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viXra

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viXra
Type of site
e-print archive
Available inEnglish
OwnerScientific God Inc.
Founder(s)Philip Gibbs
URLviXra.org
CommercialNo
Launched2009
Current statusOnline

viXra is an electronic e-print archive known for unorthodox and fringe science.[1][2][3] It was set up by independent physicist Philip Gibbs as an alternative to the dominant arXiv service operated by Cornell University. Its name comes from arXiv spelled backwards.[4][5]

Description

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Although dominated by physics and mathematics submissions, viXra aims to cover topics across the whole scientific community. It accepts submissions without requiring authors to have an academic affiliation and without any threshold for quality.[4] The e-prints on viXra are grouped into seven broad categories: physics, mathematics, computational science, biology, chemistry, humanities, and other areas.[6] Anyone may post anything on viXra, though house rules do prohibit "vulgar, libellous, plagiaristic or dangerously misleading" content.[3] As a result, the site has a reputation among physicists for hosting "material of no interest".[7] Physicist Gerard 't Hooft writes, "When a paper is published in viXra, it is usually a sign that it is not likely to contain acceptable results. It may, but the odds against that are considerable".[2]

Gibbs originally started the archive to cater to researchers who believed that their preprints had been unfairly rejected or reclassified by the arXiv moderators.[8] As of 2013, it had over 4000 preprints,[9] and by December 2020, the number had grown to 36,321.[10] A 2020 study of preprint servers found that as of September of that year, viXra hosted 440 preprints about COVID-19.[11]

viXra uses the same article numbering schema as arXiv: yymm.iiiii, where y stands for last two digits of the year, m stands for the month, and i stands for a sequential index among articles sent during the month.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Collins, Harry; Bartlett, Andrew; Reyes-Galindo, Luis (July–August 2017). "Demarcating fringe science for policy". Perspectives on Science. 25 (4): 411–438. doi:10.1162/POSC_a_00248. S2CID 57566881.
  2. ^ a b 't Hooft, Gerard (2017-11-15). "The importance of recognising fringe science" (PDF). Institute for Theoretical Physics, Utrecht University. Retrieved 2017-11-28.
  3. ^ a b Becker, Kate (2016-10-27). "What Counts as Science?". Nautilus. Retrieved 2017-11-28.
  4. ^ a b "What’s arXiv spelled backwards? A new place to publish". Nature News Blog. 16 July 2009.
  5. ^ Delfanti, Alessandro (2020). "Chapter 20, Fake archives: The search for openness in scholarly communication platforms". In Biagioli, Mario; Lippman, Alexandra (eds.). Gaming the Metrics: Misconduct and Manipulation in Academic Research. MIT Press. pp. 261–269. ISBN 978-0-262-53793-3.
  6. ^ "ViXra.org open e-print archive". viXra.org. Retrieved 22 August 2011.
  7. ^ Reyes-Galindo, Luis (2016-04-29). "Automating the Horae: Boundary-work in the age of computers" (PDF). Social Studies of Science. 46 (4): 586–606. arXiv:1603.03824. Bibcode:2016arXiv160303824R. doi:10.1177/0306312716642317. PMID 28948871. S2CID 2001597.
  8. ^ Cartwright, Jon (15 July 2009). "Fledgling site challenges arXiv server". Physics World. 22 (8): 9. Bibcode:2009PhyW...22h...9C. doi:10.1088/2058-7058/22/08/14.
  9. ^ Gibbs, Philip E. (2013). "A Good Year for viXra". Prespacetime Journal. 4 (1): 87–90.
  10. ^ Official site (front page)
  11. ^ Nabavi Nouri, Shayan; Cohen, Yosef A.; Madhavan, Mahesh V.; Slomka, Piotr J.; Iskandrian, Ami E.; Einstein, Andrew J. (February 2021). "Preprint manuscripts and servers in the era of coronavirus disease 2019". Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice. 27 (1): 16–21. doi:10.1111/jep.13498. ISSN 1356-1294. PMID 33094906.
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