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There's a huge number of serious papers on viXra. I am reluctant to pick out many specific examples because viXra has its antagonists who use peer-pressure to try to persuade people to withdraw good papers from viXra. Of course I dont mind pointing to my own papers at viXra.org e-Print archive, Philip Gibbs. In case I am considered an exception I will also mention the work of viXra.org e-Print archive, Simon Plouffe who is a great supporter of the viXra principles. There are plenty others I could mention but I wont.
An independent report has been written which did a comparison of papers on arXiv and viXra [1211.1036] A Scienceographic Comparison of Physics Papers from the arXiv and viXra Archives It was found from a sample that 15% of papers on viXra had been published in peer-reviewed journals. We are aware of several examples that are published in top quality journals such as Physics Review D. It may sound like a low proportion but with over 10,000 papers on viXra it amounts to a sizeable contribution. It also needs to be taken into account that many viXra authors are not incentivised to seek peer review to boost their CVs because they do research as a pastime rather than a career. Also, it is becoming increasingly difficult for academic outsiders to get a fair review from good journals.
In addition, I invite people to browse through the viXra submissions. Of course they will quickly find papers that many would consider non-serious with obvious flaws, but they will also come across papers that are not so easily dismissed. The chances are they wont understand these papers. viXra covers a broad spectrum of research and most serious research is too specialised to be understood outside the small group of people working in that area. It is easy for people to pick out obviously silly papers and mock viXra for including them, but they are skipping the serious papers because they cant understand them and are missing the point on several different levels which I will try and explain.
Many areas of science such as climate research are controversial and political while others such as theoretical physics delve into speculative areas which are often criticised by traditionalists on philosophical grounds before they are eventually seen to be correct. In the past, independent thinkers were given more freedom to air their ideas but during the twentieth century the peer-review system became more rigid and ended up being controlled by big commericial publishers who only want to fill their pages with safe ideas from well-backed academics who are sure to boost the journal's impact factor (There are still a few independent journals who perform a great service to the scientific community.) I documented a few examples from the history of science of people who were considered crackpots in their time but who later turned out to be right: crackpots who were right. If you notice that there are fewer examples from recent times you should consider why that might be.
The emergence of internet based repositories such as arXiv have helped to get round some of the barriers that peer review puts in the way of rapid and open dissemination of research. Of course peer-review remains an important part of the scientific method, but we need a new system of open peer-review where work is published first and reviewed openly next. Academics have been very slow to introduce such a system but that is another topic.
Despite what the moderators of arXiv will tell you, it is very difficult for people from outside the academic community to publish there. Independent researchers are asked to find a trusted endorser to allow their work to be submitted, but endorsers are threatened that if they allow inapropriate papers to be submitted they will lose privelidges. Even if an endorser can be found, the work of unaffiliated researchers such as myself is put on hold once submitted so there is a delay during which work might be plagiarised (plagiarism is becoming a serious problem in science but again that is another topic) If the work is then accepted by the moderators they may sideline it to a category such as "general maths" where it may be seen as less serious and not indexed by some academic catalogues. For example my paper [1010.4219] Elliptic Curves and Hyperdeterminants in Quantum Gravity was moved out of the hep-th category it was submitted to despite being backed by an eminent endorser and it remains in the general maths category despite having at least five citations by respected authors. Many other good papers are rejected entirely. After hearing many stories of good research being excluded we started viXra as an alternative.
It is not the purpose of a repository to judge papers or give them any level of credibility through acceptance. This can only happen with proper peer review, and eventually the process of building on the work with citations and experimental confirmation etc. Some people are made to feel that they should not submit to viXra because they will be considered a crank. This is odd since academics are not discouraged from using Google+, twitter or other scoial media despite the fact that many dubious sources also use them. The purpose of a repository is to provide a permanent url from which papers can be evaluated and a timestamped record of submitted versions for auditing priority claims. Readers should be wary of papers on any repository whether it is viXra, arXiv or anywhere else before it has been reviewed or verified. It is unfortunate that arXiv tries to give an impression that its contents can be trusted because they have been lightly checked by endorsers or moderators.
