MyARX Documentation
From QED
Contents |
What is MyARX?
MyARX is a web site designed to help you view abstracts from www.arXiv.org. On the order of 200 abstracts appear on arXiv every day, and most users are interested in only a handful of those. Picking them out is a challenge, especially if one's interests span several different fields (for example, hep-th, hep-ph, nucl-th, and nucl-ex if one is interested in string theory and heavy ion collisions). MyARX helps in two main ways:
- You can maintain a list of authors whose papers you are likely to be interested in. Keywords can also be used in these lists. The list can then be used to sort the new abstracts in order of decreasing priority.
- MyARX keeps track of which abstracts you've already read, so you can read as many or as few as you like today and have the rest waiting tomorrow.
You can also rate abstracts from 1 (not interesting) to 5 (very interesting) and make short comments on papers. And you can create or join a group of other MyARX users and share your ratings and comments with them
BEFORE YOU START USING MyARX
Before you start using MyARX, you should understand a few things about it:
- It was designed and implemented by a very small development team. It may have bugs and security vulnerabilities. The worst-case scenario if the security of the system is breached is that all the information you supply to MyARX, could be accessed by a third party. The system has been up since approximately July 1, 2007, and we are unaware of any security breaches to date.
- There is no way to cancel a user account or obliterate data from MyARX. If you want to stop using MyARX, we recommend to leave any group you may have joined and just stop logging in. At that point (modulo the possibility of a security breach) no one other than the MyARX administrators will be able to view or modify any data you have put into MyARX.
- MyARX is administered by Steve Gubser, a professor in the Princeton Physics Department.
- MyARX runs on shared hardware provided by Princeton's OIT group. The CPU power is quite limited, and this may cause the scripts to load slowly, ESPECIALLY THE ONE THAT UPDATES PAPER PRIORITIES. Please treat the scripts gently: no rapid-fire reloads.
By using MyARX, you are accepting that the software is provided on an as-is basis, including the limitations and hazards described in this section. Bug reports and requests for improvements are welcome, but they will be addressed only as time and resources allow.
Instructions for new users
Logging on
There are two steps to logging on to MyARX:
- To see the login page, you have to be added to the list of authorized users by a MyARX administrator. Then you log in with your Princeton University LDAP username and password. This is the same usename / password you would use to log on to webmail.princeton.edu or to the Unix servers; it is set using P-synch.
- Click on "Sign up" at the bottom of the login page to create an account.
- Note: any username / password combination not already in use is allowed, but we recommend using your Princeton LDAP user name and some password other than your P-synch password. The reason for using a different password from LDAP is that we cannot promise the high level of password security that Princeton OIT presumably maintains.
Getting started
Initially, when you log on, there will be no papers available to view. To use the scripts, we recommend two configuration steps:
- Adjust your preferences:
- Click on "Preferences".
- Set the "Cut-off date" to some date in the last few weeks (e.g. the first day of the current month). If you don't, a lot of old papers will show up when you're reading abstracts.
- Check "Enable category filter".
- Type in "hep-th, hep-ph" (or something similar) in the "Add comma-separated categories" box.
- Type in "default" in the "Add comma-separated filters" box.
- Set a priority list. (This step is mandatory in order to view papers.)
- Click on "Priorities".
- Revise the text in the text window to reflect your interests. If you don't want to enter a list, clear the text altogether.
- Click on "Update Priority List".
- THEN click on "Update Paper Priorities". PLEASE BE PATIENT: THIS CAN TAKE SEVERAL MINUTES. Please do not hit the back button; please do not click again on "Update Paper Priorities". This is the point where the scripts need the most patience and should be treated very gently to avoid overloading the underlying hardware.
General Information
Sorts and Searches
So now you are ready to use MyARX. The fundamental features are the sort and search options found on the "Read" page. There are several basic sorts. The current default is priority sort, which means papers will be sorted according to your list of author priorities. Then there are two time-dependent sorts: newest first and oldest first. Using either will return exactly what it says: either the newest papers or the oldest. The fourth sort option is "Read by me". Papers returned by this sort are the papers for which you have clicked on the abstract or PDF link and will be ordered using your list of priorities. The fifth option is "Viewed by me", which returns all papers that you have browsed (I'll explain this better further down the page). The sixth option, "Rating", currently returns papers ordered by average user rating though this may change in the future. The last sort option is "Groups", which returns any papers you haven't viewed but someone in your group has rated higher than 1 or commented on.
