Mastodawn

John Carlos Baez

The arXiv is separating from Cornell University, and is hiring a CEO, who will be paid roughly $300,000/year:

https://jobs.chronicle.com/job/37961678/chief-executive-officer

They say:

"After decades of productive partnership with Cornell University, and with support from the Simons Foundation, arXiv is establishing itself as an independent nonprofit organization, marking the next stage in its 35-year history as a pioneer of open-access science."

The arXiv’s current annual budget is approximately $6 million and they employ ~27 staff members, most of whom work remotely, primarily in the U.S. The new chief executive officer (CEO) will be responsible for all aspects of arXiv, including strategic planning, financial management, technical infrastructure, personnel oversight and stakeholder engagement. They will work closely with board member representatives of Cornell University and the Simons Foundation to establish the organization’s independence.

A firm called Spencer Stuart is recruiting the CEO. For confidential nominations and expressions of interest, you can contact them at [email protected]. The salary is expected to be around $300,000, though the actual salary offered may differ.

Chief Executive Officer - New York City, New York (US) job with arXiv | 37961678

arXiv seeks its first CEO to champion open, free scientific discovery and guide the platform’s next chapter as an independent nonprofit.

The Chronicle of Higher Education Jobs

Thomas Coudreau 4d ago

@johncarlosbaez 5% of the annual budget for the CEO’s salary is that a standard practice for a non profit?

Fabian Transchel 4d ago

@Thcoudreau @johncarlosbaez Yes, it's called fast-track #Enshittification.

We saw the same thing with #Mozilla (#Firefox) recently.

I won't hold my breath, but chances are we'll also see #ensloppification of #arXiv soon.

Freya Blekman 3d ago

@ftranschel @Thcoudreau @johncarlosbaez @pluralistic agree completely. But then it's our own fault. I've been fighting in various university/academic board of directors to reserve budget for things like arxiv. Those are the line items that get cut first

Fabian Transchel 3d ago

@freyablekman @Thcoudreau @johncarlosbaez @pluralistic It's surely the case that scholars need to be vocal.

However, it's also related to what the kids call #terminal #capitalism; There's only so many hills you can die on *within* faculty.

If the society at large decides* there is no money for #arXiv, then arXiv will go the way of all #enshittified platforms.

* And it should be obvious that the high-level decision-making process should be questioned, not [only] scholars fighting for #budget.

Freya Blekman 2d ago

@ftranschel @Thcoudreau @johncarlosbaez @pluralistic this has nothing to do with "society as a whole" and just so it is clear:

it was for YEARS possible to support arxiv via donations. My group always did. The number of groups that did so worldwide was in the few hundred.

So, now we will get a shitty arXiv instead. Own fault. Academic institutions are happy to shell out 20k+ publishing fees to Nature/Science for one paper but not a few 1000 for one of the essential open science tools in our field. And so we will get what we pay for.

Dan Riley 4d ago

@Thcoudreau @johncarlosbaez The arXiv budget is just internal operations, it doesn’t make any grants or fund outside projects, so the CEO salary is going to be a larger percentage than for a place like the Simons Foundation that serves as a funder of many outside project (including arXiv).

While $300k sounds like a lot, it looks to be towards the low side of CEO compensation for a tech-oriented non-profit foundation in NYC.

John Carlos Baez 4d ago

@dan131riley @Thcoudreau - I didn't list the job qualifications, but you can read them, and it seems they're looking for the kind of prestigious scientist who would need a high salary to consider dropping their research for this sort of complex, time-consuming, attention-demanding administrative job. I'm curious to see who gets hired.

BradleyKSherman 4d ago

@johncarlosbaez @dan131riley @Thcoudreau
I nominate John Carlos Baez.

John Carlos Baez 4d ago

@bks @dan131riley @Thcoudreau - I would hate this job. I had some fun thinking about the salary I'd demand if someone wanted me to do it. It would be dumb of them to want that, because I'd probably do a bad job, but I might do it for $3,000,000/year.

