Paper short abstract:

viXra.org is the evil twin of arXiv.org, the centralized preprint archive used in physics and math. It mimics arXiv's design while claiming to serve "the whole community." Doppelgänger publishing venues question the rhetoric of openness that has become hegemonic in contemporary scholarship.

Paper long abstract:

Physicists and mathematicians use preprint archives to circulate papers, as well as to render visible data such as number of contributions and citations. Their core publishing infrastructure is arguably the centralized open access preprint archive, arXiv.org. The role of viXra.org, arXiv's evil twin, is thus to avoid the community-based forms of policing that keep undesired papers outside of arXiv. ViXra mimics arXiv's design and functioning, while claiming to be "truly open" and to serve "the whole scientific community" by allowing outcast researchers to publish their work. In fact, the strict moderation and review processes enforced by arXiv are seen as failing to meet the standards of openness preprint archives are supposed to live up to. While there is a certain dose of irony in viXra, one cannot help but notice that this archive has published more than 10,000 articles. Its use appears to be highly moralized, as physicists working in recognized scientific institutions are discouraged from publishing on it. This and other cases of doppelgänger, spam, bot-generated publishing venues provide a vantage point to understand efforts to construct and police the boundaries of science ("the community"). ViXra also demands us not to take at face value the rhetoric of openness that has become hegemonic in contemporary scholarship.