• CUL provides a subsidy of $170,000, including the salary of Program Director, in support of arXiv's operational costs. In addition, CUL makes an in-kind contribution of all indirect costs, which currently represents 37% of total operating expenses.
• The Simons Foundation contributes $100,000 per year in recognition of CUL's stewardship of arXiv. In addition, the Foundation matches $300,000 per year of the funds generated through arXiv membership fees.
• Each member institution pledges a five-year funding commitment to support arXiv based on institutional usage ranking (the annual fees are set in six tiers from $1,000-$4,400).
• Grant funds from foundations and governmental agencies to sponsor new development projects.
• Online fund raising campaigns to encourage giving by the arXiv's international user community.

In 2017, arXiv raised approximately $975,000 in addition to the Sloan Foundation grant in support  of arXiv-NG. We remain grateful for the support from the Simons Foundation that has encouraged long-term community support by lowering arXiv membership fees and making participation affordable to a broader range of institutions. This model aims to ensure that the ultimate responsibility for sustaining arXiv remains with the research communities and institutions that benefit from the service most directly.  

Finding new, sustainable funding avenues to support current operations and upgrades of Classic arXiv's aging code has been an important effort for the arXiv team. One of the strategies has been continuing to encourage libraries and research labs around the world to support arXiv by becoming members. In addition, after a successful pilot in 2015, we have been repeating the online fund raising campaign and during 2017 raised $56,666 from 1,000+ arXiv users. 

As reflected in the 2018 budget, the arXiv team is taking an integrated approach to consider the current operational system (Classic arXiv) and the next-gen system as a unified program. This approach is essential as we recruit and retain staff who will need to be conversant with the old and new systems, and transitioning from one to the other. We will strategically expand the core arXiv development team to bring new skills to the arXiv-NG project, while continuing to provide excellent support and maintenance of the production arXiv system. 

Key Accomplishments and Plans for 2018

• Composed of over 170 subject experts, the worldwide network of arXiv moderators is an essential component of arXiv's success. Volunteer moderators verify that submissions are topical and of interest to the scientific community, follow accepted standards of scholarly communication, and are classified in the appropriate subject categories. We continue to improve facilities for administrators and moderators in order to streamline their workflows, and to improve clarity and transparency of arXiv communications. During 2017, the arXiv team: 
  • Implemented enhancements to the existing moderation Web UI to improve the proposal system based on moderator feedback.
  • Released the first beta of a new moderation interface to support arXiv’s volunteer moderators. Driven by Cycle.js and backed by a RESTful API, the new interface centralizes the actions that moderators can make on a submission to a single view, reducing clicks and navigation time.
• Our development team has begun to improve various search and browse technology features, which will be deployed as a part of the arXiv-NG implementation. 
• We developed and implemented methods for soliciting user input and feedback, particularly to guide arXiv-NG decision-making, including a protocol for remote usability testing and applied it to the development of new moderation interface.
• Based on the arXiv user survey, extracting cited references from arXiv papers and providing links to those references for readers was identified for development under the 2017 arXiv Roadmap. We undertook an exploratory project focused on reference extraction and possible scenarios for reference linking.
• We successfully deployed an updated TeX processing and production system. It incorporates TeX Live 2016 as well as numerous local add-ons that have been upgraded to the latest versions.
• As 2017 was the last year of arXiv's first 5-year business model, working with the Member Advisory Board (MAB), the arXiv team finalized the 2018-2022 business planning process and sought feedback from the members libraries.  See: 2018-2022 FAQ.
• arXiv received $322,000 from the Heising-Simons Foundation to contribute to the arXiv-NG initiative. The grant from the Heising-Simons Foundation, which follows a $450,000 grant from the Sloan Foundation, will help fund the creation of a scalable, cost-efficient, and reliable infrastructure for the site, which currently relies on aging legacy code.
• arXiv team is proud to be the recipient of the 2017 Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics (PAM) Division Award from the Special Libraries Association. The Award is given annually for a significant contribution to the literature of physics, mathematics or astronomy, or to honor work that demonstrably improves the exchange of information in those fields. 
• arXiv’s subject domain has been expanded with the addition of EESS: (Electrical Engineering and Systems Science) and Econ: (Economics).  
• We continued to assess and refine arXiv’s organizational and governance model and held an annual meeting for the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) and Member Advisory Board (MAB) to discuss IT development priorities, financial state, moderation tools and policies, and fund raising strategies.
• On the staffing front, in order to strengthen the daily oversight of arXiv and the arXiv NG development process, we continue to modify our team and are pleased to bring in two new colleagues. Steinn Sigurdsson, Professor of Astrophysics at the Pennsylvania State University, has assumed the part-time Scientific Director position in August 2017. Another important addition to our team has been Erick Peirson. As Lead System Architect, Erick works with the arXiv development team to evolve the current system to become the next generation of arXiv.org (arXiv-NG).  Here's our organizational structure.