BradleyKSherman 4d ago

@johncarlosbaez @dan131riley @Thcoudreau Would you take the equivalent in AI tokens?
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/03/12/ai-companies-try-to-pay-staff-in-ai-tokens-not-money/

AI companies try to pay staff in AI tokens, not money

This week’s big headline is: “Silicon Valley is buzzing about this new idea: AI compute as compensation“. Uh huh. [Business Insider] The idea is that instead of getting paid dollars to work for an …

Pivot to AI

François, kookariégeois chill 3d ago

@johncarlosbaez @bks @dan131riley @Thcoudreau i'm curious what would the extra 2700000 bring you that compensates the misery of this kind of job.

I'm asking because i'm going to do a 50% management job for almost no extra soon.

Thomas Coudreau 3d ago

@jaztrophysicist @johncarlosbaez @bks @dan131riley
Eager to know more about this job…

François, kookariégeois chill 3d ago

@Thcoudreau @johncarlosbaez it's official already...

https://lookingup.francois-rincon.org/giant-steps/

Giant steps – Looking up

Thomas Coudreau 3d ago

@jaztrophysicist @johncarlosbaez I wish you the best in this endeavor. It is likely a great opportunity to learn many new things.

François, kookariégeois chill 3d ago

@Thcoudreau @johncarlosbaez that's the idea, yes ! Trying something new in support of the future

John Carlos Baez 1d ago

@jaztrophysicist - Congratulations!

I'm not sure what I'd do with $3,000,000/year, but I'm already comfortable enough, so I could either give it to charity or set up a team of people to work on things I want done. It's all hypothetical, though, so I haven't bothered to think it through. I have enough trouble already, figuring out what I want to do.

David, a Bostonian in Tokyo.4d ago

@bks @johncarlosbaez @dan131riley @Thcoudreau

SECONDED!!!!

Edward Dunne 3d ago

@johncarlosbaez @dan131riley @Thcoudreau There is likely to be a lot of fund-raising associated with the CEO job. That may make it less attractive to some people who might otherwise be interested.

That’s one of the reasons moving to NYC seemed very odd to me.

@dan131riley @Thcoudreau @johncarlosbaez

Dan Riley 4d ago

@clew @Thcoudreau @johncarlosbaez arXiv nominally moved to the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island in Manhattan a few years ago, though I don’t know if they have any actual infrastructure there.

The job description does say “will work closely with board member representatives of Cornell University and the Simons Foundation”, so Simons seems to be very involved.

Erik Moeller 4d ago

@dan131riley @Thcoudreau @johncarlosbaez

I would say it's still a bit high, for current scale in NY, looking at Candid and other surveys, $250K would be quite reasonable.

But reading between the lines, my guess is they're hoping to scale well beyond the $6M. arXiv is essential for AI/ML research, so they very much should get some money from the sector to keep preprints useful in the age of slop.

Martin Escardo 4d ago

@johncarlosbaez Oh, no, I thought the arxiv was going to be for ever, at least for as long as we last in this planet.

First we lost the mirrors in Europe. And now this.

I am not optimistic about this move.

Who gets to decide about this?

Deyan Ginev 4d ago

@MartinEscardo @johncarlosbaez Cornell University does, naturally.

Albert Cardona 4d ago

@dginev @MartinEscardo @johncarlosbaez

Deyan, you have an insider view. What need there is for a CEO in arxiv? Rather, more like a team lead with direct experience and with a technical background and role on daily operations?

Albert Cardona 4d ago

@dginev @MartinEscardo @johncarlosbaez

I mean, April 1st is still two weeks away.

Garrett Wollman 4d ago

@albertcardona An "independent nonprofit organization" requires officers, by law, as well as a board of some sort to whom the officers are responsible. It also requires a lot of legal, finance, and compliance that Cornell was doing previously.

Deyan Ginev 4d ago

@albertcardona @MartinEscardo @johncarlosbaez

Some structure needs to perform a leadership function. As other commenters mention, the 501c3 + CEO is a standard setup over here, and given we are working with a geo center in NYC there is quite a lot that a CEO figure can achieve not only inside arXiv, but also externally.

Our main challenge is sustaining arXiv's level of service and preserving its core mission in the face of growing scale. That doesn't require a CEO for daily operations, but it requires some leadership structure for the long-term direction. And longevity is a core part of the mission of an archive.

John Carlos Baez 4d ago

@MartinEscardo - I don't instantly assume this will be bad. I think it depends a lot on who they choose. The job description says they want to hire a prestigious mathematician, physicist or computer scientist. It will be hard to get someone like that without a fairly high salary.