Some people respond to these points by saying that nevertheless viXra should filter out the most obviously crazy submissions. There are good reasons why we dont see it that way. There is no sharp line between work that is crazy and work that is revolutionary that can be easily determined. Any filtering process requires a team of moderators with a range of expertise who have to make judgments about what can be included. They will either have to let a lot of dubious papers through or risk rejecting valuable contributions. viXra is run on a budget of about 1$ per paper whereas arXiv requires $8 per paper to support its infrastructure of endorsement, moderation and administration. Aside from the cost implications of moderation our objective at viXra is to ensure that anyone with an original idea has a chance to air it, no matter how outlandish it may seem.
At viXra we recognise that even papers which do not seem to be serious can in fact be very valuable. The case of Georg Ohm shows how easy it can be to lose a good idea if research that seems crazy is rejected. Ohm was criticised because he introduced theoretical ideas into his research that more experienced scientists of his time could see were wrong. Luckily it was eventaully recognised that he had nevertheless performed some remarkable experiments that established the relationship between voltage and current in resistive materials. Now we call this Ohm's law and name the unit of resistance in his honour. It can only be wondered how much scientific progress has been delayed when many other good ideas were lost in this way especially in recent times as resistance to independent research has grown.
Furthermore, even the papers which really are crazy and far from the correct course of progress can have their own form of value. Some scientists such as Leonard Susskind have admitted that they were originally inspired to become scientists because they were introduced to ideas that they now see as ridiculous. Finally, even if a paper has no impact on scientific progress, the person who wrote it is someone who is willing to think for themselves and express their ideas. They will often learn from the process and may continue to find out more about the subject they are interested in. It would be foolish to imagine that nothing good ever comes out of this process.
If you look into the kind of people who object to viXra (when they are not hiding behind anonymity) you will find that they consist of armchair pundits, new PhD students, the occasional unexceptional postdoc and of course arXiv administrators. The larger part of good scientists are more open, often because they have been through the mill and experienced paper rejection and other forms of resistance to new ideas. You might want to look for example at FQXi which is run by scientists such as Max Tegmark and Anthony Aguirre who are much more open to the views of outsiders because they themselves have experienced the negativity that unconventional work can generate.
One thing that makes some academics dislike viXra is that they receive many nuisance emails from independent scientists trying to promote their theories. Sometimes these emails contain links to papers on viXra and we get requests to bannish the culprits. The irony is that it is arXiv who is more responsible for this problem. viXra discourages its authors from sending unsolicited emails and explains that it is more useful and safer to promote research openly, waiting for anyone interested to get in touch. If that does not happen they need to develop the work further themselves and ensure that all advances are made widely available and timestamped. If and when new developments make their work more relevant they will have a historic record of their contributions. If, on the other hand, the same authors submit their papers to arXiv they will receive an automatic response telling them to find an endorser for the submission. How else can they find someone authorised to do that other than by sending out lots of emails to try and get someone interested?
viXra started out as an experiment to see how much need there was for an alternative research repository. We have been overwhelmed by the level of support with over 200 new papers appearing each month. We hear many stories of rejection from other e-paper archives. It has become harder for people outside of academia to have papers accepted by peer-review journals. I have published a number of papers myself as an independent researcher in mathematics and physics but in every case this has been done with the help of an insider. Every time I submit my own work as soul author with no backing my work is rejected. In one instance recently my maths paper was rejected by a journal administrator as soon as I confirmed that I had no institutional affiliation. It was not even forwarded to an editor, let alone an expert reviewer. Another version of the work submitted in colaboration with a well-known academic mathematician was accepted with enthusiasm by a different journal. Even some researchers from inside academia have problems because their work is controversial, or because they are based at a less established university in a developing country. This is why we now believe that viXra fills an important need of the scientific community and we will keep it running indefinitely until the system is changed. It must be said that there are still good journals who are more open but they tend to be unjustly derided because of their often low impact factors.
For every author that submits to viXra there is a bunch of others who could make use of it but don't because they are put off by detractors who say that they will be labelled as cranks. These people are often rejected by journals or other repositories. They will eventually move on disappointed to other things and their work will be unrecorded and lost as future developments change course. Many of these people are bright and successful in their work. People would be surprised if they knew how many multi-millionaires and even billionaires are included in the community of independent scientists. I think anyone who attacks a community of 5000 researchers by mocking them on the basis of a few cherry-picked examples needs to answer this question: "Does this make me look like a reasonable and careful thinking person, or does it single me out as a thoughtless bigot?" There is little more we can do to counter the negativity that needlessly puts some people off submitting to viXra but at least we know it is a choice they have.
