Posted by bookstore-romeo 18 hours ago
Its especially problematic because while ArXiv love to claim to be working for open science, they don't default to open licensing. Much of the publications they host are not Open Access, and are only read access. So there is definitely the potential to close things off at some point in the future, when some CEO need to increase value.
another will need to rise to take its place.
To this end, they added an endorsement requirement this year: https://blog.arxiv.org/2026/01/21/attention-authors-updated-...
Oh, wait.
arXiv is doomed. It was nice while it lasted.
I wonder when they will introduce the algorithmic feed and the social network features.
I am wary of that. IMO the business model is damaged therein. You can say in 2022 we had 27; bankrupt in 2030.
People keep falling into the same trap. They love monopolies, then are shocked when those monopolies jerk them around.
Everything published on arXiv could also be published on Zenodo, but not the other way around.
I don't see much of a monopoly, nor any "moat" apart from it being recognised. You can already post preprints on a personal website or on github, and there are "alternatives" such as researchgate that can also host preprints, or zenodo. There are also some lesser known alternatives even. I do not see anything special in hosting preprints online apart from the convenience of being able to have a centralised place to place them and search for them (which you call "monopoly"). If anything, the recognisability and centrality of arxiv helped a lot the old, darker days to establish open access to papers. There was a time when many journals would not let you publish a preprint, or have all kinds of weird rules when you can and when you can't. Probably still to some degree.