Welcome to the arxivist.

The arxivist uses your preferences to sort arXiv articles --- making it easier to find new arXiv submissions that are pertinent to you.

If you're a new user, start by following instructions in the alerts: find some articles you like and tell use you like them; and sign up for the daily email!

Join us on Facebook to see the arXiv Catch of the Day.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I provide feedback about the arxivist?

Suggestions and positive feedback are very welcome. Contact us at support@arxivist.com.

How many articles do I need to rate?

The system becomes effective after about 5 upvotes, but improves as you keep rating articles.

How do rankings work?

Loosley speaking, the arxivist skims the title, authors and categories of each article to see whether it matches up with your interests as indicated through upvotes/downvotes of previous articles.

More specifically, the arxivist keeps track of keywords for each article: the authors and categories, as well as words and phrases in the title. When you upvote/downvote an article, the arxivist interprets that as a upvote/downvote of each keyword for that article. When the arxivist needs to rate a new article for you, it looks at your preference for each of the article's keywords and sums them up to get the total score.

For example, if you click thumbs-up for 10 articles in the category "math.MG", then any article in the category "math.MG" will gain 10 points towards its computed score. Likewise, if you upvote 10 articles with the word "hyperbolic" in the title, any other article with the word "hyperbolic" will gain 10 points. Because word pairs are keywords as well, phrases like "Heisenberg group" count more strongly: liking 10 articles with the phrase "Heisenberg group" will give add a score of 30 towards any article with that phrase in the title.

Can I see just one category of articles? E.g. just "hep-tp"?

Not explicitly. However, if you only upvote articles in hep-tp, then they will have a much higher computed rating so the effect will be what you want most of the time. On the other hand, if someone happens to upload a paper relevant to you in a different part of the arXiv, you will still be able to see it.

Can I just upvote all the papers by a certain author?

Most likely. Search for "au:last_first", for example "au:lukyanenko_anton", and then click the "upvote all" at the bottom of the table. Note that searching for more complicated names (starting with d', de, le, etc) is tricky. If you figure out the arxiv's general pattern for this, please let us know.

Can you hide (etc) papers with higher version numbers?

Yes, but it will take some work. We'll set this functionality up once we reach 1000 users. Articles with only minor modifications (e.g. journal citation added) will also be filtered out at this time.

Can I customize my email preferences?

At the moment, the arxivist sends daily emails, showing the top 3 (relative to you) articles announced on the arXiv that day.

Eventually, it will be possible to change the frequency of the emails and the number of articles shown. We'll set this functionality up once we reach 1000 users.

The current layout isn't very useful on mobile devices

Designing layouts is a pain, but we do need a mobile version at some point. We'll set this functionality up once we reach 1000 users.

The current layout doesn't work on my non-mobile device.

Please try reloading the page and make sure javascript is enabled. If you're still having problems, let us know at support@arxivist.com, and we'll see what we can do.

Can you also show papers from MathSciNet, PubMed, or talks at the Joint Math Meetings?

Maybe eventually.

Is the arxivist private and/or secure?

Mostly, but not fully, like most things in life.
1. The arxivist does keep track of access to the system and, obviously, user preferences. We use cookies to keep track of the layout and Google login.
2. We won't use this information maliciously.
3. However, the system is not secure, so anyone who tries hard enough will be able to access your data.

Who maintains the arxivist?

The arxivist was created by Anton Lukyanenko, then postdoc at the University of Michigan Department of Mathematics, in the fall of 2016, and entered beta testing at the end of January 2017. Anton is now a faculty member at the George Mason University Department of Mathematics.

By way of Anton's salary, the arxivist has been supported by the UM Math and the NSF RTG grant, and is now in the same way supported by the GMU Math.

The arxivist is not associated with the arXiv.


Changelog

Update February 8:
Miscelaneous improvements (gzip data for AJAX, require sequential loading of JS files).

Update January 30:
Upgraded to semi-dedicated hosting.

Update January 25:
Extensive changes to the interface over the past week. Ready to enter the beta.

Update January 18:
All daily articles should load correctly now. Working on corresponding search-by-date vs search-by-text interface changes, which should be done by the end of the week.

Update January 13:
Extensive rewrite of the system. Should look mostly the same but is on route to much better performance.

Update November 20:
(1)Reworked things internally, (2) added result caching, so precomputed results load instantly.

Update October 11:
(1) Improved search functionality (spaces are now acceptable), (2) added new-tab icon, (3) added toggle-able thumbs up/down icons.

Update August 27:
(1) Tweaked interface, (2) added an arxiv cache, (3) added a daily mailer, which will take effect on Monday (no emails over the weekend).

Update August 19:
Reindexed all articles. Categories are now keywords. Results should look pretty different.

Update August 11:
Now using arxiv categories as keywords, as requested. But only when adding NEW articles to the database. Still need to re-catalog the old articles to include this info.
Also, it seems that the arxivist is slow largely because I'm running it on a cheap server...

Update August 9:
Added search bar. Use at your own peril.

Update August 3:
(1) cleaned up database (should run faster soon),
(2) fixed layout cookie (should remember the layout long-term),
(3) fixed the center layout resizing issue.