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Journals and the arXiv

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Over the past decade, a number of mathematical journals experimented with becoming “arXiv overlay journals”. This meant, essentially, that the final versions of all their articles would be available on the arXiv, and indeed that their online editions would simply be a list of links to arXiv hosted papers.

In this post, I want to collect what I know about the history of the arXiv overlays, talk a little about why the idea failed, and what the prospects might be for future integration between journal operations and the arXiv. I hope people will find analyzing this history relevant amongst the current surge of enthusiasm for transmogrifying mathematical publishing!

I’m hoping also that some of the “primary sources” for this history might jump in to correct and add to what I’ve found.

You can find the old 2001 announcement (by the arXiv advisory board) that Annals of Mathematics had decided to become an arXiv overlay journal, preserved in a sci.math.research archive. At the time of this decision, there were three other arXiv overlays: Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, Geometry & Topology and Algebraic and Geometric Topology.

Since then, it appears that all of these journals have reverted away from arXiv overlay status. I can’t find any trace on the internet of any actual announcements to this effect, but you can read through some comment threads (e.g. at the nCafe) where they try to track this down. Here’s a quote from Thierry Bouche at the IMU’s blog on mathematical journals:

even the Annals of math–everyone thought they could do whatever they wanted being The Annals–stepped down from arXiv overlay to a mere MSP charged access journal

My limited understanding (having spoken to Greg Kuperberg yesterday) is simply that being an arXiv overlay journal was financial suicide. Annals found that libraries were dropping their subscriptions, and simply could not be persuaded to continue forking over cash when all the content was guaranteed to be available online for free! (I think this is a very important point for open access advocates to keep in mind — funding a journal through library subscriptions is flatly incompatible with open access.)

On the other hand, some of these journals have maintained limited connections with the arXiv. Geometry & Topology, for example, encourages you to submit your paper by providing an arXiv identifier. Personally, I think this is great — it may significantly increase the likelihood that the paper actually makes it to the arXiv, and that subsequent revisions from the refereeing process appear as new versions.

There’s a quite outdated page about journals which accept arXiv submissions, hosted on the Front. It lists (incorrectly) several of those as being arXiv overlays, but also fails to identify the one journal I know of that’s actually currently an arXiv overlay, SIGMA.

My internet searches suggests that at Eureka Journal Watch there’s a page about arXiv overlays, but that wiki seems to be down at the moment.

Some questions for our readers:

  • What other journals accept submissions via an arXiv identifier?
    • (Could we ‘crowdsource’ an update of the page at the Front?)
  • Could more journals be persuaded to allow this? (Is it even a good idea?)
  • When exactly did Annals retreat from being an arXiv overlay? (Is there public discussion of this recorded somewhere?)
  • What is an “associated journal” at Mathematical Sciences Publishers? (e.g. Annals is now listed in this category)


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