Viewing, Rating and Commenting
Most of the time you will probably be using the "Priority" sort and we've designed the site accordingly. You'll notice that below each paper there is a button that says "Read up to this point (#)" and it functions as it says. When you click this button, you're indicating that you've at least skimmed all of the abstracts about this point. You'll notice that the page reloads but the papers above the button you just clicked are no longer visible. Instead, the page will load with the abstract just below the button you clicked as the first paper. This makes it easy to keep track of which papers you've looked at and which ones you haven't. If you'd like to see the papers you've previously viewed, you can use the "Viewed by me" sort option or there's a preference you can change that I'll tell you about in the "Preferences" section.
As you skim abstracts, you will probably come across a few that interest you so we have provided quick access to the PDF and Abstract stored on ArXiv. You will also notice there are fields that allow you to rate a paper and make comments on it. You are not obligated to do either, but if you actually read the paper you'll probably want to let your fellow group members (to be discussed in more detail later) know what you think of it. It also gives you a quick reference that you might find useful in the future.
Bookmarks
We've added a nifty feature that allows you to "Bookmark" an abstract that you find interesting or relevant. To start using this feature, you will first need to click the link "Bookmarks" at the top of the page. Then you will need to add a new folder and click "Save." If you do not click the "Save" button, the folder will not be stored in the datebase and you won't be able to use bookmarks without a folder. Once you have at least one folder, you'll notice yellow stars appearing next to abstracts on the main page. If you click the star, you are indicating that you would like to bookmark that particular abstract and a drop-down box with a list of all the folders you have created will appear. Select the folder you'd like the bookmark to appear in, and when you submit the paper, the bookmark will be stored in the database and you'll be able to see it when you visit the "Bookmarks" page.
Preferences
There are several different preferences you can set while using MyARX. First, you can determine how many abstracts you'd like to see per page. There are several presets and currently the maximum is 100. Another option is whether or not to see papers you've already viewed. If you select this option then all papers will be visible in the basic sorts even if you've already viewed them. A third option is to see more details for each paper. While it is possible to simply click the button "Show more" under each paper, it is easier to set the default to show that information (comments, abstract, date published, and average rating). And next there are category filters, which allow you to select which ArXiv categories (such as hep-th, cond-mat.str-el, nucl-ex, ...) you'd like to view. First you should add the categories you'd like to use in the appropriate box and then determine the number of filters that might be useful for you (a filter is merely a collection of categories). After you've created at least one filter and one category, you're ready to go. Click the save button at the bottom of the page and when it reloads, you should see a table with filter names across the top, category names along the left side, check boxes in the center, and a radio button above each filter name. You should now set up your filters. Click the check boxes underneath each filter for the categories you'd like that filter to use. After you've set up you're filters, select which one you'd like to be your default by using the radio buttons. If you need to change this in the future, just return to the "Preferences" page and select a different filter. Creating filters also adds a new sort option for each filter which will return a priority sort after applying the selected filter. And the last major preference option is the cut-off date. This simply limits the sorts to all those papers published after your cut-off date. We provide this feature to ensure that you're not bombarded with lots of old papers when you first start using MyARX.
Groups
You can access the groups page by clicking "Groups" at the top of the page. If you are not in a group, the page will display a box that allows you to create your own group, and if you have any group invitations, those will also be displayed. If you are in a group, then a list of members, as well as the owner of the group, will be displayed. As the owner of the group, there are three things you can do that other members cannot: 1) You can invite other people to join the group. 2) You can change the owner of the group. 3) You can delete the group. It's fairly easy to do any of these by following the logical links on the groups page. As of now, all groups are private (although this will probably be changed) so you can only join a group if the owner invites you or if you created the group yourself.
The purpose of groups is straightforward: to provide a group of people with common research interests a venue for expressing their opinions among themselves. Being a member allows to you see comments and ratings made by fellow group members and makes the group sort feature useful as you can save yourself time by reading abstracts that others already found interesting. If you're going to use MyARX on a regular basis, you should definitely think about starting or joining a group.
Authors/Keywords and Priorities
You can currently define priorities attached to an author list and we should soon be updating so that you will be able to assign keywords priorities as well. To access your personalized author priority information, click "Authors" at the top of the page. The page that loads should have a large text box for you to enter your author list. When you first access this page there should be an example list; make sure to follow the formatting of the example. I'll give you an example here as well:
#author 10 Witten #author 9 Maldacena Vafa Pufu Verlinde #author 8 Bush George Bush George W. Bush
If an author has multiple spellings of his/her name and you don't want false-positives (for instance, Bush would register anyone with a first or last name of Bush), make sure to include the likely spellings you know about. Though you can use integers higher than 10, we recommend that you use a list of authors starting with priority 10 (best, most interesting or relevant) down to priority 1 (should at least glance at though may not be particularly useful/interesting). When you click submit, all paper from the past week will be updated to match your new priorities (I'm afraid we can't check your new list against the entire database because it takes too long). Please be patient during this process because it may take several minutes.
Further information
A developer's wiki for MyARX has been started here.