An independent report has been written which did a comparison of papers on arXiv and viXra [1211.1036] A Scienceographic Comparison of Physics Papers from the arXiv and viXra Archives It was found from a sample that 15% of papers on viXra had been published in peer-reviewed journals. We are aware of several examples that are published in top quality journals such as Physics Review D. It may sound like a low proportion but with over 10,000 papers on viXra it amounts to a sizeable contribution. It also needs to be taken into account that many viXra authors are not incentivised to seek peer review to boost their CVs because they do research as a pastime rather than a career. Also, it is becoming increasingly difficult for academic outsiders to get a fair review from good journals.
In addition, I invite people to browse through the viXra submissions. Of course they will quickly find papers that many would consider non-serious with obvious flaws, but they will also come across papers that are not so easily dismissed. The chances are they wont understand these papers. viXra covers a broad spectrum of research and most serious research is too specialised to be understood outside the small group of people working in that area. It is easy for people to pick out obviously silly papers and mock viXra for including them, but they are skipping the serious papers because they cant understand them and are missing the point on several different levels which I will try and explain.
Many areas of science such as climate research are controversial and political while others such as theoretical physics delve into speculative areas which are often criticised by traditionalists on philosophical grounds before they are eventually seen to be correct. In the past, independent thinkers were given more freedom to air their ideas but during the twentieth century the peer-review system became more rigid and ended up being controlled by big commericial publishers who only want to fill their pages with safe ideas from well-backed academics who are sure to boost the journal's impact factor (There are still a few independent journals who perform a great service to the scientific community.) I documented a few examples from the history of science of people who were considered crackpots in their time but who later turned out to be right: crackpots who were right. If you notice that there are fewer examples from recent times you should consider why that might be.
The emergence of internet based repositories such as arXiv have helped to get round some of the barriers that peer review puts in the way of rapid and open dissemination of research. Of course peer-review remains an important part of the scientific method, but we need a new system of open peer-review where work is published first and reviewed openly next. Academics have been very slow to introduce such a system but that is another topic.
Despite what the moderators of arXiv will tell you, it is very difficult for people from outside the academic community to publish there. Independent researchers are asked to find a trusted endorser to allow their work to be submitted, but endorsers are threatened that if they allow inapropriate papers to be submitted they will lose privelidges. Even if an endorser can be found, the work of unaffiliated researchers such as myself is put on hold once submitted so there is a delay during which work might be plagiarised (plagiarism is becoming a serious problem in science but again that is another topic) If the work is then accepted by the moderators they may sideline it to a category such as "general maths" where it may be seen as less serious and not indexed by some academic catalogues. For example my paper [1010.4219] Elliptic Curves and Hyperdeterminants in Quantum Gravity was moved out of the hep-th category it was submitted to despite being backed by an eminent endorser and it remains in the general maths category despite having at least five citations by respected authors. Many other good papers are rejected entirely. After hearing many stories of good research being excluded we started viXra as an alternative.
It is not the purpose of a repository to judge papers or give them any level of credibility through acceptance. This can only happen with proper peer review, and eventually the process of building on the work with citations and experimental confirmation etc. Some people are made to feel that they should not submit to viXra because they will be considered a crank. This is odd since academics are not discouraged from using Google+, twitter or other scoial media despite the fact that many dubious sources also use them. The purpose of a repository is to provide a permanent url from which papers can be evaluated and a timestamped record of submitted versions for auditing priority claims. Readers should be wary of papers on any repository whether it is viXra, arXiv or anywhere else before it has been reviewed or verified. It is unfortunate that arXiv tries to give an impression that its contents can be trusted because they have been lightly checked by endorsers or moderators.
Some people respond to these points by saying that nevertheless viXra should filter out the most obviously crazy submissions. There are good reasons why we dont see it that way. There is no sharp line between work that is crazy and work that is revolutionary that can be easily determined. Any filtering process requires a team of moderators with a range of expertise who have to make judgments about what can be included. They will either have to let a lot of dubious papers through or risk rejecting valuable contributions. viXra is run on a budget of about 1$ per paper whereas arXiv requires $8 per paper to support its infrastructure of endorsement, moderation and administration. Aside from the cost implications of moderation our objective at viXra is to ensure that anyone with an original idea has a chance to air it, no matter how outlandish it may seem.