It's possible they are doing this because they believe Trump will continue his campaign against universities until 2028 at least, and they want to insulate the arXiv from Cornell.

Of course it *could* be very bad.

@johncarlosbaez @MartinEscardo I do wonder though if aiming to hire a person working in Maths, Physics or CS is the right call. Overseeing such crucial part of academia that _arxiv_ has become requires great understanding of cultural context and discourse, at least if the goal is to keep it the pillar that it is. While people can be brilliant at what they do, it doesn't necessarily translate well elsewhere. Of course, #NotAllFolxInSTEM but actually quite many of them are not the best when it comes to the nuances of navigating such landscapes. And unfortunately we have many examples of the disasters which happen when technical people become CEOs. I really hope _arxiv_ won't be another casualty of that.

Martin Escardo 3d ago

@johncarlosbaez writes "It's possible they are doing this because they believe Trump will continue his campaign against universities until 2028 at least, and they want to insulate the arXiv from Cornell."

If that's the case, it is crucial that they move away from Amazon servers, or any American corporate server.

Matteo Capucci 3d ago

@MartinEscardo @johncarlosbaez they should partner with the internet archive...

Low Rank Jack 3d ago

@MartinEscardo
Regarding mirrors, someone from arxiv recently answered me this https://mathstodon.xyz/@arXiv/116218497242146725
@johncarlosbaez

arXiv (@[email protected])

@lowrankjack The mirrors were closed because they were not all being updated, but we have entered into third-party preservation agreements (one of which is non-US based) so no matter what, the research arXiv is trusted with sharing will be available and preserved in full: https://blog.arxiv.org/2026/02/03/arxiv-future-proofs-access-to-research-with-third-party-digital-preservation/

Mathstodon

Low Rank Jack 3d ago

@MartinEscardo
I could be wrong, but I have the feeling TIB (German National Library for Science and Technology) first took the initiative to build a dark arXiv in 2025, and next arXiv and TIB secured an agreement. If this is correct, TIB initiative was great as it forced arXiv to officially recognize a non-US arXiv backup, even if disconnected from a direct access.

https://blog.tib.eu/2025/05/14/protecting-science-tib-builds-dark-archive-for-arxiv/
@johncarlosbaez

Protecting Science: TIB builds Dark Archive for arXiv - TIB-Blog

Research and science are international; it is not for nothing that we speak of international specialist communities. Although a service such as arXiv is operated by an institution based in the USA, namely Cornell University, it is used by researchers worldwide. Part of arXiv‘s funding has also been internationalised since 2010 with the introduction of arXiv membership. The TIB finances the German contribution together with the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres (HGF) and the Max Planck Society (MPG). The TIB has now set up a so-called dark archive for the arXiv content in order to make the backed-up data accessible in the event that the data located in the USA is lost.

TIB-Blog

P_______X 4d ago

@johncarlosbaez
Sic transit gloria mundi

Tony Masiello 4d ago

@johncarlosbaez I started to doze off just reading the job description, so I guess I won't qualify.

Patric Nordbeck 4d ago

@johncarlosbaez so glad now that I took my stuff off of there. Although it required a lot of back and forth reminding them about GDPR and laws which they then reluctantly followed.

@johncarlosbaez im not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing :/
I assume it must be bad

John Carlos Baez 4d ago

@demofox - We will only be able to tell when they hire the new director, and see what he or she does.

@johncarlosbaez Well, that’s about as disappointing as you’d expect from the major universities, given recent experience of administrative cowardice, incompetence and greed. Cool😒

Ed Wiebe 4d ago

@johncarlosbaez thus foretelling the end of the arXiv.

Matteo Capucci 3d ago

@johncarlosbaez is it bad to emancipate such an institution from a private US university?
the CEO salary is quite embarrassing though, I agree

Liu Yao 刘杳 3d ago

@johncarlosbaez ArXiv already faces real challenges from AI generated papers, and this doesn't seem to be the way to fence off what's coming.

I was just thinking the other day that anything you can prompt AI to generate within a few minutes would not be worth publishing. Existing papers should also undergo an evaluation by AIs (one AI reads it, summarizes the main ideas, and feeds to another AI to reconstruct.) And we should probably only archive the prompts.

Dan Frumin 3d ago

@johncarlosbaez lets nominate you!

@johncarlosbaez That is some salary