
- Add linkages to datasets in data repositories - Based on our experience with the Data Conservancy pilot (http://arxiv.org/help/data_conservancy), a loose coupling to existing external data repositories seems more likely to be sustainable than close collaboration. This also has the benefit of allowing arXiv to work with many repositories, so that users can use the data repository that best matches their need, their community expectations, etc..
- Create tools and facilities to better integrate with Computer Science conferences - Scope out a project to ease the upload of proceeding (or other collections) by reducing the amount of custom programming required for the submission of proceedings via the SWORD interface.
Assign DOIs to data - We accept data as ancillary files (http://arxiv.org/help/ancillary_files) but offer relatively little support. It would be more helpful to assign DataCite DOIs from EZID to ancillary files thus making them citeable.
- Ingest arXiv content into CUL Archival Repository - While arXiv adopts good practices for data backup and management, it is far from being an archival collection. As we increase our collaboration with other repositories and consider supporting public access mandates, we need to strengthen our preservation strategies. Work is require to script creation of submission packages (SIPs) for initial ingest (and regular incremental updates) of arXiv content to CULAR (Cornell University Library Archival Repository). Also, we'd like to explore the need for additional archival strategies (e.g., working with Portico or Lockss).
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Restructure the submission system - We need to expand arXiv's workflow capabilities to better accommodate new and more complicated workflows associated with document analysis, overlap detection, and improved moderator interactions.
Accelerate legacy codebase improvements - While the arXiv software operates well, there are areas where the codebase is old and should be migrated or rewritten to make is it more efficient to maintain and further develop. So we need to invest in arXiv beyond what is feasible through the operational budget in order to make is 'it "sustainable' " - easier to keep up and advance. We seek to accelerate the modest progress possible within the baseline maintenance scenario.