20 Fake Archives: The Search for Openness in Scholarly Communication Platforms

Doppelgangers exist in science too. While counterfeit or reappropriated brands have long been regular features of the commercial world, scholarship is increasingly dealing with a similar phenomenon. Appropriating a successful brand is indeed a way to tap into the value the original brand creates and the communities it fosters. This does not need to be illegal or deceptive though. viXra.org is a preprint repository that mimics the design, logo, structure, and functioning of arXiv.org, the open-access website that collects articles from physics, mathematics, and other quantitative sciences before or regardless of their submission and publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Launched in 2009 as an answer to the role of arXiv as the dominant platform for scholarly publishing in some areas, viXra is an ironic copycat version of the “official” website, of which it spells the name backwards (Brumfiel, 2009). At the same time though, one cannot help but notice that viXra contains thousands of articles. It has in fact grown to become an alternative platform for scholarly communication. While it would be easy to discard it as a container for “crackpot” and irrelevant science such as cold fusion or unorthodox astrophysical theories, it hardly represents a form of misconduct. Sure, viXra engages in spam-like practices (Brunton, this volume, chapter 18). For example, users who misspell arxiv.org's URL and type “rxiv.org” instead will land on a website that mirrors viXra's and presents its content. 1 But what is more important is that viXra could help shed light on how current forms of digital scholarly publishing run counter to rhetorics of openness, and how practices of brand appropriation and mimicry can allow criticism to be embodied by concrete, if ironic, alternatives.