Astrophysicists and physicists as creators of ArXiv-based commenting resources for their research communities. An initial survey

Abstract

This paper conveys the outcomes of what results to be the first, though initial, overview of commenting platforms and related 2.0 resources born within and for the astrophysical community (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016). Experiences were added, mainly in the physics domain, for a total of twenty-two major items, including four epijournals -and four supplementary resources, thus casting some light onto an unexpected richness and consonance of endeavours.These experiences rest almost entirely on the contents of the database ArXiv, which adds to its merits that of potentially setting the grounds for web 2.0 resources, and research behaviours, to be explored.Most of the experiences retrieved are UK-and US-based, but the resulting picture is international, as various European countries, China and Australia have been actively involved. Final remarks about creation patterns and outcome of these resources are outlined. The results integrate the previous studies according to which the web 2.0 is presently of limited use for communication in astrophysics and vouch for a role of researchers in the shaping of their own professional communication tools that is greater than expected. Collaterally, some aspects of ArXiv's recent pathway towards partial inclusion of web 2.0 features are touched upon. Further investigation is hoped for.

The limitations to our understanding of peer review

“…With the recent explosion of preprints in the Life Sciences [103], a number of different services have emerged that 'overlay' peer review in one form or another on top of the developing preprint infrastructure [104], for example, biOverlay in the Life Sciences. However, the general uptake of such services appears to be fairly low [105]; most recently, this led to Academic Karma, a leading platform in this area, to shut-down (April 2019). In February 2018, the Prelights service was launched to help highlight biological preprints, and Peer Community In represents a service for reviewing and recommending preprints, both independent from journals.…”

The state of the art in peer review

“…In numerous sub-disciplines of the physical sciences, mathematics and computer sciences, researchers share non-peer reviewed manuscripts to arΧiv, which currently publishes around 100 000 manuscripts each year (known as preprints or e-prints) (Ginsparg 2016 ; Pulverer 2016 ). Here, the purpose is for community-driven cost-effective and rapid communication of research results for collaboration and feedback, which has had differential uptake across the various research disciplines that use arΧiv (Marra 2017 ). Preprints are currently experiencing an explosive wave of growth in a variety of disciplines, catalysed by a wide range of different tools, platforms and community-level organisations (e.g.…”

Anomalous Josephson effect in semiconducting nanowires as a signature of the topologically nontrivial phase

“…A much larger effect can be obtained in a topological system, where only one band exists at the Fermi level. [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] Recently, it was demonstrated that the maximal effect in a short junction based on the helical edges states of a quantum spin-Hall insulator (QSHI) is found when the Zeeman field is applied not only to the junction area, but to the superconductors as well. 31 In this paper, we show that the magnitude of the anomalous Josephson current allows one to identify whether a Josephson junction based on a nanowire with Rashba SOC and a Zeeman field is in the topologically nontrivial regime.…”