At viXra we recognise that even papers which do not seem to be serious can in fact be very valuable. The case of Georg Ohm shows how easy it can be to lose a good idea if research that seems crazy is rejected. Ohm was criticised because he introduced theoretical ideas into his research that more experienced scientists of his time could see were wrong. Luckily it was eventaully recognised that he had nevertheless performed some remarkable experiments that established the relationship between voltage and current in resistive materials. Now we call this Ohm's law and name the unit of resistance in his honour. It can only be wondered how much scientific progress has been delayed when many other good ideas were lost in this way especially in recent times as resistance to independent research has grown.
Furthermore, even the papers which really are crazy and far from the correct course of progress can have their own form of value. Some scientists such as Leonard Susskind have admitted that they were originally inspired to become scientists because they were introduced to ideas that they now see as ridiculous. Finally, even if a paper has no impact on scientific progress, the person who wrote it is someone who is willing to think for themselves and express their ideas. They will often learn from the process and may continue to find out more about the subject they are interested in. It would be foolish to imagine that nothing good ever comes out of this process.
If you look into the kind of people who object to viXra (when they are not hiding behind anonymity) you will find that they consist of armchair pundits, new PhD students, the occasional unexceptional postdoc and of course arXiv administrators. The larger part of good scientists are more open, often because they have been through the mill and experienced paper rejection and other forms of resistance to new ideas. You might want to look for example at FQXi which is run by scientists such as Max Tegmark and Anthony Aguirre who are much more open to the views of outsiders because they themselves have experienced the negativity that unconventional work can generate.
One thing that makes some academics dislike viXra is that they receive many nuisance emails from independent scientists trying to promote their theories. Sometimes these emails contain links to papers on viXra and we get requests to bannish the culprits. The irony is that it is arXiv who is more responsible for this problem. viXra discourages its authors from sending unsolicited emails and explains that it is more useful and safer to promote research openly, waiting for anyone interested to get in touch. If that does not happen they need to develop the work further themselves and ensure that all advances are made widely available and timestamped. If and when new developments make their work more relevant they will have a historic record of their contributions. If, on the other hand, the same authors submit their papers to arXiv they will receive an automatic response telling them to find an endorser for the submission. How else can they find someone authorised to do that other than by sending out lots of emails to try and get someone interested?
viXra started out as an experiment to see how much need there was for an alternative research repository. We have been overwhelmed by the level of support with over 200 new papers appearing each month. We hear many stories of rejection from other e-paper archives. It has become harder for people outside of academia to have papers accepted by peer-review journals. I have published a number of papers myself as an independent researcher in mathematics and physics but in every case this has been done with the help of an insider. Every time I submit my own work as soul author with no backing my work is rejected. In one instance recently my maths paper was rejected by a journal administrator as soon as I confirmed that I had no institutional affiliation. It was not even forwarded to an editor, let alone an expert reviewer. Another version of the work submitted in colaboration with a well-known academic mathematician was accepted with enthusiasm by a different journal. Even some researchers from inside academia have problems because their work is controversial, or because they are based at a less established university in a developing country. This is why we now believe that viXra fills an important need of the scientific community and we will keep it running indefinitely until the system is changed. It must be said that there are still good journals who are more open but they tend to be unjustly derided because of their often low impact factors.
For every author that submits to viXra there is a bunch of others who could make use of it but don't because they are put off by detractors who say that they will be labelled as cranks. These people are often rejected by journals or other repositories. They will eventually move on disappointed to other things and their work will be unrecorded and lost as future developments change course. Many of these people are bright and successful in their work. People would be surprised if they knew how many multi-millionaires and even billionaires are included in the community of independent scientists. I think anyone who attacks a community of 5000 researchers by mocking them on the basis of a few cherry-picked examples needs to answer this question: "Does this make me look like a reasonable and careful thinking person, or does it single me out as a thoughtless bigot?" There is little more we can do to counter the negativity that needlessly puts some people off submitting to viXra but at least we know it is a choice they have.
About the Author
Former Retired
Studied at University of Cambridge
Lives in Basildon, Essex
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