In the Dark<p><strong>Kudos to arXiv!</strong></p> <a href="https://telescoper.blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/brand-logo-primary.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"></a> <p>There’s a <a href="http://Inside%20arXiv—the%20Most%20Transformative%20Platform%20in%20All%20of%20Science" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">good piece</a> in <em>Wired</em> about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ginsparg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Paul Ginsparg</a>, the physicist who created <a href="https://arxiv.org/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">arXiv</a>. The lede of the article begins <em>Modern science wouldn’t exist without the online research repository known as arXiv</em><strong><strong>.</strong></strong> For once, this isn’t an exaggeration. I recommend you read the piece yourself so I won’t say much more about it except that I found it fascinating. I couldn’t resist in including this extract, however, with which I wholeheartedly agree:</p><blockquote><p>Every industry has certain problems universally acknowledged as broken: insurance in health care, licensing in music, standardized testing in education, tipping in the restaurant business. In academia, it’s publishing. Academic publishing is dominated by for-profit giants like Elsevier and Springer. Calling their practice a form of thuggery isn’t so much an insult as an economic observation. Imagine if a book publisher demanded that authors write books for free and, instead of employing in-house editors, relied on other authors to edit those books, also for free. And not only that: The final product was then sold at prohibitively expensive prices to ordinary readers, and institutions were forced to pay exorbitant fees for access.</p></blockquote><p>I’ve written words to that effect so many times I’ve lost count!</p><p>Anyway, as if to reinforce the point about the transformative nature of arXiv, it has just been announced that the European Astronomical Society has awarded the 2025 <a href="https://eas.unige.ch/inspiration_medal.jsp" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Jocelyn Bell Burnell Inspiration Medal</a> to <a href="https://arxiv.org/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">arXiv</a> “for its impact on astrophysical research thanks to the open, free and world-wide distribution of scientific articles”. What a bold, imaginative and fully justifiable decision that is, and congratulations to arXiv! It is a truth universally acknowledged that every paper in astrophysics worth reading is on arXiv.</p><p>I’m planning to be at this year’s <a href="https://eas.unige.ch/EAS2025/index.jsp" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">EAS meeting in Cork at the end of June </a>when this, and the other EAS awards, will be presented. I’m not sure who will receive it on behalf of arXiv but they’re sure to get a rousing ovation.</p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://telescoper.blog/tag/arxiv/" target="_blank">#arXiv</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://telescoper.blog/tag/european-astronomical-society/" target="_blank">#EuropeanAstronomicalSociety</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://telescoper.blog/tag/paul-ginsparg/" target="_blank">#PaulGinsparg</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://telescoper.blog/tag/wired/" target="_blank">#Wired</a></p>